Japan: A Tale of Sorrow And Woe

[JimboOmega]

The main purpose of this thread is to highlight the number of bugs, exploits, and bad design decisions I encountered in my '36 Japan game. As such, I don't know if it should be an AAR, a Bug Report, or in the regular forum. I chose here.

So, 1936, Japan. I want to invade China first off. I build infantry and ports *only* for the coming invasion. I start researching a few things, including carrier techs, nothing too advanced, and spend a large portion of my leadership on spies to send off to generate allied and comintern threat.

So far so good.

1937 arrives. I fire the incident and immediately invade China. I tear through them like a wet paper bag. Shanxi lasts 2 weeks. March sees the fall of communist china just in the nick of time - if I hadn't wound up reloading once (some other issue, I can't remember what it was), I would have had ComChi in the Comintern. I won't even call ComChi joining the ComIntern a bug, because it's vaguely possible they'd drag the SU into their war. Supply issues become major because my huge army advances into comchi in fits and starts - it was kind of a nailbiter.

So by the summer, thanks to a healthy queue full of ports, and the AI's unwillingness to seriously defend ports (AI Bug #1) with more than a division (and an easily encircled one at that), I am able to drive from Shanghai to Nanjing and meet only token resistance. Supply problems stall the Northern front, but a few units break out from around Shanghai and capture enough VPs to - just barely - end the war as OOS cripples my units.

Nat China annexed, I make my first mistake - I let the theater AI take control. Given I'm at war with Xibei San Ma, a tiny Nat Chi puppet with a few divisions in rough terrain and Guangxi Clique, a much more powerful organization in the south, what do you think theater AI does?

It sends everything at Xibei San Ma (AI Bug #2). Guangxi Clique advances to the Yangtze before anybody shows up to hold them, and even then, is only delayed because I took a couple carriers and log bombed the heck out of their capital. (Player Exploit #1 ).

Through a mix of log and strat bombing, helped by an AI landing at the port and airbase near Hong Kong, the enemy was stalled, and the theater AI, having conquered Xibei San Ma, sent a few divisions to cap the VP points for the victory. Ironically, Guangxi Clique lost ALL their home VPs (the AI landed ever more forces) but still held on because they'd captured so much of Nat Chi while my forces were up north.

Yunnan and then Sinkiang both fall easily to my mighty forces. I want to join the Axis, but I want to go easy on the threat, so I defer it.

A couple years pass. I find out about the weather over the oceans (General Bug #1), and realize my carriers are junk, and my battleship practical/theory is hopeless and behind. I start down that path, but only slowly. I realize that the SU is where I'm going, because I don't want to deal with a broken naval system.

In the meantime I've built infrastructure up to 80% from Sinkiang (including the terrible supply depot of Hotan, (which I'll lump together with other supply bugs as general bug #2)) to a cluster of 6 ports around Dagu, all of which I have built up to level 10. I started building IC (player exploit #2) at incredibly large discounts, too. I've scattered ports - and infra - at several other locations, for instance 100% infra towards shanghai and a couple level 10 ports I built down there.

Finally all my units are in supply, and I'm happy with the way the AI assigned theaters (it gave me 4!), so I distribute troops, and in 1940, I attack. Again, I let the AI lead (foolish me).

I find myself dismayed that my troops in vladivostok aren't attacking, but when I try to intervene, I find out they are all OOS. I don't know why (puppet supply?), but that's hopeless. Fortunately, (AI bug #3), the AI has no sense, and a couple marine divisions (and their HQ!) manage to hold a 3 province line by marching across from Sakhalin to Manchukuo. A few ports are now connected, so the marines and their HQ have supply, but nobody else does. I drop ports where I can and build them up to 10, along with infra.

Meanwhile my other forces advance quite easily, especially in the west, making short work of the soviets. The only flaw is that the tiny gap between Mongolia and Tibet is not defended (AI bug #4, maybe the same as #3), meaning I have to scramble units (which are always OOS despite sitting next to a 100% infra supply line) to defend the area.

I also have to repeatedly manually close and defend encirclements - the AI (AI bug #5) loves to completely ignore units behind my lines, even if they are at risk of breaking out, or worse, advancing down my supply lines and causing general mayhem.

But soon the pacific beaches are open, supply can flow, and after grueling months of AI refusals, I close the pockets and free up my second theater to head west, into what suddenly became much stiffer soviet resistance.

It didn't help that now all those units were out of supply. Out of supply was the dominant feature of the war, uncontrollable, unpredictable...

