How do I win as Communist China?

[GermanDave]

My problem is that the KMT evenetually just gets obliterated by Japan who will then just overrun me. What is the meta here?

 

[Ivio]

What i do, i join comintern and wait for japan to attack china. Take focus japanese expeditions before that and infiltrate few areas and once jap attacks you declare war on him. With russia and other china on your side you wont have much problems.

Problem with this is that Stalin calls Chang Kai Shek into comintern, that would not happen in million years in reality but what can you do

 

[GermanDave]

What i do, i join comintern and wait for japan to attack china. Take focus japanese expeditions before that and infiltrate few areas and once jap attacks you declare war on him. With russia and other china on your side you wont have much problems.

Problem with this is that Stalin calls Chang Kai Shek into comintern, that would not happen in million years in reality but what can you do

Thanks. Kind of sucks that we have to play like this. I assume there is no way of forming China afterwards?

 

[Makhno]

I do that Ivio, and it's kinda bit... disappointing.
I leave the comintern when USSR join me. KMT join it.
3 years of bloody war, but Japan has been kicked.
KMT loses but yunan and xibei became the new China.
But... Germans attacked USSR, USSR died, the comintern capitulate :

http://tof.cx/images/2018/03/12/6ec19f91e8a26709b5ce949081e3ac5b.jpg
Everybody join the faction of Japan but the Korea and Xinjiang.
I feel a bit alone.

 

[Duke_Dave]

I staged a communist coup in Japan. Somewhat midway through the war. They had to pull out enough troops so that we could overrun them.
Two problems:

- The white peace that kicks Japan off the continent ends the civil war but resets the Japanese focus tree so they will declare war on you again and annoy you with naval landings.

- In 1947 while I was marching south to victory my game crashed and now my Ironman red china is ruined, so game might not be stable that late in the war, or my messing with Japan might have caused this.

 

[Real Strategist]

Guys...

It's easy.
1. fight and annex your left neighbor
2. as Japan attacks China: form an alliance with China (focus tree)
3. fight back Japan until they offer a white peace (usually when their puppets are finished on the continent)
4. attack Nat. China immediately by escalating a border conflict
- that's the hardest part because they have more and better troops than you
- so the trick is to let China and Japan kill each other enough that you can win both wars
-- if you wait to long Nat. China gets beaten and you die with them
-- if you help too much you got problems to annex China
5. do some more border conflicts or fullfill the China as one Nation focus (or whatever the name is; the red one) which grants you wargoals on all warlords of China

time to complete the 2 PRC achievements should be about 8-12 hours (depending on your micro)

So good luck to you.

 

[Real Strategist]

Thanks. Kind of sucks that we have to play like this. I assume there is no way of forming China afterwards?

It's not necessary to join the comintern. Even if you create your own faction they will send you volunteers against Japan because you are communist.
Xinjiang even sends you forces to win both wars.

So why should I join comintern when beating Japan is quite easy?

 

[GermanDave]

It's not necessary to join the comintern. Even if you create your own faction they will send you volunteers against Japan because you are communist.
Xinjiang even sends you forces to win both wars.

So why should I join comintern when beating Japan is quite easy?

I don't find it easy. Care to elaborate how you win if KMT always shits the bed?

 

[Serathion]

How do I gain any territory if I join the united front? I can't hope to outproduce ROC with Shaanxi alone. Do I really have to fight and win against the Mas before the Japanese attack? The Xi'an Incident event cannot fire without them, can it?

 

[MadDjinn]

when in doubt, infiltrate.

It takes 3 infiltrations per province to get it to flip to you during an uprising. 4 infiltrations give you a bit more. You can do these against both Japan/vassals and NatChina.

First target should be the Japanese. Just focus on getting provinces near you to be ready for uprising and then keep expanding it til you have to start the uprising (NatChina sucks at defense). You can totally ignore joining the war against Japan, but the warlords definitely need to help, else it falls apart fast.

Once that's done, start on Nat China. You can effectively take everything in northern China/Japanese vassals if you have the time. All without a fight and you get a tonne of troops for free.

Or go border wars. It's slow, but with NatChina and the warlords busy against Japan, you can generally get free provinces (no defenders, so insta win).

