Japanese Graphic Pack

Randwyck · Aug 26, 2007

The primary aim of this graphic pack is to provide a player with refurbished or totally new Japanese unit models. In the process of searching for correct photos of some units I had to do certain changes to vanilla model roster, sometimes quite extensive ones. Usually I added additional models, but sometimes I had to delete some weird ones. The changes do not in any way alter game balance, they only add some gloss to this already great game. By no means I claim that a Japanese model of given level is equivalent to its American, German or Soviet counterpart; I was guided more by the date of entrance to service than by technical characteristics.

Japanese Graphic Pack 0.81

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JGP is very easy to use — just copy the folders in that zip-file to your HoI2 DDA folder (as always, it would be wise to make a backup of clean HoI2 installation).
NOTE: some posters DO contain swastika, be it crushed or not.

Enjoy!
I will be grateful for any feedback.

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What you get with JGP 0.8:
-136 division models + 38 brigades:
full coverage of land troops: Infantry, Marines, Mountaineers, Paratroopers, Militia, Garrison, HQ, Motorized Infantry, Mechanized Infantry, Cavalry, Armour, Light Armour, Medium Armour
full coverage of capital ships: CV, CVL, BB, BC, CA
full coverage of airplanes
-260 leaders (mostly Japanese and Chinese)
-95 ministers (mostly Japanese and Chinese)
-5 combat event pics (battle, ambush, breakthrough, counterattack and encirclement)
- 26 pictures for Japanese tech teams (fully covered), 12 for Manchurian tech teams and 2 for tech teams for Mengkukuo
-19 propaganda posters: Australia, Canada, Finland, France (both), Germany, Israel, Italy (both), Japan, Korea (PRK), Manchukuo, Russia, Spain (both), UK, Ukraine, USA, and USSR

Other mods I recommend:

mib's Consolidated China Improvement Pack + clanjay1989's CCIP Graphic Enhancement
JBunelle’s German leaders
Generic Model Image Pack
___________________________
I'd like to start with propaganda posters.
First come the Japanese:

The first of these images is actually an Italian poster by Gino Boccasile, depicting a samurai sinking the American fleet at Pearl Harbour (swastika edited out just in case). The same image is used in GIP (which I learnt after I found that poster at the Axis History Forum ), but my version is slightly more accurate, I hope.
The second one is, AFAIK, an authentic Japanese propaganda poster, too bad I can't read it.
So, which one you like best?

And while we're in the posters section, here are two more:

For the USSR and RSI accordingly. Mother Russia by Toidze is the archetypal WW2 Soviet poster, I'm surprised no one (to my knowledge) did it before. The Italian one is again a poster by Boccasile, just thought it would fit here.

Gen. Skobelev · Aug 26, 2007

Even thought the second Japanese picture may be more authentic (as it's apparently of Japanese origin), I'd much prefer the first one. It's more videly known poster and I think it represents Japanese war effort and deeds much better than the second poster.

Randwyck · Aug 26, 2007

Gen. Skobelev said:
Even thought the second Japanese picture may be more authentic (as it's apparently of Japanese origin), I'd much prefer the first one.

Thank you for your comment. I like that poster too.

Now come the paratroops. It seems that there are few surviving photos of Japanese paratroopers in action:

The left one is owned by State Library of Victoria, the second one is taken from an excellent site about Dutch East Indies . There's also another photograph of the Japanese paratroopers landing at Palembang, 14 February 1942:

Left — Paradox version, right — mine (slightly different).
And there's yet another photo, but I cannot confirm if it really depicts Japanese paras:

Advice?

