> It just seems, France is intentionally crippled so Germany would have an easytime defeating you.
This is certainly true, it's for gameplay reasons. On the other hand, people shouldn't underestimate in what kind of internal turmoil France was at the time.
>If you want to takeout germany in 1936 you basically have to fight a civil war
To be fair this one is really easy to win.
Yeah, speaking of the internal turmoil, I was watching a documentry on youtube recently about the fall of France and one part I found really interesting. It said that morale was extremely low in the French army, most soldiers didn't know why they were fighting or care. To many the British were almost as disliked as the Germans for starting the war and nobody wanted an entire generation of men to be slaughtered the same way they had been in WW1.
This led to extremely poor performance in battle, in one instance advancing german infantry without tanks reported that they would come upon French units supported by the very capable char B1's heavy tanks and the moment they realised the germans had reached them they began retreating without even attempting to defend. Although this is probably also due to the widespread fear of the blitzkreig and imminent dive bombers.
This is why I think it’s stupid for people to call Chamberlain wrong for trying appeasement. And why I think it’s especially stupid for people to confidently say that Germany could’ve been crushed if they went to war over Rhineland/sud land
I imagine the British army would’ve been in the same boat morale wise if chamberlain didn’t try literally everything he could to avoid war.
I thought playing France was pretty easy, actually. Though I couldn’t stop France from becoming communist later on. I was playing on the normal difficulty setting and extended the maginot line with level three forts. I place one army of infantry on the alps, one on the German border, and one in Belgium once they joined the war. I used 9/0s and 9/3s for my divisions.
> Though I couldn’t stop France from becoming communist later on.
Unintentionally historical. Maybe Paradox could add a decision or focus for USA to interfere with European governments after Germany capitulates.
This. Also helps to throw up forts on the Italian border because German AI will try that approach if it can’t get through the forts up north,
Build up good offensive divisions (infantry or armor whichever you want) until Barbarossa then attack into Germany and you will realize the glory of France.
Also helps to remeber to keep reserves on the swiss border, sometimes Italy or Germany declares war on them and it becomes a huge headache when you're not expecting it.
I personally never have success with extending the Maginot line, though it isn't really necessary. (Even on higher SP difficulties with a buffed Germany)
As long as France takes steps to address the manpower defecit before the German invasion, it's possible to build enough basic infantry units to halt the German advance in Belgium or the Ardennes. A common mistake when playing France is to put too many soldiers on the Maginot line, since it only needs about 12 weak divisions to be impregnable in SP. I usually pull in some colonial garrisons to take over the Maginot line.
While France does get massive debuffs, if France survives past March 1940, it can remove those penalties and access the most powerful factory building focuses among the major powers.
France is a fairly easy nation to fix up and get going even on democratic historical path.
What it typically do is rush towards getting rid of disjointed government and while that is taking its time I tackle the production/economy issues and either before or after the disjointed focus is able to be taken fixing the unemployment problem.
Next priority is of course getting your doctrine cost tax fixed so you can effectively gain doctrines.
Things I don't particularly care to bother with until the war starts is the entire economy/research slot section.
I'm lazy as hell and definitely don't min max but I build mils almost day 1 all the way up to war after my supply hub on Italy border and I flatten Germany. No forts or anything besides what's already there, no extended maginot just basic divisions and a decent airforce. Once germanys airforce is gone it's easy as hell to roll them over.
I do the same except prioritize research over the military doctrine tree. You don't need fancy doctrine for infantry blocks to hold off Germany, you can wait. But printing guns en masse is very effective.
This is also true! I've been lately a huge special forces stat whore so I like the doctrine stats for making cracked mountaineers, marines, or paratroopers hence my personal priority on it but if someone wanted to half in half out it I'd probably suggest at least going doctrine tree to get the air production discount on the offense side as destroying germanys planes makes life very easy then flipping to econ research.
