The Sun rises in Japan - Empire of Japan HPP AAR

[SKOTy]

What were the other choices for the 2-2-6 event?

I can't remember exactly but I hope this helps

	option = {
		name = "Emperor Hirohito crushes the Coup (historical)"
		ai_chance = { factor = 90 }
		load_oob = "repression.txt"
		load_oob = "propaganda_press.txt"
		fascistic = { organisation = 30 popularity = 10 }
		head_of_government = 5003
		dissent = 1
		threat = { who = all value = 5 }
		threat = { who = CHI value = 10 }
		set_country_flag = "226_incident"
		set_country_flag = "226_crushed"
	}
	option = {
		name = "The rebels gain the Emperor's support"
		ai_chance = { factor = 9 }
		paternal_autocrat = { organisation = 25 popularity = 25 }
		load_oob = "state_press.txt"
		remove_minister = 5002
		set_country_flag = "5002_removed"
		remove_minister = 5037
		set_country_flag = "5037_removed"
		set_country_flag = "226_incident"
		set_country_flag = "226_success"
	}
	option = {
		name = "Let the people decide!"
		ai_chance = { factor = 1 }
		load_oob = "open_society.txt"
		load_oob = "censored_press.txt"
		government = constitutional_monarchy
		do_election	= THIS
		threat = { who = all value = -10 }
		set_country_flag = "226_incident"
		set_country_flag = "holds_elections"
	}

 

[guillec87]

interesting update, I didn't know of that event, I had to google it

 

[SKOTy]

3. Last days of peace

Shortly after Italian proposal of Berlin-Rome Axis Germany proposed Anti-Comintern pact which Japan gladly signed.

I try to research every tech which adds a bit of soft attack as IJA will be facing mainly militias and infantry and more or less no tanks (AFAIK Guanxi starts with one LARM division and thats all armour Chinese have).

As nearly all techs that boost soft attack are researched so I shift research to air doctrines (mainly fighter defense and ground attack ones).

Some additions to IJN have been completed and necessary requirements for strong army are met.

With a big part of upgrades from guard/militia completed I shift some IC to medium bomber production so ratio of IC dedicated to IJN rises compared to ratio dedicated to IJA and navy influence happens - this one will shorten construction of capitals nearly by two months.

Soviets eliminating their officers - nothing bad about it. However Soviets won't be my main enemies.

Another HPP event. I chose option to replace Hirota Koki secretly hoping the new guy will be silent workhorse and will provide me 5% IC bonus.

Looks like new guy wasn't able to deal with problems and is about to be also replaced - his bonus wasn't really good (5% crude oil production) so I've decided to gamble and try whether new guy will provide me better bonuses.

With majority of forces modernized and reorganized time to mobilize has come. Marco Polo will be fired when all forces are reinforced to 100%.

During the mobilization last important doctrine is researched and from technological point of view IJA is as much technologically superior as it can be without researching ahead of time.

After nearly a month of babbling Allies decided to invoke second London treaty escalator clause - at least IJN will have honourable opponent.

When all armies are reinforced I fire Marco Polo and it looks like Chinese want cooperate - too bad for them I don't want to.

 

[guillec87]

he, why not cooperate? the extra infra is always wellcome

 

[volksmarschall]

Why can't we all just get along?

The Empire of the Rising Sun wants China...

 

[Maggix]

he, why not cooperate? the extra infra is always wellcome

It's infrastructure in the 1-infra provinces that represent the Heibei demilitarized zone.

 

[shorty84]

It's infrastructure in the 1-infra provinces that represent the Heibei demilitarized zone.

That's correct - in the case of war between JAP and China, the demilitarized zone (represented by 1-infra provinces in the mod) will get its decent level of infrastructure back, because in times of war, there's no need for such a zone, obviously ^^.

Nice update SKOTy - do you plan some amphibious landings around Shanghai or further south?

cheers

 

[SKOTy]

do you plan some amphibious landings around Shanghai or further south?

