In the ''Waking the Tiger'' strategic woes for the Japan AI" @BaronNoir mentioned how he defeated Japan fairly easily as China.
This is very, very wrong.
China could not fortify Beijing or its environs for two reasons.
1) Chiang Kai Shek did not have strong control over most of the generals in the area. For example, Song Zheyuan, who commanded the troops that first fought Japan in 1937, had arisen as part of the Zhili clique, the warlord grouping who Chiang Kai Shek defeated in 1926. Most of the military forces and generals in the North were of questionable loyalty. The game should require lots of command points to actually bring them into the fold. (It seems like that's going to be the case with the decision system.)
2) The He-Umezu agreement
This agreement, signed in 1935, is represented in game by the little strip of Japanese land on the border of Manchukuo and China. This is the East Hebei autonomous council.
It was a Japanese puppet state that rebelled and was effectively part of Japan as the game shows.
What isn't shown or represented is that the agreement forbade any KMT political activity... including the stationing of additional troops, in the entirety of the province of Hebei.
This means that a Chinese player should not be able to build fortifications or move additional troops into the HOI4 states of Beijing and Hebei (State id's 608 and 614) without triggering a war with Japan.
Without this agreement, China is too easy to fortify and Japan will get stopped to early.
It should be in there with a Chinese option to break it and gain more control over northern troops via decisions and focuses, but without it, Japan is at an ahistoric disadvantage. When the war started, Chiang Kai Shek had to move troops into the North China plain to fight Japan. Chinese divisions are not very mobile and they didn't have time to set up proper defenses before making contact with the Japanese so they generally got eviscerated by the more mobile and better equipped Japanese troops.
As strange as it is, Nationalist China have currently one of the narrowest ''front'' to defend. (Six provinces around Bejing, four if you do some strategic defensive). With some basic fortifications, the rather....uh...frail...KMT army can handle very well the initial japanese thrust.
While the maluses might make matters harder, it change nothing to the glaring japanese weaknesses : making a mockery of all campaigns of actual WW2, stationing a few INF battalions per harbor (all 13 of them) is far enough to defend China immense coastline, the Japanese AI being completely unable to storm those harbors if a player think to put a garrison in them.
This is very, very wrong.
China could not fortify Beijing or its environs for two reasons.
1) Chiang Kai Shek did not have strong control over most of the generals in the area. For example, Song Zheyuan, who commanded the troops that first fought Japan in 1937, had arisen as part of the Zhili clique, the warlord grouping who Chiang Kai Shek defeated in 1926. Most of the military forces and generals in the North were of questionable loyalty. The game should require lots of command points to actually bring them into the fold. (It seems like that's going to be the case with the decision system.)
2) The He-Umezu agreement
This agreement, signed in 1935, is represented in game by the little strip of Japanese land on the border of Manchukuo and China. This is the East Hebei autonomous council.
It was a Japanese puppet state that rebelled and was effectively part of Japan as the game shows.
What isn't shown or represented is that the agreement forbade any KMT political activity... including the stationing of additional troops, in the entirety of the province of Hebei.
This means that a Chinese player should not be able to build fortifications or move additional troops into the HOI4 states of Beijing and Hebei (State id's 608 and 614) without triggering a war with Japan.
Without this agreement, China is too easy to fortify and Japan will get stopped to early.
It should be in there with a Chinese option to break it and gain more control over northern troops via decisions and focuses, but without it, Japan is at an ahistoric disadvantage. When the war started, Chiang Kai Shek had to move troops into the North China plain to fight Japan. Chinese divisions are not very mobile and they didn't have time to set up proper defenses before making contact with the Japanese so they generally got eviscerated by the more mobile and better equipped Japanese troops.