As Germany : How do i deal with Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria

I usually puppet them all. They will then send exp. force en masse to you, it helps a lot against the SU. But, from a gameplay perspective, I think the best option is annexation for the IC alone.

I invited them into the Axis and now supply the Afrikan front (with Italy, Finland, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Spain, Portugal and Japan) with them.

Haven't had a single german soldier (just a few airmen) on the continent for the entire 9-years of war.

They tie-up the entire Allied military apparatus in the worthless theater and of their own choice! This allows myself to roll around the rest of the globe, snatching what I want.

Having them as support against the Soviets was unnecessary. If the Wehrmacht can't do in the Reds by themselves, the extra (under-equipped and poorly-guided) Axis-fodder won't help much.

However, their "extra border" status gives the Soviet AI real trouble in gauging what is an appropriate amount of forces to allocate to these minors. This can give the Heer a much thinner front as war breaks out.

Hungary is easy to get in to the Axis, via german focus.
Romania has 2 options, you can influence them and they will swich or USSR demands Bassarabia (via Ribentrop-Molotov ) and they will swich and ask to join.
Bulgaria is the easyest cuz the Italians influence them via focus.

If you conquer them that meens mapower loss for you and you you will have to station troops ther to quel with the partisans.
If you manage to get them in the Axis they will supply troops (crappy troops) but ther still troops plus dont forget thry will trade with you for resorces and you will get some free factorys like that.

Fierrann said:

And how do you puppet them ?
When i attack them, they surrender and i annex them....

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You can only puppet countries during peace conferences.

Hungary can be annexed directly after Austria. The allys won't care that you attack a facist country. In my last game UK joined my war against Italy and Hungary after Italy declared against Yugoslavia ^^.

Right now I usually double justify on Romania and Poland early game...run through poland then attack Romania, Romania is a bit of a pain to eat due to the mountains, but I need that oil. Hungary I usually just ignore untill after Russia, Bulgaria I usually try to eat at the same time as Turkey so I can get the Russian Oil fields easily. Might flip Turkey to Fascist, but then that means they would join the war and I'd prefer to keep as few allies as possible in my wars, if any.

Annex Everything.

Thrac said:

Hungary is easy to get in to the Axis, via german focus.
Romania has 2 options, you can influence them and they will swich or USSR demands Bassarabia (via Ribentrop-Molotov ) and they will swich and ask to join.
Bulgaria is the easyest cuz the Italians influence them via focus.

If you conquer them that meens mapower loss for you and you you will have to station troops ther to quel with the partisans.
If you manage to get them in the Axis they will supply troops (crappy troops) but ther still troops plus dont forget thry will trade with you for resorces and you will get some free factorys like that.

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If you can conquer some of them before the war with the allies there will be no partisans. You might have other priorities for any early wars though.

Austria, anex.
Chechoslovakia, anex.
Hungary, give Transylvania, then justify war, and anex.
Bulgaria, support their claims [forgot the name of the province], then justify war, and anex.
Yugoslavia, anex.
Greece, justify war, and anex.

The problem is, Romania for most of the time, gets the guarantee from UK/France, so thats why you let other countriest take their provinces first. Hungary, I have never seen it get guarantee from anyone, Bulgaria sometimes does. Greece, Im not sure.

Thats how I do it. AI is so dumb, you dont need them, they only cause troubles.

Fierrann said:

And how do you puppet them ?
When i attack them, they surrender and i annex them....

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megaspider01 said:

You can only puppet countries during peace conferences.

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Ylang said:

Austria, anex.
Chechoslovakia, anex.
Hungary, give Transylvania, then justify war, and anex.
Bulgaria, support their claims [forgot the name of the province], then justify war, and anex.
Yugoslavia, anex.
Greece, justify war, and anex.

The problem is, Romania for most of the time, gets the guarantee from UK/France, so thats why you let other countriest take their provinces first. Hungary, I have never seen it get guarantee from anyone, Bulgaria sometimes does. Greece, Im not sure.

Thats how I do it. AI is so dumb, you dont need them, they only cause troubles.

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This, basically.
If you're following the historical path, most likely all those nations will enter the Axis and remain independent, so this point is moot. It only makes sense to discuss this in the context of Ylang's strategy, that is the same as mine: puppet/annex anyone you can with NF and then justify war and attack. All that need to be done before the war starts, of course.

PDR1987 said:

I usually puppet them all. They will then send exp. force en masse to you, it helps a lot against the SU. But, from a gameplay perspective, I think the best option is annexation for the IC alone.

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My preference is puppeting, for the main reason that Germany's biggest weakness is its manpower, and, unlike many other countries (Japan, Fascist minors, Poland, and Soviet Union), does not gain any inherant bonus towards manpower.

Hungary can be annexed directly after Austria. The allys won't care that you attack a facist country. In my last game UK joined my war against Italy and Hungary after Italy declared against Yugoslavia ^^.

