Expeditionary/Volunteer forces!

[Zaku]

The AI sent 4 divisions... If they start with the historical Japanese configuration (which is variable in game some divisions are big, some are small,) They'd have 20,000 each.

Japanese divisions are very large compared to a lot of other nations.

I edited my post, please read it again.

 

[SpartanV15]

The one thing i noticed about the picture is that it states you cannot request that your volunteer divisions be sent back home during the war. Why is it that we cannot withdraw our divisions until the war has ended or until the player themselves end up in the war?

 

[jamesd]

The Spanish Nationalists made substantial use of Moroccan Muslim soldiers during the war, so I'm not sure this is correct.

Those Moroccans were Spanish, in the sense that Spanish Morocco was part of Spain and their regiments were long standing parts of the Spanish army and were regarded as a cut above the average unit - probably because they had more combat experience due to regular skirmishing with Moroccans who weren't happy at being part of Spain. To me, those units are the Spanish equivalent of the pre-war British Empire Indian forces.

There is no rationale for Japanese forces to be committed to Spain. There is no shared ethnicity, no shared religion, no shared geo-political region, no shared territorial ambitions (the Spanish wouldn't join Germany to recover Gibraltar at the height of their power after defeating France), no significant advantage in supporting the winner compared to the damaged relations with the UK & France.

 

[agus92]

True, but maybe the player wants to make a different approach to the game, one where he knows he wants to please Germany, a fascist Spain on the side of Axis could close Gibraltar, this would have consequences to the British supply in the Indian ocean. Or whatever other reason the player imagines.

Then Japan has to move diplomatically BEFORE sending people. Sending supplies would be fine, though.

I find that very hard to believe, I know it wouldn't make much sense for Japan at that time to help fascist Spain, but supplying a couple of divisions isn't that hard... its not like Japan would have to send everything, most supplies they could just buy from a local friendly nation, no need to send them all the way from Japan, only the very specific stuff like munitions and spare parts.

munitions, spare parts and clothes is the bulk of the supplies.

 

[Porkman]

The Japanese in Spain is like Russell's Teapot.

"Russell wrote that if he claims that a teapot orbits the Sun somewhere in space between the Earth and Mars, it is nonsensical for him to expect others to believe him on the grounds that they cannot prove him wrong."

It is technically possible for the Japanese to have hypothetically sent troops to Spain...

It's just so improbable/implausible to the point that it should be impossible.

 

[agus92]

Those Moroccan's were Spanish, in the sense that Spanish Morocco was part of Spain and their regiments were long standing parts of the Spanish army and were regarded as a cut above the average unit - probably because they had more combat experience due to regular skirmishing with Moroccans who weren't happy at being part of Spain. To me, those units are the Spanish equivalent of the pre-war British Empire Indian forces.

There is no rationale for Japanese forces to be committed to Spain. There is no shared ethnicity, no shared religion, no shared geo-political region, no shared territorial ambitions (the Spanish wouldn't join Germany to recover Gibraltar at the height of their power after defeating France), no significant advantage in supporting the winner compared to the damaged relations with the UK & France.

Bingo.

 

[Zaku]

Japanese divisions are very large compared to a lot of other nations.

Actually since the game also calls brigade sized formations as division we can't know how many troops were exactly in that 4 divs. I assumed that the AI uses the basic 3*3 because that seems avarage across all nations. 20K would be 5*4 which is not available at game start, I belive you need xp to unlock the slots.

 

[Porkman]

Also, Moroccans fought under Nationalist Command whereas the game is specifically making these volunteer forces autonomous under the control of an external nation.

 

[Porkman]

Actually since the game also calls brigade sized formations as division we can't know how many troops were exactly there. I assumed that the AI uses the basic 3*3 because that seems avarage across all nations. 20K would be 5*4 which is not available at game start I belive you need xp to unlock the slots.

It's not even across all nations...

