Hello and welcome to part 2 of "How I do the Equestrian Liberation Front"
Before we continue I need to mention a few things.
1. I did say this is mostly about gameplay
but in this case, some of the story is intertwined, so
spoilers warning
2. There was an unfortunate bug I encountered this run where uniting the yaks under the
"J" aks still leaves the option to unite
under the "Y" aks.
The AI will select this option due to the fact it costs no political power.
This wouldn't be an issue except for the fact that the
"Y" aks are completely independent.
And no, uniting the land under "Y" aks first
doesn't help as due to going independent, the option to then
unite under the "J" aks is locked out.
So my solution was to simply start justifying on the yaks
and fix whatever the AI does with the console. Sorry.
3. You might be wondering,
"why don't I start the rebellion now
instead of letting them build up while I'm doing the Protectorate?"
and you'd be completely justified in thinking this,
but this is about how I like to do the ELF,
not the best way to do the ELF
though I hope you still get some ideas from it, be it for role-play or strategy.
Now I won't activate self-destruct, but I will send the military on a long vacation.
Research Excavation so maybe Chrysy will buy some more of my resources.
Finish building stuff I couldn't before. I'll get the factories eventually.
Start producing equipment the ELF will steal later,
especially support equipment and anti-tank.
Prioritize negotiating the Love Tax to get your factories back,
increasing collaboration will boost construction, but it's not as important.
And while we still have political power, get partial mob.
The Yaks have been dealt with, but
that is just ugly, soooo...there
Love Tax is done, and we've now got a whole 5 factories.
More steel in the future would be nice.
Now to just wait for the ELF to spawn, if I wanted to build more,
I can just put down some of the rebellions until I'm ready.
Ok, liberation time, first things first, delete all of these orders.
Extensive conscription, Army Defense.
Just build an agency,
can't afford to upgrade it but 1 spy as counterintelligence can still help.
Research, maintenance companies, highly important
and personal AT, we'll be down on AT artillery for a while.
Construction, get rid of this junk, and just focus eintirely on repairing.
Check back once in awhile to reprioritize repairs,
especially for Anti-Air guns.
Industry, only support equipment for now.
We don't need any of these extra templates. And give the Onhooves AA.
Now one trick here is to recruit a lot of divisions,
when the Changelings take my land I can cancel this and get all the ponypower back.
It's not necessary, and I also wouldn't call it broken in this case
you are limited to how many divisions you can recruit
along with how fast your ponypower pool can fill up.
Now let's actually capitulate the protectorate first before reorganizing the army.
The pegasi split between General Price and Trixie under Field Marshall Starlight.
This is for role-play reasons as later on
the pegasi will be the most important thing in the second stage.
The rest go to Field Marshall Purple Dart mainly because of his scavenger trait.
Then send them all to the fort line.
Focus tree, I want to prioritize the ones that give troops so first,
Liberatory Crusade, as they spawn a bit farther so I want to get them out before they get encircled,
followed by Everfree, Cadres, Enlist, and Diaspora.
Flying Columns can wait a bit until I get some gun production bonuses.
We're going to lose entrenchment quite often so,
"charismatic" is more important for now.
Everfree gives 8 motorized, I'm converting 6 of them to tanks
and placing them on this port, here, and here.
The reason is, I need someone to deal with naval invasions,
and tanks are fast while also having armor.
Why not infantry?
Well while for now we're short on light tanks,
eventually once we gain maintenance companies
we'll start gaining an excess
and this way also ensures most of the infantry equipment goes to the main line.
Also naval invasions aren't as frequent,
so in what little combat they should see their armor
should be quite effective while not draining my very limited fuel.
The last two I made pegasi since I want Price to keep his Timberwolves
but I would also like he and Trixie to have even division count.
Okay, they've taken most of my land so the recruitment can be cancelled
leaving me with 300k ponypower.
Let's also draw a proper front now and maybe get some planning bonus.
Cadres done, get those volunteers out immediately.
Things really heated up at this point, so this is what I want to really emphasize.
See this? Looks okay right?
It does until you realize half of them are almost out of organization,
and the enemy is NOT taking a break right now.
So the important thing is to take troops from
somewhere not under attack or less heavily attacked,
as they can afford to have a bit less, and rotate them with routing divisions.
The farther away the sooner you should start.
This was WAY too close for comfort.
And hold shift to micromanage them in a way that they won't get caught in a different battle.
One additional trick you can use and not just here is take a routing division,
and have it walk around a bit but not too far away
so it can regain org and rejoin battle quickly,
of course this is only if you have enough organization recovery bonus
to outweigh organization loss from moving.
Things will eventually calm down to the point where you don't need to micro as heavy.
How long may depend on the playthough
but in this case, this was 3 years since the war began.
However you still need those maintenance companies.
Scavenger just doesn't give as much and they're still attacking,
if your supply starts to suffer, the AI will be
comparatively strong enough to heat things up again,
only in that case, you won't survive.
