-
We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
You can go Axis,take Vichy + Siam for free,in 1940 leave them and join Allies -> and war both with Soviets + Axis. In HPP East Siberia have more IC and resources than vanilla...
Are you reorganize navy/army/air or not done yet? It will be pleasure to us to see some army/navy/air statistics...
Are you reorganize navy/army/air or not done yet? It will be pleasure to us to see some army/navy/air statistics...
Allied Japan I'm not in favor of. But Commintern is not worse than Axis by much. Trading resource for resource is somrthing only they can do(I think?), and Soviets have plenty to give. There will be a chance to take down America and the Allies later on. Can you request blueprints from an ally? Blueprints for Automotive techs from SOV-s would be nice.
Note that going Axis is perfectly fine with me. All that matters is America getting beaten. Though, I do hope to see a 1944 JP AAR where The Rising Sun goes truly Red, before the Americans try to invade.
... it'd be harder to spell?
So true . . .
I knew this would come up eventually. Here's the problem, as I see it:
Hearts of Iron 3 is a game. Because it's a game, and not reality, design decisions have to be made for gameplay purposes. For example, Japan starts the game with NO tanks. None. Not one. And by 1935 or 36, Japan had the fifth or sixth largest tank corps in the world. Same with artillery regiments. Japan starts the game without a single artillery regiment. Ditto marines and mountain troops.
When I actually started this AAR, I thought I'd just have Japan building this stuff in secret because of the limitations of the Treaty of Shinyang. But then a friend pointed out, there is no way Japan could build an aircraft carrier without the West noticing. They're just too big, they require drydocks, etc.. The same with tanks. Infantry, maybe, but armor and naval vessels would probably be noticed by the Americans - and there were at least 1500 American citizens in Japan in 1935 (mostly embassy personnel). Not a lot, but enough to get around. Add the British and the French . . . and you get the idea.
Another issue is army and navy reorganization within the gameplay structure. This should be in place when the AAR starts, but for Japan, there's a lot of work to do. I've already completely reorganized the Navy. The army - for me - takes a lot longer - mainly because I need to fill in some holes and because the HoI3 command structure wasn't really utilized by the Japanese (but I would be quite foolish not to take advantage of it).
I suppose a smarter way to handle this might have been to start the game in 1936 and start the AAR in July of 1937. But I wanted to take some time for character development and backstory. In the process, I can see there might be some confusion because readers are familiar with how the game is played and are expecting certain things to happen. So I'll post a gameplay journal to show you how I'm handling this. Of course, it will contain spoilers.
Axis is certainly the historic route. And the main antagonists, as you can probably guess, will be the United States. I've pre-orderd Mark Stille's biography on Yamamoto which comes on June 19th from Amazon, and I'm looking forward to reading his take on the man. I've read another bibliography, but was dissatisfied with the authors fascination with Yamamoto as an "American lover." I know Yamamoto respected America and certainly understood the power of the nation, but at the end of the day, Yamamoto was Japanese to the heart. It wasn't like he was looking to change his citizenship.
The point is this: if Yamamoto ends up taking the lead in the Navy, with his friend Ozawa by his side, he would carefully plan an attack on the United States that would be designed to cripple them as soon as possible. If I can pull that off, I'll be satisfied.
Crap . . . now I've gone and gave the ending away.
Will there be any armored forces buildup, or will you use cavalry as main mobile force?
Okay, maybe will this help. Here is my recruitment plan from the spreadsheet/Word document I created, inspired by Valentinan's excellent OOB AAR. This is a complete list of the Japanese forces I intend to recruit by end of April 1937.
Part I: IC Management
01 January 1936 to 8 July 1937 = 554 days @ 50 IC committed per day
50 x 554 = 27,700 IC
09 July 1937 to 31 December 1937 = 175 days @ 120 IC committed
120 x 175 = 21,000 IC
January 1, 1937 to April 30, 1937 = 120 days @ 100 IC committed
100 x 120 = 12,000 IC
Total IC commitment from 01 January 1936 to April 30, 1937 = 60,7000 IC
Part II: Military Planning
Artillery Divisions (4xART) x 6 = 24 regiments to be disbursed with existing divisions for 3xINF, 1xART builds
11.40 IC per unit x 115 days x 6 units = 7,866
Infantry Brigade (because I'm short one
).2.07 IC x 103 days x 1 units = 213.21
2 Infantry Divisions (to build out my first 6 gun or corps of 5 DIV per corps). Each corps with 5 DIVs of 4 DIVs of 3xINF, 1xART + 1 DIV of 3xINF, 1xENG.
12.42 IC x 103 days x 1 = 1279.26
2 Engineer Divisions Triangles (to be disbursed within 6 corps - see above)
16.56 IC x 144 days x 1 = 2384.64
2 Complete Infantry Corps (I'd like to have eight corps by the war with China).
Inf Art Divisions x 8 (3xINF, 1xART)
67.31 IC x 115 days = 7740.65
Inf Eng Divisions x 2 (3xINF, 1xENG)
14.40 IC x 144 days = 2073.60
MARINES: Two corps of 4 divisions each
8 Marine Divisions (4xMAR)
63.28 IC x 172 days = 10,884.16
MOUNTAIN CORPS:
Two corps of 2 DIV of MTN (3xMTN) + 3 CAV (3xCAV)
4 Mountain Divisions (3xMT)
28.15 IC x 161 days = 4532.15
(Sufficient CAV already in game)
TRANSPORT FLEETS:
4 Transports (rounds out my transport fleets to 4 fleets of 6 flotilla)
18 IC x 84 days = 1512
CLOSE AIR SUPPORT:
2 CAS Wings
20.24 IC x 201 days = 4068.24
ARMOR AND MOTORIZED DIVISIONS:
6 Motorized Divisions (1 LARM, 2 MOT)
95.73 IC x 217 days = 20,773.41
Total IC for all projects = 61,253.72
I know. I would love to play it; it looks great. But I play on a Mac and I looked at it and read that some people had problems and decided not to risk it.
