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Automate Trade? What?

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Juan Peron 2 said:
How do you get a 300 IC Japan? In my current game I have annexed China, taken the whole pacific and all of Indian and I am at about 270.
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Honestly, it was Secret Master who taught me how to get 300+ IC as Japan. :) (Giving credit where it's due.) I use his suggestions about half the time when I play Japan, unless I'm feeling generous towards the US. Here is a step by step:

Before starting your game, do a production run of about 10x IC. This will both give you more IC and rapidly reduce the practical. It should take about 15 months if I recall or until March of 1937.

Meanwhile start making trades with the US to sell supplies. Start stockpiling energy/metal/rares because you will need them. I run my energy and metal at 25-30+ above what I need and rares 40-50+. People will say you don't need to do that but I always end up needing them. Trade with whoever you want but Soviets and US are good candidates.

When the game starts, withdraw all of your Japanese units from Manchuko to Korea (or wherever - I always put a few on mainland Japan).

When you're IC is done you can do another run of 10x (it should take less than a year now) or I prefer to 2x 5x because I want to start army/navy production. If you keep at least 4-5 IC in your production, it will keep your practical quite low.

Trigger the Marco Polo event and let Shanxi take Manchuko. After Manchuko falls, conquer Shanxi (now including Manchucko) and get all that beautiful IC.

Conquer NC, CC but don't end the war with XIC (or whatever it is). When you do, puppet them.

Keep going south - conquering - until you hit Hong Kong. All the while you're doing this, research all your IC techs. If you're in the Axis, and Germany declares on France, you can declare on France and get set a wargoal to conquer their Asian holdings as well. This will give you much needed rares. I also set a wargoal for Great Britains and Netherlands holdings but I've never actually seen them fall.

I generally stop building IC after I've made about 20-25 units (sometimes less), but I always end up with 290 to 300+ IC. I then puppet Australia and New Zealand.

I don't know how well this works in TFH (as I'm running my first game right now) but it works great in FTM.
 
You might find it more difficult to pull off this strategy in TFH. The AI was reprogrammed to be much more sensitive to threat. Multiple DOWs and annexations in China (taking all the warlords) will cause the US to rearm faster and even enter the war much sooner.

But there's no reason you can't steal Manchukuo's IC, and annex everyone involved in the Marco Polo event for the lion's share of China. When you feel ready to take on the US, DOW the warlords and finish the job. If the US comes for you, you are ready.
 
Resource poor nations can't really afford to automate trade. There are too many bargains to be had in the first month of the game. Failing to secure significant resource surpluses can cripple a resource poor nation later.
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SM: that is why I recommend doing this

...turn on the trade AI from day one and start some important trades (the initial moneymakers) to give the AI some operating funds, then I occassionally step in if I need a particular emphasis on a resource.
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Using the trade AI never means completely ignoring trade (unless you're the USA). The beauty of using the AI and occassionally babysitting it is that you get to avoid the trade spam plus getting those trades you would otherwise miss while busy doing other things. I don't relish the thought of having to constantly pore over the diplomatic page hunting for available resources, especially since the surplusses and deficits you need have the nasty habit of changing from day to day. With the improvements to the trade AI this miserable chore has been eliminated.
 
Depending on what your goals are as Japan, you can come pretty close to being empty on resources by the start of war and still be fine. Just ensure that you're in a position to capture malaysia and the Dutch east indies quickly. Once you have those two territories, Rares and Oil are taken care of. I can't remember the metal situation (but I think it's fine).

Excess resources means too much IC was spent on building supplies as opposed to trading for them. The trade AI is not going to let you stockpile too much, it's wasteful if you're going to be conquering.
 
Hello y'all - without wishing to open up a new thread, let me tell you briefly my experience with automated trade which in a nutshell it is broken IMHO.

OK, I started a campaign with Germany 1936 and not wanting to micro-manage everything (in a game that excels in micromanaging or rather is one of the most defining games needing micromanaging!) I decided to leave trade to the AI.

Major major mistake as I - incidentally :p - also decided to try an alternative German strategy, more like WWI but with favorable strategic and political developments (ie a neutral Nazi Belgium and invasion of France first with Poland to be dealt with later) which meant that I would protract the opening stage to 1940.

So, at around summer 1939 I am very low on funds almost suddenly from $1000+ finding my money dwindling and dwindling even more. I presume that the AI may be balanced towards war kicking in September 1939 with various crises erupting (I opted NOT to go for the Memel event nor for Danzig) and war commencing.

When I decided to go manual to rectify the situation I find that NO country will trade supplies with me, even SU and even though they are flush with cash and they have signed the R-M pact! Nobody, not my Axis allies, nobody! In fact NOBODY will trade, period which - needless to say - is historically and sensibly ridiculous.

So, now I got the options to either re-start with manual trade (and micromanage even more from 1936), or just correct the ridiculousness by just tweaking code and adding $1000 to my chests.

Methinks I will go for option 2 as the scenario is developing in a very interesting way and I would love to see how it will progress in the real war and how my goals will fare, especially in the East with a Poland acting essentially as a buffer with SU allowing Germany potentially to keep Poland at bay or attack with few forces (while SU invade Poland ostensibly following the R-M Pact / or not as Poland is an Allies member now?????? Even more interesting to see what happens!!!) and focus on the West.

Generally this is brewing up nicely but for the damage automated trade has done and possible glitch in no-one trading with Germany....

Perhaps in HOI4 they can abstract and streamline the trading system more to allow for smooth AI as I do not think trade is the most important component of this game
 
I’ve never tried automated trade because I don’t trust the AI ;) And because every time I check countries like JAP, ENG, GER, etc, when not player controlled, they hardly have any resources left.

Popmaniac said:
When I decided to go manual to rectify the situation I find that NO country will trade supplies with me, even SU and even though they are flush with cash and they have signed the R-M pact! Nobody, not my Axis allies, nobody! In fact NOBODY will trade, period which - needless to say - is historically and sensibly ridiculous.
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This is quite a normal problem though. After a couple of months, it gets harder and harder to trade with nations and it’s almost impossible to do after 1-2 years…Even nations you already have a trade agreement with. The AI does rectify this though. I.e. when you don’t have enough income, you’ll get lots of trade offers to sell supplies. If you use more supplies than you produce, you get offers to buy supplies etc.

I think one of the problems is that sometimes you think a nation has enough money to trade, but they actually don’t. If as a player you accept a trade agreement it takes 2-3 days for the financial effect to trigger. So basically what you see in the diplomacy screen can be 2-3 days behind! This is IMHO what happens and why trade is so difficult. Oh, and in FTH trade has been made harder since it was too simple in earlier versions. Germany or Japan for example never ran out of resources pre TFH…
 
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