Giving Japan beefed up division sizes from the start since they have been at war since the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 would be a good way to give the Japanese a prewar boost against the Allies.

Japan should start with large divisions. They had them in 1936 and they had the war experience to justify having them.

 

[agus92]

I think the problem is that most people misunderstand the "historical mode". That doesn't mean that the AI will always do the historical decisions. It only means that the AI will take the historical National Focuses(if it can, if not it will deviate even in that)

Although true, the idea behind is to create an historical-like scenario. We got deviated from it rather quickly. So the historical mode failed (due to poor balancing, nothing to worry about as long as the Devs acknowlegde it).

 

[Zaku]

It's not even across all nations...

Giving Japan beefed up division sizes from the start since they have been at war since the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 would be a good way to give the Japanese a prewar boost against the Allies.

Japan should start with large divisions. They had them in 1936 and they had the war experience to justify having them.

Yeah but my point still stands: we don't know how many troops were actually sent. It was definitely not 160K as James suggested.
It could be 4 independent brigades for all we know. I assumed it was around 10K /div since that was shown in screenshots so far.

Also, I'm not even thinking that these numbers matter, since the game is beta. All that matters that I think its okay for Japan to send some troops to support a civil war for various reasons. I already went into details in my previous posts.

 

[jamesd]

I belive one basic Hoi4 infantry Division is 10K men and not 20K as you suggest. I could not find a japanese screenshot, but I found a soviet infantry division which had 9.3K(3*3bats+1 arty) manpower in it. For 20K you would need 5*4, which is not available without spending XP first I belive.
If someone could find info on a Japanese infantry divsion in HOI4 please post it.

But the AI sent 40K(or 80K maximum) and not 160K. I don't see where you got this high number.

I explained it in my post, and if you look up TOE's for Japanese square divisions you will see some of them were actually 25,000 men so I was being conservative. The forces committed to a campaign are not just infantry battalions, and not just divisions but all the supporting and logistics troops. You mentioned the Italians sending 75,000 men (which is a real number and not a HOI4 number) and claimed the Japanese were only sending half as many. The triangular Italian divisions prior to switching to the binary TOE would have only had 13,000 men each, so 4 of them come to 52,000 and they actually sent 78,000 men, or 50% more than was in the divisions, to Spain and were able to keep a lot of their base and logistics troops in Italy due to the proximity while Japan would not have had that option.

FYI, a 1936 Japanese template should include:
16 infantry battalions (4 regiments each of which was about 33% larger than European regiments)
4-5 artillery battalions (36-48 guns in the artillery regiment plus 16 75mm mountain guns assigned to the infantry regiments)
1 support AT unit (24 AT guns)
1 recon unit
1 engineer unit

Please don't equate the templates in HOI4 as being representative of actual TOE's as they existed. Every template I've seen so far has been lacking components.

 

[Porkman]

Yeah but my point still stands: we don't know how many troops were actually sent. It was definitely not 160K as James suggested.
It could be 4 independent brigades for all we know.

But that shows another reason why the mechanic is broken.

In the screen cap it's by DIVISION. So if Germany sends two brigade sized divisions and Japan sends 4 20,000 man divisions, that's a problem. It should be via manpower or supply footprint.

 

[Zaku]

I explained it in my post, and if you look up TOE's for Japanese square divisions you will see some of them actually were actually 25,000 men so I was being conservative. The forces committed to a campaign are not just infantry battalions, and not just divisions but all the supporting and logistics troops. You mentioned the Italians sending 75,000 men (which is a real number and not a HOI4 number) and claimed the Japanese were only sending half as many. The triangular Italian divisions prior to switching to the binary TOE would have only had 13,000 men each, so 4 of them come to 52,000 and they actually sent 78,000 men, or 50% more than was in the divisions, to Spain and were able to keep a lot of their base and logistics troops in Italy due to the proximity while Japan would not have had that option.

