DEFENDING SPANISH REPUBLIC 1936 by Joni Nuutinen
LINKS:
⊕ Play Store
⊕ Amazon
⊕ free turn-limited at Amazon
⊕ free local turn-limited APK to sideload
The still loyal elements of the Spanish Republic find themselves in control of various disjointed areas after a semi-failed coup by Nationalists. After the initial militia struggles settle down, you gain full control of the Republican armed forces. You receive help in the form of International Brigades, along with tanks and planes from the USSR. Meanwhile, Germany, Italy, and Portugal support the rebels, who are also boosted by the battle-hardened Army of Africa. Can you outmaneuver General Franco to bring order to the messy situation and secure the Iberian Peninsula, ensuring the continuation of the Second Spanish Republic?
⊕ Taking place in: 1936-08
⊕ Map size: 1600 = 40 x 40 hexagons
⊕ Specials: Leading the forces still loyal to the Republic against General Franco's rebels and their foreign nationalistic supporters. If you like a messy chaotic starts, where your forces are all over the map, you'll love this scenario.
⊕ Released: 2024-02
WELCOME:
The still loyal remnants of the armed forces of the Spanish Republic army, which after a semi-failed coup by Nationalists, find themselves in control of various disconnected areas inside Spain. After the first small-scale militia struggles settle down, in the middle of August 1936, you are given full control of the Republican forces just as the rebels start to gather their forces for a serious attempt to take the city of Madrid. While most countries choose a non-interventionist policy in the Spanish Civil War (Guerra Civil Espaņola), you'll receive help in the form of sympathetic International Brigades, plus tanks and planes from the USSR, while Germany and Italy give support for the rebels, who also have battle-hardened Army of Africa on their side. Can you maneuver the various forces cleverly enough, both in defense and attack, to turn the chaotic and dispersed setup to your full control of the Iberian Peninsula to guarantee the continuation of the Second Spanish Republic?
This is a non-political strategy game meant as entertainment, not as a personal ideological belief or statement.
VICTORY CONDITIONS:
The object of the game is to control ALL the Victory Points (gained from cities) as quickly as possible.
QUICK TIPS: Settings: You can change hexagon size, city icons, unit icons, and many other aspects from settings, or via the four round buttons in the upper-left corner of the gaming view. Unit markings: Lower left corner shows HPs (Hit Points), upper left corner shows the number of MPs (move points), right side has several type of markings: warnings on red, attached resources on white, ground information (what's under unit icon) is marked on green. Zooms buttons (Z) are located on upper-left corner. Combat core concepts: adjacent units critically support each other in battle; encircling is often more efficient than using brute-force direct attacks. TMP-system: By controlling Key Tactical Locations (green diamonds) you will gain TMPs (Tactical Move Points), which can be used to move between two hexagons sharing Tactical Route (yellow-green arrow between the hexagons) without losing regular MPs.
CAMPAIGN NOTES:
Victory Conditions: Control 200 Victory Points (VPs), which are gained from the cities.
Tip: Slowing down the enemy advance is critical, defending on river lines helps with inflicting big losses to the enemy, and making strategic decisions about how much resources you really want to pour into the narrow northern strips you hold, can all help to keep the lines solid until you gain enough troops to concentrate them on an attack.
The northern (Salamanca-Burgos) and southern (Cadiz-Sevilla) progress of Nationalistic forces has been slightly time-jumped to make them take place more in-sync for optimal start to the campaign (=enough units to move around that the first turns are not over in less than a minute).
Properly modelling the changes in the number of men per unit and unit types is downright impossible: At the start many units were just 100-men militias, and later 1000-men columns, and later 10000-men divisions. Obviously mixing unit types with 10X and 100X differences in the number of soldiers does not work at all. As a result the first units in the campaign are just militia unit types with lower than maximum amount HPs, which can be rested and trained to full HP. And then later on regular infantry units emerge, some other first ones of these with limited number of HPs at first.
Unit types: Nationalists: Early weak infantry units (columns) are represented as militia infantry with 4 HPs instead of 6 HPs. Each area supporting nationalists has their own militia unit. Regulares (Army of Africa), the Legion (Army of Africa), Civil Guards (paramilitary force), and Portuguese volunteers are represented as regular infantry. Italian volunteers are their own infantry unit type. The lesser foreign volunteer units were tiny in size and are simply included in the Legion as was the case historically.
Unit types: Republicans: Early weak infantry units (columns) are represented as militia infantry with 4 HPs instead of 6 HPs. Frontier Guards (border troops) and Assault Guards (paramilitary) are represented as regular infantry. Foreign volunteer units are their own unit type covering all the different nationalities.
Tons of different types of tanks and air crafts were used, but since there can only be limited number of icons and unit types, these have been streamlined into Panzer I and T-26 tanks (the most common tank types), and Stuka (Junkers Ju-87) represents air force units (both German and Italian) under players control.
Republican units might from time to time lose MPs due to political infighting and disagreements between various factions.
From a game design perspective, the biggest challenge in this scenario is that the nationalist side receives a steady flow of tanks from Germany and troops from Italy. This means that, in a sense, the quicker the player wins, the fewer hostile units they need to encounter. While historically accurate, this can be problematic if the player finds a way to finish the game very early, for example by taking significant risks. However, these types of issues are almost impossible to solve without introducing unreasonable early-game penalties for the player.
Yes, the flag for the nationalists is from 1938 as it is easier to separate from the flag of the republic
Naval warfare is not included since there were only a few battles due to many countries choosing to follow non-intervention policy.
Spanish accent signs have been mostly removed to maintain compatibility with older versions of Android Operating System.
Scenario Specific documentation that includes links to more generic documentation on how the game series and the underlying game engine works.
To get a feel play the free turn-limited demo version (sideload or Amazon App Store), while screenshots are available on the app stores. No ads or tracking in these either.
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