NOTE: If you don't want to bother reading my boring introduction and instead want to skip straight to the links to download files and read the exact changes made, skip to the bottom of this post.
NOTE2: As of June 13, 2007, The CLMIP's work has been featured in the official Paradox v1.1 patch for Armageddon!
After reading up online about Japanese admirals and currently playing a game as Japan, finding it hard to find good admirals seems somewhat surprising to me, given this is a nation that operated, in 1941, the best combined air/sea force ever assembled, and which was eventually defeated through several things: lack of good pilots to replace those who died; lack of industry to replace losses; American superiority in industrial capacity. None of these things involve leadership. Reading about some Japanese admirals, I came to see that in HOI2 terms, these people should be all-but geniuses, worthy of some Skill 3/4 Superior Tactician, Spotter, etc. traits. Instead, looking at the files, I discovered they were marked generally as skill 1 and 2 leaders. I came to realize, reading reports of the battles they were in, analysis of where their historical reputation comes from, and such things, that of the few I was looking at, it seemed as if things completely unrelated to their skill as a leader were bringing down their skill level in game terms.
As an example, look at Japanese Admiral Gunichi Mikawa. In the Battle of Savo Island, he used a force of seven aging cruisers and one destroyer in a skilled nighttime attack against far superior Allied forces (nine cruisers and eight destroyers). In this attack, he managed to concentrate his forces, isolate, and destroy the enemy forces, sinking four heavy cruisers, severely damaging another, and damaging two destroyers, in exchange for moderate damage to two of his own aging heavy cruisers. The only failure in this mission was he then did not go on to attack a transport anchorage which was left wide open, with the escorts destroyed and scattered to the winds. Mikawa did not attack the transports because it was two in the morning and it was estimated it would take two hours for an effective reorganization and attack on the transports. Mikawa did not know US Admiral Fletcher's aircraft carriers supporting the marines had withdrawn, and believed that when dawn broke at 4 AM, if they stuck around, his forces would be attacked by carriers and destroyed, so he withdrew. For withdrawing (thanks to bad intel, not his fault) he has been criticized endlessly by naval historians. Reading about this action, and his skills as a commander, I would think this deserves, say, Skill 4 Superior Tactician and maybe Spotter. Instead, he is, in-game, a Skill 2, Max Skill 5, Superior Tactician.
Or take Japanese Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi. Described by a reliable source as 'perhaps Japan's most gifted carrier admiral, Yamaguchi was astute, aggressive, and ambitious'. He helped direct the attack on Pearl Harbour and the raids into the Indian Ocean which so badly defeated the British Asian Fleets that they were effectively a non-factor through the rest of the war at the cost of no ships and about two dozen planes. Through this Yamaguchi was in command of one of the Japanese Fast Carrier Force's carrier squadrons, and thus several of the carriers that were so effective in these engagements. He died at Midway when his flaghsip, the Hiryu, was sunk. He was heavily invested in the Bushido code, and went down with his ship rather than face the dishonour of losing it. In-game stats? Skill 2, Max Skill 5, no traits.
There are further examples. But it seems to me as if things such as Mikawa's withdrawal, despite his superb tactical prowess, or later battles in the war where Japan's carriers were little more than planeless floating targets thanks to the depletion of their air wings, lack of trained pilots, and lack of indsutrial capacity to replace their aircraft losses, have led to Japan's admiral corps being unfairly crippled in-game. For example, a leader who won several significant victories in the beginning of the war when outfitted with several fully-stocked with aircraft and skilled pilots has his skill level brought down by later battles where ships under his command were sunk because his carriers no longer had planes. These are logistical difficulties that are not his fault - after all, you wouldn't expect a leader in-game who entered a battle commanding carriers with 0 organization to win the fight, would you?
On another tact, which I only realized while writing this, it is possible some American admirals have their skill artificially upped because they took part in one-sided fights that sunk a lot of Japanese ships purely because American ships were better or they had numerical superiority in the air, and not to do with actual tactical prowess at all.