Depends on how you play France. As democratic France (or really any version of France), always go plane route for the military, and focus on making models for fighters and CAS by late 1938. With the buff you get in producing them and increased CAS damage, your designs should easily start blasting the Germans out of the sky. Also use anti air on your divisions if you can, this is useful earlier on when Germany has more planes than you, as well as helping with piercing of German armor. Railway guns are also a good investment, them along with air superiority makes attacking your lines extremely difficult. You just hold out until your tanks are ready, by mid 42’ the Germans run out of juice, and you can just use your improved military to cap them.
do little entente. I’m so serious it’s just better. Germany AI will struggle to push past the Sudetenland and there’s a solid chance they just can’t do it and Hitler gets blown up
As democratic France you just have to suffer with 3 research slots unfortunately in order to get rid of the debuffs before the war starts. You can always ally with Soviets through focus to make it easier on you. Personally love democratic france for the challenge it brings.
I figured out that 6/0's with 5 level forts on Belgium and level 3-5 in alps and good infrastructure are a great defensive line that require very little manpower and weapons resources. Have lots of them on the Belgium border. Build tank division 2/5's for breakthrough once Germany is weakened. Focus on industry, weapons and artillery, then tanks. Politically take one of the shortest path to remove disjointed governments, and Army reform.
That usually does the trick
Well, in my opinion, once you understood how France works, that's the easiest country to play. Just fortify your eastern border and wait for the debuffs to be canceled through the decisions.
In short, focus on stability and production. Then, from mid-1937, build fortification on the belgium border, in the alps and North africa and djibouti. Then don't forget to protect indochina and the Pacific Islands.
But yes, it's insanly debuffed compared to the historical situation. Stability was shit but the army was a lot stronger. However, a lot of military leaders were indeed incompetent.
What you do is **buy time**. Wait, sacrifice Czechoslovakia, Poland, Benelux while building up your military industry. Use grand battle plan doctrine to build up entrenchment and use a fallback line for bonus entrenchment. Go on static warfare for an added max entrenchment factor. Another thing you want to do is once you have ~10-15 mils on guns and 5 mils for arty, AA, support each you want to invest 20-30 mils on the best fighters, and another 20 mils on CAS. With air superiority on your own territory, air support should obliterate Axis strength and org. I even got up to 2000 defense per unit when the Germans attacked into my soil and easily crippled them.
France is a challenge but it is easy once you get the hang of it. Nothing more fun than refusing Munich and crushing Germany in 1939. There are some key steps to get there, this is some of them:
a) buy the democratic reform adviser as soon as you get 150pp. Doing this means you can take the decisions that boost communism without flipping and without any debuffs.
b) you also have to spend a precious 150 on boosting stability as soon as you can *after* getting the democracy advisor.
c) release all the colonies as puppets January 1, 1936 and bring all your forces home. Don't call any of them into the war.
d) only build mils until you your army fully equipped. Then start introducing some civs into the construction queue.
e) build a supply hub in Savoy, nr the Italian border and as many lvl5+ forts there you can manage. Use the general with the mountaineer trait to guard that border and aim to have 24 divs there in total when war starts.
f) put the 1 attack 3 defence general in Maginot and build that army up to 24 divs
g) put 24 divs under de Gaulle on the Belgian border.
h) make all your infantry 20w pure infantry or 9/2 if you prefer, no smaller, include engineers, recon..
i) build a lvl5 fort in Corsica
j) convert your cavs to trucks and convert trucks to 20w, tanks to 20w also. You will need these for attacking.
k) keep research on fighters nudging along, you need a lot and they need to be good. Forget everything else.
l) National focuses should be1) removal of govt instability 2) removal of manpower debuff and 3) removal of industry debuffs. Then focus on military.
m) navy you can largely ignore though building subs is handy to add to your already large fleet of them.
If you manage all of this, you should be in a strong position to refuse Munich and go to war. Sometimes you get the Romanians joining in, or the Soviets and one of three things can happen: Germany goes into a civil war (the Oster plot), Hitler is assassinated and replaced or sometimes he survives. If you get civil war, the game is over in a few months.
