Overview
This guide will walk you through how to correctly set up your industry and military to survive in a war against Germany and the Soviet Union, and the strategy for fighting the wars.
Intro
First, allow me to explain the title. What is “cheese”?
For this scenario, I decided that “cheese” is any one of the following acts:
– Annexing any country prior to Danzig or War
– Agreeing to either German or Soviet demands in order to “fight another day”
– Joining a faction other than the Allies
– Playing on easy
– Not playing on Ironman
– Releasing Ukraine and Belarus to avoid the wrath of the Soviets
All of these things are either gamey as hell or politically unrealistic for the time, not to mention boring and unchallenging.
This guide will serve you well around 90% of the time, I have tested this several times to refine my strategy, and on only one occasion I lost the game because the Soviets declared war on me nearly a year earlier than they usually do.
I recommend doing this on Historical AI, since it lets us plan ahead a lot more easily.
With that out of the way, lets get into it.
1936 – Getting our economy into gear
Poland starts with a pretty bad economy for a country of its size, and comparatively to Germany and the USSR who we will be fighting, it’s absolutely terrible.
Fear not however, this is something we can fix.
CONSTRUCTION
This year we’re just gonna build civillian factories. Build them in provinces with 60% infrastructure. If you follow the other steps in this section of the guide, you should have a full stack of 15 civillian factories able to make stuff by the end of the year. You might want to avoid Poznan and the eastern provinces when building, since they’re the most likely to be temporarily lost at some point.
PRODUCTION
No, we don’t need to make planes, or tanks, or trucks, or any of that. We’re focusing on a 100% leg infantry army because we just don’t have the industry or resources for anything else, and the Allies will probably send planes to help us. Even if they don’t, it’s not the end of the world. Here is a screenshot of production for this year:
This will leave you with an oil deficit of 1 and a tungsten deficit of 2. I would recommend importing some tungsten from France or another allied power, but just accept the oil deficit. I’d rather have the civillian factory than lose some efficiency in one of our four dockyards.
MILITARY
Lets start seeing to our army too. We start with 40 divisions. Select them all and switch templates to infantry. You will find that half of our divisions are trained fully to level 3, and half are not. Select those that are not, and put them in an army. Set this army to excersize and leave them to it until they are level 3. Remember that excersizing uses equipment, something that we need as much of as we can get here, so you might want to micromanage this and remove divisions from the excersizing army as soon as they hit level 3.
RESEARCH
Set the 3 research slots to Electronic Mechanical Engineering, Construction 1 and Basic Machine Tools. Our general research priority is gonna be something like:
Construction tech>other industry tech>computing>other stuff like equipment and doctrines, with one notable exception which is towed anti tank, we’ll pick that up pretty soon.
Here is all of the tech we need to research this year, in order:
1 – electronical mechanical engineering
2 – construction 1
3 – basic machine tools
4 – mechanical computing
5 – concentrated industry 1
6 – radio
7 – Towed Anti Tank
8 – Construction 2
9 – Superior Firepower
FOCUS TREE
The first two focuses we’re gonna do are Strengthen the Polish State (and use the political power from this to immediately switch to Partial Mobilization – THIS IS ESSENTIAL) and then do Develop Polish Shipbulding. We won’t be expanding our navy, but we will be building a lot of convoys. You can even disband the crappy navy that you start with if you want to min max with manpower, but you don’t need to do that if you don’t want to.
Here are all of the focuses we need to pick in this year, in order:
1 – Strengthen the Polish State (Political power for partial mobilization)
2 – Develop Polish Shipbuilding (Dockyards to make a lot of convoys)
3 – Four Year Plan (Construction tech bonus)
4 – Warsaw Main Railway Station (free Infrastructure to build a couple of military factories very quickly next year)
5 – Defensive Focus (Insane buff to military factory construction speed)
6 – Polish Militarism (Free army xp and nice manpower buff. We’re gonna start training more troops next year so it’s good to get this now)
STRATEGY
There isn’t much to put here for this year since nothing really happens and we’re just building stuff. The only two things I have to mention are firstly to make sure you have the military theorist and war industrialist hired by the end of 1936, and if the Anti-Comintern Pact shows up, reject it. I don’t know if Stalin’s AI actually cares whether you accept it or not, but in any case why do something that might annoy him and make him attack sooner.
Next year we’re going to switch our focus to military factories and recruitment.
1937 – We’re gonna need a lot of guns
So now that we don’t have a third world economy anymore, we can start working on having an army that can hold its own against the future onslaught.
CONSTRUCTION
This is everything we’re gonna be building from now until it finishes building basically. Well okay, maybe we’ll build a few more extra civs later if we run really low for some reason. But the key thing to notice here is – there are no forts. Amazing, right? This is the most significant mistake people make when trying to do this challenge. Forts are a total waste of resources. They will get destroyed, or captured, or both, and we only have enough time to build them up to level 2 or 3 anyway. We’re much better off using our entire economy for making military factories – which ultimately means better equipped troops and more of them, than hiding behind forts with an underequipped rabble against the two most powerful armies in the world.
