What you are about to read is 100% the AI's doing and in no way did I alter their behavior or switch to their country to make changes. I witnessed full on naval invasions, stand alone air invasions, massive ground assaults and even nukes were used as they conquered the planet while I as the US, sat back and turtled up. Waiting for France to come knocking when they ran out of people to conquer...which they did. First i'll explain the end game and and what the world looked like when France came knocking on our doors.
June 24th 2033 : France has taken over the entire planet, minus North America which I claimed for defensive purposes only. Pic below but France has 20 Million soldiers to my 2 million. Over 400 land fabs to my 30 and 170 air fabs to my 20. America was no longer the big kid on the block. We were dwarfed by France at this point in military power and they were deeply entrenched in South America with hundreds of units stacked at our southern border. France also had every technology I had and always had trillions in the bank.
Edit: Japan was the only other major country they didn't invade.
This was peace time before their buildup at our border. I assume their buildup was a reaction to my own.
1st row is tanks and infantry. 2nd row arty and anti air. 3rd row arty. 4th row infantry reserves. Then we had more units in "deployed reserve", interceptors and bombers in the very back and behind them I had probably 10 stacks of special forces loaded into helis ready for emergencies. Of course our navy was on standby just off the coast to provide bombardment support. I've never been challenged by the AI when using this setup until now. I remember diverting all bombers to the border at one point and losing most of them as I waited on reinforcements to get there. This was without a doubt the greatest battle I had ever witnessed. A never ending wave of endgame units being thrown at our mighty defences.
See the stacks of choppers? Well they had stacks of fighters just like it all over the place. I had to use our Navy to thin them out before I dared send our own fighters. Honestly though I think this example is just a pathing issue with France trying to send them across the Atlantic. They couldn't reach their target so they just piled up there for years. I'm pretty sure they eventually dispersed somewhere else though.
Now i'll show you how France became so powerful.
First off when the whole world is at war the global economy simple cant handle it. Time after time I watch large countries steamroll right through someone just to run out of a certain good, they buy from the market either until they are broke or there is a shortage. Which grinds everything to a halt. I've tried playing on the very hard economic difficulty but it doesn't matter there is nothing I can do with game settings to make it where there are no shortages. Every time I thought I had a big challenger they would run out of supplies or money and I could just steamroll them with ease....boring, so here's how I got around that.
"The short version is I became super rich and just supplied the large countries what they needed to continue fighting."
I put everything on VH difficulty except economic. I put that on the easiest setting. I thought, well if I can't get countries to help themselves, i'll just make all the money and give it to who needs it the most. I started out by giving all the big players every tech I had including unit design techs...my best ones. Let the game run a few years while my production and money built up and kept an eye on who was winning their wars and becoming stronger. Along the way I gave my newest techs away and donated money to those in need.
After a few years I had trillions in the bank. There were some big wars going on which I was supporting BOTH sides of several wars...equally. I wanted to see if given the supplies and money who would win. France seemed to be the biggest aggressor in the world out of everyone. They declared first on nearly everyone around them. This is pretty rare for me to see "I wonder if aggression is random"...they were like savages DOWing on everyone and taking over most of western Europe. Then they set their sights on Russia. After a decent battle France forced Russia to surrender and ended up claiming massive amounts of land due to china being wiped and Russia having a chunk of their population.
Now France had a few Billion population and a ton of fabs to pump out as many units as they wanted. At this point...prob 5-6 years in I stop all aid the the rest of the world and focus just on France. We had our top dog who was aggressive, rich and had all our technology. now just time to wait for them to grow. Over the next 5-6 years I dumped Trillions into france not to mention watched their supply levels though the trade market and donated any and all supplies they ran low on. I watched them one by one destroy everyone in their path. They took Aisa first, then Africa, then the UK and any other country not in the Americas, cept Japan. No idea why they didn't take Japan. They did a full naval invasion on the UK and had no trouble.
After taking the UK they took a year or so break from fighting then naval invaded South America. Then the Caribbean including Cuba. After they took the UK, I took Canada for defensive measures. After they landed in South America I took Mexico for the same reason and began to build my wall of troops on the new smaller border. IN all this time France never once attacked us and we didnt attack them. Pretty sure it was all the money I was giving them. But it was coming.
France still had a big problem though. Most of their units were junk. I dont know if the AI scraps outdated units or what but France had acquired thousands of junk units from countries they took over. So while yes I did see a few modern units back in Europe I never saw them elsewhere. But that was solved too.
After my buildup was complete, France declares on me out of nowhere..."ungrateful A$$'s" This was about a year after they had conquered South America. So for the next few years a stream of piss ants march to our border and we destroy them before they fire a single shot. Over and over day and night bombings going on as they stream in. Then they started shipping more units from around the world and would land them just south of our border, march in and die. Their navy and Air force did the same. They outnumbered us greatly but due to my units being better it wasnt much of a fight.
I took this time also to bring carrier groups with me to grab up a couple of strategic islands around the world. Near Africa, India, Portugal...ect ect. From here I went hunting. Using spy planes and actual spies I hunted down as many outdated units on the map as I could and destroyed them. All the while making sure they stayed supplied and rich. After several years of this I had a huge portion of their units destroyed and sadly I didnt see very many good units in the process. All junk despite them having every tech I did. "so does the AI not scrap junk units?"
France had offered several peace treaties along the way and after I felt most of their units were gone I accepted peace. So with the AI still rich and supplied and having hundreds of unit fabs they began to build their army back up but this time only with the newest and best units "mostly". Soon I found stacks of Mk3 laser tanks, buzzsaw stacks of the coyote jets "the good ones" the same watkins class or better naval ships as I had. The world "Especially at my border" began to fill with nothing but late game units all over the place.
So after they built up, they once again declared war on us and this time it was a true fight. I lost probably half my navy on the first wave France sent. They were sending their best loaded with missiles which proved to be devastating to my battle fleets stationed in the caribbean. For the first time ever I had to revert to using planes and helis with ship attacking missiles to run suicide missions to slow them down while I moved my pacific fleets over. Praying they didnt invade from the west. While I was directing traffic in the seas I look back and see that their ground assault has broken though my lines into our arty line. This was despite having bombers on patrol non stop.
One of the first things they brought and parked near the border was top of the line ground AA units so even my best fighters had trouble flying sorties. I got sick of it and ended up using Nukes on the AA units but even then with their stacks of coyotes it proved quite tough. Stack after stack of modern units marched to my border. Most of my good ground units were either half damaged or in repair at this point and im relying solely on arty and bombing runs to thin them out before they hit my reserves. Their stacks of MK3 laser tanks were obliterating my infantry units if they got close and they took a lot of damage. Eventually I just started nuking the stacks en route. Nukes one after the other, day and night just hitting the same tile over and over because it seemed like a never ending wave of tanks and infantry.
Never in the years ive played this have I been so busy micromanaging my units in fear of being pushed back and losing serious ground.I honestly believe had it not been for the hundreds of nukes I used they would have pushed through my line. 95% of my forces were on that border. If they got through I probably would have gotten another 30-90 grounds units produced but that wouldnt have been enough to stop them.
Now the worst part of this is I only had a few pictures of all of this. I thought I took more but cant find them so im about to start another game to recreate this scenario. Actually what would be cool is if the devs could make a scenario where I pick two countries. Mine and the country I want to own the rest of the world. This would save me a lot of time and I truly believe the AI "coding" is actually pretty good in this game as long as other things dont screw it up, like pathfinding and goods shortages.
Sorry for wall of text. AAR will have lots of photos and minimal text.