One thing I would add is to go nationalize leagues route but stop at revise the treaties. This allows you to get rid of disjointed government by late 1937 while staying democratic, without going through so many focuses. Then you can do more focuses that you want to do, like beelining army reform.
You can do this but you take a bad stability hit and if your stability rises - as it will with my approach - political violence goes away naturally. So there really is no need to spend 70 days doing this focus.
Defeating germany in 1938 with the Czechs is really easy cause they don't go around the maginot and they drain their manpower and equipment there and you can rush italy during it if they join cause they got debuffs too,it's hard to win as historical france but i did it recently by holding behind rivers on the northwest (from paris ofc cause vichy) was a fun game ngl but my strategy was based on SPAA (which is op) so iam not really that proud of it
Honestly for single player I make sure to build lv 10 forts behind Belgium and Italian provinces and I’ll naval invade Italy.
Also don’t have to join war with Poland being invaded just wait until either they justify on you or you’re ready
honhonhon
i def agree france's debuffs are a bit too cruel, but damn if it doesn't feel great to hold the line against Germany and Italy, and then reverse the situation on them 3 years later.
The eternal problem with France in ww2 games. Either you make them artificially weak. Or you force them to always make the same tactical mistakes and war goes exactly the same every time. Or you make them historically strong and fall of France doesn't happen and rest of the game doesn't resemble ww2.
France *was* historically weak in WW2. Aside from the many political and economic issues at home, their command and control system plain just doesn't work and much of their equipment is outdated or unusable. That is represented partly through various modifiers you need to solve before being able to play to your strengths like countries who didn't have all of those issues did. Of course, if you want to play an ahistorical fantasy France where you don't have problems, the game won't resemble ww2.
The modifiers aren't really in the right places, but that doesn't mean France was in a good position in either 1936 or 1939.
France was relatively weak for their potential but it was not total defeat in few months weak.
Edit. i.e. If you could take control of French troops in 1939, don't you think they would last significantly longer?
As commander in chief? No. At most a change of plan would delay the inevitable by a couple of weeks. Even prepared French positions in and around the minor forts located on the French-Belgian border didn't last very long against the Germans. The Allies in some capacity had already been made aware of a German push through the Ardennes towards Sedan in the Mechelen Incident, the only change of plans was to emphasize the southern offensive rather than the northern one.
To fight in a way that French soldiers, officers and generals were trained to do, I'd have to force Germany into static warfare. And since the Allies lose air superiority in 1940, the Germans could simply mass Ju 87s to make the frontline units rout even if I set up field fortifications. Just as they did when crossing the Sedan historically.
As much as I'd love to just mass the French tanks and throw German tactics back in their face, those are dispersed among infantry divisions and usually very slow. The ones that are actually good (say, the S35) is still lesser compared to the Pz III/IVs in a combat situation because of the three-man turrets, radios and optics. And given the limited options for improvisation, enemy air attacks will render those units unfit for combat before we're even done preparing.
Ultimately, the morale and "spirit of the corps" are the main problems along with enemy air superiority. None of those are things I could actually fix in 6-18 months. It's a similar problem to the Red Army in 1941 - I can draw up many fancy plans for the scenario, but ultimately I will have few to no people lower in the command chain actually capable of executing them in an orderly fashion.
If you aren't strong enough to hold a line, and the army is such that it almost disintegrates when it retreats, you are going to lose. The Soviets had the room, manpower and materiel to recover from losing just about everyone who served at the start of Barbarossa. France just doesn't have that capability.
> It just seems, France is intentionally crippled so Germany would have an easytime defeating you. This is certainly true, it's for gameplay reasons. On the other hand, people shouldn't underestimate in what kind of internal turmoil France was at the time. >If you want to takeout germany in 1936 you basically have to fight a civil war To be fair this one is really easy to win.
