Beating Germany in 1936 as France [Big Entente] [Step by Step with Screenshots]

An effective method of early German annihilation with minimum losses.
This is my very first guide which was inspired by another Rhineland guide but having read through it decided to share my own method but with greater depth.
BE WARNED, this guide requires a lot of patience and may take several attempts to pull off.

Context & Problems with a 1936 war

The Big Entente Achievement is as follows:

As France, complete the "Little Entente" National Focus, and have all German cores owned by you or someone in your faction.

We will get this achievement by declaring war on Germany through the denying Remilitarization Rhineland Event which fires 70 days after game start [on historical focus] and beating them without any direct help before 1937 so that we can have all the land to ourselves.

By declaring war in 1936 we face several problems:
1.Lack of Equipment : Despite France having the Second largest army in the world about 1/3 of her troops are weak colonial garrisons. Worse of all France has a serious shortage of Equipment which means her divisons are usually not in full strength making them usefull only on the defensive.
2.Poor Industry : Starting with a whopping 6 military factories makes it virtually impossible to provide enough equipment to divisions especially in 70 days!
3.Communist Civil War : If France goes to war through Remilitarization event, we will have to beat a communist civil war before dealing with Germany.
4.Weak airforce : Germany has more planes than France easily earning them air superiority which boosts their attack up to 50% making even defense difficult.
5.Lack of Growth : Declaring war in 1936 means dedicating the national focus on forming Little Entente instead of going for Metropolitan France and Research Slots.

With all the Problems we shall begin with Preparations for the War.

70 days of Preparations

Infantry

Starting of the Game Select all your divisions and assign them to one army for sorting purposes. You'll want to disband ALL colonial garrison divisions, the ones with red chevrons in their unit icons. While some players may hesitate doing so, given France's economy it is necessary to get desperately needed equipment. It is also reccomended to also disband Regular Infantry divisions stationed in French Indo China because they are too far away and you will still need more equipment.

Tanks/Motorized/Cavalry

France starts with 2 Tank Division Designs, One with 4 tanks and one with 2 tanks and 4 motorized. You want to convert ALL tank divisons to the second tank divison as a tank only division is ineffective due to low defense. This will give you a surplus of tanks which you need to convert your cavalry divisions into fast moving tank divisons. To counter the shortage of Motorized vehicles, disband some motorized divisions if you have to. Keep converting cavalry to Tanks divisons till you face a minor deficit but not so much that it will cripple converted units.

This should be the approximate equipment situation if the above is followed:

Navy

Merge all Naval units into one single navy and park it somewhere in Normandy or Britanny but NOT in Calais due to the upcoming civil war. We will need this navy for much later.

Production & Construction

Reassign the 6 military factories to 5 for Inf Eq and 1 for Artillery. There is no point in producing tanks or motorized as we will need to rearm the Infantry as soon as possible for the upcoming defense.
Build more Military factories as we will need more for the war.
As for Naval Production, set the outdated submarine to only produce 1 time [Not 7] and feel free to produce whatever ships you want. Personally i queued up destroyers but anything is ok.

Technology & National Focus

Choose the usual Tech that is Construction, Basic Machine Tools and Support Weapons 1 for 5% defense and breakthrough for pretty much all divisions except tanks.

National Focus should be in this order :

The 3 Armies and Defense Setup

After Reorganizing and Disbanding Uneeded Divisions it is time to divide them into 3 armies:
The Civil War Army, Northern Marginot Defense and Southern Marginot Defense.

The Civil War Force (~25 divisions) : All your tanks, motorized divisions and fill the remaining with infantry till you get more than or equal to or more than 24 divisions. This is to win the Civil war as soon as possible to prevent Commune of France joining Comiterm and dragging Soviet Union in the War. If the colonial divisions were disbanded, Commune of France would ONLY get the Calais State so to get a quick victory manually place divisions from this army just outside of Calais borders or use a fallback line as drawing a frontline on one's territory is impossible.

Southern Marginot Defense (4 Mountaineers) : In the start of the game, Germany has 3 Infantry placed across the river of the South Marginot Line. The job of this army is to only defend and not push forward as Rivers give a huge attack penalty. Place 1 Mountaineer on each province as the insane defense bonus of the marginot makes it very easy to defend.

