u/ComradeJoshua1913

I was curious to see how vanilla Austria. I played them first when the DLC first came out and did not think much of it (I think I actually capitulated in retrospect!). So all these years later, I returned. I wanted to play Austria without any of the freebies. I did a quick run of the historical tree and how you can basically annex and core the entire Austro-Hungarian Empire before 1939. That was way too strong and lacked a real sense of danger. Instead, what about Austria without doing any offensive wars?

The focus tree is rather simple: political, economic and military. My first failed attempts were getting the hang of the position and the tree. My strategy in the end was rushing to get rid of the Treaty because I like building military factories immediately. After that I started the economic tree because there is a year wait in order to revive the Phoenix Insurance and Economic Boom foci which are good. So I balanced the economic and military tree. Naturally I opted for Jansa for the nice defensive bonuses.

My strategy to hold against Germany was simple: use the Danube river line to hold and use the mountaineers to hold in the south. In my experience, the hardest province to defend was the one beside Wels (the rightmost province). This was heavily bombarded so I had to constantly cycle in fresh troops. Later, this gets harder following Fate of Czechoslovakia because Germany now has supply & Slovakia allows Germany to push into Eisenstadt. My first runs would generally hold the first phase (before Fate of Czechs) but struggle in the second phase. However, it would be in the third phase that would see true difficulty!

The third phase sees Hungarian involvement. The situation in defending the north is precarious enough so having to defend the east is quite difficult. Luckily, Germany would have killed around two million of their soldiers by the third phase so the Wels-adjacent province is under less pressure. However, the pressure points now become Eisenstadt and the two provinces beside Sopron. In my second run I managed to push a defensive line all the way to the Danube thinking the river line would be better to hold. It held for about a month and I had to retreat because I did not have enough soldiers to defend each tile. In my successful playthrough I did not do the Danubian Gambit and just held in Burgenland.

Similar to phase two (Wels and Eisenstadt), phase three has three provinces that need constant management and rotation. It is harder to do so because Eisenstadt has no provinces beside it that is not under attack. This means if I want to reinforce the province, it must go through a province that is either under attack or could be attacked. The strategy I resorted to was reinforcing through Vienna and sending Viennese troops to hold Eisenstadt whenever it was close to losing. The Burgenland reinforcement were a lot easier to manage as Graz reaches both.

Phase four! The Yugoslavs! In my second run the Yugoslavs were invaded by the Axis and collapsed quickly. In my successful run, the Yugoslavs joined the Axis. In both scenarios I had to defend the south now. Phase four may seem trickier now that I cannot import any resources and have an extra front to defend. Arguably, it felt pretty much the same as phase three. The Germans were getting noticeably weaker due to having to fight the Allies but not weak enough to allow me to push unfortunately. Phase four ultimately meant the beginning of the end for the Germans really. The Americans joined in 1942, the French actually got rid of Disjointed Government and the Allies could finally start doing something. Well, they did invade Italy which was great and I could finally link up with them when Italy collapsed. The third screenshot shows how weak the Germans were: as soon as Allied troops poured in I could battleplan with no issues. However, the nature of this challenge sees a major hiccup in Allied utility. Due to the Germans being too weak to get Danzig or War in 1939 (because they are fighting very defensive Austrians!), the Germans had to wait for Poland and when they ultimately fought, it took so long that the Soviets declared war on Poland to obtain their lands. This meant that the Soviets declared war on the Allies...

Essentially, throughout this entire-run, I was not fighting the Germans and Balkans but I knew I could never rely on the Germans going to war with the Soviets. This was problematic for numerous reasons. The Soviets declare war on Iran, Iran joins the Allies, oops now the Allies have to deal with the Soviets in Iran! Luckily the terrain is so bad that the Soviets do not cause too much damage. However by the time the Allies get their shit together in the Balkans, the USSR comes knocking. I was not particularly worried as I figured I could eventually push the Germans to capitulate but it was looking a bit dodgy seeing the Soviets occupy more of the Balkans. Regardless, with Allied help I managed to take Berlin and win the run in my eyes.

I initially used 18w infantry with engi & arty. I think this is a perfectly fine division, even for Austria's perennial manpower issues. However, I noticed that the historical tree has militia buffs so in my successful run I decided to opt for 10w militia. I initially tested it with engi, arty and aa but I found that to be far too expensive. I settled on 10w milita with engi and some divisions with engi and arty. The doctrines for militia give it good defensive bonuses which is why I opted for it. The Guerrilla Warfare tactic as well is very good and helped significantly for phases three and four (I did not use it prior because I did not know it existed!).

I am unsure on how I could optimise a faster victory. Ultimately, I am too weak to push against the Germans in the first two phases and in the last two phases I have to defend too much. In the end, I cannot really do anything but wait for the Germans to die to the Allies. Let me know any tips I could use to improve my time!

Russian World Conquest Attempt