Looking for a TFH Japan detailled guide

[Kovax]

I have never quite understood the point of GAR divisions. I just build a few 2 brigade CAV divisions and station them in a rather haphazard and lazy manner as an occupation force under local Theater command. For example, in an annexed China I would probably use three CAV. Nothing else. Is there something here I am missing? Let me explain my reasoning.

I find CAV more than enough to deal to partisans, their mobility and low supply draw is advantageous. In the event of an enemy invasion GAR divisions are doomed anyway, unless one sends a substantial regular infantry reinforcement. Once a GAR division is defeated in battle its over for them as their speed is so slow. They get overun and wiped. Meanwhile CAV can maintain contact yet withdraw in time to avoid overrun, sneaking in around flanks to retake provinces if the enemy begins to leave gaps.

Unlike MIL, GAR has a decent suppression value, and most of those VP locations also contain resources. The suppression of Revolt Risk will often provide sufficient additional resources to pay for the garrison, and significantly reduce the risk of revolt near the cities, without having to pay the expense and Leadership cost of a separate MP brigade. A 2xGAR division will defend as well as, or better than, a 3xMIL division (but is garbage on offense), and it's a rare thing to have a single Partisan division break a 2xGAR that's had sufficient time to gain a "dug in" bonus. Getting defeated and then overrun simply isn't a problem against Partisans in this scenario. Since China was annexed, not "occupied", it can't create partisan "sleeper cells" to erupt on command simultaneously, and the individual single-division revolts don't pose a threat. The few revolts in the worthless gaps between the occupied cities can be crushed at my leisure with a CAV division, without any fear of interruption of resources.

There are several ways to deal with Revolt Risk, and each has its advantages and disadvantages, with no single clear-cut "right" answer. This is one, mobile partisan hunters are another, and stationing a single TAC in a vicinity (or a lone AC at one airfield in each area) can cover it as well.

 

[j_k_k]

The Japanese did have a degree of "luck" on their side. initially at least. A good example of this is the US Mark 14 torpedo. There is an interesting utube video about that which I saw either here on or another forum, lets see if I can dig it up... Here it is.

I did a piece for a WWII book on the legendary flaws of our torpedoes in the day. It's been some years now, but I think I remember reading that one sub skipper decided to prove a point and fired all his tubes at a Japanese tanker within easy range, then again, eventually dumping the full load of sixteen (if memory serves). Any one should have been the death of the tanker. Only the fifteenth actually detonated and did the tanker any harm. I guess he'd heard enough about the brass saying to bewildered skippers "Baloney! You have the best equipment in the world; if you're afraid to get close enough to fight, we'll find someone with some guts," and decided if he was going to be in big trouble he might as well prove the point. Sometimes the donkey level of senior officers can be just epic.

 

[j_k_k]

My standard garrison division is GAR/POL, and they often pitch in to attack adjacent partisans. Happens a lot when playing GER in Poland, which because it represents the major supply artery paths to the USSR (or occupied Russia/Ukraine), simply cannot be allowed to get out of hand. Which, of course, it usually tries. Once the garrison division wins, of course, I just cancel its movement. I don't assign generals to them, though, unless they're seeing a lot of action. For rear area security I use CAV/CAV and GAR/POL divisions, in some areas adding a MTN/MTN division to deal with high-altitude annoyances.

 

[Corugi]

The suppression of Revolt Risk will often provide sufficient additional resources....

You know what? I have played this game through a lot and I never knew that. What a fortunate confidence to learn this now, since in the current game the IJN and the airforce were effectively dead weight due to lack of fuel. So upon reading your comment I immediately dispatched GAR divisions to all the SE Asian oilfields I had taken. It took sometime since everything was running on empty, but once they finally arrived and took up position the entire situation changed. Now I am producing a fuel surplus. Which is perfect timing since the Allied fleets are beginning to poke their dirty little noses around in places where they are not welcome.

You, Kovax, have saved the ambitions of the Imperial Japanese military.

I hereby award you the "Corugian Medal of Totally Supreme Excellence in All Matters" and the island atolls of Mili as your own exclusive holiday residence.... although there are some Americans currently residing there who will need cleaning out first.

 

[j_k_k]

If they are messing around in all your rear areas, you definitely need to give them at least a five-joint bohica.

 

[Corugi]

I did a piece for a WWII book on the legendary flaws of our torpedoes in the day. It's been some years now, but I think I remember reading that one sub skipper decided to prove a point and fired all his tubes at a Japanese tanker within easy range, then again, eventually dumping the full load of sixteen (if memory serves). Any one should have been the death of the tanker. Only the fifteenth actually detonated and did the tanker any harm. I guess he'd heard enough about the brass saying to bewildered skippers "Baloney! You have the best equipment in the world; if you're afraid to get close enough to fight, we'll find someone with some guts," and decided if he was going to be in big trouble he might as well prove the point. Sometimes the donkey level of senior officers can be just epic.

