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feye1

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Nov 19, 2010
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Welcome to this After Action Report (AAR)

taiwan-flag.jpg



What am I trying to reach with this AAR?
Nationalist China, officially Republic of China (ROC), is a very interesting country to play with. It has a fairly large starting army, but the techs and doctrines are very poor. It doesn't have a serious navy or airforce. Nationalist China starts with a good amount of leadership (10.68), so we can research several things. The strongest point of China is the almost unlimited numbers of soldiers. We have to use this as much as possible to fulfil our ambitions. But what are those ambitions?

First of all we want to add some other parts of China (Yunnan, Guanxi) to our empire. Later on Com. China and Shanxi will follow. We will join Axis after we beat Japan. This means China has to become a naval power! Can we resist the UK and USA and help Germany to beat the Soviet Union? I don't know, but we will see!


Some of my house rules in this AAR:
  • I will play FTM 3.05.
  • I don't play with any mods.
  • No cheats or edited files. I only unpuppet Xibei San Ma!
  • Manual control on everything
  • Normal difficulty
  • No build of reserve ARM, MOT, MEC etc.

Some other notes to keep in mind:
  • This is my third AAR, one failed due a computer crash. The other one can be found here!
  • Don't hesitate to give some hints and tips for this AAR!
  • I will try to update this AAR regularly (once a week).
  • English is not my mother tongue (I'm Dutch!), so there will be some language errors... :eek:hmy:
  • Please let me know if you are in.

Table of contents



Last update: 28 March 2012
 
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Fast tip, don't annex Shanxi if you want to be at war with Japan :) And if you increase threat on Communist China and Use Gearing up for war decision you should be able to conquer most of the other warlords before the war.

On, and it might be worth not having Xibei Sa Mai as a puppet, which is fairly easy to do, just need to find the right line in the savegame.

Oh, and i will also be following this AAR.
 
I will be watching this. Closely. Seems interesting, so good luck :)
 
Fast tip, don't annex Shanxi if you want to be at war with Japan :) And if you increase threat on Communist China and Use Gearing up for war decision you should be able to conquer most of the other warlords before the war.

On, and it might be worth not having Xibei Sa Mai as a puppet, which is fairly easy to do, just need to find the right line in the savegame.

Oh, and i will also be following this AAR.

I know, but I think that I will let Japan annex Shanxi. I will get it back later on (if I manage to kick Japans ass).
One of my house rules is to not edit any files. But the puppet-status of Xibei San Ma is ridiculous. I will unpuppet them. Thanks to remind me of that. China is pretty crap at all (e.g. no cores in Manchukuo). Anyway, I think I will go Axis, because an Axis without Japan will lose for sure.. because USA/UK has to focus on Germany alone..

I will be watching this. Closely. Seems interesting, so good luck :)

Welcome! :)
 
You might have to put yourself into the Axis, as far as i know Japan joins the Axis in 1937, and you aren't close enough aligned to join the Axis at that point.
 
You might have to put yourself into the Axis, as far as i know Japan joins the Axis in 1937, and you aren't close enough aligned to join the Axis at that point.

I can join Axis later on. Japan will join Axis when they DoW Shanxi.
 
China's lots of fun! Subscribed.
 
I agree that you have to be careful how you let this play out vis-a-vis Shanxi. Japan usually joins the Axis only when they fire their July Incident event, so it might be better to annex Shanxi before then to help keep Japan unaligned a bit longer so you can DoW them on your terms.
 
I agree that you have to be careful how you let this play out vis-a-vis Shanxi. Japan usually joins the Axis only when they fire their July Incident event, so it might be better to annex Shanxi before then to help keep Japan unaligned a bit longer so you can DoW them on your terms.

Only problem if Japan will DoW me in July 1937 is the officer ratio I think. But I'm confident I can beat them. I don't want to use many leadership for spies, because I have to research a lot when I become the Asian Axis power... :)
 
Chapter 1: Building an army (1 January 1936 - 30 June 1936)

Chapter 1: Building an army (1 January 1936 - 30 June 1936)

The Republic of China is a sleeping giant. Especially if we manage to unite the Chinese states into one, powerfull state, the world will see China as a major power.

We changed two ministers, which had a bad effect on our IC. The new ministers aren't that great, but they are a bit better. We also got the "Prepare for war"-event and changed to a War Economy. To free some IC, we also changed from Mixed Industry to Consumer Production Orientation.

From day 1 we start aligning oursefl to the Axis. In May 1936 we made some progress on the diplomacy triangle.
We set up some deals with the USA, Germany and the Soviet Union. Energy, metal and rares are all 30+ a day now.


GroteFoto-OBOIVTMP.jpg

Changed several options.


GroteFoto-WW6ND88Q.jpg

We are aligning towards the Axis.


GroteFoto-WXZWNVKU.jpg

We have some deals with the biggest powers in the world.

