Strategy Guide for Starting With Japan
Hi all – this is my first post here, and I wanted to write a small strategy guide for getting started with Japan that could help fellow newbies learn the game. It took quite a while to do so I really hope it’s helpful to someone.
I am new to the HOI series and I found Japan 1936 to be a great way to learn the game – you fight an early war with China, you get a good sampling of land, air and sea units, and you have enough industry and leadership points to experiment with, but not so many that you’re overwhelmed. So here are some tips I developed after playing three separate games as Japan. (note: my focus is on just playing the first 2 or 3 years to learn the game and experiment – you might do things a bit different if you’re planning on long-term war with the USA)
Starting Off (Early 1936)
Early Japan Objectives: Your first main objective should be the conquest of China. You’ll get the option of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on Jan. 1, 1937 which will begin the war. Your first targets will be Shanxi, the country bordering your puppet Manchukuo, and Nationalist China. Let’s start with an overview of your situation.
Your Army: You have a decent-sized army to begin with, but they’re all spread out. You need to shuffle them around so they’re ready for the war. After a long and painful reorganization of the HQs hierarchy, I moved/transported all the infantry, cavalry and one motorized infantry from the Japan mainland, Korea, and Russian border, down to the border with Shanxi. Keep the folks in Taiwan where they are, sometimes Nationalist China tries to invade.
Your Navy: You have a big navy, including 3 carriers and one escort carrier, allowing you a total of 7 CAGs. I reorganized them all and made 7 fleets, 3 of which were carrier groups, 3 were transports fleets with lots of escorts, and another was a submarine fleet (don’t include subs or destroyers with your carrier group as they severely limit their range of operations). I sent the sub fleet to defend Taiwan.
Your Air Force: You start with several tactical bombers, 4 fighters and a naval bomber or two. Rebase all your air units to the Manchukuo airbase closest to Shanxi.
Resources: You’ll need to do a little bit of trading to keep your resource stockpile in check, especially when your IC rises with war economy in 1937. Trade with any of the big nations for about 75 – 100 Energy, and maybe a little bit of Rare Materials. Don’t worry that your oil goes to 0, Energy will keep converting so your Fuel stays fine.
Diplomacy: Not much to do here early on other than make those trades you need.
Production: Other countries can focus on Industrial Capacity in the early years. With Japan, however, you need to prepare for war immediately. You’re going to need a lot more divisions, especially considering the huge West-to-East front you’ll fight on across China. Once I pushed into Nationalist China, both our armies usually only had one or two divisions per province. Because of this, it might be wise to just mass produce Infantry divisions so you can have several divisions per province. But if you’re new like I am, you probably want to experiment with tanks. In my second game, in the run-up to 1937, I built 2 divisions of 2 Light Armor-2 Infantry (for the combined arms bonus), and I think 4 divisions of 3 Infantry brigades each. You also need to begin building naval ports which, once you invade China, you can place in your captured territory to help get supplies to your troops. I built 3. You also have room for another CAG on your Escort Carrier.
Technology: You’re going to be fighting the Chinese in a year, so you need to immediately begin researching techs to help win the war: techs that improve your infantry, light armor and especially supply. Begin researching the Infantry techs, even if the soft attack one is a year or two ahead of time – your ability to kill other infantry divisions will make all the difference (you can skip the one that increases their Hard Attack, as you won’t be facing any Chinese tanks). Any of the land theories that increase their organization is helpful. Research all the Light Armor to make some really tough LA divisions. Supply is going to be a big problem, so prioritize the techs in the Theory and Land Theory tabs that help with supply. I also did the education tech, and a couple more in the industry tab that improves IC and research times. Add infantry and automotive theory too.
As for the leadership points, you need to put about 6-7 into officers in order to keep up with your new units. You don’t really need any diplomacy points, and can ignore espionage if you wish.
Politics: Update all your laws to the most efficient – you can even start with the second-best mobilization laws since your neutrality is so low. I kept the training level at the 20% exp. level because I needed more units to cover the Chinese front. Not much to do with ministers, but check back when it turns 1937 – there’s a new guy who can give you +5% leadership.
Espionage: For internal spies, raise your national unity until it hits 80% so you can get the best industry law, which helps with supply throughput I believe. As for other countries, you may want to invest a little bit into lowering Nationalist China’s unity so they surrender sooner.
War!!!
Historically, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident didn’t happen until July, but each of the three times I played I couldn’t wait, and attacked in January. Waiting may be better so you can build more units.