Yes, there will be some amphibious to speed things up. First one will be Qingdao and Weihai.

 

[Karaya 1]

Quick question : Dont the chinese lose their cores they had on the rest of China if do that ? Or is there a third option to simply give in ? I always vote for China because its awesome, but then again.... go stomp the AI will you Free them of their misery.

 

[sprites]

yeah , it would be quite boring if there was no conflict in this game ...

 

[SKOTy]

4. 2nd Sino-Japanese war, part 1


Finally, after thorough preparations it's time for some action.

4 corps are awaiting orders sitting near the Chinese borders. 3 corps are regular infantry ones (3xINF, 1xSUP(H)) and one corps is consisting of "armoured horses" (3x CAV, 1xSUP(T)) and one LARM division. Same ammount of troops is awaiting orders near Shanxi borders.
All operations near the coasts are supported by IJN, here you can see SAG of admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.

Chinese navy is no match of Imperial Japanese one but this was clear from the beginning.

This was to be expected, Chinese will receive big support from all countries on the World.

Beiping has been encircled and one infantry division has been trapped here condemned to be lost.

Amphibious assaults on Qingdao and Weihai have begun. Qingdao has a nice level 10 port which will ease supply situation in China.
Hopefully some divisions will be trapped on that peninsula too.

Unified front. All warlords apart from Mao's communists join it, Shanxi and Xibei immediately joins the fray.

Shanxi are immediately attacked with high ferocity and strong push has been initiated with intention to eliminate this weaker warlord as soon as possible.

After 8 days the progress starts being noticeable and with capture of port in Tianjin supply situation has calmed down.

Less industry to salvage in early parts of conflict

This starts to resemble my German campaign. Chinese are being pushed into their heartland and the momentum of Imperial Japanese Army is very high. I wasn't expecting that Jinan will be captured 11 days into the war.

Material support of Chinese has been initiated

Situation 2 day after previous screenshot - 2 days and progress is noticeable and peninsula where's Qingdao is going to be cut off from rest of China's controlled territory.
Judging by initial 2 weeks I have to say that investment into cavalry and blitzkrieg doctrines has paid of.

2 day later all provinces for Chihli gulf are under Japanese control and sweet modifier providing 10% money and 10% manpower is secured.

Another 2 Chinese divisions are going to be overrun, here's their counterattack targeting only Japanese tank division. Japanese army will hold and these 2 divisions won't be allowed to meet up with rest of Chinese army.

Peninsula has been cut off and 5 militia division have been trapped there.
If you look at Linqing you can notice that some divisions are having supply problems but this will be hopefully quickly solved as another port has been captured and supply convoy heading there has been established.
Also, first Xibei divisions are arriving into the fray.

American intervention? No thanks, this only between Japan and Chinese warlords.

First Shanxi victory point is secured and another one is going to be secured so that will be one warlord less to fight with.

3 weeks after start of the war. Initial pockets has been closed and armies are still having initial momentum and are quickly advancing, thanks to not difficult terrain there (in my German game my assault started in south China which is full of mountains and everything was really really slow there) and Shanxi is about to fall.

One warlord falls, other 6 to go...

 

[guillec87]

nice update!! I think you were right when deciding the doctrines, it's looks like an eastern version of the Blitzkrieg, or whatever it's called in japanese

 

[Ikarases]

I guess the Communists are making it a bit easier for you. I suggest to DoW them when they are the least aware!

Quick question : Dont the chinese lose their cores they had on the rest of China if do that ? Or is there a third option to simply give in ? I always vote for China because its awesome, but then again.... go stomp the AI will you Free them of their misery.

I think they indeed lost some cores. I actually went once for that decision and my cores were gone from there.

 

[volksmarschall]

Those poor Chinese ships must've been target practice for the mighty Imperial Japanese Navy...

