Swedish strategy and UK invasion in 1.5

[Belryuminus]

Hi again guys and gals,

i'm posting this because i had headaches yesterday trying to achieve some good runs with Sweden, in order to have "Northern Light" achievement and possibly "Med Plutonium".

For "Northern Light", in order to remind things to all, you need to control either Sweden, Finland, Norway or Denmark, and puppet the 3 others you did not chose for the game.
Usually, it is advised to play as Sweden, as it is the most powerfull country of those 4 both in Industry and Manpower ressources.

So i gave it a few new tries with 1.5 Cornflakes and i face two major problems. I need your point of view about the strategy to adopt.

1. With the new political system, i have troubles switching the governement to fascist. Two choices here. First go through Civil War but it is reducing your Manpower and troops as you don't recover the "loyalists" after the war. It is obviously not ideal whith a limited Manpower country. Second, go through peacefull referendum but it takes litterally AGES ! I was only able to switch early 1938 and no need to tell you that with the WT at that time, i was only able to justify against Denmark before UK starts guarenteeing everybody.
   So what would be the best option to you ? CW even if it gets you behind, or patiently wait the referendum ?
   
   
2. Operation Sea Lion, Swedish version. I was allied to the Reich, and Germany had complete control of France with Italy (no Vichy France). I was in complete control of Denmark (conquered in a first war) and i was in total occupation of Norway territory. It was late 1939.
   With several litlle submarine fleets, a good bunch of fighters and CAS (doing the naval work) and a few NAVs, AND a slightly reinforced starting fleet (like 8 hard cruisers, 4 light cruisers and a dozen DD), i was able to maintain naval superiority on Norway coasts and in the Eastern shore of UK.
   Happy of that, i'm launching my invasion with 4 Marines hoping it would be sufficient to take a secondary harbour, as Edinburg.
   It was a success. I rushed a good part of my army to consolidate the harbour and continue the Island invasion (about 15 7/2 INF).
   And then, drama. The supply route for Edinburg was going through the channel directly into a French harbour controlled by the Reich.
   I did not understand why. I was thinking the supply route for the troops was going to aim to MY country as i had the control of Edinburg.
   No need to mention that the supply road efficiency was very poor as nobody can challenge the UK domination in the channel so early in the game.
   My troops were hardly hit by attrition and flushed away by a quite strong defensive UK army coming from the south.

So what would you do ?
Where to land ? Is there a port where i'm sure the supply would go through Norway or Denmark and not through France ?

When ? Is it worth to wait being more powerfull or not as the Reich, your main ally, will slowly fall behind especially when wasting all his convoys in the channel thanks to the AI not really being fixed on that point, and when Soviets will join the war ?

Would it be different with Historical AI OFF ?

Is it possible to effeciently weakening UK with Swedish ressources in a long terme subnaval war, previously from invasion for example ?

Curious about your strategies in that patch

 

[Grallak]

Get three naval dockyards and research BB 2's. You should be able to make three before the war starts. Also the UK tends to get it's navy killed a lot more often now and the Japanese navy beat the american one. Shouldn't be too difficult to naval invade them right at the start or one year after hostilities commence.

 

[afb]

I just did a run as fascist Sweden, though I annexed instead of puppeting. It should be more or less the same, though. A few thoughts:

Going fascist
It does take a while. I got the free 120 pp from focus first, took silent workhorse and after that the fascist. I tried two starts, but in both of them, the scripted referendum in september gave me +10% fascism. I would assume it's influenced by my fascist advisor, but maybe I just got lucky? Anyway, between that and the decision to discredit government, your support should get to 25%. There are two events that increase fascist support that can trigger at 20%+ and 25%+ respectively. If at least one of those fires, you can get there fast. If both does, you're golden. Now I know that advice that boils down to "get lucky" isn't all that useful, but two takeaways: 1) Get to 20% and 25% support as fast as possible, 2) restarts can be useful.

Invading
With your hopefully slightly faster move to fascism, you can start conquering stuff earlier. I went after Denmark first, as I figured their military would be weaker. Naval landings around Odense and western Zealand cuts of Copenhagen and you can then crush the opposition there. Norway is tougher, but you should be able to outfight them. I was able to get both of them without any guarantees. The I waited for Germany to invade Poland before I fabricated on Finland. Again, no guarantee. Hardest part was crushing the Fins before the Soviets came knocking, but I guess you could live with them taking their own slice.

As I said, I annexed instead of puppeting. And the Scandinavian Union decision helped free manpower before Finland. But puppeting should work just as well.

Alternatively, you could try as Finland. They start non-aligned, so I'm pretty sure you can get down the fascist foci faster and therefore change government faster. And while you're there in the focus tree anyway, those massive manpower boosts will help a lot.

 

[Belryuminus]

I just did a run as fascist Sweden, though I annexed instead of puppeting. It should be more or less the same, though. A few thoughts:

Going fascist
It does take a while. I got the free 120 pp from focus first, took silent workhorse and after that the fascist. I tried two starts, but in both of them, the scripted referendum in september gave me +10% fascism. I would assume it's influenced by my fascist advisor, but maybe I just got lucky? Anyway, between that and the decision to discredit government, your support should get to 25%. There are two events that increase fascist support that can trigger at 20%+ and 25%+ respectively. If at least one of those fires, you can get there fast. If both does, you're golden. Now I know that advice that boils down to "get lucky" isn't all that useful, but two takeaways: 1) Get to 20% and 25% support as fast as possible, 2) restarts can be useful.

Invading
With your hopefully slightly faster move to fascism, you can start conquering stuff earlier. I went after Denmark first, as I figured their military would be weaker. Naval landings around Odense and western Zealand cuts of Copenhagen and you can then crush the opposition there. Norway is tougher, but you should be able to outfight them. I was able to get both of them without any guarantees. The I waited for Germany to invade Poland before I fabricated on Finland. Again, no guarantee. Hardest part was crushing the Fins before the Soviets came knocking, but I guess you could live with them taking their own slice.

As I said, I annexed instead of puppeting. And the Scandinavian Union decision helped free manpower before Finland. But puppeting should work just as well.

Alternatively, you could try as Finland. They start non-aligned, so I'm pretty sure you can get down the fascist foci faster and therefore change government faster. And while you're there in the focus tree anyway, those massive manpower boosts will help a lot.

Hi,

i used some of your advices and get several hours of gameplay to test things. On my best try so far i was late 1942 with the Reich and I at war with both Allies and USSR. It was OK, though i could not take advantage on UK. USSR was slowly pushed back and loosing but Italy and Germany were loosing too much manpower. The situation was eventually stucked at this point and bad choices from me about naval doctrines and invasions attempt pushed me to start over.

However i did, i think, found the quickest way to turn fascist without civil war and it is a bit different from what you did.
First, get the +120 PP on the focus tree.
Then, get the fascist advisor, and let him work doing nothing more.
When you have 150 PP, get the +15% PP advisor.
When you have 75PP more, get the decision to turn without a war.
Then, let the advisors work, and do nothing as you gain more support in the beginning. I found it was more efficient to keep the last decision for when you have about 41 - 42% of support.
At this moment, get the 50PP decision to discredit, it should bring you juste at 50% or near.
Turn fascist as soon as you hit 50.01% support.

Doing that in that order allowed me to turn around late ferbuary, early march 1937.