Its an absolutely appalling story of unforgivable incompetence at the highest level, for which many paid the cost with their lives. As you say, also a credit to the willingness of junior officers in ignoring orders and challenging the official stance at the risk of their own careers. A point made in the video was that the American subs were presented with many targeting opportunities right from the start of the conflict, and had they had working torpedoes, or at least had the problem been swiftly acknowledged and rectified, the Japanese would doubtless have suffered grievous losses to naval units and convoys from an early stage.

 

[50shadesofgreen]

You know what? I have played this game through a lot and I never knew that. What a fortunate confidence to learn this now, since in the current game the IJN and the airforce were effectively dead weight due to lack of fuel. So upon reading your comment I immediately dispatched GAR divisions to all the SE Asian oilfields I had taken. It took sometime since everything was running on empty, but once they finally arrived and took up position the entire situation changed. Now I am producing a fuel surplus. Which is perfect timing since the Allied fleets are beginning to poke their dirty little noses around in places where they are not welcome.

Have you checked how much your resources change in those garrisoned provinces?

My biggest crude province is Miri with a base of 11 crude. With collaboration I am getting 5.2 out of it. By adding a garrison to suppress the 1.5% risk i will only gain an extra 0.33 extra daily fuel in my biggest producing province.

If i switch to full occupation I will take 9.6 daily, but my garrison will still only gain me that 0.33 daily extra.

In my ex-Dutch provinces (annexed) my revolt risk is equal to my minimum level. According to the old guards on this game, I can't suppress below this minimum, so garrisons will not give me more crude there?

I don't think garrisons in every crude province will have gained you enough to make any noticeable difference? Changing occupation laws WILL as this boosts both resources and your IC.

 

[Kovax]

My biggest crude province is Miri with a base of 11 crude. With collaboration I am getting 5.2 out of it. By adding a garrison to suppress the 1.5% risk i will only gain an extra 0.33 extra daily fuel in my biggest producing province.

If your occupation law only allows you to take 50% of an occupied province's resources, and it's producing 11, you can't go over 5.5 (plus or minus a bit due to rounding errors), no matter how much you reduce the Revolt Risk. Annexed non-core territory also maxes out at 50%. In some places, RR can be fairly high, and will lower the daily resource production significantly. The trick is to find an occupation law and amount of suppression (which might be 0) that optimizes your resource output without paying more than you're saving in suppression forces. That will vary considerably from one situation to the next, so once again, there's no single "right" answer.

 

[50shadesofgreen]

The trick is to find an occupation law and amount of suppression (which might be 0) that optimizes your resource output without paying more than you're saving in suppression forces. That will vary considerably from one situation to the next, so once again, there's no single "right" answer.

Exactly. Though, in the cases where suppression makes 0 difference then the answer is fairly clear.

I can't find a single province where suppression makes more than this extra 0.3 crude in Miri.

This is why Corugi needs to double check the savings made in each garrisoned province. Also switch occupation laws to maximise what he needs with regards crude.

 

[Corugi]

Well I it appears I am not going to be able to progress much further in my game. For some reason when I annexed China the game engine went full does not compute mode. China became simultaneously annexed and a puppet. The land became occupied but the remaining Chinese army stayed in existence and China became listed as a puppet. Shortly afterwards the game crashed, which was not entirely unexpected. Still, it was quite fun and interesting up until that point.

It was becoming readily apparent I was in a no win situation. Allied subs were running rampant sinking convoys everywhere. The IJN, with the very hard difficulty malus, just got curb stomped every time it met Allied carriers, who were now roaming in virtually dooming doomstacks of doom. I was quite impressed, I saw the US invade Taiwan and Borneo. Which I have never seen before. It appears the difficulty level does somehow affect the AI's aggressiveness in the Pacific. Jolly nice to see that, having played games where the US takes something like Okinawa and then does nothing else.

So even with adequate oil being produced, thanks to the advice of Kovax and 50shadesofgreen, it was only a matter of time before the sub onslaught cut those overseas resources. Then other than pushing through India or attacking Russia, probably out of supply before long, I would be looking at sitting it out and waiting to be invaded, suffering unbearable shame and dishonor. I found myself eyeing up the butter knife.

Although it would have been interesting to to see if I would eventually get nuked or Operation Downfalled, I am quite happy to accept it as yet another inglorious defeat at the hands of the AI.

Just kidding. I will pick another scenario and have my bloody and terrible revenge.

 

[j_k_k]

Large enough doomstacks should have been fairly ineffective due to the stacking penalty. One thing they did well in this game is discouraging doomstacks in land, sea, and air. In fact, one of the gamiest ways to get leader experience is to have a land doomstack attack a fortified position. Their effectiveness will be low, so the combat will last forever, with every general involved racking up experience. Whenever one is ready for it to be over, one has but to remove from the battle all but a sane level of force, and they'll win. Of course, this presupposes that one has the luxury of having a whole army engage in such a long, manpower-draining, org-chewing, supply-using combat.

