Not sure I have understood correctly. Are you asking why there are mixed divisions tanks+infantry? It's how they have been provided by basic templates. I hope you know...
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I meant that I wouldn't use that template. use the pure infantry one only for the frontline would be the best. I dont know how many of those you actually deployed, but it would explain some of your tank deficit if you did.
Generally mixed divisions dont fare well as they would if tanks were in tank+mot divisions and infantry as separate. (granted its not always the rule but more often than not)
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What amount of blasphemies I read in these messages... change templates without having the points to change them (always play with active tricks huh?)... speak without knowing HoI II (if you want to see my campaign with Italy in DH have a look here: http://www.netwargamingitalia.net/forum/threads/italia-alla-ricerca-di-un-posto-al-sole.19224/ you can learn something boys)... asking why you use template mixed infantry tanks (have you ever played with Japan? you should know they are default templates... until the war you don't have the points to change them, and after as shown you you have really low room to maneuver to do things that make sense).
Anyway, still without any valid explanation to why somebody should start the war against China with 50% penalty, why resources are not stocked, why China has air superiority in the north with Soviet support, why China divisions can stop you everywhere at the start and appear from nothing... all documented... here we are with today's game.
29. I have studied the best way to use my new 10 divisions (2 trucked, 2 "almost" tanks, 6 infantry) and I have decided to attempt a risky plan, encircle the 18 divisions in the Shandong Peninsula, the idea is to isolate them and destroy them on the spot. Possibly, to have open field once destroyed them. So, I have planned landings at the base of the peninsula, and a frontal attack from the peninsula itself to keep the division busy, giving the time to complete the encirclement; planning to attack on other fronts to keep the entire Chinese army busy;
30. well... China is faciliting me the task, sendin another attack to take back Nanjing;
31. and here we are, at least the landing is done without issues; the frontal assault is pathetic even with the bonus after having fully escalated the conflict (from -50% I to + 20%);
32. and the encirclement is completed
33. After 6 days of pathetic battles China troops are almost defeated, but new troops are already coming to create a new defense line;
34. And, finally, the grotesque victory; in around ten days, 18 chinese divisions should have been destroyed; I was hoping to open the front after this maneuver, but China divisions have already belted the peninsula; I have also tried to attack in the north to keep them busy, but it has not worked; so, I will have to fight other carnival battles to break through the lines...
Anyway, still without any valid explanation to why somebody should start the war against China with 50% penalty, why resources are not stocked, why China has air superiority in the north with Soviet support, why China divisions can stop you everywhere at the start and appear from nothing... all documented... here we are with today's game.
29. I have studied the best way to use my new 10 divisions (2 trucked, 2 "almost" tanks, 6 infantry) and I have decided to attempt a risky plan, encircle the 18 divisions in the Shandong Peninsula, the idea is to isolate them and destroy them on the spot. Possibly, to have open field once destroyed them. So, I have planned landings at the base of the peninsula, and a frontal attack from the peninsula itself to keep the division busy, giving the time to complete the encirclement; planning to attack on other fronts to keep the entire Chinese army busy;
30. well... China is faciliting me the task, sendin another attack to take back Nanjing;
31. and here we are, at least the landing is done without issues; the frontal assault is pathetic even with the bonus after having fully escalated the conflict (from -50% I to + 20%);
32. and the encirclement is completed
33. After 6 days of pathetic battles China troops are almost defeated, but new troops are already coming to create a new defense line;
34. And, finally, the grotesque victory; in around ten days, 18 chinese divisions should have been destroyed; I was hoping to open the front after this maneuver, but China divisions have already belted the peninsula; I have also tried to attack in the north to keep them busy, but it has not worked; so, I will have to fight other carnival battles to break through the lines...
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Did you notice that you have 500 Army Experience Points banked?
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All professors huh? You have not followed my previous posts. Experience points issue is at the start, when you should start the war against China. Training all units at level 3, I have collected something like 5 points. And, after, when you invade China and start to collect real points, you don't really have the possibility to deploy what you want because your pathetic industrial activity is neither able to substain the war, imagine changing the templates. I have done, as documented, really little changes mainly at support company level, and this has been enough to destabilize the logistic for more than one year.
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What are the rules/settings for this scenario? I vaguely recall something about trying to capitulate China by the end of '37 as Japan with all DLC, is there anything else?
If you would just ask, then someone would suggest to wait for Spanish Civil War to start, then improve relations with Nationalist Spain till they'll be willing to accpet your Attache. That will give you 20% of Spains Army, Air and Navy EXP before your war.