So I was considering going through Japan's list of admirals and checking up on each and every one of them, raising or lowering skill levels and adding or removing traits where necessary, when I realized that Japan could be not the only country with this issue. Then I realized that if I was doing this, given the number of Japanophiles I have seen on these boards, others would probably want to share in my work. Therefore, I bring to you, the HOI2 community, a proposed community modding project.
What the proposed project will do:
-Check up on leader lists, especially those lacking in high-skill leaders, especially when that nation needs those high-skill leaders. For example, Japan has enough skill 4/5 leaders to run three carrier groups that can keep out of range of most fleets. Given the amount of skilled carrier commanders they had throughout the war, this should probably be upped, or, even leaving out massive industrial bonuses, the Americans could simply use their abundance of skill 4/5 admirals to beat the Japanese with battleships.
-Look at these lists with a critical eye and a good deal of research, seeing whether the leaders actually deserve their skill level and traits, or if they should be raised/lowered/added/removed. When doing this, those doing the research and changes must be wary of falling prey to the 'well the Americans and Japanese had the same number of forces and the Americans won, so the American leader must be better' trap, and instead look at mitigating factors that are out of the tactical leaders' hands, such as supply, number of aircraft involved, how good the individual airplanes were (could the one fighter outperform the other one?), etc.
(If this confuses you, think of it this way: look at the fight like this: if each commander was given an identical fleet, which would win? After all, in HOI2 terms the Hosho is exactly the same as the Langley, despite their vast differences in real life.)
-Change skills and traits belonging to leaders according to good evidence that they deserve those skill levels. I'm not looking to up every Japanese admiral to a Skill 6 ST/S/BR/SW, I'm just looking to give every one of them a fair trial.
-Add leaders left out of the HOI2 lists. Already going through the Japanese admirals, I have found two named Hara who were left out. Neither is spectacular, but every little bit counts. This may also apply to historical leaders of smaller units who died or who were no longer a part of the war (i.e. it was over) by the time they would have been promoted, but this is to be discouraged as it is purely hypothetical in nature.
-Another possible direction for the project would be adding first names to the names of all leaders. Though a largely unnecessary step, it would provide greater historical depth and help out AAR writers.
-Do the same for ministers, but placing less priority on this as is placed on leaders. The leaders are the focus. Ministers are just a side effect, where people in the know say 'Why is this person a *blank* when historical evidence here, here, and here show he should be a *blank*?' I figured if we were going for accurate leaders, we might as well go for accurate ministers as well.
-Possibly later expand the project to further categories, such as tech teams.
Now, of course, as this is a community modding project, everyone is welcome to help out. But please, please, don't just favour the country you like, or any junk like that. This project is trying to provide an unbiased list of leaders for the game, not favour the countries of the people who helped out. Ideally, you should be able to explain to anyone exactly why you enacted a given change on the person.
In fact, it's probably a good idea to make a list of who you changed, to what, and why you changed them like that, so if people dispute something, you can give them your evidence and have a rousing debate spanning several threads and pages about whether Mikawa should have Spotter or not.
(Just kidding.)
I do advise you to keep a change list and a 'why I changed them to this' list alongside it, because there will be people who present evidence contrary to what you collected, from different sources, and since I want this to be as true-to-history as possible it's best to have these arguments and agree on something, and end up with the most accurate possible lists of leaders and ministers.
Anybody interested?
READ THIS FIRST:
All the download links are dead, temporarily. While we replace them all with reliable ones, please use this post for downloading. Thank you.
And use this post for Latvia v1.1 .
Update - March 14, 2007:
The CLMIP Pack is available for the first time, with changes to the leader files for Japan, Italy, and the Italian Social Republic.
Update - May 11, 2007:
New version of the CLMIP Pack, now containing changes to leader files for Japan, Manchukuo, Mengkukuo, Italy, the Italian Social Republic, Hungary, and Canada.
Update - February 17, 2008:
New version of the CLMIP Pack, now containing changes to leader files for Japan, Manchukuo, Mengkukuo, Italy, the Italian Social Republic, Hungary, Canada, Germany and Latvia. All up to date. See this post.