Or play the 'politics game' and take over. Though this is the worst version because you don't get the ability to remove the crap penalties in NatChina. Best to just let each of the warlords take over first though, because they keep playing the game even if a puppet or someone else takes over. If left alone, at least 2 warlords will take over NatChina.

 

[Serathion]

The uprising starts a war though. Also, if I'm not in the war against the Japanese, the AI might just die and then it's game over for me. I just don't really see the options unless everything falls into plan with incredible luck.

 

[donmolu]

There are many possible strategies as mentioned in the thread, I think that using Soviet Union as attack dog is the most straightforward. Here is what I did (I went with the Mao/PRC path):
1. Fabricate claim on Shanxi and Xibei San Ma. You can also get Sinkiang but I think it's not worth the effort as the time constrains are tight.
2. Take over Shanxi and Xibei San Ma. Shanxi is an easy pray, the latter can be of some trouble but with proper micro they are reliably beatable even if they get Soviet volunteers.
3. Join Comintern and fabricate on Nationalists. Japan should be close to invading or has invaded by now. Declare war on Nationalists. Take as much as you can from them before peace conference. This is the trickiest part, because if you hit the nationalists too hard, Japan will steamroll over them too quickly and you won't have a chance to grab anything. Try to get as much territory and war contribution.
4. After peace conference, Japan will most likely start fabricating on you. Get as many infantry divisions as possible and maybe even some support artillery, depending how much industry and resources you managed to grab. Soviets will do most of the fighting anyways but you can still have a significant contribution.
5. Japan will attack, and it will attack hard. Hope for Soviet AI to perform well, and help it as much as you can. Eventually, Japan will run out of steam and will start getting pushed back. Fabricate and annex Guangxi Clique, keep in mind they are not a pushover and you will need Soviet help to beat them, but the resources and industry they have are a massive boon to your war capability.
6. After you kick Japan off mainland, you can complete focus to establish People's Republic of China, which will make you leave Comintern. It is necessary to get rid off that crippling economy modifier.
7. You need to capitulate Japan to end the war. Invading Japan is not easy but it's doable. Japan should be badly beaten by now after losing their mainland possessions (assuming you encircled and overrun their divisions which you absolutely should). I trained 6 paratrooper divisions (20 width) with support engineers and artillery and managed to get around 300 fighter 2s and 200 CAS 2s, also 30 transport planes. You can't take too much time to prepare because Japan will rebuild their army. I attacked in very early 1941.
8. Drop paratroopers in Japan near some port, capture the port, capture the nearest airbase (or build your own). Get air superiority and let your CAS do their job, paratroopers are useless on offense but they can hold ground.
9. Good job. Well done!

 

[GermanDave]

when in doubt, infiltrate.

It takes 3 infiltrations per province to get it to flip to you during an uprising. 4 infiltrations give you a bit more. You can do these against both Japan/vassals and NatChina.

First target should be the Japanese. Just focus on getting provinces near you to be ready for uprising and then keep expanding it til you have to start the uprising (NatChina sucks at defense). You can totally ignore joining the war against Japan, but the warlords definitely need to help, else it falls apart fast.

Once that's done, start on Nat China. You can effectively take everything in northern China/Japanese vassals if you have the time. All without a fight and you get a tonne of troops for free.

Or go border wars. It's slow, but with NatChina and the warlords busy against Japan, you can generally get free provinces (no defenders, so insta win).

Or play the 'politics game' and take over. Though this is the worst version because you don't get the ability to remove the crap penalties in NatChina. Best to just let each of the warlords take over first though, because they keep playing the game even if a puppet or someone else takes over. If left alone, at least 2 warlords will take over NatChina.

Not enought time.

