How to beat Italy as Ethiopia

[CrackerjackTiming]

There's a lot of guides or whatever on-line about how to win against Italy as Ethiopia, but they all seem to be from years ago and their advice doesn't really seem to work? Like, the AI just ships the entire Italian army into the Horn and curbstomps you long before War Escalation comes into play. I keep reading that "Oh, if you micromanage your troops then one division can take over the whole world" but that doesn't seem to be true? Like, I give orders, and my troops take months or years to move to an adjacent province, and then while they're marching in place the AI goes everywhere and kills them.

So, yeah.

[CH13F]

use irregulars, they got 6 battalions, gather 4-5divs of them then push south first. then north. dont seperate them btw, use all of them to attack single tile by single tile.unfortunately thats the only way i was able to beat italy, coz regular army quite weak, if i m not mistaken only 4 battalions. those can hold mountains but cant push really.

i managed to done at 5th stage escalation. i believe italy divs strength reduces to half or close during 5th or 6th escalation, for a brief moment they stop attack, thats the time to push. after south, try to capture either supply depot on north or the port.

a bit micro and a bit luck you should be able to do.

(note: i disabled AaT dlc for this , done with BbA 1.10.12)

[CaptainSpacetime]

Just play it like any defense war vs a superior foe. Sit there and let them attack you over and over until they're low enough on equipment/manpower that you can push.

Basically the same as going historical France/USSR.

[HappySack]

Micro and survive long enough to get your best focuses and for a high escalation, after that you have to make something happen before you run out of manpower or Italy sends more troops.

[hannibal_pjv]

Yeah… defend, defend, defend and Italy will runout of steam!
The longer you defend the harder penaltissa Italy start to get.

[CrackerjackTiming]

None of that advice helps. I mean, Ethiopia's units are so slow that I can't really do anything. Basically Italy immediately deploys a tank division in the south, which stomps my troops down there, and in the north the Ethiopians just endlessly march in place while the Alpini kick them out of the mountains. I don't have enough command power to use general powers, I don't have any guns to train new divisions, my troops move so slowly that I can't do any tricky maneuvers... I mean, there's a reason the Ethiopian AI always loses, even with Historical Focuses turned on.

shrug. Anyway, my secret weapon was just to use console commands to delete Italy's army, because I got sick of staring at the screen while my units very slowly move and numbers tick up and down over the course of months. I still don't know how you're supposed to win as Ethiopia, but I don't care anymore.

I can win the Spanish Civil War, I can hold the line with the Soviet Union (as dumb and badly-executed as that is), but the Ethiopia War is just stupid and tedious. I'm not wasting my time on this anymore...

[Blind]

Defend without any offensive orders. You could even use the fallback line so you can have more troops in an army.