PRODUCTION
Its gonna look something like this:
Import resources as needed. Prioritize imports from the Allied powers, especially France and UK. DO NOT import anything from Soviets, Germany, Hungary, Italy or Romania, remember for every import you make you’re leasing one of your civillian factories to the other country.
You’re probably gonna despair when you start deploying troops, thinking that they will never be supplied in time. But it will be fine, they will have everything. Well, they’ll be missing some of their anti tank guns, but they’ll have enough to put a significant dent in the German Panzers. Feel free to tweak it a bit if you think you’re gonna be short on something, just remember not to go too crazy – every time you change a factory to produce something else, you lose production efficiency, and we’re gonna need to build another huge army after the first one for fighting the Soviets.
MILITARY
Once we’ve gained a bit of manpower from Polish Militarism (and Limited Conscription which you should switch to at some point this year), start queueing up lots of infantry divisions. We’re not gonna change the template yet, we’ll just use the basic one we start with to get them out in the field asap. Remember to set recruitment priority to high and reinforcement to medium, otherwise we won’t be able to deploy anything until our existing 40 divisions are fully supplied. In total we are aiming for 96 divisions, enough for 4 full armies, to be ready, trained to level 3 and in position by August 1939. Once they’re deployed, train them to level 3 and try to micromanage this like we did before.
FOCUS TREE
Focuses we’re gonna do this year are:
1 – National Defense Fund
2 – Invest in the Old Polish Region
3 – Additional Research Slot 1
4 – Develop Upper Silesia
5 – Central Region Strategy
I don’t think I need to elaborate on these, their in-game descriptions are all fairly self explanatory.
TECHNOLOGY
Our research plan for this year:
1 – Concentrated Industry 2
2 – Improved Machine Tools
3 – Support weapons 1 (1918)
4 – interwar artillery
5 – Delay
6 – We have everything we need on the go so its up to you what to get here. Good options are excavation 1, or motorized in case you want to put signal company in your divisions later on (great for defending)
7 – Again, let your imagination run wild
8 – Computing Machine
STRATEGY
Still not a huge amount of stuff happening so again not much to say here. I’d spend the political power this year on picking up national spirits like PKP for research speed bonuses, and switch to Limited Conscription at some point. That’s about it, really. Here’s a pic of the national spirits/ideas/companies I have so far:
1938 – Are you sure forts are bad?
Okay no, they’re not always bad. But for this situation, they certainly are. They’re good if you can get a lot of them easily through a focus (Czechoslovakia, France) or for defending a fairly small border where they can easily be built manually (Romania vs Soviets).
Anyway….
CONSTRUCTION
No real change from before, we’re still building as many military factories as we can. By the end of 1938, I had 29 of them. You’re gonna start to feel like you’re running out of civillian factories due to all the imports, but don’t worry too much about it. We’ll free up a few more when the war starts by switching to War Economy, and we’ll capture plenty of them later on too.
PRODUCTION
Again, no change. Keep watching the resources and import as needed.
MILITARY
We should have all of our planned 96 divisions deployed by the end of the year, and most of them should be trained to level 3. We still haven’t changed the template.
FOCUS TREE
This is what I recommend doing for this year:
1 – Expansion of new Towns
2 – Start Central Industrial Region
3 – Fill the Railways Gaps (worst focus in the game, surely?)
4 – Expand Central industrial region
5 – Prepare for the Next War
We’ve exhausted all of our industrial focuses, so we might as well start getting the land doctrine bonuses to give us an edge.
TECHNOLOGY
What I did:
1 – Support Weapons 2
2 – Improved Infantry Equipment 1
3 – Mobile Defense
4 – Concentrated Industry 3 (We are using a 50% bonus here)
5 – Do what you want, I did excavation 2
6 – encryption 1
7 – decryption 1
8 – Advanced Machine Tools
9 – Construction 3
10 – Anti-Tank Upgrade
Sorry for the lack of explanation, I don’t really know what to say other than everything listed here is pretty important unless otherwise stated. Again, the in-game descriptions are self explanatory.
STRATEGY
So I have a bit more to say this time around. The first thing I did this year was pick up FB (the infantry equipment company) for the nice 10% research bonus. Then I decided to spend 50 political power on promises of peace (lol, yeah right). Why? Well, I remembered those horrible events you get during a war about desertions and strikes, giving you crippling debuffs. From what i can work out, this only happens if your stability is below 50%, and remember there is a big stability debuff for being at war (20 or 30 percent I think), so yeah, I decided that it would be good to start increasing this.
