Frustrations as playing as Japan

[diplay name]

Hello, DH forums.

Here are a few problems I faced when playing as Japan that I wanted to share with you all:

1. Garrisons: Having to garrison islands are fine, but it annoys me greatly that auto-assign gives them my best generals to troops that may never even see combat. It'd be great if auto-assign skips armies with only garrison divisions. Also, it always feel like I never have enough garrisons because of the eternal tug-of-war with the AI and their love for invading seemindly random islands, but I don't consider that to be as much of an issue, since it's more about resource management.

2. Sinking enemies' ships are easy. Getting them off my lawn is not: The AI loves to send piecemeal fleets for who knows what reason throughout the ocean, which I can easily pick off with any fleet with a decent amount of capitals, save for enemy fleets with CVs, which I have other measures to deal with. But as fun it might be to send dozens of the enemy's ships out to the sea, it's not fun watching them sneak convoys off of you in areas that should be safe, retake or invade random islands with a frustrating frequency, and once you've finally cleared the Pacific of all enemy islands (which is no mean task, I assure you), do it anyway because screw naval range. It becomes impossible to project any sort of control into what should supposedly be my sphere of influence and the way the AI continuously makes these unblockable small-scale incursions is tedious at best.

3. No Intel: Playing the naval game on the Pacific is basically playing blind. The only way you can get any information about the enemy's fleets is to be literally on top of them. Provinces, regardless of installations do not provide any sort of detection whatsoever, and the intel screen does squat. It really drains the game of strategy and makes it a tedious whack-a-mole instead. It also makes NAVs useless, but fuck NAVs.

4. Can't Invade the US: This would normally not be a problem except for the fact that the only reason why I can't invade the US is because all of my troops seem to have shit org. regain. My planes work perfectly fine, but what kind of Japan has the IC to invest into a half-decent airforce anyway. I have no idea what this may be about- it might be due to the convoys being raided, perhaps? Which would make sense... except for the problem of how difficult it is to try to keep my convoys safe in this game. I managed to conquer over half the country before the Allies began to push me back, because the peace event wouldn't fire due to how the province density is much higher on the east coast than the west.

If anyone could explain to my why my troops' org. regain went to shat, I'd be grateful.


Things I would like changed:

1. Auto-assign no longer assigns generals to garrison-only armies: Self-explanatory.
2. Installations provide detection values: Or at least naval bases. This would help make the game feel a lot more strategic, and help deal with the frustrations of unblockable AI incursions by giving a way of dealing with them if you've worked up the effort to set up a line of defence.
3. Please increase Naval-Air damage ratios:: I think quadrupling it from its current values is a good place to start off. This is more specifically for NAVs, and more applicable in the Atlantic front, but NAVs are right now way too powerful- even against CVs. I don't think their prowess against undefended fleets should be touched, but they should at least take a beating when facing enemies with appropriate defenses so that they can't just batter them over and over again with no repercussions.
4. Mengkukuo should annex Mongolia and Tannu Tuva at Bitter Peace.: Kind of frustrating to get a huge chunk of Siberia but not actual cores for your puppets. At least BP releaes Sinkiang from puppet status.
5. No -5 Infrastructure events: This is specifically with regards to the Huayankow flooding event, but having -5 infrastructure means that I will never be able to bring it up to 100 infrastructure, which bugs me greatly. More of a personal issue, but would be nice if it was dealt with,

Additionally: Some levels of the democratic-authoritarian slider require a certain relationship level before DoW. Going either way into the slider removes this. Any reason for this other than to make certain slider levels bad?


Anyone else's thoughts on my opinions? Or experiences that differed from mine and would like to share?

 

[Limith]

I generally turn off auto general assignment and manually assign everyone. It's not so hard to do. Create a save game after fixing your OOB, name it "faction start". You can sort by skill and then select only Mj. Generals and assign them to the garrisons. They'll gain experience if needed as well. Also I tend to change the upgrade path for all garrisons to Inf because why not.

