Forging massive Imperial Federation in 1937 - Hoi4 UK Speedrun Explained

welcome everyone today I'm going to walk you through an incredible speedrun as the United Kingdom and Hearts of Iron 4. the goal of the run is forming the European Union and the Imperial Federation with British core States in all of North America to make it a bit more challenging I won't be using paratroopers or any of the major exploits such as other 66 or day one invasions we're playing on the current version of the game with all DLCs Iron Man and historical mode enabled and with no mods of course anyway enjoy we start the run with a quick setup and begin the research of basic low tier Technologies and other the construction of some military factories as per usual I will only comment on in-game actions and events that are relevant to the Run we intend to reach our goals quickly and long-term projects such as construction and research have very little impact because of that production wise we concentrate our efforts on Infantry and support equipment artillery and convoys as well as some trucks for good measure the majority of equipment for this run is going to be forcefully provided by other countries but we need more especially for the early game we pick a change in course as our first Focus which puts us on a path towards Revolution and since we already know that it's not going to be a peaceful transition we draw a fallback line to recall all divisions from overseas back to Britain and yes if you think that the placement of the order looks suspiciously specific then you're absolutely correct afterwards we clean house and delete all plane wings you don't have to do this but uneven numbers trigger my OCD so I rather create them from scratch again later same with ships we select all fleets and order them to a port in Britain lastly we create an intelligence agency but that's optional our first goal is to launch and win a civil war in the UK as fast as possible and to expand our territory around the globe quickly soon after luckily the British Civil War is only one more Focus away and in the meantime we upgrade our intelligence agency whenever possible until we can hire a second agent after a change in course we go for organized the black shirts as our next focus and wait until we have 48 political power saved up in order to go to war early after winning the Civil War we have to now commit blasphemy and Scuttle all large ships in the Royal Navy this includes all carriers battleships battle Cruisers and heavy Cruisers except the pride of the fleet don't worry Britannia are soon going to rule the waves again we sunk our ships in order to gain an early war world through the naval treaties specifically by sending a warning to the Netherlands which costs us 50 political power the treaties require that the Navies of participating Nations do not exceed the size of the royal Navy measured in capital ships and if they do you can demand disarmament under the threat of War by scuttling ships we intentionally lowered that limit allowing us to send warnings to pretty much any nation that has at least heavy cruises of their own this even extends to Nations that are not part of the treaties but why the Netherlands well we'll get to that shortly we now hire our first agent and Order him to build an Intel Network in Germany and begin decrypting their Cypher we also promote one of our generals to field Marshal since the ones we currently have will remain with the Democratic side of the war the ultimatum has run out and the Netherlands did not disarm as a consequence France Italy Japan the United States and us now get a wogle on them and the AI Nations declare immediately the United States unfortunately often take their time but we absolutely want the US to join this war before it's over whether or not they actually do as one of the four RNG dependent elements of the strategy similarly to the Soviet Civil War we're going to secure the Loyalty of regions in the UK through decisions that cause political power those decisions are unlocked as soon as the focus organized the black shirts which rewards us with 200 political power is done the decision costs are related to the amount of victory points of a region and have three different outcomes the finer details are irrelevant but what matters is that one of the possible outcomes grants us 25 additional political power but more often we get that result the better and we require it at least once if we want to gain control over all regions north of the fallback line I was pretty lucky and got the ideal result 4 out of seven times we could take even more territory this way but it's a waste we'll take the rest by force has meanwhile managed to land a naval invasion in the Netherlands they do that pretty reliably but how quickly they capitulate them can differ a lot each run after the Civil War has kicked off we go through a specific and important set of steps beginning with organizing our divisions into armies and assigning generals as well as the recently promoted Field Marshal we did that as soon as possible since his stats are nerfed for 100 days following a promotion afterwards we deploy Fighters and close air support to assist our divisions in combat next up is something that I thought was removed from the game but in this Edge case it is not I'm talking about Anglo Spike which describes the technique of declaring on puppet Nations before the overlord can call them in themselves the intent back then was despite World tension and while that's great and still works the primary purpose here is a different one you'll see at the end of the Civil War just note that since this is a domestic conflict the subject nations are not automatically involved giving divisions manual orders to advance can speed things up drastically in this situation since the front line is barely saturated by enemy divisions we on the other hand are ready to go the second the Civil War kicks off thanks to the previously placed fallback line our goal here is to advance fast and