In fact they got pushed all the way back to the pre-war borders. Only the northern front, which had gotten up the 20% infra provinecs, never had supply problems.

The Soviet AI seemed quite content to keep huge numbers of forces in those 20 and 10% provinces (AI Bug #6). Soon I had managed to close them off, I think there were more than 50 divisions in there.

Battles raged all winter (General Bug #3), stuck at 50% as the weather modifier reaches over 100%. Great experience for my troops (player exploit #3?)

This pattern goes on for years, as supply flows and stops; as units get assigned from east to west, as the war goes back and forth with weather never playing any real role beyond causing the neverending battles (and perhasp interfering with supply.

Meanwhile Germany is still at peace with the SU (AI? Bug #7), and stays that way the whole time. I can't join the Axis becuase of German threat (General Bug #4), but I can't join the Allies because of their threat, and I am of course at war with Comintern. Ditto for the US, who stayed in limbo until 1946. (while the great powers had a 3 way tug of war over... Canada?!) The Germans have gobbled up all of Europe except Romania (including Spain); later they invaded the British Isles to complete success (an AI bug I didn't observe directly exists with the British production queues). They would not help the Italians in Africa, where the Italians were soundly beaten, however. In the 3 years after invading the islands, they took one province in western India, and expanded it to 3 or 4 provinces. In fact by the game end they had a few landings in Indonesia as well!

The Germans declared war on dead countries repeatedly (General Bug #5) to my confusion.

Having given up on German help, my only solution was to find some way to fix the supply problem. Having ports on every soviet pacific province, and multiple 100% infra lines from the ports to the troops was not enough. I needed a way to get to some other source of supply...

And with paratroops (Player Exploit #...4?) I found it! With a queue full of airbases, a few divisions of paratroops and one transport, I found I could rapidly advance across the northwest SU. The Infrastructure terrible, the supplies lacking, fuel but a dream, and the pavement wasn't even cooled off yet - but my brave airforce did not halt once. I'd airdrop, drop an airbase, rebase, pick up, and be off!

Well okay, one province away from the coast, when I tried to rebase planes there, I CTD'd (General bug #6, will report when I get the chance to investigate further). But somehow, even while the forces in the middle of the front were dying, the paratroops had supply, and they reached the coast.

And you better believe my deployment queue was ready!

As soon as I dropped the first port, I gathered transports from the AI...

Oh, that reminds me of AI Bugs #8 and #9. First, the Soviets loved to land troops on me - even well after they had no pacific provinces left ecept the island off Kamchatka - and they still invaded Truk after they lost that. So the soviets landing 10 divisions they can't supply in Hiroshima is Bug #8.

Bug #9 is an automated Imperial General HQ (home islands theater) refusing to send any of its massive fleets to disrupt the invasion only a couple hundred km away - each time I'd notice the ongoing battle and have to gather the well distributed forces into a battle fleet to repulse them manually. And then (foolishly, perhaps) return the ships to the HQ.

It certainly would ignore the huge radar arrays I built to detect them before arrival in the interest of repelling them.

Easiest 10 divisions I ever destroyed, though. Again and Again. And the General HQ would, with its random patrols, sometimes catch large, barely escorted transport fleets coming from the south around Vietnam. Loved those popups, though I didn't love the immortal soviet ghost fleet at 0 org (general bug #7 already reported, and logged).

It's too bad that the AI wouldn't close the pockets, even when I assigned it multiple infantry corps for the purpose

Now, where was I? Oh, yes, so I gathered the navy, and, (Player Exploit #5) rebased to my newly minted port - with plenty of new forces aboard.

I got almost to Archangel'sk (sp?) before I met any soviets. They started setting up a line, but the new units flowing in (rebasing all the way around the world) kept me one step ahead of them.

Meanwhile, I'd pocketed huge numbers of Soviet forces against the Caspian sea - twice - in the back and forth. Probably 50-100 divisions total. this left the southern front exposed, and my units tumbled down to the black sea, where everything repeated - the port spam, the units inbound.

On the black sea success was limited by most ports shipping only 1 or 2 supplies. But it worked well enough - the forces in the Baku area were OOS, too, and couldn't attack my lines.

The soviet navy harassed me, in particular the submarines, which did a number on the capitals sent to clear them out - but they never stopped me from landing.

I eventually landed next to Sevastapol, and rooted out the Soviets (this is what led to my capitals getting sunk, actually - as their navy engaged the ships waiting for them outside the port).

