I Formed the EU Using ONLY Belgium… and Bicycles

Playing as BELGIUM can we form the EU / EUROPEAN UNION using only bicycle divisions?!

Please show your support by liking/commenting/sharing and subscribing!

#hoi4 #heartsofiron4

HEARTS OF IRON 4

Welcome back to Hearts of Iron 4. Now, today we’re playing as Belgium because as Belgium, you can recruit little bicycle units here. So, we can train bicycle units, but the only problem with them is they’re little bitty ones for width with two battalions, and you can’t actually change the width. In my previous videos, when I looked at them, however, since an update at some point that I’ve missed, you can now add more bicycle battalions. So you can actually make a unit of bicycles with this rather than being crappy for width. So bicycle Belgium is 100% a go. Now with bicycles, we do have to use support equipment to make these which makes them rather expensive. They are some speedy boys though with 6.4 km. So we should be able to outflank everyone. Other than that it’s pretty much standard infantry just quicker and they get infantry bonuses. So we’re going to switch them all over to our bicycle units. We’re going to give them a general. Weirdly, we don’t have a bicycle expert, which definitely should be a thing. So, we’ll just go with the infantry and ranger here. Now, for the focus tree, what are we going to do today? Well, we’ve done the sort of brown party path here a few times in separate videos. There is a bit of a commie red path, which isn’t really that exciting. So today we are going to do the European Union and we are going to form the EU with Bicycle Belgium because why not absolutely test the edge of my limits for playing this game. So we are going to build a fort line here through the Ardens and then another one behind the river here as a backup if we get pushed back cuz we plan on attacking Germany or have Germany attack us and try and hold as long as possible. So, we’ll move our army here into these three woodland forest tiles with our forts being built. We are going to need a lot of support equipment for our divisions. The rest of it we can steal. So, I need to make support. Belgium does start in a bit of a crappy position to be fair. We’ve got a lot of fixing of our country to do before Germany eventually rolls into us. So, we need to get rid of all of these negatives. We’re going to do basic fortification. I mean, one level fort for 151 days research is absolutely abysmal. There is the corruption scandal which happened in June 36. So, not too bad. We get obviously the weekly stability negative for a little bit until we finishes the focuses. Sometimes it happens a lot lot later than that and it actually holds up and if it happens before you lose a lot more stability. So, we need to get down to here 35 days to get rid of it. So, we got just a couple more focuses to do quickly which isn’t too bad. We’re going to go and get the quiet royale for political power plus 10 and stability. Stability is going to be a problem and we’re going to need a lot of political power as well. We’ll go and get the army defense to get the XP ticking up so we can actually add some new battalions to our units. The royal appointment. So, we normally go with the Rexis, but today we’re going to go the stable hand, the democratic path because democracy is boring today. Stability plus 5%. Nice. We now will just belong our way down there to the Council of Europe. So, we will go. That doesn’t really do a lot. Let’s go the planned demand and get the consumer goods. We’ve got enough XP. So, let’s go and up these to 18 width is what I’m going for. I believe that is optimal, but I imagine if it’s not, I will find out in the comments soon after this. So, we’ll whack these up to 18 width bicycle. Only bicycle only. Obviously, we can use support equipment and company. So, we’re going to go for engineer company for some entrenchment. This does require a lot of support equipment, but we have a nice width, bit of artillery, and we will add some anti-air in as well. What I’m also going to do is create a duplicate, which is the reserves, and we’ll just update that and have two different templates. One just with a worse refreshment rate. So, we’re going to change one of the armies to the reserve one. These will get the equipment last, and we’re going to put them behind the river. I basically want 15 fully equipped divisions rather than having 30 half equipped. And then we’ll slowly move them once they get equipped to the front. Adrien Martins’s crisis. Now, the sensible man would take this one where we get a new prime minister and we’re okay and have the Catholic block, but we’re going to have to take the negative 25% stability to be able to go for the EU path. So, that is why our stability is going to be horrendous in this game. We’ll go for the Benelux Union now. We’ll get rid of the language barrier, which gives us a bit more stability back and we create the Benux Union for a little bit. Let’s go for improve land fors as well. 170 days for another fort level. At least it should mean we can hold the Germans off. We will do the infantry equipment as