Overview
A brief guide on how to quickly form the non-aligned Imperial FederationIMPORTANT NOTE: USE HISTORICAL AIDLC required: MtG (obviously), Together for Victory
Introduction
In contrast to how much of a pain it’s to form Imperial Federation as democratic Britain, the Edwardist route is far simpler, as long as you know what you are doing. If you do it right, it’s quite possible to do it by late 1940-early 1941. Though I am surprised I haven’t found a very good guide on this yet.
IMPORTANT NOTE: This guide is for people who play on historical AI! (or at least the dominions need to be on historical paths).
Since TfV gives the dominions so many alt. history paths, I cannot account for all those scenarios.
DLC required: MtG (obviously), TfV (for the autonomy mechanics, I think)
King’s Party
It’s pretty much up to you what you choose to do up to the marriage, but here are my suggestions.
Focus: A Change in Course -> Limited Rearmament -> Shadow Scheme -> Industrial Effort -> Extra Research Slot -> Royal Ordnance Factories -> (Whatever you like)
Since MtG drastically raised the bars for naval research, you want to get as much research as possible. Those factories also come in handy when you have to retake the empire later on.
Make sure to time your focuses so that you can get King’s Party focus as soon as Edward gets married.
How to spend PP: 3 possible choices
1: spend 200 pp on German and Italian scientists
Since 1.6.2, they buffed the research bonus of these from +3% to +5%, so you get a whooping +10% research speed, which is awesome. Don’t mind the stability, it’s going to ♥♥♥♥ due to the marriage anyway.
2: Early mobilization
Not recommended really. Extra civ factories and factory construction speed is nice, but your starting industry (plus those from focuses) should be enough for a build-up to defeat the dominions.
3: Do Nothing
I know this sounds stupid, but hear me out. The more pp you save, the faster you can bounce back from negative pp marriage fiesta, and hire Lloyd George (+15%pp), who can give you 1.6 pp per day when stacked with King’s Party national spirit.
Construction:
Build mil factories. You want to have as big an advantage over the dominions as possible. You can switch back to building civ factories when you have around 50-60 mils (which should be after King’s Party).
You also want to begin to build up the infrastructure and port at Labrador (the clay next to Canada) to support the invasion of Canada.
Military: Disband useless colonial, tank and cavalry divisions, exercise your army to get xp, also begin to tidy up your fleet for MtG mechanics.
You should aim for 60 regular infantry divisions (7inf 2 art) for the invasion. Don’t mind defense of your vast remaining empire, nobody should attack you until you have reclaimed the dominions.
Research: Whatever you like, but I highly recommend you to get Superior Firepower.
Now have fun taking all those marriage events which gives negative pp and stability.
Minor note: Take a royal marriage if you want Wallis Simpson as Queen of America later.
Build up & War
Now that Edward is married, take the King’s Party focus ASAP, then God Save the King.
Then there are two possible paths. You can choose to do Consolidate the British Isles first to get that extra bit of naval range (Ireland is a pushover anyway), and then Appeal to Imperial Loyalists; or you can directly rush ‘Appeal to Imperial Loyalists’ -> ‘Bring the Dominions back into the fold’. After that rush ‘Ceylon Forward Operating Base’ -> Reclaim the Jewel in the Crown.
After these, when you are at war, take ‘Reassess Continental Commitments’ if you desperately need manpower, otherwise rush down ‘Reinforce the Empire’ -> ‘Service Overseas’ -> Encourage Colonial Elites’.
Before you embark on this path, there are a few reminders:
-DO NOT spend pp on Imperialist uprising. You don’t get cores from your dominions in forming Imperial Federation if they are the Imperialist uprising puppets. This is because the uprisings use tags like D01, D02 instead of CAN, AST, etc.
-DO NOT DECLARE WAR AT CANADA. They are guaranteed by USA and you don’t want the USA as your enemy. Declare on New Zealand or Australia or SAF, and the rest will join the war.
-Since Canada is the ONLY major of the Commonwealth faction (although sometimes Australia becomes major and take over Canada’s leadership, Idk why), you can annex/puppet all the countries in the faction that you HAVE SET FOOT ON (i.e. occupy territory) when Canada capitulates (Canada and Australia if Aussies somehow become faction leader).
-Any country that you declare war on AFTER you are at war with the Commonwealth faction joins it.
War preparation:
By the time you take Appeal to Imperial Loyalists, you should have at least 40-50 inf div (motorised works great against Canada; you are never gonna get enough xp in time to make the tank division viable). Position them to prepare for invading Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India and Burma.
For Canada, you should need at least 16 divisions. Remember earlier that I told you to build port and infra at Labrador? That’s where you are invading from. Take Ottawa, Halifax, and then a slow march to Toronto will make Canada capitulate. TIME THE CANADIAN CAPITULATION WELL! (details to follow)
Note: maybe send a few destroyers to patrol around Labrador to keep your convoy safe.
For South Africa, position at least 12 divisions on the border. You don’t need high quality divisions and don’t need to push a lot here. Just take AT LEAST one tile will do.
Australia: You should have a few islands to the south of Dutch East Indies to invade Perth. Send a few ships as invasion support. I recommend you to land with ~4-6 div, take a few tiles around Perth (that airfield especially), and then just hold.
New Zealand: I highly recommend you to devote more troops (8-10 divisions) here. You still have a few islands to the north of New Zealand, use those to land troops (recommend a few battleships as invasion support) at New Zealand. Mop up the island, or at least just northern half of New Zealand, and then land at Sydney and take Canberra. This is to prevent Australia from becoming powerful enough to be the faction leader as you steamroll Canada.
