(Not much of an own, just impressed myself because of how much I suck at the game)
Started my first play through as Spain, just looking to learn how the game works and fully expecting to get beaten in any wars I get dragged in to.
I start in '36 and start making a mess of everything, randomly placing factories and assigning production and generally being clueless. This proceeds for about 6 months until the Civil War pops (which I'd completely forgotten about whoops). I pick the Nationalists because I feel like I need the historical advantage and assess the damage. We've lost 4 ports on the north coast and 4 on the east to the Republicans, all but one of our operational air bases and control roughly half the country.
Thrown in at the deep end I split my forces in 3 and set up the front line, with each section ordered to gently push to recapture territory, which proves to be incredibly costly and ineffective. We manage to push through a gap in their line in the north and take back Bilbao with the help of a German volunteer division, but all along the rest of the front is stagnant. At this point my air force is already too crippled to continue fighting for air superiority, which the enemy hold from 2 months in until the end of the war.
I reassign units to different armies and alter their orders. Our line in the north will just try to hold against the superior Republican forces while the middle section of the front will attempt to push to the coast, as it's only about 4 territories away from the port of Valencia. Finally, a concentrated force in the south will aggressively push along the coast, flanking their front line and taking their ports to hurt their supplies. I also remember I own a navy at this point and set them up raiding convoys in the Med.
The strategy pays off big time and, while we take some losses in the north our southern force quickly pushes through Murcia and takes Valencia within 3 months. As the troops secure the city I see the Republican navy flee the docks and sail out into the Med. Didn't realise they had a navy. Ah.
All my raiding fleets join into one, only 12 ships strong, and begins a search and destroy mission to find and sink their fleet. We find them within the month, but I've underestimated their strength. They are also 12 strong, and it takes time for all of my ships to join the battle and we lose a destroyer and light cruiser in the initial skirmish. The fight looks tight, so I bring an extra 5 destroyers down from the north who arrive just as my battlecruiser comes into range. Steaming in, they make short work of the Republicans subs and then close in on their battlecruiser, sinking it after a short fight.
Meanwhile on land the fighting has reached a bit of a stalemate again. Having taken the large airfield at Madrid, the enemy no longer hold air superiority and their forces are weak, but they have the mountains and river to defend if I want to push on Zaragoza. Looking at the battle tab confirms my victories, the enemy are 90% of the way to capitulation due to losses of territory and cities. To save a long, bloody war pushing over the mountains I tell my men to just hold the line while 5 of my best divisions assemble in Valencia. From there, they will sail out and perform a naval assault on Barcelona. While this was far behind enemy lines, there was only 1 division defending it as all the Republican armies were busy holding the front. They begin the assault, and units begin peeling off the front line to run back and defend. In the next couple of weeks we push through to Zaragoza and reach the river Ebro before my naval assault team finally manages to take Barcelona. This gets us the last victory points we need, and Republican Spain surrenders to us. With 200k casualties overall and the war over by August 1937, I think it could've been a lot longer and a lot bloodier. Long live Generalissimo Franco.
Hearts of Iron IV
I was playing on a-historical so it occurs to me that the Soviets may have let the Republicans down since I didn't see any of their units fighting us, but maybe I just didn't spot them.
Author
Topic: How did you last *own*? (Read 1292531 times)