Chapter 2: How to manipulate threat and neutrality. ​

Allow me to present to you Romania. With this plucky minor, we are going to put an end to the eternal rivalry in the Balkan region and bring about a new era of peace. We are going to do this by reuniting all the former Austria-Hungarian lands through conquest.This presents us with a couple of dilemmas. First, as I explained in the previous chapter, we need to subdue Austria before February 1938 at the latest. If we are going to be complete, we will also need to take Czechoslovakia before September 1938, if we want to keep the Sudetenland. In other words time is of the essence.This is our second problem. Hungary is sitting between us and Austria, and will obviously have to go first. Our Neutrality, however, is much too high. As the tooltip explains, we will need to get to 0 Neutrality before we can declare war. Usually, your neutrality will go down on its own as the Soviets and the Germans start expanding their military. This will not be enough to get anything done in time.We have to lower our neutrality so drastically that we could hopefully be at war by the end of the year. How to do this?Any nation that has less than 30 IC, gets the decision to Prepare For War. This will change our neutrality drastically, but it will still take a lot of time. Majors can achieve this by ensuring they get massive dissent, which will lower their IC. If you try this, however, make sure that you have enough IC left to pull out of the nosedive you set your nation on.What will we do in the meantime?One thing we could do is to make sure our army is as modern as our current tech will allow it to be. Since we don’t have a ton of Manpower or IC, the option to expand our army is not acceptable at the moment anyway.Our home spies will focus primarily on increasing our National Unity, because some laws require you to be above 70. At the same time, I will be sending spies to both the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, where they will increase threat. As the Soviets are already scary enough, in and by themselves, they don’t really need that much of a push, but every bit helps. Yugoslavia, though, is the one that matters, and I will explain why.Increasing another nation’s threat does not only affect your nation. It also affects everyone else. This effect depends on a combination of proximity, relations and having the same ideology or not. Raising threat too much might send all of Europe into a spiral where everyone starts mobilizing together. As a major, this only gets worse when you do it on the Soviets. In Take Two, I used this to draw all of Eastern Europe into the Axis corner. Now, however, I will need to be careful how far I want to go with it.Yugoslavia, on the other hand, is a minor, just like us, and the effect they have on, say, the UK or Japan, is nonexistent. I can keep my spies working there for as long as I have to.What this does mean, is that Yugoslavia has to maintain its independence. If I invade Yugoslavia first, and, by some miracle, manage to win, their threat will end. I would have to start over.So, as you can see, with some rational deduction, we have come to a clear course of actions.Hungary will have to go first, partly because they are in the way, partly because we hate each other, and partly because we don’t want to give them an opportunity to join the Axis. I may be reasonably good in this game, but I don’t fancy my chances against the likes of Germany. Austria will be second, followed by Czechoslovakia, because with those nations there is a small window of opportunity.Since Yugoslavia will have to stay, that means that Bulgaria will come before them. We have to finish Yugoslavia before late 1940 (remember the timeline, when Germany tends to invade Yugoslavia themselves).Next problem. Romania currently has crappy, democratic laws. Thankfully, by lowering our Neutrality and increasing our National Unity, that problem will erase itself over time.So, now we know what we want to do. Let’s see what we have to do it with.First thing I do is to put everyone under the same theater and assigning a Field Marshall with Logistics Wizard talents, to decrease our supply needs. We have 18 infantry divisions. Each one consists simply of 3 infantry brigades. I would like to add artillery to them, but I doubt I could build that many in time. We also have 4 Mountaineer Divisions (each one 2 Mountaineers and an artillery brigade). I take the arty away from them and give those to infantry divisions. Three cavalry divisions. Why not. Might come in handy at some point.Surprisingly enough, Romania has tanks. They’re crappy tanks, but still, they’re tanks. I split this division in two, each with 1 Light Armour Brigade and 1 Motorised