After a couple of days of experimentation - at least I learned the combat mechanics reasonably well - I managed to help Republican Spain win the Civil War with my 6 volunteer tank divisions. Accumulated a good amount - about 60 - army XP, and the volunteers themselves reached level 4. Zhukov himself advanced to level 6, and Spain became my puppet through event. No chance to even refuse. So far so good.
My volunteer force teleported back automatically, the same way as it appeared in Spain when I sent it. This must have been around October 1937. In February 1938 Portugal declared war on Spain. I start researching means to send forces again. To my dismay, I can no longer send volunteers, because as Spain's overlord, the USSR participates in the war, and volunteers can only be sent to other countries' wars, while the volunteers source is at peace.
To my even larger dismay, when I ask Spain to control their forces, I find that they have only 2 infantry divisions. Why has the AI disbanded all others, no idea. I'm ready to send my savegame to Paradox to investigate this behavior, because it seems like an AI issue.
The only options for me to send troops are by the Naval invasion mechanics and as Expeditionary force. Naval Invasion is not an option because USSR needs naval supremacy over the sea zones that the troops' transports will pass through. The Expeditionary force is no help at all, because it doesn't teleport the divisions to the target nation, merely passes control over them to the target nation. So when I sent Expeditionary forces all that was achieved was that Spain had a bunch of Soviet divisions sitting on Soviet territory and was of course unable to move them to Spain.
So the best I could do was send my air forces to establish Air superiority and to bomb as much of the Portugese as I could.
A sad way to end my 6 months old puppet regime. To larp Stalin for a minute, I would suspect the Spanish did all this on purpose in order to liberate themselves from Soviet rule.
My volunteer force teleported back automatically, the same way as it appeared in Spain when I sent it. This must have been around October 1937. In February 1938 Portugal declared war on Spain. I start researching means to send forces again. To my dismay, I can no longer send volunteers, because as Spain's overlord, the USSR participates in the war, and volunteers can only be sent to other countries' wars, while the volunteers source is at peace.
To my even larger dismay, when I ask Spain to control their forces, I find that they have only 2 infantry divisions. Why has the AI disbanded all others, no idea. I'm ready to send my savegame to Paradox to investigate this behavior, because it seems like an AI issue.
The only options for me to send troops are by the Naval invasion mechanics and as Expeditionary force. Naval Invasion is not an option because USSR needs naval supremacy over the sea zones that the troops' transports will pass through. The Expeditionary force is no help at all, because it doesn't teleport the divisions to the target nation, merely passes control over them to the target nation. So when I sent Expeditionary forces all that was achieved was that Spain had a bunch of Soviet divisions sitting on Soviet territory and was of course unable to move them to Spain.
So the best I could do was send my air forces to establish Air superiority and to bomb as much of the Portugese as I could.
A sad way to end my 6 months old puppet regime. To larp Stalin for a minute, I would suspect the Spanish did all this on purpose in order to liberate themselves from Soviet rule.