This led to, ironically, resource problems - for some reason Sevastopol would always be red, and ship 0 resources, even when full of transports. (Maybe the bosporous is one way only for convoys...!?!), general bug #8, which I will report with attached savegame next time I get the chance.

Things were grim for the soviets now. Despite their 30 stacks of airwings (AI Bug #10), which regularly harassed my planes, I was still able to intercept their bombers, which tended to be in smaller, more managable numbers - at least until my AI copied their strategy. I started seeing air battles with numbers like 32-12....

Another bug that occured here is even without automatic deployment checked, "something I did" (anybody know what it might be?) was causing every new unit - even those built for a different theater using the theater build - to go to Imperial General HQ. So in order to build troops to shuttle to my new ports, I had to know when they were getting done, and grab them out of the Imperial General HQ before they got shipped overseas.

Not that the HQ would organize them (AI Bug #11). It preferred to dump them all on the one theater and be done with it.

Moving on... things were now dire for the Soviets, and for me. I was late for an appointment, and needed to stop playing the game. But my troops had managed to, somehow, advance to the province next to Moscow. I'd taken leningrad, and the AI had taken stalingrad. Moscow would break their unity. Victory was so close.

I tried attacking with the divisions I had. Moscow was too well defended. I waited a few days. Now only an HQ and a 20% strength division stood in my way.

The battles would last 20 hours, the units running out of supply at midnight. The HQ evacuated, so the very understrength (but very organized) division was all that was holding on. But each 20 hours, things got worse for them, facing attacks on 4 sides. Soon they had to retreat.

I was very late, but all I had to do was occupy the city, a 30 hour march. Day after day, each unit with supply (which seemed random) was ordered to advance. Each midnight they would stop. I'd use paratroopers but the 30+ stack of interceptors was based right there in Moscow.

Finally, after a week, I got 2 days of consecutive supply, and Moscow fell.

Unfortunately general bug #9 struck, as my victorious troops hoisted the German flag over Moscow. The confused Germans, who had been trying to invade India for 3 or 4 years, gladly took Eastern Europe. The soviets shrugged, and the war continued (though I imagine, with 100% occupation, it'd end in 24 hours).

All in all - it was a very unfun game. It started off alright. But after a while, I spent all my time dealing with supply and weird bugs, and nothing else seemed to matter. The "Very Bitter Peace" was the icing on the cake, but the game had stopped being fun before then. I was just building infantry units, and sending them to the war - and spamming infra and ports. That's all I did - click click click click. Over and over.

I did get enough tech for a nuclear bomb, which I was going to try to use to end the war, but alas - the Soviet's 30 interceptor stack seemed to stop any mission in range, even if they do no damage in the process. I also thought about delivering said nuke with a V2, but only got as far as flying bomb before Moscow fell.

Here's to hoping 1.3 is more supply friendly!

Because I really want to love this game. I know, as negative this post sounds, it might not seem like it. But I wouldn't have played through that many bugs if I didn't love the game that's hiding inside, somewhere...

I'm sure I left out something, so feel free to comment. Next time I'm at my gaming computer (could be a few days...) I'll be sure to dredge up save games for the new bugs I encountered along the way, like the soviet province that crashes when I rebase to it, and the Sevastapol problem.

Also, that reminds me - the Kungard wormhole (General Bug #10) confuses the heck out of the AI. I hope that gets fixed - I know it's already been reported.

[Nicophorus]

That was a very depressing read.

I hope the devs are listening.

[delra]

Every single issue you mentioned was already discussed multiple times on this forums and is reported in the bug subforum. So as much as it's an enjoyable read (put it in AAR!), it's nothing new. :-)

And yeah, 1.3 will be more supply friendly, read Johan's announcement.

[JimboOmega]

Originally Posted by delra

Every single issue you mentioned was already discussed multiple times on this forums and is reported in the bug subforum. So as much as it's an enjoyable read (put it in AAR!), it's nothing new. :-)

And yeah, 1.3 will be more supply friendly, read Johan's announcement.

I know some of them (like the germans never going to war) were. EVERYBODY knows about the weather, and supply issues. The AI issues... I know we've gone around and around with, though not so much the AI for the player units. I personally had a therad complaining about how I couldn't get in the Axis , the capital single source problem has been discussed too.

Sevastapol and the CTD on a specific airbase surprised me the most - I read the bug reports forum pretty regular and hadn't seen those mentioned before.

Oh - and I got very excited with Johan's announcement - this is why I lumped all supply issues together as one bug, because I know the devs were working on it. I hope they try a Japanese invasion of the USSR, though!