Contains Japan v1.4, Italy v1.1, Hungary v1.0 and Canada v1.0a - Contains skill/trait changes on over twenty admirals, six air marshals, and thirty-six generals, adds over twenty-one admirals, two air marshals, and thirty-nine generals left out of the Paradox lists, standardizes Japanese puppet leaders for Manchukuo and Mengkukuo, and changes historical information on over seventeen admirals, eleven air marshals, and one hundred and thirty-six generals. As well, it makes the applicable leaderfiles 'Armageddon-friendly' by pushing all deathdates of 1960 back to 1990 to account for the new possible enddate of 1964.
Download it here.
Download (Mirror 1)
Download (Mirror 2)
To install, follow these steps:
1) Download the file
2) Unzip it to any folder on your computer
3) Copy your entire 'db/leaders' folder and place it somewhere else on your harddrive. Make sure it is somewhere you will remember. (This step is unnecessary if you have already downloaded a copy of the CLMIP Pack and gone through these steps. Only one backup folder of the original files is necessary.
4) Place the downloaded pictures in the 'gfx/interface/pics' folder.
5) Place all files with the suffix .csv in the 'db/leaders' folder. When your computer prompts you to ask if you wish to overwrite files, hit 'Yes to all'.
Current Files and Versions:
Japan v1.4
Italy v1.1
Hungary v1.1
Canada v1.0a
Germany v1.0b
Latvia v1.0 changelist v1.1 Download Link and Changelist
CLMIP Team: Phoenix Dace, Myth
CLMIP Contributors: kunadam, dec152000, von_Ysselstein
CLMIP One-Shot Contributors: AutoVonBismark, MTJ, KeldorKatarn
Team Member = Consistent contributor, editor, fact checker, compiler etc.
Contributor = Work on either only one country/area, or sparse work all round.
One-Shot Contributor = A few changes somewhere that have been included in a completed file
Enjoy and please leave feedback.
NOTE2: As of June 13, 2007, The CLMIP's work has been featured in the official Paradox v1.1 patch for Armageddon!
After reading up online about Japanese admirals and currently playing a game as Japan, finding it hard to find good admirals seems somewhat surprising to me, given this is a nation that operated, in 1941, the best combined air/sea force ever assembled, and which was eventually defeated through several things: lack of good pilots to replace those who died; lack of industry to replace losses; American superiority in industrial capacity. None of these things involve leadership. Reading about some Japanese admirals, I came to see that in HOI2 terms, these people should be all-but geniuses, worthy of some Skill 3/4 Superior Tactician, Spotter, etc. traits. Instead, looking at the files, I discovered they were marked generally as skill 1 and 2 leaders. I came to realize, reading reports of the battles they were in, analysis of where their historical reputation comes from, and such things, that of the few I was looking at, it seemed as if things completely unrelated to their skill as a leader were bringing down their skill level in game terms.
As an example, look at Japanese Admiral Gunichi Mikawa. In the Battle of Savo Island, he used a force of seven aging cruisers and one destroyer in a skilled nighttime attack against far superior Allied forces (nine cruisers and eight destroyers). In this attack, he managed to concentrate his forces, isolate, and destroy the enemy forces, sinking four heavy cruisers, severely damaging another, and damaging two destroyers, in exchange for moderate damage to two of his own aging heavy cruisers. The only failure in this mission was he then did not go on to attack a transport anchorage which was left wide open, with the escorts destroyed and scattered to the winds. Mikawa did not attack the transports because it was two in the morning and it was estimated it would take two hours for an effective reorganization and attack on the transports. Mikawa did not know US Admiral Fletcher's aircraft carriers supporting the marines had withdrawn, and believed that when dawn broke at 4 AM, if they stuck around, his forces would be attacked by carriers and destroyed, so he withdrew. For withdrawing (thanks to bad intel, not his fault) he has been criticized endlessly by naval historians. Reading about this action, and his skills as a commander, I would think this deserves, say, Skill 4 Superior Tactician and maybe Spotter. Instead, he is, in-game, a Skill 2, Max Skill 5, Superior Tactician.
