Keep puppets as fascist UK

[gaming]

Is there any way to keep your puppets after going fascist as the UK in man the guns? I've only tried one focus tree path but there are multiple, which one lets you keep your puppets?

[Pagertx]

After playing Britain a lot, I can tell you that you don't need to keep them really and they will always leave you. Usually, I find that letting them go doesn't effect you all that much. You keep British Malaya, but the common wealth will leave you and take over the allies. Britain still has plenty of factories, can easily take out France and Spain early on and will keep hold of its rubber from Malaya. Really, the only benefits keeping the common wealth will give you is India's manpower or the nations they border as they are never that good at helping you in war but you have plenty of options of where to invade with your navy and you own land in Asia to puppet China so really, you don't need them. I have managed to form the federation. An achievement, and a fun focus that annexes and cores all of your commonwealth puppets AND you get their generals. To do that, I annexed all but south-africa and I kept my army there to deal with them if they decided to leave.

To go about annexing them, you have two options. Before going fascist, lower the autonomy of your puppets and annex them one by one, with convoy lend leases or other means. This means delaying going fascist which is a pain in the ass. It is also really slow.

My preferred method is rush going fascist by triggering the civil war as soon as possible by claiming places like london. Beforehand, delete your entire army and make some cav. The AI is broken for the civil war and wont move so you just use cav to run around and win the war. Then go to Canada as you still own land on the mainland and use your cav to run around them and win the war again (keep in mind, you need to get the focus for the wargoal against them). I have done this twice and won twice, once however, the US declared war on me. This is actually great as the US is the worst major power at the start of the game but holds a treasure trove of civilian factories. You can beat them with cav too. The war should then end as Canada will be the Allies only major. After that, taking Australia, South-Africa and New Zealand is easy. You border SA and you have a navy + land in Asia. Then just take out India which shouldn't be too hard if you invade them early. Managed to take all of the commonwealth, the US + France + Spain before 1940, but you need to be good with micro managing cav, managing naval invasions and rushing the focuses. Especially rushing the Fascist civil war, you want to be done with the civil war in 1936 if I remember correctly.

[Dikshit Koomar]

if you do march on downing street you keep malaya, the only way you could keep the others is that unfeasible focus where you place a lot of manpower in each district to pacify them

its not worth the wait and here is what i do. I take ireland as soon as the focus finishes, i position a naval invasion from ceylon and wait for pakistan to fight india at which point i ally pakistan for the duration of the war and kick them out so you arent at war with bangladesh afterwards. i declare on south africa while still at war with india and once both are finished up i go after the us and canada. you can have all of them before 1940 pretty much.