After that, it’s really time to start hiring those military leaders. So i started with Zygmunt Bohusz-Szyszko, an infantry expert giving us +10% infantry attack and 15% infantry defence.
Here’s my country overview at the end of 1938:
Pre-War 1939: The Mad Rush
So at the moment we have an army that’s stood in big deathstacks in Central Poland, with a useless template, not fully equipped, maybe not even fully trained, and we have around 8-9 months before the apocolypse descends on our country. Things need to start taking shape, and quickly.
At this point I’m going to stop with the lists of tech and focuses, because we have pretty much everything essential at this point. Just use common sense, upgrade what we are using when it’s not too far ahead of time, continue upgrading the land doctrine once we have the bonus from the “Prepare for the Next War” focus. I’m honestly not sure which branch is best, Dispersed Support or Integrated Support. I tried them both for this scenario and they both work fine. Dispersed is supposed to be better for defending according to the game so I guess that’s the safe bet, but I honestly couldn’t tell the difference. This time I’m going with Integrated, because extra organization sounds good.
By all means research the next model of Infantry Equipment, Artillery and Anti Tank now, but for the love of God DO NOT switch production over to them until we are in a comfortable position with a significant surplus, because the loss of production efficiency will be very nasty otherwise.
I’d also recommend doing “Poland First” and “Ideological Fanaticism” after we’ve picked up the land doctrine bonuses, for the stability buffs.
So with all of that stuff out of the way, the first priority here is to get everything we deployed trained to level 3.
Once you’ve got the production lines I showed you in 1937 fully up and running, just allocate your military factories as you see fit when they become available. They will build slowly for now. I was feeling a little light on Support Equipment, so I put my spare ones into that production line for the time being.
I got Kazimierz Sosnkowski, the Army Defence Expert. After getting him, I’m saving my Political power until the war so we can instantly switch to War Economy, and Extensive Conscription soon after.
On 5th of March 1939, I had all of my divisions trained to level 3, so now it is time for me to change the template:
Once they’ve reinforced, train them to level 3 again. This shouldn’t take long. As for equipment, if you followed my steps, it shouldn’t look too bad. Here is what my Logistics tab is currently looking like:
Now it’s time to put our army in place.
Split the 96 divisions into four armies of 24. Put them all in the same army group. We are not going to use army group frontlines however, we will give each army its own front line.
First, put an army under the leadership of Wladyslaw Anders (our best attacking general) and put this army on the border with East Prussia. Their job will be to rush to Konigsberg and Memel, encircle any Germans who don’t get out in time, and then go help elsewhere as needed.
Put another army under the leadership of Roman Abraham (our best defending general). Put this army along the German border from Danzig to just South-West of Poznan. This is generally the area that takes the most beating and we HAVE to hold the northernmost half. If Germany takes and holds Danzig, they will flush more troops onto our Northern flank and then we’ve basically lost.
Put our third army under the leadership of Wladyslaw Bortnowski (yes, he’s a field marshal, but we don’t have many generals). Put them between Roman’s army and the Slovak border.
The final army will be led by Wincenty Kowalski and stationed on the Slovak border. I chose this commander here because he has the worst defence skill, but since the terrain is hilly it’s naturally easier for him to defend. [Since Man the Guns, Hungary seems to join the Axis before Danzig or War, so if this happens then you’ll need to stretch your army to cover Hungary’s border too]
Wladyslaw Sikorski will be the field marshal leading the Army Group.
Oh, and assign the Charismatic trait to Wladyslaw Sikorski, and Guerilla Fighter to Wincenty Kowalski.
This is what it looks like overall:
We started with a small airforce, so move all the planes to Warsaw and set them to Air Superiority and Close Air Support in Western Poland.
With that, it’s time to just let our factories do their thing until Danzig or War.
When Danzig or War happens, don’t choose anything right away. Open the Decisions tab. At the top you will see a timer for Danzig or War. Wait until this reaches 1 day until you select “Danzig will Remain Gdansk!” This is the cheesiest thing you will find in this guide.
And with that, the real fun starts…
WW2 Part One: How to Confuse Hitler (and keep the Russians in mind)
Not putting dates on the sections anymore because when stuff happens depends largely on what mood the AI is in.
After declining Danzig or War, Germany gets a wargoal against you. There will be a delay of a day or two before they declare war. Try to pause the game as soon as the war declaration comes, before Germany can start any attacks. Switch to War Economy using the Political Power we saved up. DO NOT EXECUTE BATTLEPLANS. Join the Allies.
Go to East Prussia, where you should significantly outnumber the Germans. Start setting up attacks, from multiple directions in concentrated places where they look especially weak, to break through, then push to Konigsberg and Memel as quickly as possible without leaving yourself vulnerable to enrcirclement.
East Prussia is the only place we’ll be attacking for the time being. Resist any temptation to attack elsewhere even if it looks like you might win – we don’t want to waste org and entrenchment while we’re still on the back foot.
