Defeating Italy as Ethiopia in Hearts of Iron 4 with Cavalry

The only way to survive as Ethiopia is to try to hold out as best you can until you can fully equip your army, which starts the game only about half equipped, and even then with only basic rifles and nothing else. Defending the entire country is impossible, so you have to fall back to defend the capital and ideally the other three provinces that divide the country in half. As long as the Italians don't take Addis Ababa the war won't end, but the instant that they do it is game over, so you have to defend that at all cost.

But eventually, with the right focuses and research you can finally produce enough equipment to fully equip your military, and at that point you can start thinking of recruiting new divisions. I created 6 20 width Cavalry divisions, which Ethiopia doesn't have a template for, so you have to manually create one.Tanks are not an option with the terrible industrial situation of the country, so Cavalry are the poor man's tank, and with them you can outflank and encircle the Italians in the north. I recommend going through the desert as I have done, because attacking through the mountains is a lot harder, obviously. I'm sure this could also probably be done with standard infantry too, but Cavalry is cool, so why not?

Unfortunately, there are no achievements or unique national focuses for Ethiopia. Hopefully Paradox will address that in some future update, but for now you have to make do with the generic stuff (or else mod the game, of course).

And if you wonder about the music, its music from HOI II, which in general I like better to the music of HOI IV.