Influence Wars - Japan 1936 HPP Interactive AAR - COMMENT THREAD

Well, I assumed XSM would take over the fight. Now, the slow and tough march to Golmud begins?

Surt said:

I don't see Japan becoming commies unless the Soviets starts growing mushrooms in Tokyo.

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lol.... everyone in Japan stoned out of their heads...
hirohito: "wouldn't it be funny if we all turned red right about now?"

You finished up China? Now you can finally launch the long-awaited invasion of Florida!

Great update Cybvep. It's impressive how well you can compact a lot of action into nice digestible portions. It looks like China is well in hand and especially enjoyed the nice pocket created and destroyed at Yiyang. And wow!...the Royal Navy took a shellacing at the hands of the IJN. I also noted the American nuclear research (at the Civil Nuclear Research Level) and was surprised how far behind they seem considering it's now 1944. I'll be curious to see if they even use nukes if they manage to accomplish their research in time.

In your timeline, Roosevelt is paying dearly (politically) for the setbacks suffered during the early stages of the war. It's interesting to ponder that possibility. Despite the fact that he had successfully led the country through a brutal depression and is by now approaching a possible 4th term, I suppose I can imagine how a fickle, war weary American public might turn on him. Americans are famous for their "yeah but what have you done for me lately" mentality. It's also easy to imagine that his political opponents would have moved to capitalize on his turn of luck. Any idea what relations are between the USSR and the USA?

Congratulations That was somewhat unexpected, I thought you might be stalemated in China for slightly longer.

Obviously numbers and dispositions will need to be decided upon by the players, but what sort of rough numbers of divisions are now available for redeployment to secure the Pacific perimeter?

Baltasar said:

There hasn't been one we didn't.

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I concur, the only times anything has been 'annoying' is when I felt that certain elements of a strategic plan had been ignored/removed without note. However, that has nothing to do with the game itself or the updates. One can always 'assume' that the 'beurocracy bungled it' and you have to live with the results.

What I meant before about political reformation, was not that it is a natural consequence of a change of political stance, but it is a bargining point that can be used. Hence why it would fit the would need to be aligning towards, as a prerequisite, thus representing a change in stance vs a particular ideological group. In much the same way how North and South Korea aligned to their supporting groups, or the Chinese Communists with the Soviet ones. Spain under Franco, or the Low Countries having a de facto pro-allied stance, even behind their neutrality. But anyhow its an interesting aside and like much political issues hardly generic or works on set principles.

One appologises for never getting round to getting the attack plan done...guess he shouldn't have done the GDP stuff on that other thread.

*Goes to read update*

Hard to say, but they are certainly supporting the USSR with Lend-Lease stuff. Nukes would actually help the Allies greatly, as they would discourage Stalin from attacking them and turn his attention to us, if nothing else. However, we don't have spies in the SU, so I don't give too much info about the situation in the SU and Stalin's plans. I want him to be an enigma.

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It's profitable for Stalin to remain in semi-neutral relationship with Japan. We aren't in a position to threaten U.S.R.R. now - we fight both the Commonwealth and the USA, we still want to spread our sphere of influence further (Indochina and Thailand). Of course, Stalin surely want Korea back into his hands, but he won't risk war on two fronts just now as the Germany is still hard to break and the Western Front is shrinking day by day. I think we're safe until the Axis powers are really hard pressed on multiple fronts (Italy, Spain, France, etc.), because right now most of the fighting lies on the Red Army on the Eastern Front and gains are relatively small.

A lot of work is before us. We have to fight back the USA to Hawaii, destroy People's Republic of China, conquer Xibei San Ma and then we'll be able to launch operations against Indochina and Thailand. After that Burma is another logical target... But step by step.

I don't think we should transfer that many divisions, while some would go well to the Philippines and to central Manchuria, I still feel we are 'under manned' in the armed forces. The point is that further fighting will likely be at extreme distances, precluding the ability to redeploy assets quickly, and any ground lost will be much harder to reclaim.

Therefore in order to stay competitive our armies need to be large enough in principle to operate without expecting other supporting armies coming to their aid.

All over, consolidation of China rather than further expansion in South Asia*. Plus if we do get stabbed by Stalin, then our forces are in the right position to possibly take the fight back to him, rather than a collapse.