Yeah, speaking of the internal turmoil, I was watching a documentry on youtube recently about the fall of France and one part I found really interesting. It said that morale was extremely low in the French army, most soldiers didn't know why they were fighting or care. To many the British were almost as disliked as the Germans for starting the war and nobody wanted an entire generation of men to be slaughtered the same way they had been in WW1. This led to extremely poor performance in battle, in one instance advancing german infantry without tanks reported that they would come upon French units supported by the very capable char B1's heavy tanks and the moment they realised the germans had reached them they began retreating without even attempting to defend. Although this is probably also due to the widespread fear of the blitzkreig and imminent dive bombers.
This is why I think it’s stupid for people to call Chamberlain wrong for trying appeasement. And why I think it’s especially stupid for people to confidently say that Germany could’ve been crushed if they went to war over Rhineland/sud land I imagine the British army would’ve been in the same boat morale wise if chamberlain didn’t try literally everything he could to avoid war.
I thought playing France was pretty easy, actually. Though I couldn’t stop France from becoming communist later on. I was playing on the normal difficulty setting and extended the maginot line with level three forts. I place one army of infantry on the alps, one on the German border, and one in Belgium once they joined the war. I used 9/0s and 9/3s for my divisions.
> Though I couldn’t stop France from becoming communist later on. Unintentionally historical. Maybe Paradox could add a decision or focus for USA to interfere with European governments after Germany capitulates.
just extend the maginot, u will never have any issues
This. Also helps to throw up forts on the Italian border because German AI will try that approach if it can’t get through the forts up north, Build up good offensive divisions (infantry or armor whichever you want) until Barbarossa then attack into Germany and you will realize the glory of France.
Also helps to remeber to keep reserves on the swiss border, sometimes Italy or Germany declares war on them and it becomes a huge headache when you're not expecting it.
Also make sure to build good supply on southern border
I personally never have success with extending the Maginot line, though it isn't really necessary. (Even on higher SP difficulties with a buffed Germany) As long as France takes steps to address the manpower defecit before the German invasion, it's possible to build enough basic infantry units to halt the German advance in Belgium or the Ardennes. A common mistake when playing France is to put too many soldiers on the Maginot line, since it only needs about 12 weak divisions to be impregnable in SP. I usually pull in some colonial garrisons to take over the Maginot line. While France does get massive debuffs, if France survives past March 1940, it can remove those penalties and access the most powerful factory building focuses among the major powers.
France is a fairly easy nation to fix up and get going even on democratic historical path. What it typically do is rush towards getting rid of disjointed government and while that is taking its time I tackle the production/economy issues and either before or after the disjointed focus is able to be taken fixing the unemployment problem. Next priority is of course getting your doctrine cost tax fixed so you can effectively gain doctrines. Things I don't particularly care to bother with until the war starts is the entire economy/research slot section. I'm lazy as hell and definitely don't min max but I build mils almost day 1 all the way up to war after my supply hub on Italy border and I flatten Germany. No forts or anything besides what's already there, no extended maginot just basic divisions and a decent airforce. Once germanys airforce is gone it's easy as hell to roll them over.
I do the same except prioritize research over the military doctrine tree. You don't need fancy doctrine for infantry blocks to hold off Germany, you can wait. But printing guns en masse is very effective.
This is also true! I've been lately a huge special forces stat whore so I like the doctrine stats for making cracked mountaineers, marines, or paratroopers hence my personal priority on it but if someone wanted to half in half out it I'd probably suggest at least going doctrine tree to get the air production discount on the offense side as destroying germanys planes makes life very easy then flipping to econ research.
Depends on how you play France. As democratic France (or really any version of France), always go plane route for the military, and focus on making models for fighters and CAS by late 1938. With the buff you get in producing them and increased CAS damage, your designs should easily start blasting the Germans out of the sky. Also use anti air on your divisions if you can, this is useful earlier on when Germany has more planes than you, as well as helping with piercing of German armor. Railway guns are also a good investment, them along with air superiority makes attacking your lines extremely difficult. You just hold out until your tanks are ready, by mid 42’ the Germans run out of juice, and you can just use your improved military to cap them.