Or take Japanese Admiral Tamon Yamaguchi. Described by a reliable source as 'perhaps Japan's most gifted carrier admiral, Yamaguchi was astute, aggressive, and ambitious'. He helped direct the attack on Pearl Harbour and the raids into the Indian Ocean which so badly defeated the British Asian Fleets that they were effectively a non-factor through the rest of the war at the cost of no ships and about two dozen planes. Through this Yamaguchi was in command of one of the Japanese Fast Carrier Force's carrier squadrons, and thus several of the carriers that were so effective in these engagements. He died at Midway when his flaghsip, the Hiryu, was sunk. He was heavily invested in the Bushido code, and went down with his ship rather than face the dishonour of losing it. In-game stats? Skill 2, Max Skill 5, no traits.
There are further examples. But it seems to me as if things such as Mikawa's withdrawal, despite his superb tactical prowess, or later battles in the war where Japan's carriers were little more than planeless floating targets thanks to the depletion of their air wings, lack of trained pilots, and lack of indsutrial capacity to replace their aircraft losses, have led to Japan's admiral corps being unfairly crippled in-game. For example, a leader who won several significant victories in the beginning of the war when outfitted with several fully-stocked with aircraft and skilled pilots has his skill level brought down by later battles where ships under his command were sunk because his carriers no longer had planes. These are logistical difficulties that are not his fault - after all, you wouldn't expect a leader in-game who entered a battle commanding carriers with 0 organization to win the fight, would you?
On another tact, which I only realized while writing this, it is possible some American admirals have their skill artificially upped because they took part in one-sided fights that sunk a lot of Japanese ships purely because American ships were better or they had numerical superiority in the air, and not to do with actual tactical prowess at all.
So I was considering going through Japan's list of admirals and checking up on each and every one of them, raising or lowering skill levels and adding or removing traits where necessary, when I realized that Japan could be not the only country with this issue. Then I realized that if I was doing this, given the number of Japanophiles I have seen on these boards, others would probably want to share in my work. Therefore, I bring to you, the HOI2 community, a proposed community modding project.
What the proposed project will do:
-Check up on leader lists, especially those lacking in high-skill leaders, especially when that nation needs those high-skill leaders. For example, Japan has enough skill 4/5 leaders to run three carrier groups that can keep out of range of most fleets. Given the amount of skilled carrier commanders they had throughout the war, this should probably be upped, or, even leaving out massive industrial bonuses, the Americans could simply use their abundance of skill 4/5 admirals to beat the Japanese with battleships.
-Look at these lists with a critical eye and a good deal of research, seeing whether the leaders actually deserve their skill level and traits, or if they should be raised/lowered/added/removed. When doing this, those doing the research and changes must be wary of falling prey to the 'well the Americans and Japanese had the same number of forces and the Americans won, so the American leader must be better' trap, and instead look at mitigating factors that are out of the tactical leaders' hands, such as supply, number of aircraft involved, how good the individual airplanes were (could the one fighter outperform the other one?), etc.
(If this confuses you, think of it this way: look at the fight like this: if each commander was given an identical fleet, which would win? After all, in HOI2 terms the Hosho is exactly the same as the Langley, despite their vast differences in real life.)
-Change skills and traits belonging to leaders according to good evidence that they deserve those skill levels. I'm not looking to up every Japanese admiral to a Skill 6 ST/S/BR/SW, I'm just looking to give every one of them a fair trial.
-Add leaders left out of the HOI2 lists. Already going through the Japanese admirals, I have found two named Hara who were left out. Neither is spectacular, but every little bit counts. This may also apply to historical leaders of smaller units who died or who were no longer a part of the war (i.e. it was over) by the time they would have been promoted, but this is to be discouraged as it is purely hypothetical in nature.