 

[50shadesofgreen]

I've been examining the province tooltip myself to see where I've been going wrong. My biggest need is metals and rares, as capital conquests have me sitting pretty in everything else. Suddenly thinking I should have had some serious revolt suppression in Kualar Lumpur (above Singapore). It's the highest metal (19) producing province that I can actually suppress. That province and the one next door produce rares too (25 & 20). I can't see a better province worth suppression for resources anywhere?

I made several garrison divisions for the invasion of China and left them there. They don't need to sit there as they are actually gaining me no extra resources as China is annexed. It somehow feels gamey to leave the whole country policed by a handful of badly armed guys on horses?

Am I mistaken in thinking that in one game version of HOI3, that suppression also boosted things like IC and leadership where valid suppression was a possibility? I don't see any indication on the tooltip for those.

 

[Corugi]

Large enough doomstacks should have been fairly ineffective due to the stacking penalty. One thing they did well in this game is discouraging doomstacks in land, sea, and air. In fact, one of the gamiest ways to get leader experience is to have a land doomstack attack a fortified position. Their effectiveness will be low, so the combat will last forever, with every general involved racking up experience. Whenever one is ready for it to be over, one has but to remove from the battle all but a sane level of force, and they'll win. Of course, this presupposes that one has the luxury of having a whole army engage in such a long, manpower-draining, org-chewing, supply-using combat.

Yes, the carrier combat did last for an extended time. But while their stacking penalty was indeed very high they still managed to wreck havoc on my lean mean carrier groups. On very hard difficulty there is a 40% combat efficency malus which balances out their stacking issues to an extent. Before the game crashed there were several cataclysmic engagements, with both sides throwing everything, including some converted bathtubs, into the fray. As much as I tried to rotate units they just became battered to the point of becoming floating ballast. The Cags were simply munted. Although I inflicted some severe losses on their screens and their BB's it was not enough. More importantly I couldn't knock out their carriers. Rendered impotent in port to repair, some heavy units down to a few percent strength, I then watched them begin landings unopposed while my exposed convoys began to raise the global mean sea level, bringing flooding to low lying coastal areas.

To top things off the RN began making a strong appearance. Those BRITISH BASTARDS! Didn't HMS Prince of Wales teach them anything?

Now I tried to avoid the crash with the Dec 41 scenario by starting a game with the June 41 scenario. Guess what? Exactly the same thing happened. I switched the war goal to annex at the start, proceeded to beat China by late October, and then got the conquer PLUS puppet nonsense again. So, again, all the land came under my control but all the remaining Chinese units stayed intact and China is listed as a puppet. I tagged to China and saw they are playable, albeit with pretty much zero of anything.

I reloaded a save two days before I beat China and found the war goal to now be... totally absent. But I could make peace with them. So I did, only then to get the Marco Polo event pop up. FFS. So to avoid this situation it looks like you need to start the scenario, immediately peace out, and then restart the war with the MP event. But honestly, bugger that, I am not microing my way through goddamned China for the third time just to get some other game breaking bullshit happen again.

It looks as if these scenarios are completely fubar if you have the sheer audacity to beat China. I didn't look closely but there are some other weird things. Like the earlier scenrio puts you at war with Xibel, the latter one doesnt. There are also a myriad of inconsitencies with the OOB which defy historical consideration. I have a sneaky feeling Pdx didn't put much effort into these.

Damn. I was looking forward to having a jolly good slugfest.

 

[50shadesofgreen]

It's sometimes annoying that you can't review your already selected wargoals. I wonder if you are already at war in those scenarios, whether there is a preselected wargoal already and that the goals are somehow stacking up and causing the Fubar? Also in some versions of this game the minor warlord troops go to NatChi once their own nation falls. Is that a feature in your game (in FTM Shanxi etc just fully fold).

 

[Wraith11B]

It's sometimes annoying that you can't review your already selected wargoals. I wonder if you are already at war in those scenarios, whether there is a preselected wargoal already and that the goals are somehow stacking up and causing the Fubar? Also in some versions of this game the minor warlord troops go to NatChi once their own nation falls. Is that a feature in your game (in FTM Shanxi etc just fully fold).

You can review them--but not change them--in the diplomacy screen. Select the appropriate nation and then hit the War Goals button (it's under the glance information).

 

[50shadesofgreen]

I can't see that in FTM, is this a TFH feature? I could be missing something obvious.

At the moment I can pick a region from UK, but can't see whether I have previously picked any. Except that I know I must have picked the missing ones!

 

[Wraith11B]

I didn't think that the war goals were a TFH thing, but I could be wrong. It's been a minute.

 

[50shadesofgreen]

I didn't think that the war goals were a TFH thing, but I could be wrong. It's been a minute.

My bad. I mean I can change the wargoals in FTM but there's no way that I can review what was previously selected. I can only guess I previously asked for a region because that region is no longer on the list of prospects.

I can't now remember if you can choose Puppet. Then a month later choose Conquer. Then a month later swap to Puppet again?

 

[Wraith11B]

I wasn't sure that one could alter war goals.

 

[50shadesofgreen]

I know what you mean, but what happens after you select Puppet and wait a month? Does the wargoal button remain greyed out, or what does the next screen show??? I can't recall.