well because we need to be as strong as possible. And we’ll start making some anti-air now for the piercing and obviously to shoot down the stucker dive bombers. The Netherlands joins the Ben. Oh, Luxembourgs. Um, the wise man would restart this because that’s not very good. I mean, does it make too much of a difference? Probably not. So, I mean, I can’t add him. But we do have the realize European unity. Now we want the Dutch, Luxembourg, French, Italian, and German states. That is the aim of today to be able to hit that button. We can now also go and get the Council of Europe will be known as the European Union. And then we can start inviting other countries to our faction. And there we go. Nice and blue now. New flag of the EU. And we have all of these decisions to start inviting countries to our faction. We do need to be a little bit careful who we invite because the Soviets do love declaring war on these factions. So, first thing I probably want to do is we’re going to go and propose federalization to the Netherlands because we want them to join. There’s the notification. Now, do we want Otto Van Hapburg to join us? Why not? We’ll take him as a political advisor. That is odd. I never knew that happened. I must have missed that. So, political power, consumer goods, stability. He’s actually pretty good. I’m going to go with him. I feel like this might be a little bit of a secret Easter egg. Maybe later on he takes over. Now with the focus tree, we’ve got some forts over here that we could take a few of those. There is fixing our army which we will need to do. We can get rid of the scars of war and we get some recruitable popping bits pieces. We will have to do that as well. But I think first we’re just going to grab a few saves just to help make our forts and get some factories out. The Netherlands agrees. Perfect. So now we own the Netherlands as a puppet. We are going to construct a couple of forts in their land just to have a full back line if we need it depending how much the Germany attack. So, we’ll go for Einhovven and A Roterdam, but we’re not going to call them in. So, they shouldn’t have to actually do any fighting. Now, I need to be clever who I invite. So, I think we’re going to go for Poland because it doesn’t really matter. Romania gets attacked by Soviets if they join your faction, I believe. So, we’re not going to do that. We’re just going to do Poland. We don’t want the guarantee from the Allies either because we want to keep the Allies out of the war for as long as possible. So, we get as much war score as we can without them intervening. Poland rejects. Okay, that’s absolutely terrible. I really should restart this run, but I’m not going to. Let’s go for Hungary as well because they’ll join the Germans otherwise they are a good ally to have. We’ve got another forts we can build as well. So, let’s improve our fort line up up to six forts which will be very good. Should hold the Germans. Right, Hungary has joined. Brilliant. We have an ally which is very good. Now, with the checks, if you just have them in your faction, they still give up the land. But if I’m quick enough, I should be able to integrate them as well. The checks have joined. Perfect. I need another 100 PP to federalize them so they join our puppet and then they won’t give up the Sudat land to Germany. I do that quick. So we are running out a bit time. We will do the improved relations as well just to hopefully make sure. And the checks agree. Perfect. That should be enough to hold Germany off while we hold the other side. So that should distract them enough they won’t get the Sudan land and conquer them as well which is good. So we are looking in a good scenario. I’m happy now. I’m happy of how this is setting up. Now, Luxembourg shouldn’t get drawn in too quickly. So, I’m actually going to remove this and have two lines because I think Luxembourg will be a nice buffer for us. So, we should just have to hold two tiles from Germany. I will get some of our uh rubbish reserve troops and just fill that just in case they quickly fold over and then we are left with no troops here in trench. We’ll move a few of those unequipped ones just to fill the gap. Germany demands a data land. Obviously, we’re not giving that up. We want the forts. The Czech should be able to hold off Germany, especially with Hungary in the south as well. So they shouldn’t be able to get round. We’ll only have to hold a small front line here. We’re not obviously going to call the Netherlands in yet. So we’ve got a little bit of a way before they do focuses like uh round the Benelux. They’ve obviously declared uh no one else is brought in, which is good. So it’s just us and the checks. We’ll get a better artillery on the go as well. Now I’ve got to be careful with this because if we lose a few states, the king will surrender and then the war support will basically capitulate us. So we just need to hold on to the provinces of the port here. We’ll just send a couple of our reserves there just to make sure we don’t get naval invaded, especially with the allies not being in. They’ll have green sea against us. They are