Japan's plan for China

[Commander-DK]

In the recent thread about Japan's armies and support companies, I got some advice about e.g. trying out 9 inf + 1 LARM divisions, because China can't pierce them = much lower casualties.

I have tried to perfect my build now over several new test games and I am at a loss as to how people do it?

Here's some of the issues I run into:

1. Not enough XP
I need 20 xp for the LARM division template, another 10 to put support artillery into Marines and another 35 to make even reasonably okay MTN divisions (the free 3 brigade template sucks). That is 55 more XP than the Focus tree will give me, and I can't make that much XP just training - even if I train all my armies all the time?

2. Not enough divisions by summer 1937
No matter how I distribute my factories and even if I pick the Focuses that gives med 4 MIC and 4 CIC asap, I can't make enough equipment to supply much more than 80-90 divisions by summer 1937 (depending on whether I go the 7 INF + 2 ART or the 9 INF + LARM route). I am always at least 10-20 divisions short of what other players describe their starting armies against China as being.

3. No MIC for airforce
When I tried to allocate just a few MIC for TACs, I had to set aside more CIC for trade, meaning even slower build-up. So 1+2 above is without any new airforce additions.

4. Absolutely not enough troops for a multi-front approach.
From what I have read, many players attack China from the north and in several places along the coast all at once or almost all at once. If I try to do that, I can spare no more than 15 divisions / beachhead - meaning the offensive stalls very quickly in all areas because I can't fan out or link up beachheads.

I know I must be doing something wrong, so please - lay it on me. How are you doing this? Where are you geting all that juicy XP from? And how are you making your MIC provide the tons of equipment you need for the plans you outline?

Or are you simply starting the war much later than summer 1937?

 

[Tomnoddy]

I had one Japan campaign vs AI on normal difficulty, beat China some time in 1938 by micromanaging and encircling.

Infantry casualties certainly weren't an issue playing this way but I can see how they might be if you left your armies in AI control.

From what i remember, i concentrated on motorised and mountaineer divisions. Motorised have the advantage that the 1936 equipment never really goes obsolete so it's something you can produce right from the start, unlike early model tanks & airplanes etc. Given the rough terrain you probably want to add engineers, recon, radios and maintenance support when possible. After getting 36 light armour i might have started producing a few divisions of 2 larm + 8 moto. The Chinese divisons can't even pierce those, but i only had two or three such divisions by war's end.

I didn't bother with an airforce tbh, China doesn't have enough runways to support a big air campaign, and any fighters made then will be obsolete by the time you come to fight the allies. Better to use what oil and rubber you have for moto. Perhaps if you can get air support high enough you'll be able to slow down the chinese divisions and encircle them easier, but that'd probably need TAC since the air zones are too big (range penalty) for early war fighters and CAS.

After China, I took French indochina, singapore, the British Raj, the Dutch East Indies, and I got Australia to capitulate. When Germany declared war on the Soviets I conquered Mongolia then drove north to the Artic, cutting off a load of soviet divisons in the Russian Far east. Then Germany and Italy surrendered, having succumbed to Allied invasions whilst busy on the Eastern front, that huge slog to conquer half of Asia ended up counting for nothing.

 

[Orlunu]

I'm hardly a speed-runner, but I have no problems with China, so I'll try and help you with the easy way to do it.

1. You won't have enough XP to go into the war with perfect divisions, but the number of units in combat will soon have you rolling in it. As long as you grab a military theorist early on, you can set up the more important changes before the war (i.e. Marines and so on) and adjust your main line units soon after combat starts.

2. Probably just a case of different unit composition. Either you're not using so many of the smaller specialised units as they are, or you're trying to modernise your army to perfect templates earlier than they are and bottlenecking on production.

3. You don't really need to expand the airforce much. Just a couple of factories and ignoring their specific resource requirements should be fine to keep you air superiority and some bomber presence.

4. The southern/eastern fronts don't usually need much force. For instance, you can easily take and hold the Qingdao peninsula and Hainan with tiny little 4-division armies with good templates, which then dig in and do surprising damage to China just by sitting in place, denying industry, tying up dozens of divisions each and racking up monstrous kill lists in defensive attrition battles.

My go-to strategy would be to essentially bound from river line to river line with the main force coming from the North. Once you reach the next one, you sit tight, enjoy the defensive position as you let China hurl troops at you, work up your prep bonus for the next one and adjust templates. This makes the most of the terrain bonuses and puts the attrition pressure on China instead of you. Just before you step off on your next assault, open up a new amphibious invasion, which will cause the AI to draw divisions off the northern front and re-shuffle. The early landings should be the easy ones I mentioned, so that when you go for the Nanking coup de grace the Chinese are already stretched as thin as they'll get.