Germany will probably make some gains on the area of the front shown below, since the shape of the border is to their advantage and lets them attack from multiple directions in several places. Just keep calm, try to micromanage and rotate low org troops with high org ones, but know when you’re beaten and accept a tactical retreat if needed. The key is to never let them break through your line and get behind you. If you do then you’re probably toast.
15 days into the war, I have destroyed all German forces in East Prussia and captured the province. The best part is that I was able to encircle all of them north-east of Konigsberg:
After this was done, I set three of the divisions in our East Prussia army to guard the ports of Memel, Konigsberg and Danzig from naval invasions, and the other 21 divisions were given a new frontline order in north-west Poland, an area where we will soon be counter-attacking. New front line for this army shown below:
It has gone particularly well elsewhere, so far. I have taken 39k casualties to Germany’s 449k. I have not lost any land at all:
You can start to counter-attack in areas where you have a clearly superior force now that we have troops in reserve to tidy up any mistakes.
Don’t go too crazy with the counter-attacks. Trying to capitulate Germany right now is too risky, and the act of attacking costs us equipment which we need to defend against the Soviets in the near future. I normally push to the Oder river, giving us a nice defensive line, and stop there.
When you’re confident that you’re going to reach the Oder river, its a good time to start recruiting more divisions. We’re going to aim to recruit another 72 infantry divisions before the Soviets attack. The success of this depends on how soon they justify. Usually they will leave us with a big enough window, but sometimes they attack really early for some reason. Anyway, queue up the 72 divisions and as before, set recruitment priority to high and reinforcement to medium. The allies will start lend leasing us a lot of equipment once they detect our deficit. This is why we built those convoys.
Keep an eye on Germany’s focus. When they’re doing Second Vienna Award, move our spare army (the one that was originally on East Prussia) to the Hungarian border.
Also keep an eye on your general’s traits. When it becomes available, be sure to grab Organization Focus for your field marshal, and Infantry Expert for your generals.
It took until May 1940 for the Soviets to start doing their “Demand Eastern Poland” focus in my game, by which time I had my 72 divisions deployed, most of them trained to level 3 or not far off, and was getting pretty close to a position of being able to recruit some more divisions (which you should always do if you have the spare manpower and equipment).
So with that, it’s onto the next section.
WW2 Part Two: How to Confuse Stalin
Keep in mind that the Romanians are gonna join the axis soon. The army that we put on the Hungarian border can safely be spread out a little more to cover the Romanian border too, since it’s a small border.
Get all of your divisions for the eastern front trained as high as you possibly can, and as well equipped as possible. Around 2-3 weeks before the completion of the Soviet war justification, stop any excersizes and deploy your troops to a fallback line similar to the one shown below. We are not gonna try to defend Wilno since we’ll just get swamped, and we’re going to keep troops on the border with Lithuania even if the Soviets haven’t occupied it yet, because they can occupy this very quickly while at war with us, without needing to declare war on Lithuania.
You can see that I’ve moved my leaders from the German front over to this one, since this is gonna be where the harder fighting is happening. I replaced the German leaders with the one field marshal that we weren’t using before, and some generic level 1 generals who I recruited.
Once I’ve used the fallback line to get my troops into position i’m gonna delete the order and just control them manually (fallback lines don’t automatically update if a province is lost) until the Soviets have taken all the provinces that we abandoned, then i’ll make a front line.
When the “Soviets Demand the East” event comes, I used the same trick as before with Danzig or War, waiting for the cooldown to reach 1 day before refusing the offer, just to give us the maximum possible time to make equipment.
When they attack us, we’re just going to defend the border initially. It will be the typical meatgrinder type of war that is often the case when fighting the Soviets; they will attack you endlessly until they run out of manpower and equipment, and when that happens you can counter attack pretty effortlessly. They’re attacking over marshland, mostly, so they will take significant losses due to the attack debuff, and they will lose a lot of equipment due to the attrition.
If you have the 72 divisions trained mostly to level 3, then this part should be pretty easy. If they’re level 1 or 2 or missing a lot of equipment then it will be hard and they will take a chunk of your land before you stop them. If it feels particularly desperate then you should be able to take a few divisions from other armies and use them to bolster your forces in the East – just don’t go too far with this as we don’t want the Germans breaking through.
Past this point there isn’t too much advice I can give, since once you’ve beaten the initial Soviet offensive it really just stops being a challenge and becomes a pretty normal save game. Keep recruiting more troops until you have more than enough to push out and conquer Germany and Russia.
I generally find that the allies land in Germany and Italy around 41-42, so when this happens its a good time to start pushing into Germany. Once that’s done you can use these troops on the eastern front, and the Soviets will roll over.
And that’s pretty much it. I hope that this guide was somewhat helpful.