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1936 – Road to War[/size]
First I take a quick review of the countryside. The southern tip of China is basically all mountains and jungle with poor infrastructure- 40% or less in most territories. I don’t know if I will ever find myself in a position to fix that. I have an ongoing alliance with Nationalist China to the north but none of the other factions. With my alliance I can get a peek at RoC troops, and I seem to have nearly equal numbers. Also, the high VP centers are all much closer to me compared with the Japanese on the coast. If I ditch the alliance and go for an attack, I could conceivably be the one to annex them. However, with a starting neutrality of 70 I won’t be able to do that before they end up at war with the Japanese, which means I will have to try and get an alliance with Japan and/or transit rights to discourage attack until I can get into the Axis. Likewise the Yunnan Clique has their main VP city right on my border: the minute I can get to war, I could probably beat them. Right in the middle on the coast I have Macau and Hong Kong… obviously prime targets once I get to war with the Allies. Something that is notable is that this is the first Minor country I’ve played that didn’t start the game with a resource shortage. Rare materials are low, but it is still showing a small gain for now.
The OOB is quite simple, with most divisions attached directly to the main theatre HQ; intermediate HQs are few in number. The divisions are a mix of Militia and Infantry with two brigades in each division. I will likely improve the Infantry divisions with a mixture of Artillery and Engineers. I also have one Transport fleet and one Interceptor. Long-term I don’t see myself buying anything but Infantry for the army unless I can get a license from an Axis power.
My officer count is low so I can’t supply a lot of new HQs, but since I have good manpower I will create some extra HQs under the assumption I will get them officered later. One thing I quickly discover is that I don’t even have enough leaders to cover all my divisions. I use the OOB browser to fire everybody and then check to see who is deserving of the top jobs in the hierarchy. As you can see my choices aren’t that great. Only a couple of these guys have the Logistics Wizard trait. Note that only one additional leader is not shown in this picture.
The Politics screen is easy to adjust- there are no possible replacements for anybody. I’m happy to see that none of these guys carries a malus on them. All the corrupt ministers must be hanging out up north with Chiang. The Mobilize button says I need 0 manpower to fully mobilize, I take that to mean none of my men are reserve units, which is fine with me. I can’t change any of my laws until I get my neutrality down.
For my Spies, I do the usual routine of removing the starting send Priority so I can focus my efforts on Yunnan and the Nationals. I also remember to get my local men working on lowering my neutrality.
On the tech front, my Clique is practically swimming in leadership. I’ve never seen a Minor with leadership this high! In this game, I will focus more on developing Infantry and Artillery and buy everything else from allies.
For production, I see that my men have vastly outdated equipment, but my needs for consumer goods are too high so I don’t have any ICs to spare to buy them new guns. Hoping to fix a mistake I made last game, this time I queue up enough Artillery to fit out nearly all my existing divisions. All of these are getting built as reserves, which gives a dramatic drop in IC cost (going from about 4 to 1). I’m also swimming in manpower and queuing all this Artillery doesn’t make a dent in it.
On the diplomacy front, I start to align to the Axis and I request transit rights from Japan. With that, I think I’m about ready to start.
(Click)
1 January: Japan grants me transit rights. The green tip or whatever you want to call it tells me I can already switch to War Economy, but when I visit the Politics screen, it says I cannot afford the cost to change. I have no idea why that would be the case. I am however able to bump up to 1-year draft.
7 February: Japan accepts transit rights from me, but an Alliance is listed as “Impossible”.
2 March: I now have 10 Spies in Yunnan and with the Nationalists, so I switch up to spending most of my leadership on research. My neutrality level is 66 for joining the Axis, the report says I need to get below 25, which confuses me since it is usually 50 you need to drop below. I’m allowed to change my laws to War Economy. The extra increase in ICs means I’m now in the red on producing resources.
27 March: Ethiopia surrenders to Italy and becomes a puppet.
8 May: The Spanish Civil War starts.
19 May: I get the event for the Foreign Ministry, and decide to take the dissent since I don’t want to drift away from the Axis. Maybe to have less dissent in the future we can simply gussy up the ministry building with some new curtains instead of firing everybody.
2 June: I notice that the Nationals are starting to do counterintelligence, so I add another 1.0 points to making Spies to cover my losses.
10 June: Artillery units are starting to trickle in.
2 August: I nationalize the private sector. Is this a permanent bonus?
28 November: I start to add Convoys to the production queue.
30 November: I notice I’m still losing Spies, so I add more points to making new ones. I suppose my rivals must have ministers that are giving them plenty of inherent counterespionage bonus.
20 March, 1937: I have a small surplus of free Spies, so I bump research back up to 8.5.
30 March: The UK starts to influence me, annoying me to no end.
31 March: The UK stops influencing me, making me less annoyed. My faction join value is 38.18, I need to get below 25.
23 April: The UK does the same thing again where they influence me and then cancel the next day.
21 June: I dissolve my alliance with the Republic of China so I don’t find myself at war with Japan. I’ve been constantly checking as the game progresses to see if I can get into an alliance with the Japanese, but the button always reads ‘impossible’. As a matter of trivia, breaking the alliance is a pretty big hit in relations- I’ve gone from 200 to 120.
1 July: Japan declares war on Shanxi.
10 July: Japan joins the Axis.
21 August: I seem close to being able to join the Axis, so I mobilize my troops and move divisions into position for an attack on Yunnan.
9 September: Shanxi surrenders and becomes a Japanese puppet.
14 September: I join the Axis. Presumably we will crush the Bolsheviks, but I have several other fish to fry first. Axis membership tips me over the diplomatic breaking point so I can declare war with Yunnan. My laws go up to Service by Requirement and Total Economic Mobilization, plus I shift beaucoup leadership points to making officers until I fix the dire shortage I’m in.
I can also declare war on Nationalist China now, but I will wait a bit until I see how things go with Yunnan. Until I have more officers, no point in going nuts. With the ICs freed from consumer goods, I start to make some Airfields to build up construction practical. I can also start dealing with the backlog of upgrades.
16 September: Italy joins the Axis. I get the Pact of Steel effect.
23 September: Sinkiang joins the Comintern.
27 September: Heading into Yunnan. With all these mountains it will be a slow slog.
Speaking of the mountains, I look at my border with Chiang and see that he has left it completely empty. I declare war in the hopes that I can move into them while they stay that way. Any mountain I don’t have to fight for is a good one!
16 October: Attacks going on throughout the front. Nationalist Militia have shown up.
24 October: Communist China surrenders to Japan and is annexed. Chiang is trying to take Guilin. I expect to hold since I’m trying to envelop the city.
The war against Yunnan is not going so well. You never have Mountain troops when you need them!
2 November: The Yunnan front is in a bit of a retreat, but I’m doing okay against Chiang so I’m not worried yet. My officer count continues to climb.
27 November: I get Coal Donations.
6 December: I take Chongqing.
The factories there are immediately retooled…
7 December: Nationalist China surrenders to Japan and we split the country in the annexation. At least I got Chongqing out of it. I also get the Taiwan Strait effect which is very welcome.
11 December: I decide to cancel working on production for a while to get through the upgrade process. It looks like I am ridiculously behind in giving my men some new guns.
”You know, they stopped making these in 1902”
“Blast! Then I shall require a replacement weapon”
“You’re not a postal worker, are you?” – Gunshop owner and Van Pelt, Jumanji
This seems like a good place to stop… and hey, now they get to use a bigger font to write our country name on the world map.