immediately attacking with a couple of divisions, but that’s absolutely fine. We are lacking a bit of equipment, but that’s not a problem. We’ll go up to war economy, so we can actually start building meals. I do want to get uh legacy of the great war down here for attack on core territory and defense. But I’m going to start with the uh additional recruitable pot cuz we do need a bit of population. That’s only 35 days and we do get that negative officer for a little bit. They’re still attacking, which is fine. Uh, Germany has declared on Luxembourg. I don’t know how they got a war going on that they’ve joined our faction even though I didn’t invite them. So, I’m kind of happy with that. At least it hasn’t brought in. Yeah, it hasn’t brought in the allies. But Luxembourg might start calling people in. They’ve called in the Dutch East Indies, but I suppose they’re not a puppet whereas Netherlands is a puppet, so they can’t. We’re not going to help Luxembourg. We are just going to sit on our fort. Let’s get the reserves over here. Right, they are full on attacking. Luxembourg is gone. We have enough equipment in the reserves. They are still green, so they are still training. We are trying to get some normal troops in. So, I’ve just done a front line. We’re going to have to hit a couple of last stands cuz they are quite badly pushing. And we’re going to have to reinforce this bottom tile here. Just a little bit of micro in. And we are fine. It is green. They are trying to attack. Winter’s coming as well, which should be helping us as well. They are still pushing, but we’re not going anywhere. We are just having to get round to this tile and hit the bottom one. That’s the only one they’re really interested in. Uh, we’re holding okay, though. It’s fine. The amount of days it takes for them to push is more than enough for us to do little micro. The checks are trying to push out stupidly, but they are holding, which is good, which is distracting enough of the German troops. They’re not flying into our front line over here. Is Poland going to Yeah, they are guaranteed by the British. So, they will call in the allies eventually once that comes around, but we’ve probably got enough war score already. They are just absolutely cycle charging us, but we are holding out. They’ve only taken 160,000 losses, which is a bit annoying. We are lacking an awful lot of equipment still, but we’re holding with our forts and forest. So, that’s the main aim is not to hold. We will get a bit of a planning bonus from the uh battle plan on the go. Now, we got 50% world tension. We’re just going to stack up a load of new divisions that we can’t afford. And then we’re going to go beg the allies for equipment. So, we want infantry, support, bit of artillery, and anti-air will. Okay. Oh, no. We haven’t put it in our divisions yet. Right. Let’s go and add anti-air. We haven’t actually made any, but we’re basically going to beg for it off of the allies still. So, we’ll go back to Yeah, we’re missing a little bit of 760 anti-air now. So, we’ll go and ask the allies whether they want to contribute and they definitely will give us a lot of equipment. Let’s go up to extensive conscription cuz we might actually get those extra divisions out. We are out of manpower, but they’re not really doing a lot of damage, so it’s okay. Even the Soviets will give us stuff. They won’t give us artillery, but they will give us antia and infantry equipment, which is nice. 1,000 from them. 1,500. Perfect. We will keep begging our way every 30 days for allied equipment to reinforce our troops. The legacy of the great war. The attack and defense on core and the is what we really want. Especially the attack and defense on core population or core territory. That should help us massively. Although the Germans are just struggling as hell. There’s no one else I really want to join. We could go for Romania, but they’re probably going to join the Axis anyway. Checks are still holding. Yeah, they’ve already literally immediately as I said that, they’ve joined the Axis and they’ve called Italy in which means we’re going to have a lot more troops and we’re also going to get navy invaded more. So, let’s deploy some of these untrained divisions. But just to have a few more on the ports because Italy just loves a cheeky naval invasion at the moment. I’m going to build some naval forts as well just to hold. Actually, that’s a bit overkill, isn’t it? Oh, definitely don’t do that. We want probably five. Five is enough. Or four. Let’s go four. Four will build quickly and it will be enough to stop the Italians. Let’s do another fallback line on the river because we’re going to get rid of some of these divisions because they’re just not attacking us anymore. So, we need to make it a little bit weaker to actually let the Germans attack. No matter what I do, the Germans just don’t want to attack any Italians. The checks are holding as well. So, I’m sort of waiting now. And there’s the Italians just deciding they want a cheeky name invasion. Lucky I’ve got some divisions here that will quickly reinforce and they’ll take none of our forts. The forts