I tried out 3 different strategies in each time I played, finally getting it right on the 3rd time when I was able to defeat and annex all of Nationalist China by mid-August. Here’s my suggestions from my experience:
The Shanxi Front:
To quickly defeat Shanxi, you need to capture 3 of their Victory Point provinces, the first two obviously being the ones closest to your border (see map below).
The Eastern Front: You should easily push into Shanxi by 2 or 3 provinces all along the eastern front within the first week. Their divisions on the border won’t be fully mobilized and will be defeated very quickly. Don’t get too confident, because the rest of the Shanxi army in the south/west will redeploy toward your advance. After I got about 2 or 3 provinces in, our forces were about evenly matched and the front line remained static until my divisions up north were able to advance and hit their flank from the northwest. Also, make sure you take the lone Shanxi port – this will help bring in supplies from the mainland.
The Northern Front: The Shanxi provinces in the north are mostly mountainous. In my first game I attacked these head on with several divisions and got bogged down for a month despite stronger numbers. In my other games I left only one division per province (see the blue line) in order to contain the 6 or 7 divisions they had in three provinces up there. Your terrain along the border also has hills/forests, and they never attacked me. Keep an eye for opportunities, however, as in my third game they left the two provinces to the south of Arpinium Sum (the second from top province of theirs) open for a few days and I quickly sent in a cavalry and infantry division in, cutting 6 Shanxi infantry divisions off from their supply chain. After 2 weeks they were out of supplies and I attacked from 5 different provinces, completely destroying them in a few days.
In attempts of getting a quick surrender, I put all my cavalry and one motorized division together to race toward the VP province in the west. In two games this worked, and I found an opening where I sent a cavalry division through undefended enemy territory to take the VP province.
The Nationalist China Front:
Once you push down through Shanxi, you’ll be facing most of the Nationalist Army to the east. It’s best to open up a second front against them by invading them through their northernmost port. The map below shows what happened during my second game. There I invaded with some newly built light armor-infantry divisions, a cavalry division and several infantry divisions. Doing this forced the Nationalist army to head both to the northeast and northwest. I pushed west and south with my invasion force until they were too spread out to advance any further, and waited until the Shanxi front came further south. To help combine the fronts, some newly built light armor and infantry divisions in March were transported to the captured Shanxi port and fought their way south.
All of these actions were supported by the air force. Bombers assisted with the invasion and general weakening of the Nationalists along my front. I also sent the 1st Fleet, which had a carrier and the escort carrier down by Taiwan. Their 3 CAGs did bombings of the Nationalists’ industry to weaken their ability to send reinforcements.
The Communist China Front:
Once the Shanxi fall after about a month of fighting, you’ll quickly face the Communists. I would suggest annexing Shanxi rather than puppeting, as your supplies won’t travel through them for some reason (as of 1.1c anyway). They also didn’t declare war on the other Chinese countries (shouldn’t your puppets declare war on your enemies?). When you do annex them, this sets off a rush for Shanxi’s southwest provinces. Your army will only be about halfway into Shanxi, so you’ll inevitably lose several newly annexed provinces. The Communists have quite a few infantry divisions, so the key to victory is choosing where to fight. I set up my front in provinces with mountains and forests, and allowed them to advance to neighboring plains. I kept a few places in the forests weak so they would attack, then brought in divisions behind my line to reinforce and win the battles. Once they give up on their attack and their organization is low, launch your own, hitting them in their provinces that give no defensive bonus. After their first retreat, you should be able to push on and capture their capital relatively easily.
Supply Problems:
In my second game, after defeating the Communists, I easily advanced south and took wide swaths of Nationalist land. However, come July, everything came to a stop because my supply lines were all red. Infrastructure is terrible in China, so you can’t expand your front line indefinitely. Look at the picture above and you’ll see my mistake. I took the picture with the Resources map mode to highlight how I had taken tons of worthless land in China’s interior, while failing to advance on her more valuable provinces in the east. To avoid devastating supply problems, focus your advance on the east. It may be tempting to plunge to the southwest when the Nationalists fail to defend that flank, but there’s a reason their stronger units are out east. If you have problems advancing there, send in an invasion group into Shanghai, and push north toward their capital. Taking that will get them close to surrender – send your cavalry units into the interior to quickly capture more VP provinces.
Good lord, I can’t believe I wrote this much … if you read it all, kudos to you, otherwise just looking at the pretty pictures are good enough.
