China vs. UK

[Lord Finnish]

Started as China again, and am worried about the Opium Wars. I never survive against UK.

When war starts, I simply stand no chance. The brits are coming from doors and windows, from everywhere. One british division can easily beat 20 chinese divisions, so UK needs 10 divs to hack the whole China apart. And troop splitting is annoying. If I put troops on beach A, they land on B. If I put men on A, B, C, D, E and F, they land on beach J.

I can civilize China without a problem but fighting UK is the most annoying thing I have ever seen in this game. I got a small elité guard of up to 12 divisions of artillery-powered natives but they can barely hold a province and the armies lose 80% of their strenght in battles.

 

[Orm]

Started as China again, and am worried about the Opium Wars. I never survive against UK.

When war starts, I simply stand no chance. The brits are coming from doors and windows, from everywhere. One british division can easily beat 20 chinese divisions, so UK needs 10 divs to hack the whole China apart. And troop splitting is annoying. If I put troops on beach A, they land on B. If I put men on A, B, C, D, E and F, they land on beach J.

I can civilize China without a problem but fighting UK is the most annoying thing I have ever seen in this game. I got a small elité guard of up to 12 divisions of artillery-powered natives but they can barely hold a province and the armies lose 80% of their strenght in battles.

Build only native cavalry with cuirassier brigades. They have good shock value and a corps of them can beat several regular british divisions if you don't give them time to dig in. Furthermore they give the most military score for the least money.
IIRC you only have one province bordering the brits, and a mountain one at that, directly so put a decent sized army there and let it dig in, then place a couple cavalry corps spread out along the coast to respond to british landings, then just pounce on them as soon as they land.
A few of the divisions you start with are reserve quality and have decent fighting ability, you can use those for defending the border province together with a few cavalry. The rest of the starting army are crap, keep them away from the brits.

 

[Lord Finnish]

What provinces the Brits mostly prefer?

 

[Orm]

What provinces the Brits mostly prefer?

The games I've played they have mainly landed on the southern part of the coast from Shanghai and southwards.

 

[unmerged(81390)]

Sometimes the land in that peninsula in Shandong state too, but mostly in the port cities from Shanghai to Sanya

 

[Delegate]

ive played china a couple of times, and worked out a pretty good system. if you ever let Hong Kong go, you lose it in a treaty, so I put the Manchu regular troops in there with a good general and you can't lose it. i then split up that huge stack of irregulars and station them at the main points from Shanghai to Beihai in the south.

buy lots of military goods, train lots of divisions with regulars, guards, and artillery brigades, and use them to stiffen the irregulars. i also convert some more officers so i can get good leaders, because since your troops are inferior, you need good leaders to make up for them. look for speed, terrain, and shock bonuses.

also, train 10 or so divisions of cavalry with hussars and cuirassiers, stick them in a big stack and use them roam around and mop up landings your infantry will be too slow to stop.

so by the time the first opium war rolls around, i have garrisons in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Weihaiwei, Fuzhou, Hangzhou, Dali, Suzhou, Lushun, Tianjin, Haizhou, Ningbo, Xiamen, Shouzhou, and Guangzhou. one of those should be the cavalry stack, probably in the middle somewhere. most of your troops should be in south.

as i remember, the area around Shanghai is very very populous, and if the brits take it, you will have lost a large amount of tax and tarriff income and brits will have an inflated war score from the large population they captured.

if you can bleed them dry, which means just letting them keep coming and assaulting, they will accept a white peace after awhile. how long that awhile is depends on how busy they are elsewhere though... ive had the war last 5 years on me before they accepted a white peace.

 

[T'ung Dynasty]

What provinces the Brits mostly prefer?

Kwangchow area?

 

[T'ung Dynasty]

ive played china a couple of times, and worked out a pretty good system. if you ever let Hong Kong go, you lose it in a treaty, so I put the Manchu regular troops in there with a good general and you can't lose it. i then split up that huge stack of irregulars and station them at the main points from Shanghai to Beihai in the south.

buy lots of military goods, train lots of divisions with regulars, guards, and artillery brigades, and use them to stiffen the irregulars. i also convert some more officers so i can get good leaders, because since your troops are inferior, you need good leaders to make up for them. look for speed, terrain, and shock bonuses.

also, train 10 or so divisions of cavalry with hussars and cuirassiers, stick them in a big stack and use them roam around and mop up landings your infantry will be too slow to stop.

so by the time the first opium war rolls around, i have garrisons in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Weihaiwei, Fuzhou, Hangzhou, Dali, Suzhou, Lushun, Tianjin, Haizhou, Ningbo, Xiamen, Shouzhou, and Guangzhou. one of those should be the cavalry stack, probably in the middle somewhere. most of your troops should be in south.

as i remember, the area around Shanghai is very very populous, and if the brits take it, you will have lost a large amount of tax and tarriff income and brits will have an inflated war score from the large population they captured.

if you can bleed them dry, which means just letting them keep coming and assaulting, they will accept a white peace after awhile. how long that awhile is depends on how busy they are elsewhere though... ive had the war last 5 years on me before they accepted a white peace.

Is there an event whereby China can receive for winning the opium war

 

[unmerged(116276)]

What what I've seen of the Opium war, all you lose is Hong Kong anyway. Surely it's not such a big deal? You can always build up and get it back later.

 

[Orm]

What what I've seen of the Opium war, all you lose is Hong Kong anyway. Surely it's not such a big deal? You can always build up and get it back later.

There are some other bad results of losing the Opium War. If you're playing vanilla Revolutions your possibility of early civilizing will be gone for one.

 

[Cinéad IV]

Get your relations up with the Russians, obtain Freedom of Trade and any other industrial/commercial techs neccessary for civilisation ASAP. Use your claims in turkestan and Sakhalin as bargaining chips. Freedom of Trade increases your efficiency massively, allowing you to field a much more effective war machine. This is ceratinly the case in VIP and I'm reasonably certain it's the case in Vanilla. If you can get Post-Napoleonic thought, all good: it massively boosts your troops ability to fight, though it isn't neccessary to civilisation and will increase the time you spend in the dark ages.

Build as many natives as you can, preferably with regular/guard brigades if possible. This is one of the few times I recommend against using artillery because it is HUGELY expensive in the early game. Use your irregulars to garrison provinces in Southern China/Shanghai/around Waheiwei until you can replace them with natives. Also, as already mentioned, cavalry currassiers are fantastic early game.

 

[unmerged(81390)]

You could also sell a poor mongolian province or two, the ones without good resources!

 

[Cinéad IV]

The other thing is never to underestimate the power of a good general, particularly if the general in question nicreases your reliability, organisation, defence and firepower. Speed is a desirabe attribute in cavalry generals so that you can respond rapidly to sea-borne assaults before the British can establish a beachhead.

I find a stack of five cavalry currassiers to be the most effective way to do this. Three of these stacks should be enough to cover your entire coastline.

 

[Lord Finnish]

Thanks for advice, I "won" the war with 60 cavalry-cuirassers and destroyed more than 30 british scum divisions befroe neville'ing peace.
I also got civilized in 1868.