take the remaining major victory points such as London Birmingham Portsmouth and Dover lastly before unpausing again we select God Save the King as our next Focus which is available now that we're playing as the British Empire please know that it will only talk about each Focus that we take in detail if either the requirements or results are relevant to the strategy more often than not we just have to get past the focus in order to get to one that we actually require for the Dollar Tree the AI war in the Netherlands goes as planned so far but besides needing France to win in a timely manner the United States has to also join the war before it's over with the letter out of the way we can check off the second RNG element of this run the British Civil War comes to an end on May 16th but instead of a simple event notification which is the case with every other civil war we get a full-blown peace conference after calling the Dominion into the war we technically turned the conflict into a war against the faction and defeated its only imagination and can Annex all its minor Nations during the peace conference unconditionally in turn we take all territory and All Ships but leave one Canadian province untouched this way we keep the Allies around with Canada the sole member and faction leader Only The Dead May rest so let's not slack off and prepare for our first expeditionary War instead it's just a few days away we need to urgently scale up our army by recruiting more divisions and set the occupation loss to Noel Garrison to have every piece of equipment available and not be used for combating resistance and that's totally not going to backfire on me during a crucial moment at the end of this run seven of the 17 units that we currently have are going to make their way over to Tiny Canada the remaining 10 divisions will take on the Glorious role of achieving every English Monarch's wet dream and conquer France the French Coast is going to be guarded but these provinces between charbour and lava are usually not defended same with the area between amyan and Dunkirk after setting up the order for the naval Invasion we get to the part of the run that are really dislike since we are at the mercy of the AI it may look like Victory is imminent in the Netherlands but I've seen the AI struggle for months during some attempts for totally different reasons we also want Italy to fail in Africa or at least not succeed quickly fortunately the Arts Forest Swift Italian Victory are slim at best but increased the longer France needs to defeat the Netherlands France's military success is simultaneously their downfall since they always turn the Netherlands into a puppet and because we never made use of the war goal that resulted from the naval treaties and because this war role also carried over to what's now called The Batavian Republic we can now declare war on their Overlord if the United States hadn't entered the war they'd also used their Wargo at this point which complicates things so much that I rather restart from scratch in that case after declaring war on France we justify on Albania this is only possible because we've cranked World tension up to 100 percent the leader of the British Empire Oswald mostly and starts out with the vocal tension limit of exactly 100 which were meant to lower through the focus tree but tension is already at maximum allowing us to use manual justifications anyway due to having a fascist government High World tension and being at war with a major Nation the time needed to justify a war goal is down to only 25 days what's left of the royal Navy is still enough to gain Naval Supremacy in the English Channel as expected we are able to make landfall and begin snaking towards French victory points France has quite a lot of Divisions in the area and will put up a fight so we need to watch out for opportune openings in the still chaotic front lines with Paris and some major victory points on the coast under our control France surrenders the subsequent peace conference needs a little bit of context France joined the Allies shortly after the conflict began but Canada the faction leader never joined the war so the conference is again treated as a faction war and we can again Annex all major Nations unconditionally you're also witnessing a Premiere and that is me creating a puppet during the peace conference I would usually never do that since we won't get our hands on the full French equipment stockpile this way the reason for creating a French puppet now is that it'll have a more integrated status compared to a release puppet nation and that's going to be important our Castle's belly on Albania is about to be ready and since that also means a war goal against Italy because of their guarantee on Albania we use our 10 divisions to plan another set of Naval invasions the task here is twofold land in Sicily so we don't need to cross the easily defendable straight later and Pierce the region around Rome and Naples to force the AI to stretch them that is a great plan and I highly recommend it even outside of speedruns but we still need an army to attack from Land we shooting enough units for the job takes too long but due to a technicality France has plenty of Divisions to offer usually units are wiped from the map when a nation surrenders but that does not include divisions on oceanic Transit those remain and can now be requested from Puppet France but they'll have to get back here first meanwhile We Begin constructing military factories in the territory of our French puppet to lower their autonomy and that's crucial France is going to gain lots of autonomy once their divisions conquer territory for us by building factories for them we keep the autonomies somewhat in check there's still plenty of work ahead of us so let's speed things up a bit we deploy our divisions from Recruitment and keep training even more after the first French units have made their way back we form a new Army and assign them to the Alpine border with Italy every time new