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Really historical, isn't it? No it isn't historical at all. So Japan should not need any similar trick to have decent templates. Not to talk about industrial (in)capacity...
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Historical setting. And difficulty set to default. I don't remember to have done other settings.
You can send volunteers and/or lend-lease to the Spanish Civil War(or even Ethiopia!) and have plenty of army experience to change your templates to their final forms before you need to go to war. Just sending about 2k old rifles to the Republicans(they will use the guns sooner than the Nationalists will) will give you plenty of army experience.
If you really don't want to get involved in Spain at all, you can one division train. Delete your whole army on day one except for one division of whatever template you have that is the biggest. Every time you reach 5 army experience, add one infantry battalion to your training template (save it as a duplicate and convert to it so you keep your starting template). They nerfed this a while ago, but after some time of ramp-up you will earn enough exp from exercising this one division that you can make the templates you need before war.
If you also think that is too cheesy/exploity, just convert all your divisions to whatever division template is the biggest, and exercise your entire army. It gives more experience than one-division training, you just waste a lot more equipment exercising many divisions than you would waste exercising one. Even if you don't have enough equipment to equip a bunch of big divisions, you still get all the army experience you need. Just convert your army back into your desired template once you have enough exp and are finished training.
If you don't want to exercise at all, you can do the focus "Army Expansion Law." It gives you 30 army exp to work with. It's not enough to make a 14-4, but it's enough to get a 20w pure infantry template going by editing your starting 24w, and a 7-2 to use for encirclements, which you can add light tank recon to after you get a bit more in the opening days of the war.
Basically, there are plenty of ways to earn army experience as Japan before you go to war with China. Complaining that you don't have enough army experience to make proper templates and then also sarcastically rejecting good advice when told how you can get army experience, just makes you seem willfully ignorant. As others have said in this thread, China is a cakewalk to defeat as Japan when played properly.
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If you think Japan has weak industry and low equipment, quit your current game and give China a go
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Now that you have 500 army experience, you can build any template you want.... so go ahead and design a 40 width template with 4 ART and rest infantry. Logistics & engineer company if you can. Convert 3 regular templates to this template. Turn the rest into 20 width pure infantry divisions. Then start punching through the Chinese divisions with less than 5 troops on the province using your big 3 divisions. Attack from multiple angles where possible to increase your own attacking width. Surround a province or two, then crush the pocket. Move your front line up. Aim at Jinan first, then towards the Shanxi border, then north until you have encircled the Chinese army in Beijing. Crush them, and then strike south, aiming to trap troops between the ports opposite Taiwan and the Shanghai area.
Also useful: build infrastructure if there's less than 5 infra in the province. If you have the equipment to spare, build another 3 big stacks, and repeat the process in a different part of China.
Also useful: build infrastructure if there's less than 5 infra in the province. If you have the equipment to spare, build another 3 big stacks, and repeat the process in a different part of China.
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What I meant when I said, "Did you notice that you have 500 Army Experience Points banked?", was that you allowed 500 experience to accumulate without taking action to address the two problems you were complaining about.
Just 15 experience points would have netted you 6,000 infantry kits and made your divisions much more capable as they would eliminate their combat width penalties and reduced the penalty for fighting with under equipped units. Those 15 experience points would have taken about a week in combat to accumulate, or better yet, you could have gotten them through training, focuses, or attaches. You mentioned that attaches are a gimmick, but there is nothing more real than a military to watch another military fight and learn from their observations. Attaches may be one of the closest simulations of real war in the game. It is a large reason the USA did not enter WW2 in December, 1941 with a 1918 military.
How to use those 15 points? Using five points, you could have reduced your 30 Chuton-Chi Shidans to 10 width and instantly accumulated 3,000 infantry kits. Using ten more points you could have reduced your 15 Hohei Shidans to 20 width and accumulated 3,000 more infantry kits.
It also would not hurt for you to have produced more infantry kits to begin with. As you noticed, Japan has to make hard choices, because it cannot do everything at once in 1937. You chose to engage in a large land war in 1937 knowing your army was dangerously unprepared. Part of the attraction of HOI4 is that this situation exists in most countries and there is a requirement to get ready for the fight to be reasonably successful. Since the game is complicated, there is no shame in learning what it takes to get prepared through some hard knocks.
I know it is not easy to learn from scratch, especially since no one, myself included, rarely wants to read a thick instruction manual on how to play a game. I lost several Japan versus China fights before I started to figure out my way was not working. Getting ready for the fight is not always about simply building more. As you noticed, Japan does not have that luxury. To get ready I had to learn what an efficient combat unit looked like. Then I had to figure out what it took to make those units and enough of them. It meant I had to give up my idea of what Japan should be building in 1937 and build what was needed.
