The Occupation of France

Day 781, 09:00 • Published in USA USA • by Desertfalcon

The French capital is once again under siege, this time in Burgundy. Burgundy is the last region France holds on the European mainland and if it were to fall the French would have to prepare for a last stand in Corsica. Right now the attack on Burgundy is still anyone's game, the wall is only about 200K above the secure line and with 8 hours left that doesn't offer much security to the French. The French can still count on their allies to fight through their MPPs so that should offer the French some hope in Burgundy. Still, Spain also has allies who have deployed troops to help with their offensive so Spain will have a little help in knocking down the wall.


If France were to lose both of Burgundy and Corsica then they would be wiped out and all their wars would end in peace treaties. This would make things difficult for the French since if they did manage to win a resistance war they would be unable to use their allies to help fight a conquest war with Spain. At this point it would be a better strategic move to just resistance war all their regions back like Spain did when France completely conquered all of their regions not too long ago. France doesn't appear to be waiting to be taken over though, since the Spanish attack on Burgundy three resistance wars have started up across Spanish and Polish occupied France. While the French aren't winning any of these resistance wars the battles are all extremely close with two of them being just 5k over the secure line. This is mostly due to the fact that for some reason resistance wars tend to be neglected when conquest battles are occurring. Another reason is that there is often confusion over orders with people fighting on the wrong side or interpreting "fight red" (fight for the resistance) as "fight against red" (fight for the defenders). Both these reasons cause for shorter walls in resistance battles.

While occupying all of France for an extended period of time would be unrealistic, the Spanish should be able to hold onto a few key regions for quite awhile. One of the most strategic advantages from holding France is that Spain can use it as a launching point into other Phoenix countries such as the U.K. in Belgium. A direct invasion of the U.K. won't happen any time soon but Spain can weaken the U.K. by taking Belgium from them and then resistance waring it back to Belgium which would then become a free state. The Spanish have already launched an attack on Brussels which will likely succeed and we can expect that they will attack Flanders soon after to push the U.K. out of mainland Europe.

Whether Spain attempts a full scale invasion of Italy or the U.K. is yet to be seen. The Spanish have launched several attacks into Italy before, but there really isn't much benefit. For one both the U.K. and Italy only have high grain and two they are both roads to nowhere in that neither of them borders any new Phoenix countries. The only real difference difference between the two is that many citizens of EDEN aligned countries want revenge on the U.K. for defecting. If an invasion of the U.K. doesn't happen soon though, it is very possible that the U.K. starts their own offensive into Northern France since it wouldn't activate any of the Spanish MPPs and the U.K. wouldn't have much to lose.