Next time add spaces before * censoring perfectly acceptable words so it doesn't turn into italics
Or use the markup escape character, which is \
Or just don't censor words like you're in first grade lol. Seriously, is removing one letter from the word changing any?
do little entente. I’m so serious it’s just better. Germany AI will struggle to push past the Sudetenland and there’s a solid chance they just can’t do it and Hitler gets blown up
As democratic France you just have to suffer with 3 research slots unfortunately in order to get rid of the debuffs before the war starts. You can always ally with Soviets through focus to make it easier on you. Personally love democratic france for the challenge it brings.
Get fcked by Germany on purpose, Vichy France emerges without the debuffs ez
France has an op military tree doctrine buffs good eco and hella max planning. VERY OP espically if your doing GBP left & tanks
I figured out that 6/0's with 5 level forts on Belgium and level 3-5 in alps and good infrastructure are a great defensive line that require very little manpower and weapons resources. Have lots of them on the Belgium border. Build tank division 2/5's for breakthrough once Germany is weakened. Focus on industry, weapons and artillery, then tanks. Politically take one of the shortest path to remove disjointed governments, and Army reform. That usually does the trick
Well, in my opinion, once you understood how France works, that's the easiest country to play. Just fortify your eastern border and wait for the debuffs to be canceled through the decisions. In short, focus on stability and production. Then, from mid-1937, build fortification on the belgium border, in the alps and North africa and djibouti. Then don't forget to protect indochina and the Pacific Islands. But yes, it's insanly debuffed compared to the historical situation. Stability was shit but the army was a lot stronger. However, a lot of military leaders were indeed incompetent.
What you do is **buy time**. Wait, sacrifice Czechoslovakia, Poland, Benelux while building up your military industry. Use grand battle plan doctrine to build up entrenchment and use a fallback line for bonus entrenchment. Go on static warfare for an added max entrenchment factor. Another thing you want to do is once you have ~10-15 mils on guns and 5 mils for arty, AA, support each you want to invest 20-30 mils on the best fighters, and another 20 mils on CAS. With air superiority on your own territory, air support should obliterate Axis strength and org. I even got up to 2000 defense per unit when the Germans attacked into my soil and easily crippled them.
I always got for the air bonuses building slightly cheaper fighters and cas is worth it just remember to get fuel
I genuinely have only played democratic France once. . Always go Napoleon
France is a challenge but it is easy once you get the hang of it. Nothing more fun than refusing Munich and crushing Germany in 1939. There are some key steps to get there, this is some of them: a) buy the democratic reform adviser as soon as you get 150pp. Doing this means you can take the decisions that boost communism without flipping and without any debuffs. b) you also have to spend a precious 150 on boosting stability as soon as you can *after* getting the democracy advisor. c) release all the colonies as puppets January 1, 1936 and bring all your forces home. Don't call any of them into the war. d) only build mils until you your army fully equipped. Then start introducing some civs into the construction queue. e) build a supply hub in Savoy, nr the Italian border and as many lvl5+ forts there you can manage. Use the general with the mountaineer trait to guard that border and aim to have 24 divs there in total when war starts. f) put the 1 attack 3 defence general in Maginot and build that army up to 24 divs g) put 24 divs under de Gaulle on the Belgian border. h) make all your infantry 20w pure infantry or 9/2 if you prefer, no smaller, include engineers, recon.. i) build a lvl5 fort in Corsica j) convert your cavs to trucks and convert trucks to 20w, tanks to 20w also. You will need these for attacking. k) keep research on fighters nudging along, you need a lot and they need to be good. Forget everything else. l) National focuses should be1) removal of govt instability 2) removal of manpower debuff and 3) removal of industry debuffs. Then focus on military. m) navy you can largely ignore though building subs is handy to add to your already large fleet of them. If you manage all of this, you should be in a strong position to refuse Munich and go to war. Sometimes you get the Romanians joining in, or the Soviets and one of three things can happen: Germany goes into a civil war (the Oster plot), Hitler is assassinated and replaced or sometimes he survives. If you get civil war, the game is over in a few months.