divisions arrive we assign them to the Army as well the justification against Albania finishes on June 21st but we wait a couple more days to get our units to the front we don't want to wait too long though since only a few Italian divisions are currently stationed at the border three days later and we're ready to go note that Albania has been guaranteed by Canada as well it's a tiny detail that is of utmost importance and I'll tell you why in a second after Italy joins the war we hired the backroom stubber to bring the justification time even lower Belgium is next on the list and the time needed is now down to 15 days the majority of Italian divisions are still busy in Ethiopia but that's not the reason why we wanted Italy to fail in Africa only after they've achieved victory over Ethiopia can Italy progress towards the focus that unlocks the balance of power and after they do they are guaranteed to plummet into a civil war once we've rocked Mussolini of a couple of victory points we really really want to prevent that from happening though to not have to deal with the associated scripted events namely getting a puppet that we cannot refuse remember we want to form the European Union amongst other things and we need to fully own all required territory for that so about that Canadian guarantee on Albania Canada is currently the faction leader of the allies and will therefore guarantee any Democratic and non-aligned Nations that are under threat but that only works while Canada is not already taking part in a different war in that case Canada does not hand out guarantees just the opportunity to talk briefly about the focus tree we're currently progressing through the part of the focus tree that is intended to lower the Wargo tension limit of Oswald mostly and increase the terribly low War support it also provides War goals on the dominions in Ireland since it's assumed that they've broken free at this point and requires some British colonial treatment to get reintegrated into the Empire but we only care for a single focus on this part of the tree unite the anglosphere which requires all preceding focuses we can skip the majority of them by annexing the dominions in Ireland the only one we can't skip is silent forward operating base the effects of that Focus are irrelevant we just need to get past it unite the anglosphere is a requirement to later get cores on all of North America now that we have the wargle on Belgium in the back we take aim at Ireland and March into tiny Canada but we don't want to make them surrender just yet meanwhile another batch of divisions are ready for deployment we also create my beloved spam template consisting of a single Cavalry Division and start recruiting as many of them as we can afford the naval invasions haven't launched yet but that's about to change the Royal Navy finally caught a big Italian Fleet and after the naval engagement Was Won we gained enough Naval Supremacy for our Invasion to embark as soon as they've landed it's pretty much game over for Mussolini we only need to take a couple more victory points to end the war after the justification against Ireland has finished we go for Luxembourg next with war goals on Belgium and Ireland at hand we can now end the second war with the allies and start the final push into tiny Canada what we're doing here is referred to as salami tactics since we gobble up the target nations in slices rather than all at once get our seconds by at the end of July and immediately order him and his colleague to prepare a collaboration government in Germany that's not a requirement for the run though it just makes things a bit easier Italy and Canada are both about to surrender with Italy falling first during the peace conference we have to share The Spoils of War with Ethiopia but they are content with annexing adjacent territory in Africa we on the other hand take all we can and what's left of the Italian Navy one day after the peace conference with Italy Canada surrenders they were the only major nation in the Allies due to being faction leader hence why we now get the third faction War conference but we only Annex tiny Canada Ireland and Albania while Belgium remains as is to become the new faction leader after the conference is over we deploy our spam divisions and assign them to the northern border with the United States with Canada and next we control all dominions as well as Ireland which automatically bypasses a lot of focuses we've talked about earlier Belgium has contracted the guarantee everything disease just as Canada before them the symptoms should become visible any day now but it appears as if they lack the needed political power we use the unintended waiting time to plan Naval invasions into the east coast of the United States if you've watched some of my other videos you're probably familiar with the setup and goal piercing the American underbelly to create more and longer front lines which makes defending impossible with a few units the US starts with Belgium takes their sweet time to do what I expect of them but that's okay the strategy allows for some wiggle room but it's painful to sit around and do nothing luckily it doesn't take too long for the guarantee on Luxembourg to arrive and we declare on them right away since I forgot to unpause first to allow Belgium to join you can nicely see the difference in justification time here after Belgium which is now considered a major nation has entered the war the time needed is again only 15 days but without being at war with a major it's 90 days although it might appear as if we are now going to have to manage Wars on two different continents at the same time it's actually rather simple the third war against the Allies won't involve much combat in Europe allowing us to focus our attention primarily on America our first Target is Yugoslavia and after the justification is finished we begin fabricating a Castle's belly against the United States we'll get a war goal from the focus tree anyhow but that's still months