Northern Marginot Defense and Future Breakthrough (Rest of What's Left) : Altough Southern Marginot is guarded, Northern part remains undefended when war breaks out. This is because the German AI would not have predicted a war with France and thus have their divisons scattered giving an opportunity to grab some free land before the whole german army comes crashing down. The question is what to grab? If you look at the State adjacent to the Northern Marginot you will see a River just 2-3 province away. You'll want to to take all provinces within this state so that you can extend the defense line till the river bend.[Explained further in Next Section]

Generally your armies should be positioned as Follows
[Note: Offensive Lines Shown below are NOT to be executed when war breaks out and will come to play later on]

War with Germany and Commune of France

After 70 days are up, You will get a pop up notifying about Remilitarization of the Rhineland.
Pick the First Option, If Britain supports France then a restart is required. If Britain Refuses you will get another pop up confriming that war with Germany will cause civil war. Pick "Yes! Germany must be dealt with".The war begins when Germany refuses the ultimatum.

Before unpausing we want to micro manage two of our Armies namely the Civil War army and the Northern Marginot Army. You want to take Calais back as soon as possible for the upcoming naval invasion while at the same time expanding the front line of Northern Marginot just before the River bend.

WARNING : Do not try and expand beyond the first River bend, it is easy to be greedy because the germans have not relocated their army yet but trust me you don't want to outstretch the frontlines too much as defending it will be impossible. By using the rivers, we can effectively cancel german air superiority's staggering 50% attack bonus with huge river crossing penalties and forest terrain.

So you might be wondering why not just defend at the marginot line I mean they have level 10 forts which are impossible to take. While it is true that staying at the marginot is much safer, it means sacrificing future opportunites of breakthroughs and potential gaps. You see, by expanding to provinces before the river bend we are also stretching out german lines which is essential for what is to come. Plus the AI will rarely launch attacks at the Marginot line if you have more than 1 division. Remember we want to trick the Germans into performing suicide attacks to drain manpower and their equipment.

Here is a screenshot of the position i described and of the civil war. Notice how Im easily repulsing multiple german offenses without air superiority whilist maintaining a wide front line with potential for gaps.



After dealing with the Commune of France, you want to select 10 divisions of your best tanks and motorized units and plan out a naval invasion, the rest will merge with the Second Army(North Marginot Army) which should have secured the river bend. Use the port of Calais as your start point and set the land point as the port province besides Hamburg Why? because the AI does not assign divisions to garrison port provinces without victory points if it has few divisions [Germany only has 30 at the start]
Look at the Screenshot below taken during the naval Invasion. Notice how ports in victory points have garrisons but the port besides Hamburg don't ,allowing for a quick unopposed landing.

140 days of Defense

With a naval invasion preparing and all infantry and cavalry division stationed just before the river bend. It is time to hold the ground for 140 days to complete the Little Entente National Focus. This will create a faction between France and Czechoslovakia whose benefits i will explain in the next section.

During the early days of the war do not underestimate the Germans, even with River and Terrain debuffs the AI is competent enough to concentrate attacks on one province. If they manage to breach even one province across the river then you defense will collapse faster than you could say "Baguette" and you will take significant casualties from being pushed back.

It is also helpful to prevent already entrenched divisions from accidentally reallocating by deleting any orders (frontlines) as you do not want to lose the defense buff. I have several runs ruined when i assigned one new division to the frontline and every division shifts causing the Germans to attack and break the defense.

If everything was done right German casualties will start to pile up as the french play a game of shoot the german while he crossess the river. As you can see below im getting almost a 1:10 loss ratio which is what we want to drain german manpower and equipment.

Czech Bait & Breakthrough

After Little Entente focus has finished, you will get a pop up notifying about the Czechoslovakians joining your faction (very rarely they will reject). This will cause the German AI to pull out half of their divisions previously stationed at the marginot to the czechoslovakian borders. The reasoning is that since we are in the same faction there is a possibility that we can call them to our war hence why they are forced to reallocate divisions. Fortunately for use we won't be calling czechoslovakia because we dont want them taking our fruits of hard labour do we? Regardless of calling them or not they make for good Bait for our next move.