The Warlords won't be push overs, but the camels back is broken. Roosevelt will gain additional credence as Xibei, and Siking fall, and Stalin will feel extra threatened, but only if we can't shape some politics in the meantime.

Interestingly when the light cruiser techs we currently have are completed, in principle we have reached the same level of warship design that dominated the entire Cold War (since many navies were only being comparable in the 1950s to these late war era cruisers), so in this aspect we have truly dominated the world decades in advance of history. On the other hand, it looks like the Allies are ahead of year on their infantry techs, meaning our armed forces is pretty pants in comparison to the Americans hence we want to avoid land fighting with them as much as possible.

The Soviets I know bugger all about ATM, but from past experience they tend not to improve 'strongly' late in the war, since much of their strength comes from tanks, which the AI sucks with out in Manchuria. Yet they do have numbers on their side, and supply favours neither of us.

Finally I am surprised at the Euro-axis for holding on, and the Chinese for falling over so fast. Germany could pull this one back, it depends on their MP and if the game AI starts to 'dig them in' when they are near the rivers in Poland, because I recall a game that happened in while I was Portugal (naval orientated) and the war just kept going and going so I could never really call it quits. Mindyou, the front never ever moved much in that game. The Nationalists I were expecting to go down sometime late this year, but I just we just got some momentum and it rolled. So nice there.




*Seriously, fighting the Allies out here will stretch the navy much more than already and the gains are not worth it. We really would be 'warmongering' which in RP terms means loosing moral high ground and meaning a total war of ideological level. The fact we never joined the axis gives us some play here, since we are not bound 'in game' to fight to unconditional surrender that's a plus if we can swing it all.

Finally, in principle assuming an 'end to war' of just a few years, even without high level mobilisation in principle superpower status is not far off (although if mobilised its closer than non-mobilised) and the resource security is pretty much there. Even if we 'loose the war' in the sense of not advancing as far as Japan did historically, if we can pull out of it without being devastated in the process, the Chinese Miracle could be brought forward 35 years in a 3 way Cold War.

"Germany paid in morals,
Russia in Blood,
The Allies in Ships and Empire,
and
Asia in Independence."

Claim by Historians on the Price of War

Politicians are known to ignore their promises and ideologies in times of crisis...

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You had a typo in there, I took the liberty to correct it.

Trivia:

The German term for promise is Versprechen. Though not entirely grammatically correct, I do explain it to myself as sprechen, to speak and the prefix ver. That prefix implies that the speaker is turning away from what he said, either geographically or from the meaning. As such, "election promise" does have a real meaning after all.

Cybvep said:

But how do you now that? I don't understand where are you getting this info. How do you know how advanced the most modern ships in the Allied fleets/production queue are and how good their infantry techs are?

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I'm interpolating from the information given from the few battles fought with the Americans over the last couple of updates. Both the counters, and battle results give some indercation of relative strength, but its sketchy at best. Hence it looks like the Allies maybe more advanced, that doesn't mean I know it.

Crusiers; I was talking about historical real life classes, since the last major developments in crusiers before modern SAM and rapid fire guns were the ~1944-1950s designs e.g. Worcester class. But that's a side tangent.

Should we add the matter of Allied POWs to our political considerations regarding negotiations? We must have several hundread thousand Allied soldiers in captivity by now, the sheer number of sailors presumably rescued must be staggering and we also destroyed several Allied divisions.

Some wild guesses at average ship completments.
BB: 1.241 (UK and US vessels had about the same completment)
CV: 2.017 (US carriers were larger and had more personal)
CVL: 1.257 (early CVL were small but they grew in size and thus completment later on)
CA: 1.035 (UK and US vessels had about the same completment in wartime)
CL: 562
DD: 1.250 (this assumes five destroyers per flotilla)
SS: 335 (this assumes five submarines per flotilla. Earlier subs were smaller, modern ones are larger and have more crew)


How many men of any ship could be rescued is anybody's guess, but it is clear that simply the sheer number of enemy vessels sunk will mean that we have captured lots of men.

Well as well. Suffice to say we should have plenty of them and they too could be bargain chips in negotiations.