are still building. So the ports are absolutely fine. Last few divisions out and we are looking chunky. They’re attacking Yugoslavia who have joined our faction without an invite. Um but it means that our border is very very sparse on the German and Italian side. So I think we might do a cheeky push out now cuz they’ve literally got one or two divisions. So let’s go and call in the Netherlands. So we have a bigger front line to use. I have really stupidly not been doing a battle plan to get the planning bonus, but we’ll create one of them and we’ll immediately advantage just push out. I imagine the Germans are going to quickly respond to this. But if we can push I mean there’s a big lump of troops up here in the north. So if I can push out quickly, I might be able to get a cheeky encirclement and then that will make a massusive gains for us and knock off quite a few uh casualties for the German Italian. All right, there’s a few troops in circle. That’s fine. Our troops aren’t brilliant at breaking these encirclements. I mean, we are going across the river. We have cut off in the north here, but I don’t think I can hold that. They are starting to reinforce. Soviet Union has declared on Poland who were guaranteed by the British. So, this could be massive for us because it could be a real help for us if the Allies join the war with the Soviets. They have joined the allies. So, the Soviets are going to war with the Allies in this. We have messed up the time. We have messed up the timeline. But it does mean defeating the allies later for their territory should be much easier with help of the Soviets. Oh, they really want their land back. They are really starting to push. We’ve trying to hit a few last stands. They are pushing us back quickly. If the lines break, they could flood into Belgium and [ __ ] us. Let’s get Britain and France who are now involved in and see if they’ll actually put some troops on our front line. As long as we can hold one side of the Rine, I think we’ll be okay. Let’s go and get our Belgian Congo divisions. We’ll re redo the uh bicycle divisions. We’ll just switch a few of these because we are out of manpower and we can’t really do anything about at the moment. So, we gain a bit from this. We use a bit of the Belgian manpower to garrison some of our units. We are sort of holding. If I can hold this side of the rine, otherwise pushing out again over the ride will be nearly impossible. So, I want a few divisions to be able to hold. We are lacking a lot of equipment. We’re at 42% war score, which is good. They’ve only got 17. Britain’s got 14. That should be enough for us to get majority of the German state and probably the Italian. We are making the equipment. We’ve got support equipment. We’re just missing a bit of guns and a bit of anti-air, but we are making quite a bit of it. We need a couple of trains. Everything else is good. We’re also trying to get some rocket artillery in. So, I think we’re okay. We just need to hold out. We are holding. It’s all green. We’ll just wait for the equipment to trickle in. I have got a plan. So, we’re going to try and get 24 more divisions out. We don’t have the manpower, but we’ll change a few from the Congo, and we have gone up a manpower law, so we should start getting some more in. We are lacking a little bit of equipment and some manpower. Obviously, what I’m going to do with this new army is we are going to invade Italy. I think they’re all on our border and around the checks. So, if we can make the civil war kick off, the allies have given us the um dominance or naval supremacy. So, if we can get a Italian puppet, that’d be brilliant to integrate and be able to hit the EU rather than Britain owning it. And just as I suspected, Italy isn’t home apart from like an irregular division there. Rome is always open because they just never learn a lesson about their capital. If it had a port, I think they’d be more important about it. But because Rome didn’t have a port, they just basically give it up for free. And yeah, we will march on in quickly. we get the civil ward to kick before they manage to reinforce, which it looks like we might do because these cycle boys are so quick and they are just not being aggressive enough to stop us. So, we’ll just cycle around them. See if we can get an encirclements and kick the civil war off. There is the civil war and we will keep the territory. So, we have got once we push out here, little bit of the north still remaining, but we have massively crippled the axis there. We should be able to push and quickly defeat the rest of the Italians. And then we have a lovely Italian puppet, I think. Yeah, with the Italians done pretty much. They’ve evacuated here. So, we’re going to try and push out. We’ve got a lot of divisions. The Germans are busy elsewhere. Once we make a few holes, we also need to Well, we got 45%, but we’ll get a bit more, but we need to massively, you know, get rid of some casualties just to help with our war score to get land. Unfortunately, Belgium bicycles are pretty much expendable for us. Oh, we are smashing through here. The Germans just don’t know what