Hi all – this is my first post here, and I wanted to write a small strategy guide for getting started with Japan that could help fellow newbies learn the game. It took quite a while to do so I really hope it’s helpful to someone.
I am new to the HOI series and I found Japan 1936 to be a great way to learn the game – you fight an early war with China, you get a good sampling of land, air and sea units, and you have enough industry and leadership points to experiment with, but not so many that you’re overwhelmed. So here are some tips I developed after playing three separate games as Japan. (note: my focus is on just playing the first 2 or 3 years to learn the game and experiment – you might do things a bit different if you’re planning on long-term war with the USA)
Starting Off (Early 1936)
Early Japan Objectives: Your first main objective should be the conquest of China. You’ll get the option of the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on Jan. 1, 1937 which will begin the war. Your first targets will be Shanxi, the country bordering your puppet Manchukuo, and Nationalist China. Let’s start with an overview of your situation.
Your Army: You have a decent-sized army to begin with, but they’re all spread out. You need to shuffle them around so they’re ready for the war. After a long and painful reorganization of the HQs hierarchy, I moved/transported all the infantry, cavalry and one motorized infantry from the Japan mainland, Korea, and Russian border, down to the border with Shanxi. Keep the folks in Taiwan where they are, sometimes Nationalist China tries to invade.
Your Navy: You have a big navy, including 3 carriers and one escort carrier, allowing you a total of 7 CAGs. I reorganized them all and made 7 fleets, 3 of which were carrier groups, 3 were transports fleets with lots of escorts, and another was a submarine fleet (don’t include subs or destroyers with your carrier group as they severely limit their range of operations). I sent the sub fleet to defend Taiwan.
Your Air Force: You start with several tactical bombers, 4 fighters and a naval bomber or two. Rebase all your air units to the Manchukuo airbase closest to Shanxi.
Resources: You’ll need to do a little bit of trading to keep your resource stockpile in check, especially when your IC rises with war economy in 1937. Trade with any of the big nations for about 75 – 100 Energy, and maybe a little bit of Rare Materials. Don’t worry that your oil goes to 0, Energy will keep converting so your Fuel stays fine.
Diplomacy: Not much to do here early on other than make those trades you need.
Production: Other countries can focus on Industrial Capacity in the early years. With Japan, however, you need to prepare for war immediately. You’re going to need a lot more divisions, especially considering the huge West-to-East front you’ll fight on across China. Once I pushed into Nationalist China, both our armies usually only had one or two divisions per province. Because of this, it might be wise to just mass produce Infantry divisions so you can have several divisions per province. But if you’re new like I am, you probably want to experiment with tanks. In my second game, in the run-up to 1937, I built 2 divisions of 2 Light Armor-2 Infantry (for the combined arms bonus), and I think 4 divisions of 3 Infantry brigades each. You also need to begin building naval ports which, once you invade China, you can place in your captured territory to help get supplies to your troops. I built 3. You also have room for another CAG on your Escort Carrier.
Technology: You’re going to be fighting the Chinese in a year, so you need to immediately begin researching techs to help win the war: techs that improve your infantry, light armor and especially supply. Begin researching the Infantry techs, even if the soft attack one is a year or two ahead of time – your ability to kill other infantry divisions will make all the difference (you can skip the one that increases their Hard Attack, as you won’t be facing any Chinese tanks). Any of the land theories that increase their organization is helpful. Research all the Light Armor to make some really tough LA divisions. Supply is going to be a big problem, so prioritize the techs in the Theory and Land Theory tabs that help with supply. I also did the education tech, and a couple more in the industry tab that improves IC and research times. Add infantry and automotive theory too.
As for the leadership points, you need to put about 6-7 into officers in order to keep up with your new units. You don’t really need any diplomacy points, and can ignore espionage if you wish.
Politics: Update all your laws to the most efficient – you can even start with the second-best mobilization laws since your neutrality is so low. I kept the training level at the 20% exp. level because I needed more units to cover the Chinese front. Not much to do with ministers, but check back when it turns 1937 – there’s a new guy who can give you +5% leadership.
Espionage: For internal spies, raise your national unity until it hits 80% so you can get the best industry law, which helps with supply throughput I believe. As for other countries, you may want to invest a little bit into lowering Nationalist China’s unity so they surrender sooner.
War!!!
Historically, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident didn’t happen until July, but each of the three times I played I couldn’t wait, and attacked in January. Waiting may be better so you can build more units.
