I usually don't defeat china until 1941. Why should I?
Because by sometime in 1941 your empire can stretch from Cairo to Wellington.
Portal has it right. DoW the minors sequentially. Although I don’t know how he manages to do all that by the end of 37. It’s easy enough if you don’t sacrifice Manchuko but it takes the Chinas longer than that to get themselves where you want them. April 1938 to mop them up & DoW the Clique. I got to the 250 battles milestone part way through Nat China. Can’t say it made a huge difference, maybe I should have just had an extra couple of infantry divisions instead of that 6th TAC bomber. I use ALL my air force, not just TACs & CAGs continually to assist my ground troops with ground attack or intervention orders.
By the end of 1938, I’d taken all of China, Auz, NZ, Siam and all the other non-aligned in the region. My effective IC is now 280. But I cheated. I built 6 factories.
And I’m now at war with...
Tibet.
And it’s going to take my mountaineers ages to wheedle them out.
So long in fact that I think I’ll have time to finish four battle ships, six CVs, 6 escort carriers, 30 or so CAGs, some more transport planes and shit loads of ground troops for my simultaneous push through Malaya, Indo-China, Dutch East Indies, Burma, India and on to the Middle East.
MY question is…
Do I wait for Germany to kick-off in Europe or… do I start the war with the Allies myself?
This will put Germany at a disadvantage, but how big & how significant. Bearing I mind that I’ve refused to join the Axis so they’ve not had any related bonuses.
But, on the plus side, at least the USA hasn’t joined the Allies… yet.
Oh, last thing, rebels.
In HoI III, I always got my para’s experience playing whack-a-mole, but it’s not so easy in FtM. So I’m re-thinking that too. I think light armour is probably the best. They are the fastest ground units I’ve got at 10kph but maybe it’s a waste because the FtM rebels are soooo weedy. And I use (single) INF or MIL as garrison units on resource spots. I don’t like GAR as they are just tooo slloooww.