Raj: Now you must be thinking: “Wait a second, aren’t we invading the dominions?” Yes, and you should also invade India and Burma before Canada capitulates, and you just need 6 divisions to annex India and Burma.
Here’s the deal: You rush to ‘Ceylon Forward Operating Base’ -> ‘Reclaim the Jewel in the Crown’ IMMEDIATELY AFTER ‘Bring the Dominions back into the fold’. You need to declare war on ONLY INDIA AND BURMA (LEAVE PAKISTAN ALONE) BEFORE CANADA CAPITULATES. As I explained above, India and Burma will join Canada’s faction once you declare on them. And then you can annex them at peace conference even if you only occupy one tile of their land. So you take 2-3 divisions to take Burma’s port, and then 3-4 divisions to just take any one of India’s port (I recommend the one next to French India, so that one fleet can escort both). After that, take 1-2 tiles around the port and just wait for your armies to capitulate Canada. And then BOOM! You can take all their lands.
MAKE SURE NOT TO DECLARE ON PAKISTAN! Unless you can spare a few more divisions to take Pakistani Bangladesh (if it still belongs to Pakistan), declaring on them will just waste your war goal, because you don’t have so many troops to occupy their lands and will just get a truce after peace conference.
Peace Conference
As mentioned earlier, your Imperial Federation only gets cores if your puppets have the CAN/AST/NZL tag, so puppet South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. ANNEX India and Burma, as that will save you A LOT OF TROUBLE (and bypass some focuses) when the Imperial Conference comes.
Pakistan
After you annexed India, move your troops to the Pakistani border, declare war and annex them.
Note: as detailed in the comments, justifying on dominions (instead of taking the focus ‘Bring the Dominions back into the fold’) does not work because Canada somehow doesn’t join the war.
Imperial Conference
Now your empire is back, and Edward is happy. But we are not done yet.
Take the focus ‘Imperial Conscription’ to start reducing your puppet’s autonomy, then do ‘Commonwealth Ties’ (remember you need to be in the same faction as your puppets), then do the ‘Development in (Canada/Australia/New Zealand/South Africa)’ focuses. Don’t trade resources from them or do anything that will increase their autonomy progress.
By the time you are doing the second development focus, start saving pp (i.e. don’t get advisor/policy). [You may as well save the game once here] When you are halfway through the last development focus that leads to ‘Hold the Imperial Conference’, start improving relation with ALL 4 puppets (South Africa, NZ, Australia, Canada); Malaya is not required. The Imperial Conference puts a -100 relation modifier to them, so you want them to be as friendly as possible to get them to approve the Federation.
Keep spending pp to improve relations until you finish the Imperial Conference (the decision chain, not the focus), EVEN IF THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH YOU IS 100. Canada can be a bit tricky since you have so many claims on them. Returning Labrador to Canada helps a bit, and to make them like you more you should send them a huge lend-lease package (convoys work quite well, send them 200-300?) about 35-40 days before the date when you will finish the focus. This is to get the small relationship buff from arrived equipment. You want this to happen as close as possible to the start of the conference, as the improved relation from lend-lease decreases over time.
Now the fun the conference begins. If you have a lot of pp you can try to discuss items other than Imperial Federation first, as they accepting your proposed items will give a small positive relationship bonus. Just make sure you have ~150 pp saved up for Imperial Federation. If you have done everything right, all of them should accept it. If not, load your save and repeat.
Congratulations, you are almost there. Now start building infrastructure, airbase, factories, whatever in South Africa.
Uniting the Empire
You are almost there, just reduce them all to integrated puppets and you can take the focus ‘Imperial Federation’ to annex them all.
For Canada/Australia/NZ this should be fairly simple. They should have a national spirit that gives -3.0 autonomy per day. Coupled with the -1.0 from Imperial Conscription, they should become integrated puppets in no time.
South Africa is a bit tricky though. They have some national spirits that give autonomy, so you really have to spam build them. Lend-leasing also helps, but their number of convoys is piss poor.
When they are all integrated puppets, you can take the focus and annex them!
-End of guide-
Extra: The Pan American Dominion: Coring the USA [Special thanks to (3CID)bottle]
Special thanks to (3CID)bottle for telling me this broken feature.
This section tells you how to gain core on all of USA.
Note: Since early game USA gets buffed significantly in this patch, the early America rush strategy doesn’t work anymore, and I still haven’t thought of how to do this in an easy way.
Ideally you want to do this as early as possible after you reclaimed the dominions, because USA just becomes more and more powerful, and it will inevitably involve itself into a war with Axis. You don’t want the Axis to steal your rightful American lands in peace conference.
Note: Tech exploit removed in 1.7 Hydra
Maybe if you do the doctrine and industry exploit, it will be easier to crush America and do the Meme Federation. Check out this video by Dustinl796 Videos for the exploit:
Now, to the detailed steps:
First, don’t do the ‘Imperial Federation’ focus yet.
Then you go to war with USA (say take the ‘Unite the Anglosphere’ focus). After you annex all of USA (DON’T GIVE IT TO CANADA IN PEACE CONFERENCE), you get a decision to create the Pan-North-American State. Doing so will transfer all USA territories to Canada and give Canada cores on ALL USA states.
After you do that, take the ‘Imperial Federation’ focus, and as the focus gives you cores on ALL the states that is a core of Canada, you get cores on all of USA after you form the Imperial Federation.
(The screenshots below are done with console commands)