away speaking of the focus tree we're about to finish Cylon forward operating base the subsequent Focus gets bypassed just like the others since India currently does not exist we'll come back to unite the anglosphere soon but the more pressing matter is organizing the conquest of the United States with the war rule in hand we go for Hungary next and launch our Naval Invasion from the Bahamas instead of naming all justifications and Declarations of War I'll list them here instead the majority of them are not a requirement for the Imperial Federation or the European Union it's their geographic location and equipment that we're after more equipment means larger armies and owning all neighbors of Germany and subsequently being able to attack from all sides is going to make the war against them so much more convenient as soon as our invading units land on the beaches of Florida Georgia and South Carolina we order our divisions to spread out and take as much ground as possible the big disparity between the sites of the nation and the current amount of Divisions makes the conquest of the United States quite easy this early on a little later and all hostile divisions from the Northwestern border of the US have moved elsewhere this usually happens after they've lost their connection to the capital time to send in the spam divisions the campaign progresses according to plan and the us is going to surrender soon it is around this time that France has accumulated enough autonomy to move one step closer to Independence there's a chance that our efforts keep autonomy in check hinder them from doing so but it's usually not enough this is preventable by land leasing for example convoys but I rather do that later in a more controlled manner when France no longer accumulates autonomy from fighting when targeting Democratic Spain I highly recommend selecting the region used for the justification not from the menu but from the map this time the list includes regions that Democratic Spain does not actually hold but the game allows us to select them anyway if we do that the justification is going to be removed right after without notification or refunding political power the American surrender is imminent but it's imperative to finish the unite the atmosphere Focus beforehand otherwise our future plans for North America won't work now that we've completed the required part of that Branch we start moving towards the Imperial Federation by selecting reinforced the Empire as our new Focus as the name suggests it is meant to be used in the context of crown colonies and requires us to have control over at least one puppet we of course fulfill this requirement although not as intended the United States no longer has to stick around meaning we can finally order our divisions to take some additional victory points to bring the US below the surrender threshold before they finally laid on their arms or ongoing justification finishes Greece is next and that's all we need for the time being we can now go on the offensive in Belgium to end the third war with the allies the United States throws the towel at the beginning of December which is the cue for us to declare on All Nations that we fabricated War girls on except Spain we also move the spam divisions to the Mexican border relocate the French divisions back to Europe and order our infantry to ports on the East Coast although we currently control all of North America we're going to conquer it a second time soon and we prepare for that by pre-positioning our units in these key locations a few hours before Belgium capitulates we declare a democratic Spain doing that early what merged the faction War and the Civil War leading to a really messy conference we avoid that by giving them just enough time to join the Allies but not enough to call them into the Civil War subsequently the following peace conference is neat and tidy meaning we can Annex everything again we keep Reviving The Corpse of what once was the Allies faction This Time by leaving bits of Romania on the map we've now reached a point in the run that requires some preparation before we can move forward the finish line is already inside but we're not quite there yet after the peace conference is over we move our divisions from the U.S east coast to Bermuda and the Bahamas draw a fallback line for the spam divisions on the Mexican side of the former border with the US and recruit a bunch of fresh divisions with the equipment from captured stockpiles by lentilizing convoys and ordering further construction work we lower the autonomy of France again now that their divisions aren't in combat anymore at this point we fully own North America and because we also finished the United sphere before the war with the US was over we can finally create the patent North American state to unlock the respective decision we first need to release Canada as a puppet and form a faction with them Canada is soon going to declare independence so we cannot waste any time in between the steps after the faction is formed the decision to create the pan-north American state becomes available once activated Canada will Annex and gain course on All American states course that we plan to take over and inherit once we form the Imperial Federation the collaboration government Mission against Germany finishes at the end of December this is going to slightly lower their surrender threshold in our future war against them Greece isn't going to join the Allies certain modifiers prevent them from easily joining factions at this point so we'll have to capitulate and Annex them separately while we're waiting for the Dominion of North America to declare independence we keep fabricating vocals but before the current one can run its course our puppet breaks free we immediately cancel the ongoing justification and switch to our treacherous former subject instead coming only from Mexico would take a bit too long which is why we're also planning Naval invasions into key locations on the East Coast we are going to