You are lucky. There are several names I recognize in your thread who have proven they can be very helpful and will take the time to be helpful. Not everyone gets that kind of response. Do not let it accumulate like your army experience, wasted.
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I never played HOI2 but I did play HOI3. I just want to check - you do know that in HOI4 changing the division template changes all the divisions - INCLUDING ONES IN THE FIELD. It's not like the previous games where you can only set units up at deploy time. In fact if you remove stuff from the template it will HELP the units in the field as they are no longer missing supplies & anybody with extra can share with local units before it gets sent back to headquarters.
You seemed to have played in the old style where you need to churn out as many units as you can before war starts and that you can't change them once deployed (without a ton of micro in HOI3). HOI4 is a lot more fluid and much better replicates the changes implemented by the militaries as the war progresses.
Regarding some other comments you made - Japan have penalties because in real life they didn't take the Chinese seriously and so faffed around a lot in their invasion. Their starting divisions are bad for a similar reason. You have replicated real life very well in your game - some progress but at what cost to the nation.
And resources were only ever stockpiled for a matter of months in real life - the early games where you could stockpile for the all 4 years of the war were completely unrealistic. The HOI4 flow system with it's subtle internal stockpiling to smooth out spikes and losses in the flow rate is much more realistic.
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Propably this is my last post in this threads, I don't like to waste my time to discuss with some toxic person.
Answering ironic on ironic - no, dude, I finished my studies a while ago and HOI4 was no part of the education.
Kuro_Maikeru told You about one of the basic tactics in this game. It not a shame to confer, that You didn't know about this possibility. For example, I discovered after 100 hours, that I can change my ideology in the game.
Propably, this is not historical, but when I check it lately, nothing makes me play fully historically. If You feel ready, You can fight against Allies as Germany in 1937. If You don't feel ready, You can delay fight against China as Japan, this is Your decision. You know, how this movie ends and, yeah, this is just a game.
Experience points issue is at the start, when you should start the war against China.
You have a few possibilities to bank EX:
- attache to Spain,
- lend lease;
- advisors;
- training;
- national focus.
With these You can do a lot od things with Your basic templates.
People told You. Historically, everyone wanted this war (China, Manchukuo, Japan), but probably Japanese were the only one, who wanted it later. For game balance - if not these debuffs, japanese AI could eat China in 1938, what hapened in previous versions of this game.
Maybe You put to much planes in one airport, maybe You don't use all of Your planes - try to micromanage Your planes.
China start with huge numbers of divisions - something like 60? There are little and cheap, so they can produce it a lot. You can overcome quantity with quality, but You need know something about combat width.
And this is quite nice job (without ironic) - You can eat more divisions by making more circle, good work.
Propably Japan is not a good country for the start. Fascist Brasil is very good for beginner, but remember about supply - I don't want to read some grumble on attrition, because You put all Your divisions on zero - level infrastructure in Amazonka.
Answering ironic on ironic - no, dude, I finished my studies a while ago and HOI4 was no part of the education.
Kuro_Maikeru told You about one of the basic tactics in this game. It not a shame to confer, that You didn't know about this possibility. For example, I discovered after 100 hours, that I can change my ideology in the game.
Propably, this is not historical, but when I check it lately, nothing makes me play fully historically. If You feel ready, You can fight against Allies as Germany in 1937. If You don't feel ready, You can delay fight against China as Japan, this is Your decision. You know, how this movie ends and, yeah, this is just a game.
Experience points issue is at the start, when you should start the war against China.
You have a few possibilities to bank EX:
- attache to Spain,
- lend lease;
- advisors;
- training;
- national focus.
With these You can do a lot od things with Your basic templates.
People told You. Historically, everyone wanted this war (China, Manchukuo, Japan), but probably Japanese were the only one, who wanted it later. For game balance - if not these debuffs, japanese AI could eat China in 1938, what hapened in previous versions of this game.
Maybe You put to much planes in one airport, maybe You don't use all of Your planes - try to micromanage Your planes.
China start with huge numbers of divisions - something like 60? There are little and cheap, so they can produce it a lot. You can overcome quantity with quality, but You need know something about combat width.
And this is quite nice job (without ironic) - You can eat more divisions by making more circle, good work.
Propably Japan is not a good country for the start. Fascist Brasil is very good for beginner, but remember about supply - I don't want to read some grumble on attrition, because You put all Your divisions on zero - level infrastructure in Amazonka.