 

[TheBromgrev]

Quick question : Dont the chinese lose their cores they had on the rest of China if do that ? Or is there a third option to simply give in ?

They lose their cores. HOI3 really lacks support for internal politics, especially for China. Ideally, what should happen is that the provinces in Hebei get a permanent revolt risk, but the HOI3 game engine only allows for global revolt risk or local revolt risk caused by not having a core present. We tried adding a province modifier that raised RR, but it didn't work, so we went with removing cores instead.

To understand the reasoning behind that, you need to know something about China's political situation. Chiang Kai-shek had evaded a kidnapping attempt in 1926 and was kidnapped just prior to the war breaking out, and in both cases his kidnapping or attempted kidnapping was politically motivated by his opponents to get him to change his stance on certain things. His opponents knew they couldn't just kill him, because Chiang was the only thing holding China together at this point, and he had a very stubborn personality so they felt that their only option was to kidnap him and threaten to kill him if he didn't change his policies. While he evaded the first attempt in 1926, he was caught by one of his own generals in 1936 and barely survived. Given what happened to him during the Xi'an Incident and the very large public movement to fight Japan, Chiang really had no choice IRL but to declare war on Japan or risk revolts, loss of popular support, and another possible kidnap or even assassination attempt.

Since the mod tries to provide alternatives to historical events that we believe would be plausible, we felt that if Chiang (or his successor if he's killed during the Xi'an Incident) gives in to Japan during Marco Polo, that they would lose popular support in the areas that would be most affected by Japanese aggression. IRL, the area the RoC loses cores on became hardcore communist supporters after Japan invaded, because the people living in Hebei felt betrayed by the Chiang's government and Mao's communists were the only ones fighting in the area during most of the war.

 

[Ikarases]

They lose their cores. HOI3 really lacks support for internal politics, especially for China. Ideally, what should happen is that the provinces in Hebei get a permanent revolt risk, but the HOI3 game engine only allows for global revolt risk or local revolt risk caused by not having a core present. We tried adding a province modifier that raised RR, but it didn't work, so we went with removing cores instead.

To understand the reasoning behind that, you need to know something about China's political situation. Chiang Kai-shek had evaded a kidnapping attempt in 1926 and was kidnapped just prior to the war breaking out, and in both cases his kidnapping or attempted kidnapping was politically motivated by his opponents to get him to change his stance on certain things. His opponents knew they couldn't just kill him, because Chiang was the only thing holding China together at this point, and he had a very stubborn personality so they felt that their only option was to kidnap him and threaten to kill him if he didn't change his policies. While he evaded the first attempt in 1926, he was caught by one of his own generals in 1936 and barely survived. Given what happened to him during the Xi'an Incident and the very large public movement to fight Japan, Chiang really had no choice IRL but to declare war on Japan or risk revolts, loss of popular support, and another possible kidnap or even assassination attempt.

Since the mod tries to provide alternatives to historical events that we believe would be plausible, we felt that if Chiang (or his successor if he's killed during the Xi'an Incident) gives in to Japan during Marco Polo, that they would lose popular support in the areas that would be most affected by Japanese aggression. IRL, the area the RoC loses cores on became hardcore communist supporters after Japan invaded, because the people living in Hebei felt betrayed by the Chiang's government and Mao's communists were the only ones fighting in the area during most of the war.

That's interesting. I hope you'll succeed in getting to HoI IV beta test and if you do, you can try to push through some HPP ideas! Especially those regarding China, as so far its representation in-game is indeed very imperfect.