face virtually no resistance but taking enough victory points in time can be challenging due to the sheer size of the target Nation the upside is that we can leave the war running on autopilot most of the time we achieve this by using Garrison orders instead of front lines for our spam divisions and will later do the same with the units on the East Coast while we do get out with Greece the focus reinforced the Empire finishes we pick service overseas next and go to war against the North American state a couple of days later after our Naval Invasion has left Port we delete the orders and plan and pre-launch another set of Naval invasions since the Greeks never joined the Allies they get their own peace conference once they surrendered it's around this time that our efforts with France start to pay off we can now lower the autonomy status of our subject for 50 political power we send out another land lease right after but this time it contains pretty much all the convoys that we have after the land lease arrives in France in about 30 days we should be able to index them fully when North America surrenders we of course take everything and are finally done with this continent spam divisions have no purpose anymore they can now retire we use their equipment and the ones from captured stockpiles instead to recruit more divisions something that I've done pretty much non-stop throughout the run and order our infantry units back to Europe service overseas finishes soon after we began creeping up to the capital of tiny Romania we take encouraged Colonial Elite as our next Focus it's the second to last one before the run is over which also means that we're on the clock now we want to have all the territory that we need to form the European Union beforehand so within the next 140 days the requirements towards the Imperial Federation at least territory-wise are already fulfilled it's now finally time to go to war with Germany I try to extend the duration of the justification by selecting more regions but because of all the modifiers including land lease to an enemy I just cannot push it Beyond 10 days but we still need to prepare for the war and want to Annex France in order to prevent increasing their autonomy from combat again we can cap tiny Romania now and the following conference marks the end of our salami tactic the Allies have suffered enough they may now finally live happily ever after under British rule the only nation that was still required to fulfill our goals is Germany but we have plenty of time left so let's Annex the remaining European nations too we're nearly there anyway while prepping the wall with Germany the final lentilies arrives in France lowering their autonomy in return that allows us to Diplo and next them for 300 political power it's go time at the end of May we activate the decryption bonus from cracking the German Cipher launched the attack orders and begin a justification against Sweden we're not in a rush and have a vastly superior Army which means we don't require micromanagement after the castle spelling Sweden we go for the Baltic states usually we are meant to use the focuses leading up to the Imperial conference to further subjugate the dominions and convince them to voluntarily integrate into the British Empire but that not only takes over a year but also requires lots of political power and a bit of luck curiously enough though neither of the focus is leading up to the Imperial conference nor the Imperial conference itself are an absolute requirement for the Imperial Federation the only thing that we're missing out on by doing it this way are possible course on South Africa our campaign against Germany progresses quickly so much so in fact that we have to hold the orders to not forces surrender too early Sweden capitulates in early August they never joined access and get a separate conference Germany and the remaining access members fall a week later and although it looks as if we succeeded the game still has a surprise waiting for us I expected that we now only need to wait for the Imperial Federation Focus but because I completely neglected resistance management the Netherlands popped back into existence they've reached the critical threshold of at least 90 average resistance and rolls up in Rebellion as a consequence we immediately switched Garrison laws to prevent that from happening to other countries delete the majority of our armies to have at least some guns for Garrison duties and attack the Netherlands I highly recommend that you spend a bit more brain power and resistance Management in case you want to continue playing for example to get the one Empire achievement capping the Netherlands again isn't a big issue but it's way way too close for comfort literally on the day before the focus finished the Netherlands surrender completing the Imperial Federation Focus transforms us into the Empire and grants our scores on Australia New Zealand and all of North America without the extra effort to form and Annex the North American state we'd now only have cores in Canada and not the US the subsequent increase in core population results in our first big boost to Manpower forming the European Union a decision that is usually reserved to certain democratic nations increases our Manpower pool once again due to gaining course on France Germany Italy and the banana dogs we now sit at a core population of over 360 million with nearly 7 million Manpower available on volunteer only higher conscription laws advisors and additional focuses can bring that up to 20 million I hope you enjoyed this in-depth speedrun commentary thank you very much for watching stay safe and have a great day

Channel: m3an

Views: 52,622

Keywords: hoi4, hearts of iron 4, hi4, harts of iron, paradox games, grand strategy games, speedrun explained, speedrunning, commentary, map games, man, m3an, imperial conference, the empire, super federation

Id: iXY1KGJCQBI

Length: 26min 25sec (1585 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 14 2023