With France being in one of the most powerful yet most vulnerable spot in Europe, sandwiched between four powers that usually all try to kill it, I've devised a plan on how to retake the former French legacy.
My strategy in the beginning of the game is to immediately try to ally with Germany, UK, Italy, and Spain, as they are the ones who always kill France, if they refuse, I need to do a lot of killing.
Build any needed factories and spam the living crap out of tanks, along with ships that you will need to defend the English Chanel and just overall your coasts.
Justify the following wargoals:
Subjugate on the Netherlands and Ireland (It doesn't matter if UK already took Ireland, do it anyway.
Liberation on the United Kingdom.
Conquest on Monaco, Andorra, Belgium, Luxembourg Switzerland (take them as fast as possible you need the extra land and power).
Conquest on Italy, Spain, and Germany.
(SIDE NOTE: if any of them justify on you, which will likely be conquest, you don't need to justify whatever they did on you, except for the UK because they would have no reason to liberate you.)
Focus highly on Germany first, as they are not only the most powerful of the four, but they are also the closest to Paris, save for the UK, but water exists.
Keep a medium-large navy in the English Chanel and other smaller fleets around your coasts, keep a slightly larger fleet in The Ligurian Sea (the section of the Mediterranean Sea close to your southern border, and more importantly, Rome.
Micromanage your fleets any way you need to protect yourself.
All you should really have to do to defeat the Germans is advance steady, take the Ruhr first, then target their South, Stuttgart and Bavaria. take every opportunity you have to flank and destroy their armies, if you play your cards right, they should quickly begin to run out of manpower, and a Germany who can't blitzkrieg, is a dead Germany. Take berlin and auto-capture what pathetic remnants of Germany still survive.
After the capitulation of Germany, don't peace them out, you need to keep your government spending (and optional research spending) low so you can gain the nice stability bonus as well as war exhaustion reduction.
Now you need to shift your attention to your South, if Italy and Spain are players, no doubt they have already pushed up into your homeland, you should be micromanaging your defenses, do not let them get close to Paris and do not let any factories you have fall.
You should target Spain first since you likely will have the largest border with them, if you have already annexed Switzerland, Italy will likely go and occupy that first.
First you need to repel any advancements they made into Gaul, and take out as many Spaniards as you can while pushing back, if they are competent, they will retreat back to your original mountain border, if they do this, build artillery and attempt to flush them out into retreating, if they stand their ground, you need to shift focuses to the Italians and settle in for a bout of trench warfare with Spain.
However, if Spain is bad or isn't thinking the best in the moment, you did just destroy their entire forward advance after all, good. You need to follow their armies back into Spain, take Barcellona and Catalonia; Barcellona is the only place they can summon tanks close to the frontline, it is also one of their few overall square cities. Repeat the tactic of forcing a retreat by killing off their divisions in the frontline use a small fleet to assist your ground forces by bombarding the Spanish troops, and take Madrid when available, continue to advance. After the capture of their last square city, Spain is doomed as they account for almost all of their economy. auto-capture the remains.
After the fall of Spain, change lenses over to Italy, for this you need to use a good tactic, but it only works if you make it work.
Create a medium-small infantry squadron and send them with a small escort over to Sicily and Naples, this is a diversion to take their attention off the other places you need to attack. Send a larger infantry group (around 150-200K) and send it with escort to land in Rome, at the same time, use your main attacking forces to advance through the Alpine mountains, whence they break through, and if your diversion distracted the pizza men long enough for you to land in and hold Rome, the Italian peninsula has become a slaughterhouse; send another small division back to Naples if the first was killed, and split your Rome division in half, have them take square cities near Rome. The armies you sent through the Alps should have taken all or most of the mountains, set them to auto-capture Italy.
With a single front war taken to a three front one, Italy will likely be overwhelmed; the loss of Rome and more troops landing in the South, along with a large force barreling in from above, the Italians are done for.
Now, for the last piece of this plan, you need to use everything you have at your disposal to upheave the United Kingdom. A full reverse D-Day should not be attempted, first, either completely destroy or hinder their navy to the point where it is no longer a concern. Then, send in a large force with the equivalent of a naval deathstack to escort them; use this group to capture London and their group of square cities in the center of England. Send two smaller groups, somewhat like the solution to the Italian problem, one to land in Ireland, the other (composed of infantry, not tanks) to land in Scotland.
The Bri-ish weakness is also their strength, the fact that the UK is an island gives it protection, but with them being an island, they are confined to that island; which means whence you land successfully in London, there is not much they can do to stop you at that point. The usual Bri-ish player will focus more on a navy than a defending land force, as if you can't land, you can't win. So, after all your divisions land, auto-capture the UK after taking their last square cities.
THE NEWEST TREATY OF PARIS:
After establishing dominance and crushing your rivals, peace does need to be unfurled. Recommended peace terms are below:
Annex from Spain: Catalonia, the Canary Islands, the Beleric Islands, and the Moroccan enclaves.
This deprives Spain of their last colonies, and their most profitable cities, Spain will be blocked from forming anything, and will have a damaged military and economic power.
Annex from Italy: Alpine regions bordering Switzerland, and the Italian Isles.
Italy will be blocked from forming anything, and will lose quite a bit of useful territory, resulting in a damaged economy.
Annex from Deutschland:
The Ruhr, this will line the border up better with the former territory of Belgium, also take the area granted by annexing Stuttgart. (may need to take cities around it for territory to be taken)
This completely cripples the Germans, as they have lost their second most-populated city, and their military/economic pride of the Ruhr. Bavaria might even declare independence, hurting them more. This will also stop them from forming.
Terms for the UK:
Liberate Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, declare war on and puppet the now whole Ireland. Also, enforce your ideology onto England, even if they are already your ideology, this destroys their ability for at least a year.
These terms make it very difficult for England to recover, the loss of their releasables hurts them further. this is most damaging in terms of Ireland as they have cores on Northern Ireland, and with them as a subject, they can't retake them without another war with you.
AND OUR RESULTS:
After all the peacing if you haven't already, puppet the Netherlands.
All of this pacifies all possible enemies in Europe, and sends a direst message to all who would oppose us, that the French are not weak. The only ones who could stand to fight us now would be a developed nation not bordering us such as Russia.
We will strike fear into the minds of those who get the message of us justifying a war on them, they know that they stand no chance against the mighty French.
We will reestablish our lost empires and dominate the Eurasian continent, we will project ourselves once more onto the grand world theater and be the powerhouse we once were, once again!