Detection is a mixed bag yea.
NAVs are really strong, yes. Air superiority is the only counter currently.
Regarding your org regen, org regen is modified by infrastructure level of the province you are in. It is also modified by your supply efficiency which includes the route that supplies take from your capital (some function that includes the average of infrastructure across the provinces). Generally always make sure your capital has 100% infrastructure. Partisans also affect your supply efficiency, so make sure that partisans aren't so high. You get a flat bonus for offensive supply to supply efficiency so always use offensive supply when possible. I'm guessing either you had too many back and forths on the front (each time a province siwtches hands part of the infrastructure is destroyed) or you have large swaths of territory ungarrisoned and partisans is destroying your supply efficiency. The other possibility is your convoy efficiency is low. Sometime the auto convoy ai isn't the brightest, just pump it up manually so it doesn't matter how much is lost.

 

[Soul of Darknes]

The naval wars are simple, you send ships and wait, the AI is very dumb, they send unprotected transports and lose divisions, invade territories with 1 divisions etc
When ibplay with Japan i transform most of my garrisons into infantry, more useful than protecting some useless islands.
You can use all your troops to defeat China, they can't invade your mainland
When you defeat China?
When you invade USA?

 

[Eugenioso]

Garrisons: yes, key islands with good ports and airfields are indeed important to hold, work on that. Let the AI invade worthless islands for no reason, it strains their TC and makes their convoy lanes extra vulnerable. This means that you should defend key locations, like the dutch east indies, which will give you tons of oil, rares and energy, but forget about the smaller islands with no ports or no VP's, they dont matter. Also, as stated, dont auto assign leaders to armies, there is a button there that stops that from happening.

2.- The AI operates differently than you. Usually they will have many smaller fleets with them, and 2 or 3 big fleets with CV's and BB's. Sinking the smaller ships is nothing when your CV's get raided by an enemy fleet during a storm at night by a BB fleet and watch half your capitals sink. No matter how good you are, your ships are always in danger regardless. Dont believe me? see what happens when a japanese carrier fleet meets a substack, its not nice to the carriers.

3.- For intel, use either small sub flotillas stationed in key locations, and use airplanes to supplement that (as well as to blow the enemy ships to smithereens). Remember, the japanese managed to travel from Japan all the way to Hawaii undetected by taking a route that was not frequented by ships or was too far into the ocean to be spotted by planes. The only other way to know is when the AI plans an amphibious landing on a garrisoned island, and that gives away a vulnerable enemy fleet.

4.- Japan needs to have a good airforce, for 2 reasons: ship destruction and ground support. Invading the US from the east is a daunting task for japanese players, as your forces will be fighting against a growing number of american divisions, most of the time equipped with large amounts of mechanized and armored divs, more so than even the german army. To win versus the US, you need:

- A huge amount of infantry, all equipped either with ART or AT (to increase your hard attack values)
- A somewhat considerable number of mountaineers with ART or AT.
- A good airforce, for ground attack and air defense.
- A very high convoy count, in the thousands, to keep your forces supplied/bring back the booty.

Convoy lanes do not contribute to the ORG regain of your troops; that was the case for AoI, but whatever. Your doctrine is one that gives advantages to your forces fighting in mountain, jungle and swamp with low infrastructure, as well as giving tremendous bonuses to your mountaineers and marines, but giving an average morale (org regain) and very few bonuses to ARM or MEC, which you usually wont build as Japan due to the IC given and the terrain you fight in. In other words, use combined arms with your armies to surround and destroy the americans; dont simply push them back. A mountaineer rush through a mountain and an infantry rush into open ground can trap very large numbers of americans.

Also, change your ministers to ones that follow your doctrine. A 20% bonus org minister is excellent in all situations, for example.


The changes:

1.- The answer is in the game. Turn off the option.
2.- Explained above.
3.- This has been extensively discussed in the forum. Yes, NAV's need to either be nerfed or air attack/defense of ships increased a ton. Modders have succeded to a degree with some mods, like TRP.
4.- Mengkukuo was part of the japanese plan to keep many smaller puppet states under their control and at odds with each other rather than a massive state which could rebel against their rule. Mengkukuo would not annex Tannu Tuva or Mongolia for that very reason.
5.- Do you cheat? because what you mention smells like cheating, building 10 infra is already 7 years ingame, longer than all of ww2.