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Reading through this thread was both frustrating and very informational. I got to learn a lot about the game from all the sound and useful advice that people gave the OP. That was really nice.
The way the OP keeps insisting that there's something "wrong" with the game when they obviously simply have no idea how to play it correctly, that was pretty hard to read...
Admitting to yourself that you are ignorant is the first step towards getting better at something.
The way the OP keeps insisting that there's something "wrong" with the game when they obviously simply have no idea how to play it correctly, that was pretty hard to read...
Admitting to yourself that you are ignorant is the first step towards getting better at something.
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Yeah... I would like to build... but Japanese building capacity is ridicoulus. I should improve air bases, refineries, infrastructure, some anti-air defense, civil and military industries. Considering, I really donàt see why, civilian industry points are also used to import resources (that I can't stock... absurd...), and considering the building capacity is so pathetic, I have given priority to civilian indutry; now I have enough building points to build a civilian factory plus some spare points to work on a refinery. While continuing to develop the civilian industry, I will alternate for a while a refinery and a military industry. Apart obviously spending building points... for importing...
Just a note for the one asking for the mix division (that, I remember you, is what you got with Japan, and Japan has not intervened in Spain, so don't put as need/requirement something not historical), my plan is to replace the 5 infantry divisions with 4 motorized. But I am short on trucks, so waiting better times. And, I am planning to add a couple of medium tanks I am researching, possibly with a self-propelled artillery. Obviously, given the situation, it will ask time. And meantime I cannot simply remove the infantry from that divisions... they would remains almost without anything, given the fact I have not so much tanks. So, how they say in France,
à la guerre comme à la guerre!
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35. We remained with a really well done encirclement that has cut off 18 divisions, now the plan is to penetrate Chinese lines to try to push toward ovest, trying to encircle the north Chinese front; Statistics are not exceptional, but at least a bit better than before...
36. The offensive is progressing well, motorized divisions will be used to push to the west.
37. Motorized divisions have successfully pushed back Chinese armored divisions (???), the encirclement is now a possibility. Meanwhile in the north my divisions are continuing the attack to keep Chinese divisions busy.
38. Beijing is encircled; around 20 divisions are stuck in the pocket;
39. At this point, even the pathetic Japanese divisions can take Beijing, which capitulates after twelve days of intense fightings;
40. at this point the pathetic invasion become unstoppable; in around 2 months China has lost around 40 divisions; grasslands open up to the Japanese... well, no; not so easy; China divisions are still pupping up from nowhere, but situation is evidently definitely improved with holes in the defenses and lost air support due to the conquest of the two airports; also in the south Japanese troops are advancing, forcing China to spend some resources outside the north. What next? Probably I'll try to cut off some other divisions, probably the one on the coast; for this I will need to send East some motorized divisions; and, I'll try to restore some reserves of weapons, which are dangerously scarce;
36. The offensive is progressing well, motorized divisions will be used to push to the west.
37. Motorized divisions have successfully pushed back Chinese armored divisions (???), the encirclement is now a possibility. Meanwhile in the north my divisions are continuing the attack to keep Chinese divisions busy.
38. Beijing is encircled; around 20 divisions are stuck in the pocket;
39. At this point, even the pathetic Japanese divisions can take Beijing, which capitulates after twelve days of intense fightings;
40. at this point the pathetic invasion become unstoppable; in around 2 months China has lost around 40 divisions; grasslands open up to the Japanese... well, no; not so easy; China divisions are still pupping up from nowhere, but situation is evidently definitely improved with holes in the defenses and lost air support due to the conquest of the two airports; also in the south Japanese troops are advancing, forcing China to spend some resources outside the north. What next? Probably I'll try to cut off some other divisions, probably the one on the coast; for this I will need to send East some motorized divisions; and, I'll try to restore some reserves of weapons, which are dangerously scarce;
Is there a particular reason why you are not fully utilizing your generals and field marshal? 7 generals are missing out on bonuses due to no field marshal.
You have a bunch of generals with 2-3 troops. It is usually better to have specialized generals, so a defensive infantry army, an offense infantry army, a motorozed / tank army, etc. Defense units under a defense field marshal, offensive armies under an offense field marshal. This lets you maximize the bonuses, such as infantry leader, to apply to as many divisions as possible.
You have a bunch of generals with 2-3 troops. It is usually better to have specialized generals, so a defensive infantry army, an offense infantry army, a motorozed / tank army, etc. Defense units under a defense field marshal, offensive armies under an offense field marshal. This lets you maximize the bonuses, such as infantry leader, to apply to as many divisions as possible.
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