Mostly roleplay - because Japan used CAS and rather extensively. I know, I know, they may not be particularly helpful. There won't be any tanks in China and their range is severely limited. My thought is just to get two to four wings, bomb everything I can so they can get experience, then put them on islands or around ports. I suppose it's a bit gamey, but I can't imagine playing Japan without CAS (goes back to the illustrated Osprey books of my childhood
).A question for readers:
What is your feeling about this AAR? I'm confused - sorry my first AAR on this forum - because there's 1000 views and only a few people commenting. I'm not soliciting comments, and don't feel obligated to, but if you think this sucks - or if you think I can do this better - please tell me. In particular, the images take a bit of time, sometimes as much as hour each, and so if there is no audience for this type of AAR (I thought it was clever, but I've been wrong before) then I can either stop or do something else.
Feel free to criticize - I'm asking for it. Thanks.
Hi,
it`s very interesting to read and you can continue as is. Besides, I don`t understand some AARers thinking that number of comments decides if an AAR is any good. No of views decides if an AAR is popular, which does not automatically mean it`s good. You write for your pleasure, that`s what matters. Having said that I do of course agree that comments can be very helpful in many ways.
Rgds, Oldtimer
it`s very interesting to read and you can continue as is. Besides, I don`t understand some AARers thinking that number of comments decides if an AAR is any good. No of views decides if an AAR is popular, which does not automatically mean it`s good. You write for your pleasure, that`s what matters. Having said that I do of course agree that comments can be very helpful in many ways.
Rgds, Oldtimer
Last edited:
I think your AAR is very good, if you keep the right balance between pics and text. So some in game screenshots are always preferred . Keep going!
Tim
. Keep going!Tim
Yes this AAR sucks, becouse you are good writer ,and only few gameplay posts
Keep going.
Keep going.
Oh don't worry. Except for a few AARs, usually interactive or MP, AARs don't get much more comments than you got. I would say 1 author post per 2-3 posts is pretty normal. It also depends if there are some AARs fans who like to comment. You can get more comments if there is some kind of dispute between commentators but don't worry even if there will be no comments at all after you post an update. Just continue your work. In some way we draft AARs for ourselves too
BTW, I like your artistic touch.
I think your AAR is very good, if you keep the right balance between pics and text. So some in game screenshots are always preferred
Tim
Yes this AAR sucks, becouse you are good writer ,and only few gameplay posts
Keep going.
Thanks to everyone for the feedback. It really is helpful. I wasn't really planning on quitting as possibly changing the AAR.
For example: there are a number of really good "history book" AARs out there, written by people who know more about history than I do. I enjoy their AARs, but without a great deal more time to do research, I can't write something of that caliber. My background is more in world literature than world history. I rely heavily on Wikipedia and what few books I've read, but I'm clearly not the expert here.
My question was more directed at whether people would rather see a strict: "Here's what I did when I did it and why AAR . . ." without the nice (or less-than-nice) roleplay and if they found the latter interesting or simply silly and boring. Just trying to get an idea where people are landing on this issue.
Thanks for the comments.
I like the presentation style, too. You had a rough start with those last-minute changes, but now thing seem to be progressing well.
BTW you should know that there are many so-called "lurkers", i.e. people who read your updates but don't post any comments. The number of comments can be misleading, because sometimes people simply don't know what to say or don't have anything to add, yet they are still following the AAR.
BTW you should know that there are many so-called "lurkers", i.e. people who read your updates but don't post any comments. The number of comments can be misleading, because sometimes people simply don't know what to say or don't have anything to add, yet they are still following the AAR.
Not really, while they had a doctrine that led to small support units in aircraft and artillery, it wasn't the same as the 'CAS' aircraft in HoI3. The most historic route is to have tactical bombers employed equally across the entire chinese front. While yes there were large numbers of the Ki-32 (854) and Ki-48 (~2,000) made during the early years of the war ('38 '39), that was preaty much it until the P1Y (1,100) in '43, and both those latter two aircraft were twin engined bombers...not single engined light bombers.
Really, you shouldn't build any CAS units bar perhaps 1 more wing from what you start with. All the rest should be TACs.
Futhermore, that Japanese did have a fair number of tanks in China. However because the Chinese had no tanks, and hardly any anti-tank weaponry, just the sight of a tank was often enough to cause Chinese millita units to fall back. Thus the Japanese never had to organise their tanks into full brigades like in Europe.
I lack the book I want at the moment, but there were at least 2,300 of one kind of tank produced*, and given that in HoI I've estimated a tank brigade at about 250 tanks, then you sould have several brigades of tanks to be historic, but non of them designed for combined arms divisions, and just as an additional 'support brigade' since many of the tanks were organised at regimental level sizes.
Anyhow, I digress
.[PS: Most people only comment when they disagree or have a comment to make, that doesn't mean they aren't reading what is written]
*And not only that in the 1930s they were comparable to the tanks of the western nations too!
Last edited: