Alright, so I finaaaaaaaaaaalllllllyyyyy managed to do Belgium 1917. It was the very last conquest I could not do. Did all the others in all time periods, just this one seemed completely impossible. Stuck on it for over a year, tried all strategies, just could not do it. I never play with medkits btw.
Yesterday I gave it another go and for some reason it worked. 155 turns
Here is what I did, I believe it requires luck but nevertheless should be possible to replicate:
1. Send Albert I and De Roquoy (starting Belgian cav gen) south to Spain. In the meantime I set up Hindenburg (with protection bonus) on light arty and Lee on some infy unit to help out the French on the German front and defend Brussels (with defense bonus princess)
2. Albert I and De Roquoy go deep in Spain down to the South coast, where there is good support from the British navy to help capture one of the smaller cities. This is extremely important because in the meantime the German front cannot hold and Brussels will be lost. No direct assault, just play cat and mouse around the 2-3 Spanish southern cities and at some point the AI makes a mistake and you can take one of the cities without taking much damage.
3. Here are the 2 key things which did not happen in my previous attempts and pretty much changed the balance of the game, preventing the usual German/USSR/Austrian/Ottoman tsunami:
a. Albert I managed to get Madrid, just by waiting next to the city as the Portuguese attacked and then stealing it at the last minute
b. Hindenburg fled North to Scandinavia and Lee sought refuge in Britain with almost no life left. These two drew a lot of the enemy forces away from Spain for quite some time: Hindenburg was able to hold quite a few turns on his own, with medical tent, using Norwegians units as protection, and firing on enemy units trapped in the sea, but eventually the enemy got him. Lee was protected in the UK. He helped for some time to repel the enemy.
While the enemy focused on the North, it gave me time to start producing my cav generals in Madrid on Armoured Cars. First Stonewall, then Plumer and finally Moltke.
4. One by one I sent the cav gens South to help out Morocco. They quickly captured one city, which was another key moment as it allowed me to start militia spamming to defend the African coast. The three cav gens are really amazing working together against fewer/weaker enemies (like it is the case in North Africa). I believe it was also a big help that Rabat was lost by the Moroccans, as I re-captured it and between this and Madrid it provided me enough income to start rolling out a conquest strategy and defend cities with militias each turn.
I also set up imperial forts in Madrid and Rabat, which helped a lot.
The three horsemen then proceeded to take over all of Africa - quite standard and not too hard.
I also produced two strong boats with Hipper and Beaty from Rabat, which always helps in the Mediterranean.
5. In the meantime I re-patriated Lee south to help defend Madrid. London had been taken and the enemy was starting to do too much damage in Britain. After Lee left Britain and the cav gens started going East in Africa, the enemy started following them, and as a consequence:
- The brits re-took Britain
- The enemy ceased attacking Madrid
- They all went in the sea to attack Africa, which is quite easy to defend against with militia spam and/or navy gens and strong cav gens
6. I went around taking city by city with my cav gens, first through from Africa to Turkey and then rejoining the Russians. In the meantime the US/Brazil/UK re-inforcements started to arrive as the Americas where under full ally control by then, and they slowly started putting pressure and eventually taking cities in France and moving slowly East. At that point I sent Lee and a few troops to Italy to start a third offensive line (with good navy support from me or even allies)
I gave as much as I could every turn to Russia who was almost dead (around 200-300 on average per turn). I believe this was also important to keep the soviets busy and prevent them from joining the Germans/Austrians in mass.
There you go! Cannot believe I finally did it, I really thought it was impossible!