 

[diplay name]

I'll mainly reply to Eugenioso's post since his is the most comprehensive:

Garrisons: yes, key islands with good ports and airfields are indeed important to hold, work on that. Let the AI invade worthless islands for no reason, it strains their TC and makes their convoy lanes extra vulnerable. This means that you should defend key locations, like the dutch east indies, which will give you tons of oil, rares and energy, but forget about the smaller islands with no ports or no VP's, they dont matter. Also, as stated, dont auto assign leaders to armies, there is a button there that stops that from happening.

1.- The answer is in the game. Turn off the option.

I wouldn't agree on both counts. It's predictable where the AI would want to land, so the only place where you really need to garrison is Hong Kong, just in case that somehow fucks up with China. It's just annoying to see the AI land at all, really. Try loading up as Japan and see how long it takes the AI to take even just Truk. It'll take a while, especially if you've taken any of their bases in the meantime.

As for auto-assign... consdering why it even exists in the first place, not really much of a solution, :s

2.- The AI operates differently than you. Usually they will have many smaller fleets with them, and 2 or 3 big fleets with CV's and BB's. Sinking the smaller ships is nothing when your CV's get raided by an enemy fleet during a storm at night by a BB fleet and watch half your capitals sink. No matter how good you are, your ships are always in danger regardless. Dont believe me? see what happens when a japanese carrier fleet meets a substack, its not nice to the carriers.

I wholeheartedly agree that the most threatening portion of the AI's navy is their subs, but even that's comparatively. Their subs are more annoying than threatening since pretty much any non-CTF fleet beats the crap out of them, due to the AI not being very diligent with their torpedoes. I haven't found the AI to be much of a threat at all really. To be fair, I do think that they keep their carriers together in a CTF, but all I need to do is keep a random fleet of TPs garrisoned somewhere and boom. As I said, it's more tedious and frustrating than it is much of a challenge.

3.- For intel, use either small sub flotillas stationed in key locations, and use airplanes to supplement that (as well as to blow the enemy ships to smithereens). Remember, the japanese managed to travel from Japan all the way to Hawaii undetected by taking a route that was not frequented by ships or was too far into the ocean to be spotted by planes. The only other way to know is when the AI plans an amphibious landing on a garrisoned island, and that gives away a vulnerable enemy fleet.

I actually wish I could see a message when an enemy tried to land on an ungarrissoned island, since neither the AI or me seems to be capable of being bothered to have them attack islands that I have garrisoned. But keeping subs around everywhere hardly seems like a tactic for scouting as opposed to just blowing shit up. Which in the latter case, is perfectly valid. Personally, I plan to try keeping fleets on Panama and the Magellan next time I clear out the Pacific and see how that goes, but I might really just build a shitload of subs and scatter them everywhere if I still have issues after that.

4.- Japan needs to have a good airforce, for 2 reasons: ship destruction and ground support. Invading the US from the east is a daunting task for japanese players, as your forces will be fighting against a growing number of american divisions, most of the time equipped with large amounts of mechanized and armored divs, more so than even the german army. To win versus the US, you need:

- A huge amount of infantry, all equipped either with ART or AT (to increase your hard attack values)
- A somewhat considerable number of mountaineers with ART or AT.
- A good airforce, for ground attack and air defense.
- A very high convoy count, in the thousands, to keep your forces supplied/bring back the booty.

Completely incorrect, I'm afraid. The US is a pushover and you have plenty of time between D-Day and the AI actually getting any significant amount of boots onto the ground to defeat them without that, especially if you land on the east coast, where there is a very high province density compared to the west, meaning you'll be hitting the breaking point much quicker. That being said, you do need a lot of convoys though, that I completely agree. It might actually be better off invading from the West just for that reason, though I'm pretty sure that the US AI doesn't switch to a land-focus build until someone actually starts landing on its coasts, so not like there's a shortage of time. Personally, I invaded the USA from the west using Hawaii as a staging point (didn't realise that latin american countries would randomly join the allies and give me another staging point that way until it was too late), but I still would have likely won had I not had the inexplicable org. regain problems.

The only planes you really need are one or two stacks Interceptors of FIghters in case the AI starts bombing you, but it didn't do that until a while into the invasion, so no idea just how necessary they are, or how willing the AI is to use them against you. Might be possible to beat the US before they start bombing you, maybe not.