-Another possible direction for the project would be adding first names to the names of all leaders. Though a largely unnecessary step, it would provide greater historical depth and help out AAR writers.
-Do the same for ministers, but placing less priority on this as is placed on leaders. The leaders are the focus. Ministers are just a side effect, where people in the know say 'Why is this person a *blank* when historical evidence here, here, and here show he should be a *blank*?' I figured if we were going for accurate leaders, we might as well go for accurate ministers as well.
-Possibly later expand the project to further categories, such as tech teams.
Now, of course, as this is a community modding project, everyone is welcome to help out. But please, please, don't just favour the country you like, or any junk like that. This project is trying to provide an unbiased list of leaders for the game, not favour the countries of the people who helped out. Ideally, you should be able to explain to anyone exactly why you enacted a given change on the person.
In fact, it's probably a good idea to make a list of who you changed, to what, and why you changed them like that, so if people dispute something, you can give them your evidence and have a rousing debate spanning several threads and pages about whether Mikawa should have Spotter or not.
(Just kidding.)
I do advise you to keep a change list and a 'why I changed them to this' list alongside it, because there will be people who present evidence contrary to what you collected, from different sources, and since I want this to be as true-to-history as possible it's best to have these arguments and agree on something, and end up with the most accurate possible lists of leaders and ministers.
Anybody interested?
Phoenix Dace on 18-02-2007 said:
READ THIS FIRST:
All the download links are dead, temporarily. While we replace them all with reliable ones, please use this post for downloading. Thank you.
And use this post for Latvia v1.1 .
Update - March 14, 2007:
The CLMIP Pack is available for the first time, with changes to the leader files for Japan, Italy, and the Italian Social Republic.
Update - May 11, 2007:
New version of the CLMIP Pack, now containing changes to leader files for Japan, Manchukuo, Mengkukuo, Italy, the Italian Social Republic, Hungary, and Canada.
Update - February 17, 2008:
New version of the CLMIP Pack, now containing changes to leader files for Japan, Manchukuo, Mengkukuo, Italy, the Italian Social Republic, Hungary, Canada, Germany and Latvia. All up to date. See this post.
Contains Japan v1.4, Italy v1.1, Hungary v1.0 and Canada v1.0a - Contains skill/trait changes on over twenty admirals, six air marshals, and thirty-six generals, adds over twenty-one admirals, two air marshals, and thirty-nine generals left out of the Paradox lists, standardizes Japanese puppet leaders for Manchukuo and Mengkukuo, and changes historical information on over seventeen admirals, eleven air marshals, and one hundred and thirty-six generals. As well, it makes the applicable leaderfiles 'Armageddon-friendly' by pushing all deathdates of 1960 back to 1990 to account for the new possible enddate of 1964.
Download it here.
Download (Mirror 1)
Download (Mirror 2)
To install, follow these steps:
1) Download the file
2) Unzip it to any folder on your computer
3) Copy your entire 'db/leaders' folder and place it somewhere else on your harddrive. Make sure it is somewhere you will remember. (This step is unnecessary if you have already downloaded a copy of the CLMIP Pack and gone through these steps. Only one backup folder of the original files is necessary.
4) Place the downloaded pictures in the 'gfx/interface/pics' folder.
5) Place all files with the suffix .csv in the 'db/leaders' folder. When your computer prompts you to ask if you wish to overwrite files, hit 'Yes to all'.
Current Files and Versions:
Japan v1.4
Italy v1.1
Hungary v1.1
Canada v1.0a
Germany v1.0b
Latvia v1.0 changelist v1.1 Download Link and Changelist
CLMIP Team: Phoenix Dace, Myth
CLMIP Contributors: kunadam, dec152000, von_Ysselstein
CLMIP One-Shot Contributors: AutoVonBismark, MTJ, KeldorKatarn
Team Member = Consistent contributor, editor, fact checker, compiler etc.
Contributor = Work on either only one country/area, or sparse work all round.
One-Shot Contributor = A few changes somewhere that have been included in a completed file
Enjoy and please leave feedback.
Last edited:
