There have been several AARs dedicated to China. most of them in the early expansions, using swarms of Militia to exploit China's vast Manpower pool. I decided to take a different approach. The focus of this AAR will be on WHY to do certain things, making it at least somewhat useful for playing other countries as well.
Long-term goal: recover all Chinese core territory from all foreign invaders. This will involve war against Japan and its puppet Manchukuo, against the UK, France, and Portugal to regain those tiny enclaves along the southern coast, and against all of the semi-autonomous Chinese warlords. Initially, I intend to grab what we can from a warlord or two before war against Japan becomes inevitable, then attempt to occupy ALL Japanese and Manchukuo-held Chinese territory before forcing Japan to peace out (they will hopefully accept a "white peace", which will leave China with any of its Japanese cores which it militarily occupies - hopefully ALL of them). Then we will join the Axis and take our cores from the UK and France, and integrate the various remaining warlords by force. Leaving the Japanese home islands and their navy intact will benefit the later struggles against the Allies, and we may even need to bail out one or more of the other Axis powers at some point ( possibly helping GER against the SU or defending Japan from a US invasion).
Jan 1, 1936 - China begins with crippling economic problems, in fact its starting effective IC is insufficient to cover both Consumer Demand and military Supply consumption, much less build new units or upgrade the existing ones. The alternatives are to either reduce Consumer Goods production and suffer ever-increasing Dissent, further reducing its effective IC, or to undersupply the Military. I chose the latter, for obvious reasons. A truly gamey approach would be to set the Supply slider to 0 until war is imminent, then begin repairing the damage done by a year or two of starvation, but I chose not to resort to such a drastic exploit.
To fix the underlying production problem, the first step was to enact the "Prepare for War" decision, which is available as a result of Nationalist China having less than 30 effective IC. That will gradually reduce Neutrality, and thereby reduce Consumer Demand over time. More immediately, China needs to enact more aggressive Production laws, but that requires Neutrality less than 70, plus 40 Money. The first requirement will be solved in a matter of a few days by the "Prepare for War" decision, and the latter will take a few more days until sufficient cash is acquired. To hasten the process, at the cost of further aggravating the supply problem in the short term, China offers to sell 10-20 supplies per day to the USA, and to the Soviets. Both accept, giving China more than 4 money coming in per day.
Meanwhile, Leadership is divided up, with 2 points going to Diplomacy (because we're going to need to trade for raw materials once the industrial base begins to ramp up production), 4+ going to Espionage (to boost internal spies to 10 ASAP and then to install 10 spies in several target countries, as will be detailed later), a mere point going to Officer Training (until we change the conscription law), and the remainder to Research. The initial focuses for Research will be Education, Agriculture, and one of the two Production doctrines, then Infantry Small Arms, Single Engine Aircraft Armament, and the essential Land Doctrines related to Infantry Organization and Morale. Note that Education and the Supply Doctrines increase the land combat Theoretical value needed for many combat doctrines and several techs, so researching that will speed up several other Research projects, besides the obvious benefit of providing a bit more Leadership. That will have to suffice until there are enough spies, and more Leadership can then be shifted from Diplomacy and Espionage to Research. The abysmal Officer Ratio will continue to drop, with only 2 points invested in Officer Training and a lot more brigades being built, but we won't sink any more into it until it's closer to wartime, when we Mobilize our military and bump up the Conscription and Training laws considerably. Then we can invest a LOT more Leadership points at a FAR higher rate of return, a couple of months prior to waging war.
Once there's more than 40 cash in the treasury, we give up on our peace-time economy and the Basic Mobilization law is enacted. This will provide a significant boost in effective IC, solving the economic shortages as well as giving a more modest boost in Resource production, leaving China short just a few units of various raw materials. MOST of the available IC, once Consumer Demand and military Supply have been met, will go toward retiring that large backlog of equipment upgrades as soon as practical, rather than building new units which will eat supplies for the next year or two before they're needed for combat. A couple of new brigades and several upgrades from MIL to INF are put in the production queue to begin warming up Practicals.
We have the money coming in from the Supplies we sold, so it's time to buy Resources. First we buy 1-2 of something from the USA and Soviets, to improve Relations by 15 points, and 1-2 Rare Materials from the UK, since they will need to be our primary source of Rare Materials while at war with Japan, most of the other sources requiring Convoys which WILL get sunk quickly. You can buy a few Energy (coal) from Germany, which will boost Relations with a future ally, assist them with a tiny bit of cash, and increase your drift toward their corner of the diplomatic triangle slightly. After 7-8 days, new diplomats should arrive in each of those countries, and you can buy another 1-3 units of raw materials. Continue this for a few rounds until Relations are in the 100 range, and THEN buy the bulk of what you need at far cheaper prices than would have been the case at low Relations. Try not to exceed 200 Relations, because anything over 200 is discarded. If you need to break those trade deals (due to convoy raiding), you lose 15 points per deal, and you could easily end up with WORSE Relations than before you started making deals, thanks to those discarded points.
By around the end of January, there should be enough spies, over and above the 10 needed for domestic security, to begin operations on foreign soil. Set your placement priority to 2 "pips" for the UK, initially set the mission to Counter-espionage, then add pips for "Raise Threat" after you've gained overwhelming spy superiority. That Threat will be needed to further lower your own Neutrality, since the "Prepare for War" decision will only take it from 70 down to 20, which is insufficient to declare wars. The UK is in a different political group, making its Threat much more effective than from another Authoritarian state (absurdly enough, Japan poses almost zero "Threat" to China, despite war being imminent), they're adjacent (thanks to that tiny Hong Kong enclave), which increases the magnitude of the effect, and they will build a lot of non-Reserve military units (ships and planes), adding even more Threat. Since only the HIGHEST threat to a country is considered, they're by far the best target for raising Threat. As a side effect, the increased Threat of the UK also allows GER and ITA to build more military units, by reducing their Consumer Demand.
Once you have sufficient spies for additional placement, Communist China is the second target. While the UK's Threat will lower your own Neutrality, raising ComChi's Threat will allow you to attack them as soon as their boosted Threat exceeds your reduced Neutrality. They're harder to increase, due to their small military threat, but anything is a plus at this point. With a bit of luck and shifting the emphasis between Counter-Espionage and Raise Threat, the two values of Threat and Neutrality should meet somewhere during 1937.
France and the Soviet Union are optional espionage targets, if you feel confident and lucky; France is a "lottery" for stolen tech, which may yield valuable techs and doctrines over the next couple of years, or be a complete waste of Leadership. In various campaigns playing different countries, I've gotten valuable techs like Motorized, Medium Armor, Destroyer Engines, or Carriers, but in other campaigns ended up with stuff like Fighter Focus (counter-productive, in my opinion) or Cavalry AT weapons (which slow down your cavalry significantly). Your spies can also assist Germany by lowering French National Unity. Attacking the National Unity of the SU with spies makes if far easier for an Axis victory in the East. Initially, I set 3 pips for Counter-Espionage until I've reduced the target's domestic spies to 0-1, then add 2 pips to the primary mission, then reverse that 3 + 2 to 2 + 3 pips once I'm confident enough of maintaining spy dominance. Once you have the domestic spies reduced in all of your targets and a few spare spies as replacements, you can usually drop your Espionage slider down to around a point of Leadership or less for the rest of the game.
I'll address the "why" aspects of Production in a bit of detail in a later post. Basically, you have the Manpower to build more than enough Militia to defeat Japan, but those won't stand up well to the better equipped Soviet or Allied units which you may face later in the campaign. I chose to begin the long process of upgrading Militia to Infantry (plus a couple of divisions of Mountain troops), and increasing the Division sizes from 2 brigades to 3. The tough choice for me was whether to disband the existing Infantry and Militia brigades one by one, and replace them with Reserve units, or to keep them and hope they gain experience quickly enough in combat. The Reserve brigades will gain a LOT of experience when you fill them out to full strength at higher training laws, as you mobilize for war, and will consume less Supply in the mean time while at their low Reserve levels, while the non-Reserve units will retain the low experience levels that they start with, but are already built and ready for action at a moment's notice.
You can further increase your Production law from Basic Mobilization to Full once your Neutrality drops far enough, then to Wartime Mobilization, giving you significantly more effective IC than your base IC figure. With that amount of IC available, I begin building new Infantry and Mountain brigades to bring the divisions up to 3xINF or 3xMTN size, and add an Interceptor to the production queue, a couple of ART brigades, plus another group of Convoys (for those US and German resource runs). Eventually, I want a minimum of 3xINT, preferably two groups, to face Japan. They will PROBABLY not trigger the Marco Polo Bridge event if we can stack enough troops on the border and they don't feel confident enough to attack, so war with Japan may happen in late 1937, or possibly not until well into 1938. That leaves an unknown length window of opportunity to deal with the various warlords, starting with Communist China.
Long-term goal: recover all Chinese core territory from all foreign invaders. This will involve war against Japan and its puppet Manchukuo, against the UK, France, and Portugal to regain those tiny enclaves along the southern coast, and against all of the semi-autonomous Chinese warlords. Initially, I intend to grab what we can from a warlord or two before war against Japan becomes inevitable, then attempt to occupy ALL Japanese and Manchukuo-held Chinese territory before forcing Japan to peace out (they will hopefully accept a "white peace", which will leave China with any of its Japanese cores which it militarily occupies - hopefully ALL of them). Then we will join the Axis and take our cores from the UK and France, and integrate the various remaining warlords by force. Leaving the Japanese home islands and their navy intact will benefit the later struggles against the Allies, and we may even need to bail out one or more of the other Axis powers at some point ( possibly helping GER against the SU or defending Japan from a US invasion).
Jan 1, 1936 - China begins with crippling economic problems, in fact its starting effective IC is insufficient to cover both Consumer Demand and military Supply consumption, much less build new units or upgrade the existing ones. The alternatives are to either reduce Consumer Goods production and suffer ever-increasing Dissent, further reducing its effective IC, or to undersupply the Military. I chose the latter, for obvious reasons. A truly gamey approach would be to set the Supply slider to 0 until war is imminent, then begin repairing the damage done by a year or two of starvation, but I chose not to resort to such a drastic exploit.
To fix the underlying production problem, the first step was to enact the "Prepare for War" decision, which is available as a result of Nationalist China having less than 30 effective IC. That will gradually reduce Neutrality, and thereby reduce Consumer Demand over time. More immediately, China needs to enact more aggressive Production laws, but that requires Neutrality less than 70, plus 40 Money. The first requirement will be solved in a matter of a few days by the "Prepare for War" decision, and the latter will take a few more days until sufficient cash is acquired. To hasten the process, at the cost of further aggravating the supply problem in the short term, China offers to sell 10-20 supplies per day to the USA, and to the Soviets. Both accept, giving China more than 4 money coming in per day.
Meanwhile, Leadership is divided up, with 2 points going to Diplomacy (because we're going to need to trade for raw materials once the industrial base begins to ramp up production), 4+ going to Espionage (to boost internal spies to 10 ASAP and then to install 10 spies in several target countries, as will be detailed later), a mere point going to Officer Training (until we change the conscription law), and the remainder to Research. The initial focuses for Research will be Education, Agriculture, and one of the two Production doctrines, then Infantry Small Arms, Single Engine Aircraft Armament, and the essential Land Doctrines related to Infantry Organization and Morale. Note that Education and the Supply Doctrines increase the land combat Theoretical value needed for many combat doctrines and several techs, so researching that will speed up several other Research projects, besides the obvious benefit of providing a bit more Leadership. That will have to suffice until there are enough spies, and more Leadership can then be shifted from Diplomacy and Espionage to Research. The abysmal Officer Ratio will continue to drop, with only 2 points invested in Officer Training and a lot more brigades being built, but we won't sink any more into it until it's closer to wartime, when we Mobilize our military and bump up the Conscription and Training laws considerably. Then we can invest a LOT more Leadership points at a FAR higher rate of return, a couple of months prior to waging war.
Once there's more than 40 cash in the treasury, we give up on our peace-time economy and the Basic Mobilization law is enacted. This will provide a significant boost in effective IC, solving the economic shortages as well as giving a more modest boost in Resource production, leaving China short just a few units of various raw materials. MOST of the available IC, once Consumer Demand and military Supply have been met, will go toward retiring that large backlog of equipment upgrades as soon as practical, rather than building new units which will eat supplies for the next year or two before they're needed for combat. A couple of new brigades and several upgrades from MIL to INF are put in the production queue to begin warming up Practicals.
We have the money coming in from the Supplies we sold, so it's time to buy Resources. First we buy 1-2 of something from the USA and Soviets, to improve Relations by 15 points, and 1-2 Rare Materials from the UK, since they will need to be our primary source of Rare Materials while at war with Japan, most of the other sources requiring Convoys which WILL get sunk quickly. You can buy a few Energy (coal) from Germany, which will boost Relations with a future ally, assist them with a tiny bit of cash, and increase your drift toward their corner of the diplomatic triangle slightly. After 7-8 days, new diplomats should arrive in each of those countries, and you can buy another 1-3 units of raw materials. Continue this for a few rounds until Relations are in the 100 range, and THEN buy the bulk of what you need at far cheaper prices than would have been the case at low Relations. Try not to exceed 200 Relations, because anything over 200 is discarded. If you need to break those trade deals (due to convoy raiding), you lose 15 points per deal, and you could easily end up with WORSE Relations than before you started making deals, thanks to those discarded points.
By around the end of January, there should be enough spies, over and above the 10 needed for domestic security, to begin operations on foreign soil. Set your placement priority to 2 "pips" for the UK, initially set the mission to Counter-espionage, then add pips for "Raise Threat" after you've gained overwhelming spy superiority. That Threat will be needed to further lower your own Neutrality, since the "Prepare for War" decision will only take it from 70 down to 20, which is insufficient to declare wars. The UK is in a different political group, making its Threat much more effective than from another Authoritarian state (absurdly enough, Japan poses almost zero "Threat" to China, despite war being imminent), they're adjacent (thanks to that tiny Hong Kong enclave), which increases the magnitude of the effect, and they will build a lot of non-Reserve military units (ships and planes), adding even more Threat. Since only the HIGHEST threat to a country is considered, they're by far the best target for raising Threat. As a side effect, the increased Threat of the UK also allows GER and ITA to build more military units, by reducing their Consumer Demand.
Once you have sufficient spies for additional placement, Communist China is the second target. While the UK's Threat will lower your own Neutrality, raising ComChi's Threat will allow you to attack them as soon as their boosted Threat exceeds your reduced Neutrality. They're harder to increase, due to their small military threat, but anything is a plus at this point. With a bit of luck and shifting the emphasis between Counter-Espionage and Raise Threat, the two values of Threat and Neutrality should meet somewhere during 1937.
France and the Soviet Union are optional espionage targets, if you feel confident and lucky; France is a "lottery" for stolen tech, which may yield valuable techs and doctrines over the next couple of years, or be a complete waste of Leadership. In various campaigns playing different countries, I've gotten valuable techs like Motorized, Medium Armor, Destroyer Engines, or Carriers, but in other campaigns ended up with stuff like Fighter Focus (counter-productive, in my opinion) or Cavalry AT weapons (which slow down your cavalry significantly). Your spies can also assist Germany by lowering French National Unity. Attacking the National Unity of the SU with spies makes if far easier for an Axis victory in the East. Initially, I set 3 pips for Counter-Espionage until I've reduced the target's domestic spies to 0-1, then add 2 pips to the primary mission, then reverse that 3 + 2 to 2 + 3 pips once I'm confident enough of maintaining spy dominance. Once you have the domestic spies reduced in all of your targets and a few spare spies as replacements, you can usually drop your Espionage slider down to around a point of Leadership or less for the rest of the game.
I'll address the "why" aspects of Production in a bit of detail in a later post. Basically, you have the Manpower to build more than enough Militia to defeat Japan, but those won't stand up well to the better equipped Soviet or Allied units which you may face later in the campaign. I chose to begin the long process of upgrading Militia to Infantry (plus a couple of divisions of Mountain troops), and increasing the Division sizes from 2 brigades to 3. The tough choice for me was whether to disband the existing Infantry and Militia brigades one by one, and replace them with Reserve units, or to keep them and hope they gain experience quickly enough in combat. The Reserve brigades will gain a LOT of experience when you fill them out to full strength at higher training laws, as you mobilize for war, and will consume less Supply in the mean time while at their low Reserve levels, while the non-Reserve units will retain the low experience levels that they start with, but are already built and ready for action at a moment's notice.
You can further increase your Production law from Basic Mobilization to Full once your Neutrality drops far enough, then to Wartime Mobilization, giving you significantly more effective IC than your base IC figure. With that amount of IC available, I begin building new Infantry and Mountain brigades to bring the divisions up to 3xINF or 3xMTN size, and add an Interceptor to the production queue, a couple of ART brigades, plus another group of Convoys (for those US and German resource runs). Eventually, I want a minimum of 3xINT, preferably two groups, to face Japan. They will PROBABLY not trigger the Marco Polo Bridge event if we can stack enough troops on the border and they don't feel confident enough to attack, so war with Japan may happen in late 1937, or possibly not until well into 1938. That leaves an unknown length window of opportunity to deal with the various warlords, starting with Communist China.
Last edited:
- 5
- 2