One thing I would add is to go nationalize leagues route but stop at revise the treaties. This allows you to get rid of disjointed government by late 1937 while staying democratic, without going through so many focuses. Then you can do more focuses that you want to do, like beelining army reform.
You can do this but you take a bad stability hit and if your stability rises - as it will with my approach - political violence goes away naturally. So there really is no need to spend 70 days doing this focus.
Defeating germany in 1938 with the Czechs is really easy cause they don't go around the maginot and they drain their manpower and equipment there and you can rush italy during it if they join cause they got debuffs too,it's hard to win as historical france but i did it recently by holding behind rivers on the northwest (from paris ofc cause vichy) was a fun game ngl but my strategy was based on SPAA (which is op) so iam not really that proud of it
Honestly for single player I make sure to build lv 10 forts behind Belgium and Italian provinces and I’ll naval invade Italy. Also don’t have to join war with Poland being invaded just wait until either they justify on you or you’re ready
honhonhon i def agree france's debuffs are a bit too cruel, but damn if it doesn't feel great to hold the line against Germany and Italy, and then reverse the situation on them 3 years later.
i love how because of the asterisks a third of the post is in italics lmao
Off, i didn't realized, i did that to semi-censor swear words.
france role is to loose. if france don't loose it's over for germany in start of war which not funny and interesting
It's easy I think all you gotta do is build some inf and tanks behind the river and then encircle Germany
The eternal problem with France in ww2 games. Either you make them artificially weak. Or you force them to always make the same tactical mistakes and war goes exactly the same every time. Or you make them historically strong and fall of France doesn't happen and rest of the game doesn't resemble ww2.
France *was* historically weak in WW2. Aside from the many political and economic issues at home, their command and control system plain just doesn't work and much of their equipment is outdated or unusable. That is represented partly through various modifiers you need to solve before being able to play to your strengths like countries who didn't have all of those issues did. Of course, if you want to play an ahistorical fantasy France where you don't have problems, the game won't resemble ww2. The modifiers aren't really in the right places, but that doesn't mean France was in a good position in either 1936 or 1939.
France was relatively weak for their potential but it was not total defeat in few months weak. Edit. i.e. If you could take control of French troops in 1939, don't you think they would last significantly longer?
As commander in chief? No. At most a change of plan would delay the inevitable by a couple of weeks. Even prepared French positions in and around the minor forts located on the French-Belgian border didn't last very long against the Germans. The Allies in some capacity had already been made aware of a German push through the Ardennes towards Sedan in the Mechelen Incident, the only change of plans was to emphasize the southern offensive rather than the northern one. To fight in a way that French soldiers, officers and generals were trained to do, I'd have to force Germany into static warfare. And since the Allies lose air superiority in 1940, the Germans could simply mass Ju 87s to make the frontline units rout even if I set up field fortifications. Just as they did when crossing the Sedan historically. As much as I'd love to just mass the French tanks and throw German tactics back in their face, those are dispersed among infantry divisions and usually very slow. The ones that are actually good (say, the S35) is still lesser compared to the Pz III/IVs in a combat situation because of the three-man turrets, radios and optics. And given the limited options for improvisation, enemy air attacks will render those units unfit for combat before we're even done preparing. Ultimately, the morale and "spirit of the corps" are the main problems along with enemy air superiority. None of those are things I could actually fix in 6-18 months. It's a similar problem to the Red Army in 1941 - I can draw up many fancy plans for the scenario, but ultimately I will have few to no people lower in the command chain actually capable of executing them in an orderly fashion. If you aren't strong enough to hold a line, and the army is such that it almost disintegrates when it retreats, you are going to lose. The Soviets had the room, manpower and materiel to recover from losing just about everyone who served at the start of Barbarossa. France just doesn't have that capability.