to do with our bicycle units. The speedy boys on the bicycle are so good at encircumments. If I was allowed a truck with artillery, I think we’d absolutely crush it. But that is not the rules. I think this really is Germany on their last legs. There’s a few seconds there. We have Berlin as well. We’ve bicycled our way into Berlin. Let’s just quickly crush these pockets. Grab a few more victory points. Come on, Italy. Venice should Yes, there we go. Lovely guns. They’ve obviously given it to the Brits as well, the lab, because that is absolutely how fair this game is. Uh we’ll just go get military access so we can quickly move our bicycles in. And we’ll go for Vienna because that is one of the big German points. Right, there’s another big pocket we can close up towards Rosstock. Everyone else is fine. I think they just don’t know what to do now. One more tile. One more tile. There we go. We have finally relieved the Czech circle here. They have been fighting for 4 years on these forts and we have finally cycled our way through Belgium to relieve the Czech border. And we will now just do a big battle plan quickly. Germany is basically done, I think. There we go. Germany is done. That is them capped. We just need to hit Bulgaria now. Uh we’ve done Italy and Germany. Quickly into Romania and Bulgaria is the last victory points we need. So that shouldn’t be a problem. Is Sophia enough? Yes, it is. The axes are defeated and we have majority of the war score. So I want all of Italy and all of Germany basically is what we need. We’ll try and grab some other bits, but I’ll obviously give Italy the Italian land because it’ll be cheap. And there we go. We did manage to get everything we wanted. There is some horrendous borders going on, but we have got all the German states is the main thing. The Italian ones are owned by Italy. So, it’s just the French and we need to get Luxembourg and then integrate Italy and the Dutch and we are good to go. Mr. Netherlands, would you like I don’t know, say thousands of guns, loaded trucks, basically everything we have in our stockpile. Would you like to take possession of it for no reason whatsoever? Now we’ve got all our stuff back. Let’s go and lend it all to the Italians as well. Oh, and they’ve got the king in charge. Mr. Kingy, would you like a load of equipment? No questions asked. It definitely won’t come back to bite you in the ass. Before I do Italy, I’m going to do the trick where we’re just going to deploy a load of Italian units and then when we integrate them, we’ll get all of this lovely, lovely manpower to us. So, these are horsey boys. We’ll just quickly up them, deploy them, and then it should become ours once we delete them after integration. Just waiting on some PP. And one more. Come on. There we go. Right, Italy is ours. We have taken that. Oh, and I forgot to deploy the units. What an absolute penis. And we’re just losing that manpower. Oh no, I’ve absolutely screwed that. Okay, we do have 43 units, but I I don’t have loads of manpower that I was hoping for, which is a right ball lake. We do have Italian navy however I’ve just noticed. So we will be using that to invade Britain. We’ll make sure that is all in one port. I don’t know why it’s all over the place. Um but we will get that in and be ours now. The only people I can get a war on was the British Raj which is fine. They will call absolutely everyone in. So we declare on the Raj. They call in the British. The allies own quite a lot but we only need France really now. So we will wait until France joins. France is just refusing to join. I can’t do a justif on them for some reason. They’re just not deciding to join this war annoyingly. I mean, they have no one on their border, so it’s no reason why they wouldn’t. Finally, Ireland has called them in months later. Finally. Right. Luckily, we’re already with our bicycle, so we’re going to absolutely storm in. You’ve not even got the Magino line. Uh we will quickly get some encirclements here. There’s a little bit of a dunker going on, which we’ll take full advantage on. Instead of quick blitz greed, we are using bicycles to surround. Let’s just beline straight up here. Straight into Paris. Oh my god. They’ve still got disjointed government. Huh. As soon as we take Paris, France is gone. There goes France. And why has it given it to the Soviets? You Why is it giving it to Soviets? You’ve absolutely got to be bloody joking here. I was tempted to invade the Soviets, but I’ve decided just to let France take it back and then we’ll reinvade. So, there’s a bicycle gap here or a bicycle size gap. We’ll just quickly beline all the way through here. They’ve not reinforced enough, but obviously the Soviets aren’t pouring troops in, so they’re just taking the territory back. Right, we have to wait a little bit longer. We need a naval invasion here to take this Soviet land. I really don’t want to fight the Soviets because we just don’t have the manpower, at least until we uh do the EU formation. Right, we can knock this lovely encirclement here. That’s a nice 20 odd divisions encircled. Okay, I think oh there’s a naval invasion