There are many possible strategies as mentioned in the thread, I think that using Soviet Union as attack dog is the most straightforward. Here is what I did (I went with the Mao/PRC path):
1. Fabricate claim on Shanxi and Xibei San Ma. You can also get Sinkiang but I think it's not worth the effort as the time constrains are tight.
2. Take over Shanxi and Xibei San Ma. Shanxi is an easy pray, the latter can be of some trouble but with proper micro they are reliably beatable even if they get Soviet volunteers.
3. Join Comintern and fabricate on Nationalists. Japan should be close to invading or has invaded by now. Declare war on Nationalists. Take as much as you can from them before peace conference. This is the trickiest part, because if you hit the nationalists too hard, Japan will steamroll over them too quickly and you won't have a chance to grab anything. Try to get as much territory and war contribution.
4. After peace conference, Japan will most likely start fabricating on you. Get as many infantry divisions as possible and maybe even some support artillery, depending how much industry and resources you managed to grab. Soviets will do most of the fighting anyways but you can still have a significant contribution.
5. Japan will attack, and it will attack hard. Hope for Soviet AI to perform well, and help it as much as you can. Eventually, Japan will run out of steam and will start getting pushed back. Fabricate and annex Guangxi Clique, keep in mind they are not a pushover and you will need Soviet help to beat them, but the resources and industry they have are a massive boon to your war capability.
6. After you kick Japan off mainland, you can complete focus to establish People's Republic of China, which will make you leave Comintern. It is necessary to get rid off that crippling economy modifier.
7. You need to capitulate Japan to end the war. Invading Japan is not easy but it's doable. Japan should be badly beaten by now after losing their mainland possessions (assuming you encircled and overrun their divisions which you absolutely should). I trained 6 paratrooper divisions (20 width) with support engineers and artillery and managed to get around 300 fighter 2s and 200 CAS 2s, also 30 transport planes. You can't take too much time to prepare because Japan will rebuild their army. I attacked in very early 1941.
8. Drop paratroopers in Japan near some port, capture the port, capture the nearest airbase (or build your own). Get air superiority and let your CAS do their job, paratroopers are useless on offense but they can hold ground.
9. Good job. Well done!

Great. I'm not tp fond on joining cominitern. Thanks though. I'll just nerf Japan.

Guys...

It's easy.
1. fight and annex your left neighbor
2. as Japan attacks China: form an alliance with China (focus tree)
3. fight back Japan until they offer a white peace (usually when their puppets are finished on the continent)
4. attack Nat. China immediately by escalating a border conflict
- that's the hardest part because they have more and better troops than you
- so the trick is to let China and Japan kill each other enough that you can win both wars
-- if you wait to long Nat. China gets beaten and you die with them
-- if you help too much you got problems to annex China
5. do some more border conflicts or fullfill the China as one Nation focus (or whatever the name is; the red one) which grants you wargoals on all warlords of China

time to complete the 2 PRC achievements should be about 8-12 hours (depending on your micro)

So good luck to you.

Tried it. Nice bamboozle. Japan cannot be beaten. I'll just mod the game. WHY DO YOU HAVE TO MAKE THIS SO FRURSTRATING DEVS?!?!?!

 

[donmolu]

If you find the game too hard, you can just lower the difficulty level, no need for modding.

 

[GermanDave]

If you find the game too hard, you can just lower the difficulty level, no need for modding.

Lowing the diffivulty has done nothing for me. It's the fat that Commie China has no equipemnt abd even if Xibei San Ma is conquered beforehand you hardly have enouh factories. The nationalist AI is just too damn stupid to hold against the OP Japanese. I don't know if this has occured to you but Japan wins the war EVERY TIME unless you are the KMT player.

 

[Serathion]

Joining the Internationale is cheese and I would prefer to not do it.

It's not really better for you if the Japanese lose the war either, which is why I find that a bit frustrating. You basically would want them to fight each other down so much that you can use that to your advantage. Maybe trying to kill Shanxi imediatly after game start can give you enough territory to actually gain something from fighting the Japanese. Otherwise, the war against Japan does not make you stronger, but only ROC, unless you infiltrate all their provinces in the mean time, which in turn means that you can't really commit anything to attacking the Japanese, since your equipment get's tied down for that.

 

[PnGuin]

I struggled the first couple games playing “regular” difficulty, but am doing better because of early focus tree selection. I choose first “Land Redistribution,” second “The Yan’an Base Area,” third “Focus on China,” and fourth “Exploit the Weak Neighbors.” The last focus gives you a free war goals against Xibei San Ma (to the west) and Shanxi (to the east). Also, as soon as I have enough PP I start justifying against Sinkiang. An early, aggressive and fast win against Shanxi, then Xibei San Ma, and finally Sinkiang gives me a few resources, some factories and manpower. They key is do all this as quickly as you can.