The number of troops they pull out varies but it will be enough to create gaps on the marginot front line. There is no need to rush the attack, wait a few days for german divisions to start piling up in czech borders. Meanwhile use the navy parked in Normandy to Search & Destroy required sea regions so that the invasion can commence.

Time your attack as such that when your naval invasion lands your marginot forces start their offense.
Since Germany start with 90% national unity, it is necessary to take ALL victory points except for the one in Ostepreussen as you have to launch another naval invasion to secure that.

The goal right now is to secure as much land as possible. Use infantry to pin down forces and use cavalry/tanks/motorized to create pockets. Remember that Frech troops are still inferior to Germans mainly because the German Infantry Division would most likely include Artillery while we are still using Infantry with arty support. This will be the longest part of this walkthrough as micro management is necessary to avoid stalemates or heavy losses. Here are several examples of breakthorughs and enriclement.


Do not worry too much about the AI retaking undefended land becuase for some reason they are very passive and even if they do, they can be easily retaken later on.

Further Breakthroughs

Continue Advancing carefully but not too slowly for as the war drags on ,German troops stationed in the Czech border will be called back to the front lines. Only go on the offensive to pin down troops so tanks/motorized can encircle or if you want to kill of encircled divisions. Use your airforce to try and achieve air superiority in regions with the most battles. By this point the German airforce should be scattered due to multiple offensives allowing for easier air superiority.

At this point your frontlines would be a mess, divisions with 0 organisation after an offensive battle may try and relocate to some far away place and can slow down progress and that is why microing them is necessary.

If you are as lucky as me, you can even take Berlin undefended. Of course that barely gives any % to capitulation due to the 90% national unity.

Victoire!

If you have made it this far, German defeat is inevatable and soon enough they will capitulate.
Take all their lands in the peace conference and you would have completed the Big Entente Achievement with minimum losses [68k compared to 483k German losses]





Thank you for reading this guide. If you have any questions regarding the achievement or the strategy in general feel free to ask in the comment section and as always Vive la France!

[Janik2004]

ehm small problem
they commune keeps starting in brittanie instead of calais. I can beat them but it takes to long wich makes the Germans push back the river bend and push into France. I've tried over 3 times and i keep losing because i cappetulate because of germany. I can and up beating the communist in France but don't have enough time.

[MildredSimms]

instructions unclear, switzerland annexed nepal

[ArcaneGamer]

Legendary, thanks for the walkthrouh!

[ebolarat]

oh ok. I thought i disbanded them all but i think i trained more. Also I did it and formed the entent. I didnt follow your steps though. I just pushed through the marginot and hoped that czech/romannia/ yugoslavia would do the rest... they got mulched. Rn im trying to build forts in the border to belgium so that i can stop the push there as well lol

[TheAmberFox]

@Ikfoster The amount of land the commies get depends on the number of divisions you have, if you disband colonial divisions to focus on a smaller but consolidated army then they would only get calais (at least this was my observation for several test runs)

[ebolarat]

The civil war was different for me. The commies controlled brittany and the southwest

[Batae]

Just got the achievement, so to get the event you need to have historical a.i off, then it's a 50/50 if germany backs down or goes to war. Then the civil war will break out in 3 provinces one of them will be Brittany and that's the only province with troops, the other two will be random and have no troops (unless it's a coastal with port then the enrmy can send volunteers). And the german's will be guarding every port thry have, so it's better to use the tanks for the push from the river. With that i got it on my first try.

[TheAmberFox]

@Batae Ive read somewhere that historically, Hitler had ordered his troop to back down if the remilitarization of the Rhineland was challenged. Whether this was added into historical focus in newer patched or DLCs or just bad luck, i cant say.

[Batae]

Germany kept backing down in the 6 attempts i tried, although this is with the new 1.5.1 patch and dlc, so don't know if the patch/dlc made it harder or i just have bad luck

[bad at video games]

It's not the French Royal Navy. The last monarchy ended in the 1870s.