The starting techs and doctrines are poor, very poor. We start with a very low officer ratio (50%). As we need our leadership to research several things, we can't recruit any officers at this moment.
How do we spend our leadership? Well, first of all we have to keep the Japanese out of China and eventually we have to push them back to their island. We also keep in mind that we want to join Axis, but without Japan there is no Axis Naval power in the Pacific.
So it’s up to Nationalist China to build a navy. We start immediately researching the CAG-tech, which means we will build carriers later on.. We will buy Light Cruisers from Germany or Italy, which will save us some leadership.

Furthermore we research the standard Infantry/Militia techs and doctrines. We also want to research some of the Light Aircraft techs.
Well, how we can build up an army without getting a 1% officer ratio.. Easy: build Militia forces. Nationalist China has an amazing Militia practical, which means we can build 1 division in 48 days!


GroteFoto-JVBP3OBN.jpg

Our research for now..


GroteFoto-8B4QPDJQ.jpg

We can build cheap and fast tons of Militia divisions


GroteFoto-RQSDIQ4Q.jpg

We researched some standard techs


GroteFoto-AFIGQPWB.jpg

..and also these standard ones.


To have a decent force to stop a possible Japanese attack, we build 75 divisions, consisting of 4x MIL. This means we have three armys with 5 corps that have 5 divisions. We also got a few Militia-divisions from the starting army, which we will use as forces to protect harbours, airfields etc.
We also have three full corps of infantry divisions, which will be our main force in the first years.

Important was to make a OOB. There were only two HQ in China, the Theatre HQ and one Corps, with two divisions. We reorganised the entire army.


GroteFoto-VXQLJFN8.jpg

Our production screen..


GroteFoto-USZGUERX.jpg

Reorganising the Army 1


GroteFoto-L6YTN43P.jpg

Reorganising the Army 2


GroteFoto-6UFJNPAP.jpg

Reorganising the Army 3


GroteFoto-PVPUIBUT.jpg

Reorganising the Army 4*

In June we reached an army size of 382 brigades. As we can’t keep building land forces (officer ratio) we start building some Light Cruisers and a Interceptor, just to get some praticals. We also started to recruit some officers..
Probably we will build some additional land forces later on, but it's not sure if the officer ratio will be high enough for that. We need the leadership for research at the moment.


GroteFoto-8RPFAVBI.jpg

We got now 382 brigades, most Militia.


GroteFoto-TXJ8MM78.jpg

Changed some laws..


GroteFoto-JZCE3QCA.jpg

..and our production screen


GroteFoto-ETCGXO6M.jpg

We don't recruit a lot, but at least some officers now..

Next chapter: coming up!
In the next chapter we see how the last year before the war with Japan will start. At least, that is what I expect. Are we well enough prepared to hold the line against Japan? Can we join the Axis already and how are we doing with the navy and airforce? Can we get a good officer ratio on time? We will see it in the next chapter.
 
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Will be interesting to see how you do, I've just started a game as NC and I think my traditional war strategy is not going to go well for me. I need to learn to how to play as a low tech country.

Also, curious how you got the Prepare for War event, it never appeared for me.
 
Will be interesting to see how you do, I've just started a game as NC and I think my traditional war strategy is not going to go well for me. I need to learn to how to play as a low tech country.

Also, curious how you got the Prepare for War event, it never appeared for me.

Change from Full Mobilisation to the lowest economy. Then fire the event and get the laws back. It's a bit gamey, but you can't really lower ur neutrality as China on another way.

For me it will be hard too against the Japanese, because I can't focus my techs on infantry warfare at all. I have to focus on naval and air too. :)

1 tip for your game: don't build too many infantry divisions, because they need to much officers. Hard to get a good officer ratio when you build tons of infantry as China.
 
To have a decent force to stop a possible Japanese attack, we build 75 divisions, consisting of 4x MIL. This means we have three armys with 5 corpses that have 5 divisions.
LOL, I had to laugh. I know you are Dutch, but that is just too funny. "Corpses" = dead bodies. It made me think you were calling your militia men who did not know they were dead yet or something. You want "Corps", the p is silent that way. Aside from that, great start. It looks very interesting.
 
LOL, I had to laugh. I know you are Dutch, but that is just too funny. "Corpses" = dead bodies. It made me think you were calling your militia men who did not know they were dead yet or something. You want "Corps", the p is silent that way. Aside from that, great start. It looks very interesting.

English -.-
Always made such failures.. and afterwards I think OMG..
I will change it btw.

You need about 3 years to fill your officer % to 100% ..

At this speed, yes. But I will invest more in officers later on. And I don't need it 100% when I fight the Japanese in july 1937. I'm happy if I have 100% around October-December 1937. ;)
 
Oh, your obsession with China never seems to end feye ;) Definitely going to watch this one! Subscribed. What's up with this weird naval building at this stage? Usually Chinese players spam horrible amounts of troops before the war.
 
That's a very interesting piece of naval investment, I look forward to seeing how it works out!