Congrats! What was your approach for CK2 and how many attempts were necessary? I haven't done it yet.
CK2 is actually the reason I accomplished the whole thing...I tried it, gave up on the game in frustration, came back to it after a new patch only to give up again...until finally I've done it in 1.8.2 and thought "Hey, if I could do CK2, surely I can do every single other one!"
So the breakthrough came after I realized one simple thing: Do NOT fight anyone in Africa. You might be able to hold you line or get some useless clay, but no amount of empty tiles there will bring you any closer to the victory. And the whole thing is a race against time!
With that in mind, here's the gist of what I did:
1. Rush communism via civil war. You need it by summer 1936 or everything else isn't going to work.
2. After that, wait for SCW and immediately justify on the Nationalists.
3. Join the war as soon as you can and the Republicans will join your faction (you can use your focus to send some volunteers there to help them survive until then).
4. While fighting the Nationalists, starting preparing a coup in France. Make sure it fires in Nord pas de Calais, as you only need to capture Paris and this province has the closest tiles to the capital.
5. When their civil war starts, the French Commune will also join your faction.
6. Next, kill Portugal attacking from Spain. The tricky part is that their will inevitably call the French, who will easily be able to get higher warscore than you with their superior army...Don't allow that. Fight well, attack over the rivers and take occupations, maybe even try a naval invasion. The thing is that the French love themselves some African colonies and they will take both Angola and Mozabique if given a chance.
7. After that, justify on the British and invade. The combined Spanish and French navy should keep the RN busy enough for whatever the fleet you would be able to scrape together to allow for a landing. Nevertheless, invest in it early on (take your naval focus while you wait for communism to tick up), otherwise even the Portuguese shipyards wouldn't allow you to build enough on time. The British AI will send their whole army to Africa where you will just need a few cheap infantry units to slow them down in the mountains while you run wild in their home.
8. Leave Belgium for last. You wouldn't even need to risk the French involvement like with Portugal, and just naval invade from the UK.
I did the whole thing on historical sometime in 1939 before WW2. I think the timing is crucial as the Axis might throw all kinds of wrenches in the plan above.
Now, that was in 1.8.2. I think the current version will make it a little more complicated but independent of RNG. Complication comes from the new coup mechanics which now require quite a significant investment for a country as small as South Africa. On the other hand, the RNG element in my strategy came from the SCW timing: if it fired too early, it might be over before you could save the Republicans. If it fired too late, you might not be able to do everything before WW2. Ideally, you wanted it to fire around Q3 1936, and deviation from that increased the difficulty of the whole thing...but now this is exactly when it fires reliably.