While you’re waiting start cranking out 4 battalion Infantry Divisions (one of the starting templates). As soon as they’re ready to deploy (only partially trained) I manually deploy them “green” and then put them on training until they are at “Trained” level. I then move them into my combat army.

When I’ve finished conquering Shanxi and Xibei San Ma, I upgrade the template to 5 battalions (10 width) before attacking Sinkiang. By the time I finish the campaign and am ready to go to war with Japan, you should have ~24 of these divisions ready.

Once the decision comes up about forming the government of national defense comes up, I agree to join – but if your war with Sinkiang hasn’t finished yet, wait until you’ve conquered them before you join the war. (You’ll be in the alliance – just not at war with Japan).

For production I leave the two starting factories building Basic Infantry Equipment (the Type 88 rifles). They start at full efficiency, and every rifle you can produce is needed – I don’t take the efficiency hit for upgrading those two factories until I’m at war with Japan and am running a production surplus. All new military factories start producing Infantry Equipment 1 as soon as I have it researched … and they keep producing Infantry Equipment 1. I don’t build artillery or support equipment until very late in the game. Quantity has a quality all its own – you’ll want a lot of basic infantry divisions.

I research Support Weapons 1 and Basic Machine Tools first, followed by Infantry Equipment 1 and Industry 1. Once I have the 3rd research slot It stays dedicated to researching land doctrine. Still playing with the mix here, but my thought is focus research on infantry equipment and infantry support equipment, land doctrine, and Industry (but not synthetics until very late in the game).

For focus decision, I usually pick up the 3rd research slot as soon as it’s available an then stick with the decisions that minimize or remove your (many) negative traits.

Once you’re at war with Japan, it’s a bit of a crap shoot. I’ve seen Nationalist China do well against Japan (especially containing coastal invasions), and I’ve seen them completely fold and get steamrolled. I try to focus on the campaign in the north and occupy Mengkukuo and Manchukuo.

I’m sure there are other, “better” ways to proceed, but this is evolving as a pretty good strategy for me.

 

[MadDjinn]

The uprising starts a war though. Also, if I'm not in the war against the Japanese, the AI might just die and then it's game over for me. I just don't really see the options unless everything falls into plan with incredible luck.

the uprising starts a war that you will be fine with because china is already at war with Japan. Timing is key. You likely won't get the chance to get all of the uprisings vs Japan, but if you go one province at a time (3x infiltrations then move to next province), you can cut of the Japanese supply lines up north and crush them with the rest of the Chinese groups in the united front.

Lowing the diffivulty has done nothing for me. It's the fat that Commie China has no equipemnt abd even if Xibei San Ma is conquered beforehand you hardly have enouh factories. The nationalist AI is just too damn stupid to hold against the OP Japanese. I don't know if this has occured to you but Japan wins the war EVERY TIME unless you are the KMT player.

That's not even close to true. I've watched the Nationalist AI hold the line for quite some time, as long as the United Front forms. if it doesn't, then yes Nat China dies fast.

 

[D3po]

I've watched the Nationalist AI hold the line for quite some time, as long as the United Front forms. if it doesn't, then yes Nat China dies fast.

This is very important. If you want to infiltrate, do not annex Shanxhi or Xi Bei. If you annex them, it will stretch the border and Nat China will put half of their army to guard your border.
Then Japan steam rolls so hard that, you won't have much to infiltrate.

 

[D3po]

I came to the conclusion that infiltration is borderline useless in it's current state. You are basically awarded nothing in the ensuing peace deal for controlling states, even the ones you infiltrated.

In my case I infiltrated Xian, Henan and Jiangsu. I got extremely lucky that Nanjing held on for so long. Here's how it went for me:

After the screenshots, I managed to take everything to the south, only a couple of western provinces left for Nat China. Of the states infiltrated, I fully controlled Henan and Xian.
And the peace conference? A big "f**k you Mao"...a massive 17 points! Which resulted in getting Xian on the first round, after which Japan gets to puppet everything else.


In conclusion, don't bother grabbing land, just declare the uprising and sit back and grind some war score. Anything else is a waste of time. It's is actually more useful to annex Shanxi, Xi Bei and Sinkiang before doing so, so at least you get the few factories from them...