To be honest, I never figured I’d ever see a “blitzkrieg” strategy work in the mountains and deserts of Ethiopia… But I managed it!
I moved forward quickly from the south, and rapidly won those battles and forced them to retreat. We never stopped. While one division “held” each of these Ethiopian defenders, once they’d shifted backward, my other units began to slip around their flanks.
The northern front was more “blocked up,” and so my advance there was not so rapid. But I was still able to manage to go around and flank some of their units.
Once past the border units in the south (they had retreated, so were no longer on the border), instead of attacking from the flanks, I advanced beyond them and attacked Addis Ababa directly. My “holding” units were still keeping the border divisions busy, so they couldn’t come to the aid of their capital.
We had completely surrounded the units in the south – having forced both into the same province, and then bypassing them.
By the end of January, I was attacking Addis Ababa from the north and south. Surrender was inevitable. Five weeks of war (plus whatever time had been spent before I took command on January 1), and Ethiopia was annexed.
I immediately demobilized, in order to save the costs. Of course, it doesn’t have any effect upon my IC, as in the HPP mod those economic consequences run by different rules.
We also quickly begin transporting units back to Italy from Ethiopia. Needless to say, I’m worried about what Germany, and its volatile leader, might have in mind for Austria, his homeland. Austria is currently a fellow traveler with Italy, with a pro-Italian Fascist leader.
When asked to sign the London Naval Treaty in March, Italy quickly accedes. This improves our relations with those countries who we don’t want to antagonize, and perhaps makes them more likely to consider Germany the threat to watch, repairing our relations which were damaged over Ethiopia.
I’ve been working on building a Light Armor division, but since armor is not especially more important to my defenses than close air support provided by Light Bombers, I swap them out for a time so that I can get a little progress done on both. If I go to war soon, I will increase my economy so that I can hopefully build both at once.
I’m gradually building IC to improve my economy, but there’s little chance of sweeping economic changes. It will be good enough to add three or four IC to what I already have. Anything more than that is surely impossible if I’m to build a military also. The airbase is being built to extend my aircraft’s range north to protect Austria from Germany, should that become necessary.
In June, I achieve two tech advances which are of considerable importance to me. The Small Arms and other Infantry techs are critical to my survival against Germany, should it come to that.
The Industrial Production improves my miserable IC base (slightly). By about 2 IC as it turns out. We also improve our radio detection tech, which means we can use Radar stations as Signals Intelligence stations, the benefit of which I tried to demonstrate in my
Kriegsgefahr AAR.
We add another couple Mountain divisions to our Queue. The initial combat, and much combat in general, and assuredly any defensive moves we might have to make should Germany prove too strong for Italy to successfully invade, are dependent on the barrier of the Alps -- we'll be fighting and refighting over the mountains of Austria. So Mountain troops are very important to our strategy. I wish I could throw more in there. We'll see.
I love to throw artillery into any divisions I create. Artillery is wonderfully good at increasing my soft attack, and even hard attack to a degree. Toughness and Defensiveness also benefit -- it's an all-around good force multiplier to have around.
Everything happens in October, 1936. Well, not everything, but most of the major historical events come to fruition. China breaks into civil war, as does Spain.
Italy is walking a fine line. We've signed onto the London Naval Treaties. We refuse to join Germany's Anti-Comintern Pact (though we heartily sympathize with the sentiment, we're loathe to associate with Hitler). But we do send troops and supplies to aid the Nationalists in Spain, because they're Fascistic in nature and there's no saying they'd have to end up as allies of the Germans, rather than of Italy. Sending troops also gains experience and research points for Italy.
I also get a benefit from a random event. By nationalizing the private sector, I gain yet another 2 IC!
At this rate I'll have sufficient IC to challenge Germany by.... 1964 or so. If I can prevent Germany from growing at all.
Still, earning an extra 4 IC so quickly is definitely helpful for a low-budget empire like Italy.