there which is good. We are just waiting for them to take the last bit of Soviets down here. The Soviets haven’t got a port so they can’t bring anyone in. Okay, let’s go and let’s just take the north up here towards Britany. We will and breast. We’ll do a couple of encirclements. It looks like I don’t know what they’ve got, but it looks like we are better than them or at least speedier anyway. So when we bulldoze our way through gaps, we can circle them. Uh we will a little bit more. Oh yeah, we need a little bit more. Then we can get Luxembourg in and we can finally hit the EU. I totally forgot about Luxembourg, but luckily they accepted our puppet hood. Uh we’re just waiting for a little bit of Soviet land to go still. Right, that is Luxembourg done. These last little provinces of France is done, which means we can realize European unity and we can become the proper EU. So we keep the same flag. We are the European Federation. Were we that before? I can’t remember now. Um, but we have all of these extra Oh, I didn’t realize you get all this extra crap. You are absolutely joking. Unification of Europe. We have 13 million manpower now. So, let’s get some new divisions. We will start absolutely smashing our way into more bicycle divisions. We have a lot more territory to take yet because we’re going to go for all of those extra cores if we can. I don’t really know if we’ll be able to. First thing, we need a lot of port garrisons. Right, we are naval bombing and fighting the heck out of the channel. We need a bit of green sea to knock Britain out. That’s the first one and that should make life so much easier without Britain having a load of troops everywhere. We have got this small Italian navy which should get his naval supremacy eventually. We’ve also got a load of subs out just harassing everyone. Let’s go and put them in the channel as well. I know they’ll get hit by naval bombers, but at least our fighters should be able to help out. I mean, USA is really trying to ruin my game here. If they’d have taken Antwer up there, I think that would have screwed us. But no, USA naval invasion has gone terribly for them. Bicycles are for the win. Uh there is a big naval battle here, but they are retreating because we have a million billion naval bombers in the air, which is doing absolute bits for us. We are just waiting for Oh, there we go. We are waiting for the green as it hits. Our naval invasion is done. Yes. and Congo has capitulated because I accidentally called them in without realizing it and left them to be abandoned. Uh, don’t look into that. We’ll force our way on. There’s a few in do. We have taken either side of do, so there’s a nicer pocket here. We’ll take that. We’ll push out. They haven’t got many divisions. Turns out if you just have a load of bicycles, Britain is actually not really much of a challenge. We’ll come down and take Plymouth, but other than that, it’s just be on our way for Hull, Liverpool, probably up to Newcastle. Just feels so wrong just invading Britain all the time. But there we go. United Kingdom is done. They had a load of guns that they gave us as well. We will mop up the rest of it, but we should be able to hit the cores and get all of Britain as well. Uh, what are we talking? Expansion to the No, we need Ireland. Oh, you’re joking. Ah, finally our naval invasion of Ireland. Right, they have got a few troops in Belfast. Not a problem. We will just quickly mop them up and move south for Ireland. And Dublin should be the end of it. Right. Can we finally hit one of these extra cores? We can expand into the aisles. We’ll get all of Britain’s factory and manpower and cores. Uh we are just become what? Oh, it’s 70 days. Okay, that’s really anticlimactic. Terrible news. I may have to call it. I can’t justify on anyone else because they haven’t created one tension. So, all the other people we need, there’s a bit of factions here, but there’s load of nations that just won’t join or integrate anything. and there’s not really anything I can do about it. So, I can’t grab the rest of the land we need for the cause because they won’t declare war. I’ve even tried to turn communist, but I don’t get a event when I had an election to change and we’ve got majority and they’re not requesting. So, I don’t really know what to do. I don’t want to wait till 52 for another election because I just don’t think it’s happening. As communists, I probably could attack everyone, but it just won’t let me flip. So, I think we are going to have to call it here, guys. I mean, I wanted to form the EU with bicycles as Belgium, and we did do that. So, I’m chalking that up as a win. It’s not my fault. Democracy is rubbish and we can’t just declare on who we want because I want all of the other bits. So, I don’t know if there’s some sort of trick. Let me know down in the comments what I’m not doing to be able to form the rest. Otherwise, I don’t really see how you get all of these EUs. Um, but thank you guys for watching. Shout out to our members for always supporting the channel. Let me know in the comments what you want me to do next. Spanish Armada is always the answer.