FYI, a 1936 Japanese template should include:
16 infantry battalions (4 regiments each of which was about 33% larger than European regiments)
4-5 artillery battalions (36-48 guns in the artillery regiment plus 16 75mm mountain guns assigned to the infantry regiments)
1 support AT unit (24 AT guns)
1 recon unit
1 engineer unit

Please don't equate the templates in HOI4 as being representative of actual TOE's as they existed. Every template I've seen so far has been lacking components.

So how do you know how many troops does a HOI4 japanese infantry division have? I know that historically they were large but ingame it's definitely not 23-24 battalions as you suggest.

 

[Zaku]

But that shows another reason why the mechanic is broken.

In the screen cap it's by DIVISION. So if Germany sends two brigade sized divisions and Japan sends 4 20,000 man divisions, that's a problem. It should be via manpower or supply footprint.

That's not a broken mechanic.
That's balance issue as I mentioned 100 times already.

 

[agus92]

That's not a broken mechanic.
That's balance issue as I mentioned 100 times already.

The possibility to intervine is a balance issue. Having two sets of rules to measure the same lenght is broken (unless we are missing something).

 

[jamesd]

So how do you know how many troops does a HOI4 japanese infantry division have? I know that historically they were large but ingame it's definitely not 23-24 battalions as you suggest.

I know how many battalions should be in the divisional templates of many countries because I've played WW2 wargames for about 30 years and I've spent more time researching OOB's and TOE's in the last 20 years than I've spent playing. The Japanese square infantry division template should have the numbers of battalions as I listed in my post. Whether Paradox manages to create historically accurate templates for HOI4 or continues with the substandard OOB's and TOE's that they've used previously is yet to be seen.

One of the points I made was that you used real life Italian numbers committed to Spain, and real life numbers of Japanese and British overseas forces, so therefore in order to analyse the Japanese expeditionary force to Spain in the live stream we need to use real life numbers and not HOI numbers, which have always been understated.

 

[jamesd]

That's not a broken mechanic.
That's balance issue as I mentioned 100 times already.

Yes it is a broken mechanic. From the German decision to commit forces to Spain, we could see that they were able to send 2 divisions based on the number of divisions they had operational. This means that if a nation spams regiment/brigade sized units, they can then send a greater number of full sized divisions to intervene. Germany had the option of sending 2 divisions of a starting total of 30, so 1 for every 15 units. If instead of 30 divisions they had 5 divisions and 75 brigades, they would be able to send 5 units, meaning they could send the divisions and keep the brigades at home. This would increase the size of their intervention by 150% despite having the same numbers of troops.

 

[Zaku]

I know how many battalions should be in the divisional templates of many countries because I've played WW2 wargames for about 30 years and I've spent more time researching OOB's and TOE's in the last 20 years than I've spent playing. The Japanese square infantry division template should have the numbers of battalions as I listed in my post. Whether Paradox manages to create historically accurate templates for HOI4 or continues with the substandard OOB's and TOE's that they've used previously is yet to be seen.

One of the points I made was that you used real life Italian numbers committed to Spain, and real life numbers of Japanese and British overseas forces, so therefore in order to analyse the Japanese expeditionary force to Spain in the live stream we need to use real life numbers and not HOI numbers, which have always been understated.

I don't see the connection.
I used historical numbers because someone was debating that sending several divisions was a joke, I pointed out that it happened in real life.
I never argued about historical OOBs, because they are not in HOI4 so it doesn't matter very much in this topic.
All I'm saying is that Japan should be able to supply 4 HOI4 divisions overseas.

 

[Porkman]

I don't see the connection.
I used historical numbers because someone was debating that sending several divisions was a joke, I pointed out that it happened in real life.
I never argued about historical OOBs, because they are not in HOI4 so it doesn't matter very much in this topic.
All I'm saying is that Japan should be able to supply 4 HOI4 divisions overseas.

Japan should be able to supply 4 divisions overseas at cost to their own logistics and supply capacity in areas that they had a historical interest in.