Brigade. This could be good. I can add 2 Armoured Car brigades to each division, which will benefit their speed as well as their Soft Attack.We also have 1 Interceptor, 1 Tactical Bomber and 1 Naval Bomber. It’s not much, but it’s a start.The Romanian navy, 1 destroyer flotilla and 1 submarine flotilla, will be all but useless, but I keep them around for now. You never know.And with that, the waiting game begins. We trade away fuel and crude oil to whomever wants it, in order to pay for Energy, Metal and Rare Materials. These resources fuel our economy. Each IC needs 2 Energy, 1 Metal and ½ Rares. This is another piece of the puzzle. We are going to compete against the big boys. Anything we can do to get better relations with them, helps. As such, I am going to buy Energy exclusively from Germany, Metal from the Soviets and Rares from UK and Italy.Each trade gives a relations boost of +15. What you should do, is buy in small quantities, so that you have multiple trades going, further increasing your relations. I don’t really do that, in my own games. I just want the resources as fast as possible. But remember that you can do this if you want to play a diplomatic game. Besides, as my laws become better, I will get more IC and require further trades to keep fueling the factories.I have put my total of 6.48 Leadership points into training spies. Time is of the essence, and research will have to wait.After little over a month, Neutrality has already dropped about 9 points. And no, I am not planning to commit suicide. Hovering over the “Declare war” button will give you an excellent tooltip to know at a glance exactly what your exact Neutrality is.By late February, I have 10 spies in both SU and Yugoslavia. I wll now be able to spread my Leadership around some more, putting 4.2 points into research and 0.22 into Diplomacy. There is no point in training officers when we have a Volunteer Army. I am going to research Agriculture and the two Industry techs plus the infantry techs, since those are the most obvious shortcomings.Late March ’36. We now have Specialist Training (more experienced units but they take longer to build), Three-Year-Draft (More MP, more officers) and War Economy. This last law will raise our IC from its initial 19 to 45 and gives me the IC I need to get started on those Armoured Car brigades. I will need 4 of them (2 for each division), requiring 21.73 IC and they will be done by October. I have 8 Mountain brigades. I reorganise them into 2 divisions with 3 brigades and 1 division with 2 brigades. I will need an extra mountain brigade to round out the last division. This is added to the queu as well.I also do my next batch of trades for Energy (from Germany), Metal (from the Soviets) and Rares (from Netherlands and Belgium because UK does not want to sell any to me even though they have a surpluss – must be suspicious after my laws upgrade).The Spanish Civil War has started and I accept Nationalist Spain’s offer to sell me supplies, freeing up 2 extra IC. It might not be much, but beggars can’t be choosers, and every IC counts.If you do this, make sure to always keep some money in reserve. You don’t want someone to cancel a trade on you and go into the negative at the wrong moment.By April, my Neutrality has dropped below 50. At this rate, I will be ready for war before the year ends.I forgot to mention this earlier, but this is a handy new feature in TFH. Hovering over your flag in the corner will give you a list of Strategic Effects and what they do.By mid-October ’36, our neutrality has dropped to 0 and we can get ready for war, right after I attach my new Armoured Cars to the tank divisions.This is so much better than those crappy photoshopped arrows from Take Two, isn’t it? The Battleplanner is a handy little tool that I use quite regularly to figure out what my army composition needs to be.I build 2 armies. First Army will have 2 full infantry corps (10 divisions), the 2 finished Armour Divisions and the Cavalry dvisions, each in their own corps. Second Army has the Mountaineers and 8 infantry divisions in 2 corps. In case you’re wondering why I put the Mountaineers in the North, they will be attacking from the woods there. Since they lack firepower, I want them to have some solid cover in case their initial attack fails and Mountaineers have a small bonus to fighting in the woods.Unfortunately, I made a mistake. I did not put enough Leadership Points into Officers and I have less than 100% Officers Ratio, which would give me a combat penalty. I have to stop research and put all my points into Officers to get back to a safer level in less than a month. oh well, everyone makes mistakes on occasion.Join me next time as we begin our invasion. See you then!