Your divisions not suffering too heavily from undersupply penalty
is the only thing keeping them from ramming you on all front.
The moment the research is done, give them to everyone you can,
take out some recon if you need more support equipment.
Can start making some budget guns as well
Since I didn't need to defend as hard anymore, I switched doctrines to mass mobilization,
I do NOT want to go, "All Adults Serve" as the ELF.
I know it's been several years,
but I still find it weird they can actually hold political positions.
Supply is pretty good now, so let's prepare for second stage,
and make some nice pegasi divisions.
The line is strong enough, that if they see combat now,
it's additional xp to regular training.
Also if I'm remembering this right, it actually takes more equipment,
but less time to train them in the field.
Also, give them hospitals.
Now, if you've seen some guides on the "30 minutes of Hel" achievement from Vanilla
this may look familiar to you.
First, convert the main line back into a fallback order.
Second, take the two pegasi armies and draw a pincer like this.
Note whoever occupies this tile can't gain planning bonus due to spies apparently.
Third, attack the first tile, but hit "s" to only order half the army into the second,
so the other half can guard the first.
Fourth.
Fifth, delete orders, retreat, and repeat
you are not ready to make an actual push right now, the goal is to chip away the enemy.
You can make this a bit more time efficient by using, "staff office plan"
to build planning bonus faster
Now for a while, this might not look like it's making a dent,
but remember, the line is short right now,
so any enemy refill you see are probably rushed divisions.
The attrition doesn't help either,
yet they still occasionally believe attacking some spots will get through eventually.
Action!
Unlike myself, the old neighborhood is still
the same as you left it bro
Hey, did I tell you? I'm mayor now. Right Ed?
Hi Trixie!
See that loser? That's Trixie. She's the neighborhood dork
I have to slap him 'round every now and then,
just to remind him who's boss.
Eddy.
Neighborhood dork? Huh?
Hey double-dweeb, you gettin this?
H-He collects underwear and gives them to the poor,
Pretty stupid huh bro?!
Help!
Now let's take all that stolen equipment and start making another Pegasi team.
And give them the more veteran generals,
the main line's primary job at this point is basically done for now.
Wait for training to get done
And this here is just tasty.
Okay I've got only around 200k ponypower left on
both SBR and mass mobilization's wave offensive
so I felt this was the best time to start making an actual push.
Now I probably could, or
should have started this a lot sooner,
but there's also something really amusing about a 15 million to one K/D in a My Little Pony mod.
Fillydelphia is a pretty big city so that's where we're gonna encircle down towards
I also left one pegasi army on this area, since
the line will be stretched and the enemy might gain some ideas.
Now that there's more ponypower and equipment,
it's actually affordable now to convert some units into onhooves.
Either they're all green or my forces are
too good at attacking for this to be a problem anymore.
Don't need to be on SBR anymore.
Regular forces can still make encirclements.
Well this was embarrassing.
Don't even need front lines anymore.
One of my personal preferences is, when I can help it,
I generally keep infantry armies with consistent divisions.
In this case, the unmodifiable volunteers to a second army group
on the less dangerous front.
I didn't do this sooner since I still needed Purple Dart's scavenger trait
along with the skills of my generals back then.
I do kinda wish there was an easier way to check for volunteers.
Now was a good time to liberate Canterlot.
And with that we have the opportunity to rescue Twilight.
Now I don't know if this has been fixed or not
but if you don't take care of this before the war ends,
you'll basically be locked out of the post-war focus tree,
so get it done before actually invading the Changeling homeland.
I was honestly surprised, there was no event for this.
The enemy is weak enough now that if I do one more knitting
on their lines it should be enough to launch one final grand offensive.
Okay, one more.
And with that, Changeling days were numbered.
If you can't figure out where to finish Twilight's rescue,
the Changelings might have also renamed a parody of an Alaskan city
into a Latin word for beehive or a beer company in Conneticut.
Either way, we got our glorious purple bookworm back.
And this is when I remembered why I capitulate the bears first.
You probably won't need them at this point,
but if you want my recommendations on which of other mane 6
you should get first I guess I'd have to say...
Pinkie Pie, so they can keep organization up and not need to rest as often.
Rainbow Dash, you probably won't see any combat
heavy enough to cause serious damage anymore so that's why she's number two.
Rarity...I guess if the north was independent
this might encourage them more to lend-lease you,
but if they ideologically don't like the Changelings
they might do that regardless of their opinion of you.
Fluttershy...I never suffered from stability problems at this point
but I guess if you have problems then...
I'm sorry, but this is completely useless in singleplayer
and I've never done multiplayer,
but is the ELF even remotely possible against a human Changeling?
And that is how I do the ELF.
Once again, I don't really consider this a guide,
but I still hope you found it informative or entertaining.
For the Magic of Friendship. Goodbye
Slow down Trixie! I was just kidding! Stop! Please!