I tried out 3 different strategies in each time I played, finally getting it right on the 3rd time when I was able to defeat and annex all of Nationalist China by mid-August. Here’s my suggestions from my experience:
The Shanxi Front:
To quickly defeat Shanxi, you need to capture 3 of their Victory Point provinces, the first two obviously being the ones closest to your border (see map below).
The Eastern Front: You should easily push into Shanxi by 2 or 3 provinces all along the eastern front within the first week. Their divisions on the border won’t be fully mobilized and will be defeated very quickly. Don’t get too confident, because the rest of the Shanxi army in the south/west will redeploy toward your advance. After I got about 2 or 3 provinces in, our forces were about evenly matched and the front line remained static until my divisions up north were able to advance and hit their flank from the northwest. Also, make sure you take the lone Shanxi port – this will help bring in supplies from the mainland.
The Northern Front: The Shanxi provinces in the north are mostly mountainous. In my first game I attacked these head on with several divisions and got bogged down for a month despite stronger numbers. In my other games I left only one division per province (see the blue line) in order to contain the 6 or 7 divisions they had in three provinces up there. Your terrain along the border also has hills/forests, and they never attacked me. Keep an eye for opportunities, however, as in my third game they left the two provinces to the south of Arpinium Sum (the second from top province of theirs) open for a few days and I quickly sent in a cavalry and infantry division in, cutting 6 Shanxi infantry divisions off from their supply chain. After 2 weeks they were out of supplies and I attacked from 5 different provinces, completely destroying them in a few days.
In attempts of getting a quick surrender, I put all my cavalry and one motorized division together to race toward the VP province in the west. In two games this worked, and I found an opening where I sent a cavalry division through undefended enemy territory to take the VP province.
The Nationalist China Front:
Once you push down through Shanxi, you’ll be facing most of the Nationalist Army to the east. It’s best to open up a second front against them by invading them through their northernmost port. The map below shows what happened during my second game. There I invaded with some newly built light armor-infantry divisions, a cavalry division and several infantry divisions. Doing this forced the Nationalist army to head both to the northeast and northwest. I pushed west and south with my invasion force until they were too spread out to advance any further, and waited until the Shanxi front came further south. To help combine the fronts, some newly built light armor and infantry divisions in March were transported to the captured Shanxi port and fought their way south.
All of these actions were supported by the air force. Bombers assisted with the invasion and general weakening of the Nationalists along my front. I also sent the 1st Fleet, which had a carrier and the escort carrier down by Taiwan. Their 3 CAGs did bombings of the Nationalists’ industry to weaken their ability to send reinforcements.
The Communist China Front:
Once the Shanxi fall after about a month of fighting, you’ll quickly face the Communists. I would suggest annexing Shanxi rather than puppeting, as your supplies won’t travel through them for some reason (as of 1.1c anyway). They also didn’t declare war on the other Chinese countries (shouldn’t your puppets declare war on your enemies?). When you do annex them, this sets off a rush for Shanxi’s southwest provinces. Your army will only be about halfway into Shanxi, so you’ll inevitably lose several newly annexed provinces. The Communists have quite a few infantry divisions, so the key to victory is choosing where to fight. I set up my front in provinces with mountains and forests, and allowed them to advance to neighboring plains. I kept a few places in the forests weak so they would attack, then brought in divisions behind my line to reinforce and win the battles. Once they give up on their attack and their organization is low, launch your own, hitting them in their provinces that give no defensive bonus. After their first retreat, you should be able to push on and capture their capital relatively easily.
Supply Problems:
In my second game, after defeating the Communists, I easily advanced south and took wide swaths of Nationalist land. However, come July, everything came to a stop because my supply lines were all red. Infrastructure is terrible in China, so you can’t expand your front line indefinitely. Look at the picture above and you’ll see my mistake. I took the picture with the Resources map mode to highlight how I had taken tons of worthless land in China’s interior, while failing to advance on her more valuable provinces in the east. To avoid devastating supply problems, focus your advance on the east. It may be tempting to plunge to the southwest when the Nationalists fail to defend that flank, but there’s a reason their stronger units are out east. If you have problems advancing there, send in an invasion group into Shanghai, and push north toward their capital. Taking that will get them close to surrender – send your cavalry units into the interior to quickly capture more VP provinces.
Good lord, I can’t believe I wrote this much … if you read it all, kudos to you, otherwise just looking at the pretty pictures are good enough.
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