Arguably the nukes are the best weapons in the arsenal of any pacifist, since they actually make large-scale wars between major countries less likely.
If this game was like history we should have partisans popping up every week blowing up railroads, IC mysteriously being damaged etc. etc. The HoI3 game engine doesn't model some of the asymetrical warfare that went on on this front. Futhermore the Japs had great difficulties in China because the population was historically very 'anti-Japanese' so large numbers of troops had to occupy the urban areas, and there never were enough troops to go round anyhow.
We on the otherhand don't have half the partisan issues, plus we've built a lot more infantry to stock our armies. If we hadn't have expanded them, then I'd guess we'd be much closer to the historical case bogged down around the ports.
Futhermore we got Guangxi Clique on our side, so I helpped deny us some of the Chinese army attacking us. All of those things have been in our favour. Hence why we have done as well as we have done. But that is because we expected a full war, the Japanese historically weren't. It escalated out of control for them.
This is why in HoI3 Japan always does better than it did historically.
It you want to play 'historically' then you should hardly expand your 1936 forces and not even really consider mobilisation until a few months of the Chinese war have played out...
It's one of the reasons why even our AAR is not as difficult as RL Sino-Japanese War. However, we are not blindly repeating history here, even though in many cases we are facing historical or semi-historical constraints.
I actually considered changing Marco Polo Bridge Incident into an event with no choice but to start war, as historically the Kwantung Army acted pretty much independently, but I thought that it would limit our choices too much and you would all hate me. It would also make less sense considering that the IJA is one of the playable factions, but I think that it's an interesting thought for regular games on custom difficulty.
Anyway, Gensui mentioned one thing which is very important:
It will be a grind to walk to Golmud, but I did tell you that the Chinese wouldn't just keel over and die with their VPs gone!
EXACTLY. Even if the nationalists collapse, it will take us much time to mop up all enemy resistance and even when all warlords are conquered, we will have to deal with partisans. However, before the nationalists are beaten, the theatre is important, because the Chinese can still potentially push us back. After they are beaten, it will become a minor theatre which won't require additional investment besides infrastructure development.
If we get our butts kicked in other theatres, we can always withdraw to defensible positions and hold the Chinese back until 1946 while holding most, but not all of their VPs. Their offensive potential is not as great as their defensive potential and we could still score a minor victory by capturing enough VPs in various places. However, this is sth which we can do as a last resort and certainly not in 1941, lol.
I'm thinking about various potential rules which would prevent gamey late-war behaviour (like hit&run strategies for VPs, irrational attacks in order to buy time etc.). One of them would include an additional "VP modifier" in 1944-1945, which would penalise the players for doing various nonsensical things by lowering the value of controlled VPs. On the other hand, since I am the autocrat here, I could simply ignore such orders... I prefer when the players have gameplay motivations for (not) doing X or Y, though.
