I finally was able to get the "We're Putting the Band Back Together" achievement, and what a painful and frustrating slog it was.
The requirements are simple enough- play as Turkey, and be in a faction with Germany and Austria-Hungary. But since you need either Germany or Hungary to go monarchist, you must play with historical focuses off. You could simply uncheck the historical focus box on your new game, and then hope that Hungary eventually does what you want. But that is likely to produce all sorts of odd outcomes from all the other nations, which will get in the way of this achievement.
Instead, I recommend you develop a preset that locks every nation into it's historical focus path, except for Hungary. This is achievement compatible. Then keep re-starting until Hungary chooses "Balanced Budget" for it's starting focus.
You might think this is the hardest part, but it's actually only the beginning. My plan was to take Turkey down the fascist path, join historical Germany in the Axis, then wait for Hungary to eventually flip monarchist and create Austria-Hungary.
The problem is that AI Hungary is really bad at getting Austria to accept peaceful annexation, and doesn't have the military to annex the Austrians by force. And the clock is ticking, since Germany will snap up Austria with Anschluss in early 1938 if they haven't merged with Hungary by then. It took another 10+ save reloads, but eventually I got Hungary to choose the "Take Austria by Force" focus in the fall of 1937.
Now Turkey needs Hungary to win that war, so you need to send volunteers to help out. Thankfully, Turkey has a focus that allows them to send up to 8 volunteer divisions (if you have 30+ divs overall) if you go down the "Kadro Movement" branch. See below:
So you, as Turkey, need to complete this volunteers focus, then have 8 solid divisions ready to go, before Hungary starts their war with Austria. However, since Hungary is landlocked, and doesn't share a border with Turkey, the supply for your volunteers is terrible. I sent 8 7/2 divs, but had only 5 supply available. They started taking attrition the moment they arrived in Budapest. If I had to do it over again, I think 5 divisions would have been a better choice. Help the Hungarians take Vienna, Graz, and Salzburg, which will increase your local supply, and the victory will be theirs.
Now you need the AI to take the Unification of Austria-Hungary focus. Once they did, my plan was:
It didn't work out that easy. It took several more save reloads before AI Hungary chose the focus to re-create Austria-Hungary before WWII had already started in fall 1939. Then, after trying different ways to get the war goal without Austria-Hungary getting a guarantee from the Allies, Germany became the next problem. They always refused to join the war against Austria-Hungary, unless they are already at war with the Allies (not helpful for my achievement goals). If Germany doesn't join, you can't attack Austria-Hungary from Germany territory.
After a bunch of fails, my work-around was to drop 8+ paratroops on a lightly defended tile on the German-Austrian border. Once I took control of that tile, then I was able to assign a regular army frontline on that tile, and then attack the rest of Austria from there.
I lost 80k men, 15k guns, and 2k artillery pieces fighting in those mountains, but eventually broke through. After a few months of slow progress, the Germans finally asked to join the war, and it was all over for Austria-Hungary pretty quickly after that. Amazingly, even though world tension was over 50%, a peace conference fired when they capitulated, and I was able to make an Austria-Hungary puppet a member of the Axis.
If you're planning on going for this achievement some day, please be ready for lots of dead-ends, and try to learn from the mistakes of others.
Enjoy this final picture of a lame Central Powers 2.0, where mighty Germany can't seem to take a single tile in 3 weeks of fighting the Czechs after they refused Sudetenland.
The requirements are simple enough- play as Turkey, and be in a faction with Germany and Austria-Hungary. But since you need either Germany or Hungary to go monarchist, you must play with historical focuses off. You could simply uncheck the historical focus box on your new game, and then hope that Hungary eventually does what you want. But that is likely to produce all sorts of odd outcomes from all the other nations, which will get in the way of this achievement.
Instead, I recommend you develop a preset that locks every nation into it's historical focus path, except for Hungary. This is achievement compatible. Then keep re-starting until Hungary chooses "Balanced Budget" for it's starting focus.
You might think this is the hardest part, but it's actually only the beginning. My plan was to take Turkey down the fascist path, join historical Germany in the Axis, then wait for Hungary to eventually flip monarchist and create Austria-Hungary.
The problem is that AI Hungary is really bad at getting Austria to accept peaceful annexation, and doesn't have the military to annex the Austrians by force. And the clock is ticking, since Germany will snap up Austria with Anschluss in early 1938 if they haven't merged with Hungary by then. It took another 10+ save reloads, but eventually I got Hungary to choose the "Take Austria by Force" focus in the fall of 1937.
Now Turkey needs Hungary to win that war, so you need to send volunteers to help out. Thankfully, Turkey has a focus that allows them to send up to 8 volunteer divisions (if you have 30+ divs overall) if you go down the "Kadro Movement" branch. See below:
So you, as Turkey, need to complete this volunteers focus, then have 8 solid divisions ready to go, before Hungary starts their war with Austria. However, since Hungary is landlocked, and doesn't share a border with Turkey, the supply for your volunteers is terrible. I sent 8 7/2 divs, but had only 5 supply available. They started taking attrition the moment they arrived in Budapest. If I had to do it over again, I think 5 divisions would have been a better choice. Help the Hungarians take Vienna, Graz, and Salzburg, which will increase your local supply, and the victory will be theirs.
Now you need the AI to take the Unification of Austria-Hungary focus. Once they did, my plan was:
- Justify on war-goal on Hungary.
- Join the Axis.
- Attack Austria-Hungary from southern Germany.
- Puppet Austria-Hungary in the peace deal, which re-unites the Central Powers in a single faction.
It didn't work out that easy. It took several more save reloads before AI Hungary chose the focus to re-create Austria-Hungary before WWII had already started in fall 1939. Then, after trying different ways to get the war goal without Austria-Hungary getting a guarantee from the Allies, Germany became the next problem. They always refused to join the war against Austria-Hungary, unless they are already at war with the Allies (not helpful for my achievement goals). If Germany doesn't join, you can't attack Austria-Hungary from Germany territory.
After a bunch of fails, my work-around was to drop 8+ paratroops on a lightly defended tile on the German-Austrian border. Once I took control of that tile, then I was able to assign a regular army frontline on that tile, and then attack the rest of Austria from there.
I lost 80k men, 15k guns, and 2k artillery pieces fighting in those mountains, but eventually broke through. After a few months of slow progress, the Germans finally asked to join the war, and it was all over for Austria-Hungary pretty quickly after that. Amazingly, even though world tension was over 50%, a peace conference fired when they capitulated, and I was able to make an Austria-Hungary puppet a member of the Axis.
If you're planning on going for this achievement some day, please be ready for lots of dead-ends, and try to learn from the mistakes of others.
Enjoy this final picture of a lame Central Powers 2.0, where mighty Germany can't seem to take a single tile in 3 weeks of fighting the Czechs after they refused Sudetenland.
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