 

[indika_tates]

You can go for the southern expansion focus to attack the dutch companies before allies can guarantee them. Join the axis before starting the war and invite Germany to attack Netherlands when the east indies capitulates. Grab all the important provinces with rubber and oil. Then, abandon the axis if you want. It gives you enough XP to modify your main infantry division (Hohei Shidan) to add a light tank to the template. If you have not enough XP, just train your troops or send volunteers to the spanish civil war.

With lights tanks on your infantry divisions the chinese troops have no way to pierce your armor value so you can steamroll china in a matter of months (I won this war in less than six months). The template I use is a 20 width infantry + 2 from one light tank for a total of 22 width. Use your marshals with offensive doctrine with it. You have to prepare marine invasions to Guanxi to grab the steel as soon as the united chinese front forms.You don't need support companies for the template early on. And you don't have enough aluminum to afford it early so you can safely ignore it.

Disband all the garrison troops because you need infantry equipment for the war. You can afford a full line of light tanks if you start building military factories at the start.

With this setup and air superiority is very easy to envelop 30+ armies around Beijing and destroy the chinese front in less than one or two months. Then each motorized division can make their way to the important capture points without opposition. The cavalry division can guard the Shanxi front against any counter attack from soviets/PRC divisions. I'm talking of course about SP. As I said, light thanks are the key of this strategy. Having divisions that china can't pierce is an enormous advantage on this war.

 

[Dalwin]

In the recent thread about Japan's armies and support companies, I got some advice about e.g. trying out 9 inf + 1 LARM divisions, because China can't pierce them = much lower casualties.

I have tried to perfect my build now over several new test games and I am at a loss as to how people do it?

Here's some of the issues I run into:

1. Not enough XP
I need 20 xp for the LARM division template, another 10 to put support artillery into Marines and another 35 to make even reasonably okay MTH divisions (the free 3 brigade template sucks). That is 55 more XP than the Focus tree will give me, and I can't make that much XP just training - even if I train all my armies all the time?

2. Not enough divisions by summer 1937
No matter how I distribute my factories and even if I pick the Focuses that gives med 4 MIC and 4 CIC asap, I can't make enough equipment to supply much more than 80-90 divisions by summer 1937 (depending on whether I go the 7 INF + 2 ART or the 9 INF + LARM route). I am always at least 10-20 divisions short of what other players describe their starting armies against China as being.

3. No MIC for airforce
When I tried to allocate just a few MIC for TACs, I had to set aside more CIC for trade, meaning even slower build-up. So 1+2 above is without any new airforce additions.

4. Absolutely not enough troops for a multi-front approach.
From what I have read, many players attack China from the north and in several places along the coast all at once or almost all at once. If I try to do that, I can spare no more than 15 divisions / beachhead - meaning the offensive stalls very quickly in all areas because I can't fan out or link up beachheads.

I know I must be doing something wrong, so please - lay it on me. How are you doing this? Where are you geting all that juicy XP from? And how are you making your MIC provide the tons of equipment you need for the plans you outline?

Or are you simply starting the war much later than summer 1937?

I think your list of targets for land experience is a bit unreasonable. First, the marine divisions do not need to be revamped until after the war with China, even though you will make landings during that campaign.

Second, is MTH motorized? The existing template is adequate considering that you will only need to have a small handful of these. The starting template is more than adequate for dealing with China. After the war with China Japan will spend most of the game pegged at 500 ground exp in the pool because they don't have enough worthwhile things upon which to spend it. For this reason, as well as air and naval doctrines being more important to them than land, I think it is a mistake for them to hire the land theorist.

 

[Commander-DK]

I think your list of targets for land experience is a bit unreasonable. First, the marine divisions do not need to be revamped until after the war with China, even though you will make landings during that campaign.

Second, is MTH motorized? The existing template is adequate considering that you will only need to have a small handful of these. The starting template is more than adequate for dealing with China. After the war with China Japan will spend most of the game pegged at 500 ground exp in the pool because they don't have enough worthwhile things upon which to spend it. For this reason, as well as air and naval doctrines being more important to them than land, I think it is a mistake for them to hire the land theorist.

The MTN template I get with researching this unit type is just 3 brigades = width 6. I didn't think that would be useful for anything, so the 35 XP is for a unit that is 6 MTN + eng + sup.art.? Do you actually fight the war in China with 3 brigade-MTN divisions?

