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Tormodius

Alien
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Jul 18, 2002
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www.j-diva.no
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Communist China 1936

Why torment myself like this?
Ok now I tried playing Mao several times and it's really hard. As I bet the current censorship guys in China also thought when evaluating this game, and banning it out of pure frustation thinking it to be "unfair" perhaps ?
Now I on the other hand like some frustration, and it made me trying to figure out some nice strategies, but I might need your help too, so please comment below!
Back in the days when this game was released it managed to unify China, but there were no expansions and many exploits to do it. The case now with the game changed so much, I believe it's much harder to do.

Beginning the game as Mao.
How you set up the game will affect alot of things. I use no mods, all expansions, ironman mode, and regular difficulty that gives no modifiers. On the previous playthough I had historical foci turned off, as I like the excitement of an unpredictable world for most games. That is nice for major powers, but it can turn out very bad for ComChi though, if Soviet capitulates and UK goes to the Axis and Japan has all the time they want to fight in China with help from powerful friends too. Also Japan could potentially turn democratic and be peaceful towards china or join other alliances that makes it difficult to unify China without making war with other great powers. This will give you a break to only fight with Chinese, but NatChi might also go into alliances with foreign powers and even in one case they pulled Japan in against me. So I gave up trying to figure out a strategy for such unpredictable situations, and went with historical foci turned on.

National foci
I went down the line to 'Exploit the weak neighbours' first, allthough it might have been unneccesary, which you will see in a bit.
Then I invited foreign investor for some more industry, and getting some friends in UK and USSR. I was tempted to go with France for the 3 offmap military factories, but I thought it to be risky because France has a tendency to get occupied by Germany, so I went with Britian instead. Completing the 'Burma Road' for some military factories is nice, but that had to wait until I had alliance with Yunnan. So then going then all the way down to Maoism seemed like a good idea. In regards to having a big army and as good as one can get with all these limitations I also prioritized going down the path to 'People's Liberation Army' as fast as possible and also to 'Protracted War' because I thought myself to be fighting defensively for a very long time. The most important thing I thought was to get rid of the limitations from penalties that I started with.

Planned stategy of expansion and defense
So the first plan is to ally with all the other Chinese and we all fight Japan because they will invade pretty soon. Also I need to quickly expand before this, to take the territory from two neighbouring warlords for much needed manpower and some more factories. So as quick as I could recruited 6 more half-trained divisions and annexed the neighbour warlord Xibei San Ma to the west by pushing through in a weaker point at the frontline and using many understrenght divisions to move around them and occupy as much they could. Next plan was to do the same with Shanxi to the east. But it was too late I started to think. Japan declared war on them before me, and they managed to advance in to Shanxi territory. Anyways I quickly declared war on Shanxi as well since I had this focus done already.
(Here an alternative could be to use war justification to avoid having to do like me)
This however worked as I could move in fast and capture alot of Shanxi, and since I was not at war with Japan I chose to puppet them instead of annexing. Annexing would cause myself to have border with Japan at this point with very weak understrenght divisons so it unnerved me. Even better, my improvised decision caused my new puppet, the Soviet State of Shanxi, to be at peace with Japan and removing japanese troops from that area, but they would just go fighting Nationalist China and pushing through Bejing at the time. I kinda liked this outcome. So these northern puppet areas is a place one could build forts while at peace. But it goes slowly as I have so little industry at that point and also penalties to building. However getting a few forts along border up north will help I figured. In addition to doctrines and leaders that help with defense and entrenchment. That would come later and gradually. Now to make the red army stronger and more numerous.

Military production and and recruitment:
I recruit as much as the manpower can support, and the goal is to have 1 million men under arms. Luckily manpower is not bad after annexing the warlord in the west early on. Mainly infantry and mountaineers with 9 battalions in each. The starting size is 6 battalions and even less for mountaineers. This will take time, but rushing them will help.
The production is focused on small arms with a new factory being built after the forts and with help from foreign powers through foci increasing that up to 6 factories in about a years or so. I turned out to be at war with Japan before anything of this was achieved. The future plan is to also make artillery and have 2 factories producing that and then build one more factory while reducing to 5 for the infantry equipment.
Air warfare is not something I can realy much upon with my limitations. I dont even have an airfield! The friendly relations with UK and USA also gets me 50 Gladiators and 50 Hawks from a focus but I postpone this, and prioritize to field many men with guns.
I should perhaps have Anti-Air companies in infantry divisions to compensate when fighting those with airforces, but that would also be understrenght AAA with so many divisions and so little production, so this plan got postponed too. Also for tanks I have not much going for me, but will get some help from USSR and those 100 old tanks and one light tank division after completing some more foci.


Final steps to chase Japan into the sea:
Japan invades all other places along the coast as well, and when they are unopposed by Allies and USA it might mean failure from all chinese to stop them entering the heartlands and winning the war. So holding them at bay until they go into war with the other great powers is my primary goal then. Let Chiang Kai Shek forces take the most hits and let me build up military slowly, but not to the extent that Japan can win. So I chose a focus to make a big faction with me as leader, as you can see in the screenshot. Then I helped with slowly pushing back the Japanese in a long war losing about a million soldiers, with Nationalist China taking three times as much. Leadership of this faction becomes disputed however because Nationalist China still has a good rate of manpower in the field. So I have recruited many men that have poor training.
Good news is that Lend Lease from Soviet gave me about as much rifles as I could produce myself, so I could switch production to more artillery, anti-air guns and support equipment.

Is it time to make a move to unify this nation?
The situation now in 1944 is like you see in this image here. Japan is still trying to launch invasions along the coast but are chased back out even without me doing anything. They have gone to war with so many now including USA, and are weakened. They pose no longer a big threat I believe, and I could concentrate on new plans.
I am still leader of the Government of National Defence and could kick out the old rival Chiang Kai-Shek and backstab them after the truce runs out. Our armies is at slightly the same size from allied intelligence reports that seems accurate, but they have better industry. However they are spread out over vast distances chasing those desperate banzai charges all the time.
This is my next decision to make.
Will he ally with the Americans and British if i throw him out? Or someone else? Maybe nobody? That would be great.
Hopefully I would isolate him and have the other warlords on my side when I kick him out and not them.
But I am not sure. What do you think?

I need your opion on the further plan
(will update here)
comchi1.JPG
 
Last edited:
Not sure how NatChi will jump if you eject/attack them. Would need to test.
 
Not sure how NatChi will jump if you eject/attack them. Would need to test.
Ok. I tested some. They join Allies at once when I kicked them out probably because everyone is at war with Japan together.
The other Warlords will not leave. I have to fight them all, that is too bad if they are in factions with major powers and I am not.
Both Allies and Comintern want me in, so i can basically choose to join one of them if i leave the united china thing.

If I go in with the Allies and then go to war with NatChi I believe they cannot join them and cannot join Comintern either because they are not communist.
So could stay with Allies until the world war is over and leave it when there is peace. I can create another faction later with a focus if I want to.
Just want to isolate NatChi first because they are hard enough to take on alone.