As for NAVs, I found them useful for that one time I baited the AI's CTF, but other than that, the Pacific is way too wide to make effective use of them with Japan's limited IC. They are OP, but much better suited for the Atlantic.

Convoy lanes do not contribute to the ORG regain of your troops; that was the case for AoI, but whatever. Your doctrine is one that gives advantages to your forces fighting in mountain, jungle and swamp with low infrastructure, as well as giving tremendous bonuses to your mountaineers and marines, but giving an average morale (org regain) and very few bonuses to ARM or MEC, which you usually wont build as Japan due to the IC given and the terrain you fight in. In other words, use combined arms with your armies to surround and destroy the americans; dont simply push them back. A mountaineer rush through a mountain and an infantry rush into open ground can trap very large numbers of americans.

The thing about org. regain is that it was completely inexplicably low. I didn't have much infra or TC issues, and I had plenty of convoys, but my troops had worse org. regain than they did in Burma or the Middle-East. It was really low, like ~0.3-0.35/day low when stationary. It'd be really nice if someone could explain this, because if it's not about convoys being raided, I have no idea what's left.

4.- Mengkukuo was part of the japanese plan to keep many smaller puppet states under their control and at odds with each other rather than a massive state which could rebel against their rule. Mengkukuo would not annex Tannu Tuva or Mongolia for that very reason.

I'm speaking purely out of my desire for aesthetics here. If there are cores, then I don't think I'm being unreasonable to expect them in a peace deal where you already get half of Siberia anyway.

5.- Do you cheat? because what you mention smells like cheating, building 10 infra is already 7 years ingame, longer than all of ww2.

Unfortunately not. If I did cheat, I would've just nuked the US and be done with it . Regardless of whether I would actually achieve that limit though (which I won't, because it's owned by U87 anyway), the fact that exists still bugs the crap out of me, haha.

 

[Limith]

Regarding your org regen, org regen is modified by infrastructure level of the province you are in. It is also modified by your supply efficiency which includes the route that supplies take from your capital (some function that includes the average of infrastructure across the provinces). Generally always make sure your capital has 100% infrastructure. Partisans also affect your supply efficiency, so make sure that partisans aren't so high. You get a flat bonus for offensive supply to supply efficiency so always use offensive supply when possible. I'm guessing either you had too many back and fourths on the front (each time a province switches hands part of the infrastructure is destroyed) or you have large swaths of territory ungarrisoned and partisans is destroying your supply efficiency. The other possibility is your convoy efficiency is low. Sometime the auto convoy ai isn't the brightest, just pump it up manually so it doesn't matter how much is lost.

The infrastructure level of all provinces in the route from where the unit is to your capital is used when calculating supply efficiency. There is a penalty on it due to partisans. Whenever you take a province the infrastructure value is halved. Thus your supply efficiency may be low as you mentioned you advanced quite a bit. It takes some time for those provinces to heal back up and if you left them ungarrisoned you will be getting a good amount of penalty on your supply efficiency. Besides that, the infrastructure value of the province you are in tends to matter a good deal, as does your current org level. It's faster to recover from 0 to 25% than it is from 70 to 100%. Third you can generally resolve most org regain issues by using offensive supply as it provides a flat bonus.

 

[SushiS]

Hello, DH forums.

Here are a few problems I faced when playing as Japan that I wanted to share with you all:

1. Garrisons: Having to garrison islands are fine, but it annoys me greatly that auto-assign gives them my best generals to troops that may never even see combat. It'd be great if auto-assign skips armies with only garrison divisions. Also, it always feel like I never have enough garrisons because of the eternal tug-of-war with the AI and their love for invading seemindly random islands, but I don't consider that to be as much of an issue, since it's more about resource management.

2. Sinking enemies' ships are easy. Getting them off my lawn is not: The AI loves to send piecemeal fleets for who knows what reason throughout the ocean, which I can easily pick off with any fleet with a decent amount of capitals, save for enemy fleets with CVs, which I have other measures to deal with. But as fun it might be to send dozens of the enemy's ships out to the sea, it's not fun watching them sneak convoys off of you in areas that should be safe, retake or invade random islands with a frustrating frequency, and once you've finally cleared the Pacific of all enemy islands (which is no mean task, I assure you), do it anyway because screw naval range. It becomes impossible to project any sort of control into what should supposedly be my sphere of influence and the way the AI continuously makes these unblockable small-scale incursions is tedious at best.