EDIT: Typed MTH in opening post, should be MTN = Mountaineers. Corrected now, sorry.

 

[Dalwin]

The MTN template I get with researching this unit type is just 3 brigades = width 6. I didn't think that would be useful for anything, so the 35 XP is for a unit that is 6 MTN + eng + sup.art.? Do you actually fight the war in China with 3 brigade-MTN divisions?

EDIT: Typed MTH in opening post, should be MTN = Mountaineers. Corrected now, sorry.

You had typed MTH and not MTN so I wasn't sure what you meant. I actually use no mountain troops at all against the Chinese. They would be useful but they are a luxury that Japan cannot afford and they are not really necessary.

 

[Meglok]

1. Not enough XP
I need 20 xp for the LARM division template, another 10 to put support artillery into Marines and another 35 to make even reasonably okay MTN divisions (the free 3 brigade template sucks). That is 55 more XP than the Focus tree will give me, and I can't make that much XP just training - even if I train all my armies all the time?

You are forgetting Spain and the SCW. Unless you are abysmally unlucky the SCW wil start by Summer 1936. Send your 2-3 divisions and farm for xp. This will give you the xp for making a 6 MTN division, a 6 MAR division, and modifying the starting tempates to make a 9 INF 1 LARM division. Then add ENG to all you can until xp runs out.

2. Not enough divisions by summer 1937
No matter how I distribute my factories and even if I pick the Focuses that gives med 4 MIC and 4 CIC asap, I can't make enough equipment to supply much more than 80-90 divisions by summer 1937 (depending on whether I go the 7 INF + 2 ART or the 9 INF + LARM route). I am always at least 10-20 divisions short of what other players describe their starting armies against China as being.

Are you pulling all of the 6 INF divisions in from the islands and Russian border? In SP you are safe until after you take China. You shouldn't need to make more than a dozen or so more divisions than you start with unless you are really boosting China's slider. You can take those and flip them to MTN and MAR as needed. I usally flip about 20 to MAR or MTN and keep 20 to use as fillers where needed. I usually am making only about a dozen MAR divisions from scratch. And will improve templates on the fly once the war begins. I have at least 10 MIC on INF I weapons, then distributing the rest into LARM, ART, MOT, Support. Starting Aircraft production on the queue (TAC, FTR, CFTR, CNAV) get 1 or 2 to keep efficiency going, also usually start NAV and kill CCAS production.

Starting CIC goes to bumping infra in the low Home Island state NOT going to be bumped by the focus, then a couple of synth factories, then into 1 NIC into each Home Island state. China will give me plenty of CIC and MIC to work with even assuming I only take the PRC and the coast.

3. No MIC for airforce
When I tried to allocate just a few MIC for TACs, I had to set aside more CIC for trade, meaning even slower build-up. So 1+2 above is without any new airforce additions.

This is the biggest issue, Japan's lack of aluminum and free CIC from trade. I normally don't bother increasing aircraft production until after China falls. Your starting air is plenty to dominate China and achieve air superiority which is the main thing you need. It slows China movement down to a crawl. Don't worry about maxing your ground support form aircraft, if you are using the starting 12 INF template you easily double China's SA from it's templates.

Once you get capitulate China you can use it's CIC to trade for Russian aluminum. Reorg'd China and Manchuko have enough Steel. Oil and Rubber is a strategic decision, do I go south and trade for aluminum or do I commit to the North and try to grab Russian resources. If north you need to make sure to make plenty of ART and AT, and start pumping synth factories. Either way aluminum is a big problem, you are either cut off from it if you go north or flowing CIC like water to Russia and you will never have enough for both planes and support companies unless you take it. The actual Japanese bauxite and aluminum production is non-existent in HOI4.

Which is why I keep saying Add Aluminum in Asia.

 

[redrum68]

In SP, the best thing is just to attack China much earlier as they have poor starting units and you can easily overrun them. This gets you their factories sooner and there is little drawback since managing WT in SP is unnecessary. If you are going to wait til mid 1937 to attack then primarily just building artillery and upgrading as many of your starting divisions to 7inf-2art is probably the best approach. IMO, tanks are way too expensive for early Japan so just use the couple of LARM divisions you start with. I usually use 10 divisions for a few invasions to take some of the Chinese ports and the rest in the north to encircle all the Chinese troops in the Beijing area.

 

[Misaka_Complex]

You don't need mountaineers VS China and you don't need to be making TAC against China as well. What you really need are just those divisions with 1 light tanks + 9 infantry and marines against China. Also feel free to add some motorized if you wanna do some micro with encircling and overrunning,