 

[TheBromgrev]

Well, the changes to the map in Asia between FTM and TFH came from the HPP, the Hu Hanmin event came from the HPP and I snuck had it added to TFH vanilla as part of the Community Map Project, and did some other things my NDA doesn't allow me to talk about. That said, in general for all software, when beta testers start the progress of the game/program is typically only a few months away from being finished and the major features are already implemented to some extent. The main point of the beta is to get user-feedback during a stage of the development process where things can still be adjusted without causing problems later. Since I'm assuming HOI4 is changing a lot of things, it's likely that by the time Paradox asks for betas to sign up not much in the way of new, unplanned content will be added due to time constraints. That's just a guess though, based on my professional RL experience. At this point we can both only hope that the political side of the game is changed to allow for a decent representation of China and the complexities of the situation in the country at the time. For one, having the PRC exist right from the start as a normal country isn't the best way to represent the communists, as their army didn't fight in the game's divisional combat style, but there's no good way in HOI3 to model them.

SKOTy, I'm curious as to how the Break the Dikes event works for you, since that should be coming up pretty soon given your progress in China. When I last tested it, my supply lines as Japan slowed to a crawl and I was forced to open a second front in Shanghai in order to keep the offensive going. When I saved/reloaded, my supply depot moved from Qingdao to Shanghai and the supply situation was much more bearable.

 

[SKOTy]

5. 2nd Sino-Japanese war, part 2

After Shanxi fell lot of Chinese divisions found themselves in former Shanxi territory without support and in relatively weak numbers.

Blue arrow represents operation which will hopefully cut of Chinese in Shanxi territory from their main armies.

Cutting Chinese off is harder then it look, however main problems are supply shortages not the Chinese...

All warlords of China are slowly unifying against might of Imperial Japanese Army.

Encirclement has been accomplished. It's smaller than I've expected but plenty of Chinese divisions are trapped and IJA will take care of them so they won't be bothered by them in the future.

4 days have passed and another one division has been cut off and the main pocket has shrinked.

While the pocket is weakening and is about to collapse SNLF is being busy and assaults on Nantong and Shanghai are taking place.

In the end 10 divisions are trapped in the pocket and what's better, most of them are regular infantry ones as they are being most painful to deal with.

The pocket has shattered and Chinese are another 10 divisions short which is nice.

Shanghai and Nantong have fallen and in the west you can see another small one province pocket forming.
It appears that initial momentum has been lost and the offensive has degenerated into slow methodical approach but at least IJA is still pushing Chinese.

I chose fighter targeting focus, after fighters are down bombers will be dealt with easily.

Another 3 divisions are trapped. The pace IJA is destroying Chinese divisions is good and hopefully I still can destroy more divisions than Chinese can produce.

Assault on Zhengzhou has begun, this will drive Chiang Kai-shek and leaders of Kuomintang desperate that they will break Huang He dikes. Luckily for me, most of Imperial Japanese army have already crossed Huang He.

Another 3 divisions are trapped in the vicinity of Shanghai. However none of them is regular infantry division but even this helps the offensive.

City of Xi'an will be encircled by Japanese cavalry and another one infantry division will be overrun by the Japanese tide.

It's there, Chinese in their desperate retreat broke the Huang He dikes and caused the area to be flooded.

I've expected the area to be flooded more as only 4 provinces have reduced infrastructure so I don't think that this will slow the adavance as number of ports to which supplies are flowing si quite high and another level 10 port in Shanghai is secured.

The advance is slow but methodical and steady as IJA is approaching areas where blitz can't be used due to tremendous terrain.


[/IMG]http://imageshack.com/a/img600/5407/mtmb.jpg[/IMG]

As most of Xibei divisions was destroyed and overrun in former Shanxi territory their homeland is defenseless. In order to defeat them only 3 of their victory points are needed to be captured (at the beginning of the conflict they had unity of 75,2 but with some strategic bombing of their capital their unity has dropped bellow 75%).

Guanxi divisions are entering the fray! From my past experiences their armies are most difficult to be dealt with and they posses a tank brigade. Their presence will surely slow (even now painfully slow) advance.
However I have crazy plan that might just work...

 

[Maggix]

Land in southern China and conquer Guangxi?

 

[guillec87]

Land in southern China and conquer Guangxi?

+1 if you have enough troops for that operation, it would speed up the end the war