3. No Intel: Playing the naval game on the Pacific is basically playing blind. The only way you can get any information about the enemy's fleets is to be literally on top of them. Provinces, regardless of installations do not provide any sort of detection whatsoever, and the intel screen does squat. It really drains the game of strategy and makes it a tedious whack-a-mole instead. It also makes NAVs useless, but fuck NAVs.

4. Can't Invade the US: This would normally not be a problem except for the fact that the only reason why I can't invade the US is because all of my troops seem to have shit org. regain. My planes work perfectly fine, but what kind of Japan has the IC to invest into a half-decent airforce anyway. I have no idea what this may be about- it might be due to the convoys being raided, perhaps? Which would make sense... except for the problem of how difficult it is to try to keep my convoys safe in this game. I managed to conquer over half the country before the Allies began to push me back, because the peace event wouldn't fire due to how the province density is much higher on the east coast than the west.

If anyone could explain to my why my troops' org. regain went to shat, I'd be grateful.


Things I would like changed:

1. Auto-assign no longer assigns generals to garrison-only armies: Self-explanatory.
2. Installations provide detection values: Or at least naval bases. This would help make the game feel a lot more strategic, and help deal with the frustrations of unblockable AI incursions by giving a way of dealing with them if you've worked up the effort to set up a line of defence.
3. Please increase Naval-Air damage ratios:: I think quadrupling it from its current values is a good place to start off. This is more specifically for NAVs, and more applicable in the Atlantic front, but NAVs are right now way too powerful- even against CVs. I don't think their prowess against undefended fleets should be touched, but they should at least take a beating when facing enemies with appropriate defenses so that they can't just batter them over and over again with no repercussions.
4. Mengkukuo should annex Mongolia and Tannu Tuva at Bitter Peace.: Kind of frustrating to get a huge chunk of Siberia but not actual cores for your puppets. At least BP releaes Sinkiang from puppet status.
5. No -5 Infrastructure events: This is specifically with regards to the Huayankow flooding event, but having -5 infrastructure means that I will never be able to bring it up to 100 infrastructure, which bugs me greatly. More of a personal issue, but would be nice if it was dealt with,

Additionally: Some levels of the democratic-authoritarian slider require a certain relationship level before DoW. Going either way into the slider removes this. Any reason for this other than to make certain slider levels bad?


Anyone else's thoughts on my opinions? Or experiences that differed from mine and would like to share?

1. after all, IJA garrison DIVISION were ahistorical.
2. a game engine problem
3. a game engine problem
4. you should use the ahistorical Attu naval base.

 

[Furor_Teutonicus]

Really? I remember one of the major reasons why DH was faster than AOD being the fact that it didn't calculate supply routes from capital. Are you sure?

I am 99,9% sure, that there are no supply routes. Only the infrastructure of the province where the troops are stationed is important.

 

[Limith]

I am 99,9% sure, that there are no supply routes. Only the infrastructure of the province where the troops are stationed is important.

For some reason I have this funny notion reading the ESE formula somewhere and that even though there is no supply routes the infra of your capital to front lines does matter. Either that or I've been building up my capital infra to 100% in kaiserreich for no reason.

 

[TremblingBlue]

I also hate Island hopping and naval warfare in the pacific, but my advice is merely from a strategic point of view. Some important points that I always adhere to:

Commit to achieving victory in China within 2 years. Any longer and you risk not having the brute force needed to really commit to a war with the allies.

Money should be spent on getting Thailand into the alliance ASAP. Don't wait for events.

Take the Dutch East Indies as soon as you can after Germany annexes the Netherlands. It'll annoy allies but they won't/can't do anything.

Assemble yours and the rapidly growing Chinese armies as you see fit and attack the Allies (not the USA), gearing toward total control of the British Raj and Australasia. You can start island hopping in the south if you please.

Puppet nations like India, Burma etc. and you have your western defences eventually covered by them.

The USA should declare war around 1942. By this point you should have a really solid grip on Asia, the means to maintain good production, and the upper hand militarily. From this stand point you'll at the very least maintain a permanent static defence, and I usually ignore them and hit the Soviet Union at this point.