Randwyck · Aug 26, 2007

Almost forgot — here is Gurkha brigade landing in Burma. Well, it was said so in the documentary, I can't confirm that's a real combat footage; still, I can't say they don't look like Gurkhas

It could be used both for the British and Indian forces, I think.

mib · Aug 27, 2007

Randwyck said:
The second one is, AFAIK, an authentic Japanese propaganda poster, too bad I can't read it.

from right to left

14th year of hirohito
youth tank corp recruiting
miscellaneous details; too small to read
august 25th
more miscellaneous details
army tank school

Randwyck · Aug 27, 2007

mib said:
from right to left

14th year of hirohito
youth tank corp recruiting
miscellaneous details; too small to read
august 25th
more miscellaneous details
army tank school

Ah, thank you. So that is the "I want you" type poster, the year must be 1940. By the way, since you know Japanese, haven't you accidentally seen any interesting Japanese propaganda posters?

You've got nice models in your CCIP GFX pack, but here I have a good picture of Chinese infantry:

That could probably be one of those German-trained divisions. Can pass for Inf 1936 I think.

Today I have some provisional pics of marines and mountaineers:

Note the IJN flag.

Randwyck · Aug 29, 2007

Ok, today some infantry:

Mountain:

And Motorized:

Well, as motorized as you can get in Malaya

I have yet to choose from these. Don't think I'll use them all.

Next update will probably see some armour models and the first release of a usable graphic pack (looks like I won't get much feedback otherwise).

snajper06 · Aug 29, 2007

japan paratrooper

Sa Mutt · Aug 30, 2007

I dont think that picture is really usable.

mib · Aug 30, 2007

Randwyck said:
Ah, thank you. So that is the "I want you" type poster, the year must be 1940. By the way, since you know Japanese, haven't you accidentally seen any interesting Japanese propaganda posters?

You've got nice models in your CCIP GFX pack, but here I have a good picture of Chinese infantry:

That could probably be one of those German-trained divisions. Can pass for Inf 1936 I think.

Today I have some provisional pics of marines and mountaineers:

Note the IJN flag.

Thanks. I don't actually know Japanese per se. I can read basically half of everything that is in Japanese, through no fault of my own.

EDIT: No Japanese propaganda, but plenty of ANTI-Japanese propaganda...

EDIT2: But the conspicuous lack of anything non-kanji in that poster makes it look suspicious... I'd venture a guess and theorize it MIGHT be a Taiwan/Manchoukuo poster... though I have not heard of IJA war colleges recruiting Chinese, for a tank corps no less...

Randwyck · Aug 30, 2007

Armour

Now, that was quite a difficult thing to do. It seems to me that Paradox messed up the Japanese armour tree, so I had to clean it up.
Lets look at it.

DIVISIONS
Light Tank I - Type 94 Tankette TK (former Type 92).
There were only 167 Type 92 built, and overall it was quite an unsuccessful model. Type 94 Tankette TK was introduced in 1934 and there were 843 built.

Light Tank II - Type 95 Ha-Go
No changes here (well, almost). Quite a successful one - 2,375 built, if you're interested.

Light Tank III Type 97 Tankette Te-Ke (former Type 98 Ke-Ni)
Again, there were 593 Te-Ke versus 113 Ke-Ni, plus the vanilla model is in fact a protype with Christie suspension, never used in battle. On top of that Te-Ke photo looks nicer

Randwyck · Aug 30, 2007

Armour - 2

Medium Tank I - Renault FT-17 Ko
No changes here yet.

Medium Tank II - Type 89 Otsu
Same model, different photo.

Medium Tank III - Type 97 Chi-Ha
That was a good tank (as good as a Japanese tank could be). 2,208 produced.

Medium Tank IV - Type 97 Shinhoto Chi-Ha (former Type 1 Chi-He)
Introduced in 1942. I will explain later why I changed that.

Medium Tank V - Type 1 Chi-He (former Type 3 Chi-Nu)

Medium Tank VI - Type 3 Chi-Nu (former Type 4 Chi-Re)
I could not find any information on Type 4 Chi-Re whatsoever. It seems to me it never existed at all. The photo used by Paradox is actually a Type 3 Chi-Nu (and I don't know what they used for Type 3 Chi-Nu itself, have not found it yet). There was, however, Type 5 Medium Tank Chi-Ri (Heavy armour III in HoI2).

No changes for later models.