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One of my favorite strategies is to support party in countries I plan on attacking, then when they flip fascist, invade, the allies will not garuntee or help them.

Hungary should already be in your alliance as soon as you fire 1st Vienna. They will help with Poland and Yugoslavia and are actually useful in Russia.
Bulgaria will join IIRC as soon as you fire 2nd Vienna. Bulgaria can help with Greece and Yugoslavia and can be used as garrisons in the Balkans.
Romania will join you as soon as Russia fires Bessarabia. They are definitely useful in Russia.

I don't bother wasting time invading and puppeting them. Time is critical in getting to Russia before Russia gets to you. To quote Napoleon "You can ask me for anything you like, except time." Any time spent conquering and puppeting a nation that will automatically give you control of their armies is wasted time. To make matters worse they can join another faction and you suddenly have Allied or Soviet troops in the Balkans. My PP are being used up north grabbing all of Scandinavia for free and moving Turkey my way. I am not going to waste them on the Balkans.

All troops are useful as garrisons and filling gaps in Russia. In multiplayer be careful, their generic templates can be shattered easily by Russian troops. It is safer to keep a few German divisions with ALL other Axis units to provide them some backbone.

ALL allies can use lend lease support and are a great dumping ground for old light tanks, basic and level 1 rifles, artillery, AT, and fighters, Italy, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria in that order is my preference. For better or worse Germany is the arsenal of fascism. Just wish we could LL captured gear also as was done in RL. Hungary and Romania used tons of Czech and French gear.

You can use their troops in expeditionary forces better than the AI. Just remember to disband them back to their owner when you no longer need them to avoid excessive manpower hits. I would rather use Bulgarian toothpicks for garrison duty than front line Wehrmacht manpower.

Seems like evry1 is for anexation of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria but no1 understands the bigger picture.
So i m gone point out some issues with annexing this countrys insted of allying them.
First after you annex them, those countrys will not provide you ther full factorys that they had before the war cuz all ther annexd states will be regarded as COLONY STATES and get a -50 % slots in the respective states, so for example if a state had 4 factorys in it in a 4 slot state you will get only 2 or maybe 3 factorys cuz of your tech same for the manpower for the new conquer states you will get only 0.02 or something.... ussles.
Second you just wasted manpower to conquer this countrys which could've provided you a army of 1 to 2 milion men against the soviets..

Generally you can annex all of those nations with less than 10,000 casaulties, which is like 2 months of manpower spawn, and any states factories you gain are better than the zero youd get from not conquering them, and leaving the AI to control their forces, which is terrible. Same thing with manpower. 0.98% of the manpower is better than 0% of it.

Krafty said:

Generally you can annex all of those nations with less than 10,000 casaulties, which is like 2 months of manpower spawn, and any states factories you gain are better than the zero youd get from not conquering them, and leaving the AI to control their forces, which is terrible. Same thing with manpower. 0.98% of the manpower is better than 0% of it.

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The flaw in your logic to me is I can ask for and get expeditionary forces from European Axis members at ANY time, Expeditionary forces I can use and release back as and when needed. The AI begs you to take them.

If I annex the nations I get the factories, yippee yahoo. Factories are usually not my issue as Germany. By annexing my axis minors I now have to use my manpower, industry, and production time to reproduce and re-equip infantry units I just removed from the board when I could have them for free. Infantry units I can use to fill lines in Russia when facing the Russian hordes so my panzers don't get isolated when rampaging towards Moscow and Stalingrad.

No thanks, I'll use my industry to make panzers, mech, airplanes, and the ships I am going to need later......

The flaw in your logic is that the AI division template will be worse than if you had built a smaller number of divisions yourself.

Exp Force or not, you cant design them. This is a huge problem. It makes those divisons useless.

SP, sure fine, do whatever you want, even on veteran the game is so easy that none of this matters. In MP however, you dont want ANY AI designed divisions. Ever. Period. No. Nope. Not even once.

Russia is going to have every single division with 35% hardness. Every one. Your Exp. Forces will melt instantly against a human being. They have no piercing. They will never add ATGs.

Lets throw out a ballpark figure, lets say you get 50% less IC and troops by annexing rather than puppeting or factionalizing them.

If the units you design with that are 55% more effective, you should annex them. Because it means youll have 110% effectiveness compared to 100% effectiveness from exp.forces.

Literally just by spending 15 Army XP, you can make the AI divisions almost 300% more effective. So its even worse than you think. For everyone 3 divisions the AI gives you as an Exp. Force, you could have built one division that is more effective than all 3.

By that math, it would take Romania or whatever giving you almost 400 divisions with bad designs, just to sit on the border with Russia and act like 100 divisions you built yourself. Clearly the better choice is to annex them, and use their production (which youll get about 75% of it, especially the earlier you do it so they havent built factories near the state limit yet) to build my own units that are extremely effective.