Started a Manchukuo playthrough for my first Waking the Tiger run. Here's a little feedback. First of all I should say that I'm a very casual player who is playing on regular and not good at minmaxing stuff.
1. I've heard the independence war path would be hard. That isn't really the case I've experienced. Japan was fighting China and didn't station any troops near me, so when the war kicked out I just blitz through defenseless land. Took the entire Korea except Pusan and got all the way to Shandong before I meet any serious resistance.
2. The Japan surrender thing seems either bugged or carried out in a weird way. At some point when I took all of Korea, and bordered no Japanese occupation (Japan was still occupying parts of Southern China that belonged to nationalist China), Japan surrendered only to me, and gave me the land I occupied, and released Korea as an independent state, despite me occupying the entire Korea.
3. I wasn't too bothered by Korea since I have a focus to get a wargoal later anyway. I went on to conquer China. But then the peace conference started and Japan inevitably took some land from nationalist China. So wait, I've got to fight Japan AGAIN if I want to unite China? Fine, I declared war on Shaanxi which Japan somehow puppeted, but now I have no way of winning the war unless I invade Japanese homeland, just like before the update. That kinda defeats the whole purpose of the surrender mechanic I think.
4. Weird stuff happened in the middle of the war. Soviet Union, of all countries, was the first to invite me to its faction, but it wasn't at war with Japan at any point in my game. That was followed by the Allies when Japan declared war on the Dutch. And finally the Axis also tried to invite me, while I was fighting my second war with Japan.
5. Of all the Chinese factions, Manchukuo seems to be the most OP, since it loses almost all penalties once the independence war kicked out, and once I got the focus to get cores on all of China, the manpower and factories and everything just became unlimited.
1. I've heard the independence war path would be hard. That isn't really the case I've experienced. Japan was fighting China and didn't station any troops near me, so when the war kicked out I just blitz through defenseless land. Took the entire Korea except Pusan and got all the way to Shandong before I meet any serious resistance.
2. The Japan surrender thing seems either bugged or carried out in a weird way. At some point when I took all of Korea, and bordered no Japanese occupation (Japan was still occupying parts of Southern China that belonged to nationalist China), Japan surrendered only to me, and gave me the land I occupied, and released Korea as an independent state, despite me occupying the entire Korea.
3. I wasn't too bothered by Korea since I have a focus to get a wargoal later anyway. I went on to conquer China. But then the peace conference started and Japan inevitably took some land from nationalist China. So wait, I've got to fight Japan AGAIN if I want to unite China? Fine, I declared war on Shaanxi which Japan somehow puppeted, but now I have no way of winning the war unless I invade Japanese homeland, just like before the update. That kinda defeats the whole purpose of the surrender mechanic I think.
4. Weird stuff happened in the middle of the war. Soviet Union, of all countries, was the first to invite me to its faction, but it wasn't at war with Japan at any point in my game. That was followed by the Allies when Japan declared war on the Dutch. And finally the Axis also tried to invite me, while I was fighting my second war with Japan.
5. Of all the Chinese factions, Manchukuo seems to be the most OP, since it loses almost all penalties once the independence war kicked out, and once I got the focus to get cores on all of China, the manpower and factories and everything just became unlimited.