Randwyck · Aug 30, 2007

Armour - 3

BRIGADES
Where do I change the names for brigades?

Light Armour - Type 2 Amphibious Tank Ka-Mi (former Shinoto (sic) Chi-Ha)
Shinhoto Chi-Ha is not lighter then Chi-Ha proper (Medium Tank III), in fact it's a bit heavier - 14.8 ton vs 14.3 ton. Light Armour is often used to brigade marines, so an amphibious tank fits well.

Heavy armour I - Type 95 Heavy Tank (former Type 4 Chi-To)
Only 4 built, but still, it was introduced in 1934, not in 1944, like Chi-To.

Heavy armour II - Type 4 Chi-To (former Type 5 Chi-Ri)

Heavy armour III - Type 5 Chi-Ri (former NoName)

Superheavy armour - Super-Heavy Tank O-I
No image is known of that 120 ton monster, except of that imaginary one.

Randwyck · Aug 30, 2007

snajper06 said:
japan paratrooper

Thanx. Judging from the insignia on his shoulder these guys getting into a plane I posted earlier are indeed Japanese paratroopers.

Kibbles said:
I dont think that picture is really usable.

It is not. But still, I learned something useful from it

mib said:
No Japanese propaganda, but plenty of ANTI-Japanese propaganda...

Aha. I love that one:

Good to have on your working place

mib said:
EDIT2: But the conspicuous lack of anything non-kanji in that poster makes it look suspicious... I'd venture a guess and theorize it MIGHT be a Taiwan/Manchoukuo poster... though I have not heard of IJA war colleges recruiting Chinese, for a tank corps no less...

You have a point here! Here's larger version of that poster, still no signs of Hiragana:

Even more: there was actually a tank school in Manchuria. So that poster might be used for Manchukuo, which is good, since it has quite a crappy one.

Here's one more Japanese poster, seems like there's Hiragana on it:

It's 2 am here, so I better go get some sleep now. I'll release the promised beta-version of this pack some time later.

Randwyck · Aug 31, 2007

Tada, here comes version 0.1:

Japanese Graphic Pack 0.1

3 new models included: lvl 1 Medium Armour, Paratroopers and Marines (thanks to Hagar for that one):

Hope that will work for you

BTW, I still have not figured out how to change the names for brigades. Any idea?

robw963 · Aug 31, 2007

Japanese music

This seems to be as good a place as any to post this question. I've been scouring the web looking for Japanese World War 2 era music. There's very little. I know very little about traditional Japanese music but am interested in incorporating some good selections into my grand campaign playing as Japan. Anyone have any suggestions?

Here is one site I've found:
http://www.duoen.com/music.html

Hagar · Aug 31, 2007

Randwyck said:
3 new models included: lvl 1 Medium Armour, Paratroopers and Marines (thanks to Hagar for that one)

Glad I was able to help out. And glad you were willing to help me out in return.

unmerged(41995) · Sep 2, 2007

Thankyou Randwyck. What excellent pics you have scrounged - I hope you find more!

mib · Sep 2, 2007

Randwyck said:
Thanx. Judging from the insignia on his shoulder these guys getting into a plane I posted earlier are indeed Japanese paratroopers.
It is not. But still, I learned something useful from it
Aha. I love that one:

Good to have on your working place
You have a point here! Here's larger version of that poster, still no signs of Hiragana:

Even more: there was actually a tank school in Manchuria. So that poster might be used for Manchukuo, which is good, since it has quite a crappy one.

Here's one more Japanese poster, seems like there's Hiragana on it:

It's 2 am here, so I better go get some sleep now. I'll release the promised beta-version of this pack some time later.

Hmm very interesting... Looks like the annual salary of a Japanese tank officer was 48 yen... they must have been worth a lot more back then...

Randwyck · Sep 3, 2007

Today's update — Naval Bombers. To the left are original Paradox models, to the right — my suggestions.

Naval Bomber I — Mitsubishi G3M Chukou

Naval Bomber II — Mitsubishi G4M Ishikkiro

Japanese Graphic Pack

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