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[WealthyRadish]

My experience on the opposite side (conquering China as Japan) is that command structure is pretty key to keeping supply requirements down, making the bad infrastructure workable.

I'm mostly paraphrasing from this, but you want decent skill at theater level (bonus attributes are irrelevant), your absolute highest skill general at army group level, decent skill guys with some incidental attributes at army level, and basically anyone you can get with 'logistics wizard' as a corp leader (4 divisions to a corp is how I split it). I've been able to keep 38 divisions (36 divisions of 3 inf/1 art and 2 divisions of 2 light armor/2 motorized) continually advancing against Nationalist China with minimal supply concerns using that setup.

That said, since Japan may have superior forces, having high skilled guys at the divisional level may also be necessary in critical areas.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

That said, since Japan may will have superior forces, having high skilled guys at the divisional level may also be necessary in critical areas.

FTFY. Japan is one beast to fight as an Asian nation.

[WealthyRadish]

It is actually hilarious how badly China's getting rolled. GL defending against that. o7

[Anvilfolk]

Wohoooo! Game won!

I'm only really interested in WWII, and by '44 Nationalist China had conquered Manchukuo and single-handedly conquered Berlin while the rest of the Allies played around with France and the rest of Germany.

The US had taken care of Japan, and Japan's troops in the continent were slowly but surely destroyed. I found out about encirclement, which is awesome - but a bit too easily exploitable. Basically all I had to do was let a largish piece of land open next to the shore, and let the AI rush in and adjust bring troops to the new borders. Then I'd push one or two provinces against the coast, cut a dozen divisions off, and completely destroy them.

I don' think things improved that much from building infrastructure. What I ended up doing was having units at low org strategically redeploy to a city not horrible far from the frontlines. That'd get them supplies and get their organisation up really fast. Then I'd bring them back.

Organising the army and commanding corps is still a big pain. I'm trying to keep 1 Corps per province, with 4 divisions each. I have to select one of the divisions, find its HQ, click on "divisions" to select the HQ+all divisions, then remove HQ, then move them. It's a big pain. Please tell me there's an easier way?

Also, is there any way Japan can survive the late war? I doubt it, right?

Thanks for the help, everybody. Nationalist China, Conquerer of Berlin, approves!

[snelg]

Thanks for the advice about Japan.

I did find one thing kind of weird after starting the war with Nationalist China. After I had most of Shanxi occupied, they were automatically annexed. I'm playing with all settings on played controlled, is this normal? Any problems with that happening?

If it's anything like HOI2, warlord states are automatically annexed by Nationalist China via events when you occupy enough of them, and their armies inherited by that country.  A lot of the warlord politics aren't really well-modeled in-game since the warlords are more independent than satellites and not quite fully sovereign (since they, at least, pay lip service to a united China), and since the devoting resources to accurately model it would detract from other areas where they could be put to more general use across the entire game, it usually gets papered over by event-driven determinism.

Almost. In hoi3 you have the conquest war goal on the various Chinese countries from the event/decision which causes annexation or government in exile (sometimes if they have allies, maybe only for factions) when they surrender. The reason they surrender is because you grab enough of the victory points they have compared to their national unity.

My question is: how long will it take infrastructure to build once I've got the tech? And more than that, what can I do in the meantime? I'm thinking about the following:
- Bring resting units way back from the frontlines to get supplies more easily
- Set up sea convoys somehow?
- Give up some of the front in order to make it smaller and have more people resting
- SPAM THE HELL OUT OF INFRASTRUCTURE ONCE IT'S RESEARCHED

Infrastructure, as you probably noticed takes a while to build up if you don't have construction practicals.
Moving some units away from the front will probably not help much unless you move them far enough to not to hog the actual supply line to the front.
Sea convoys would probably be heavily harassed by the Japanese.
Infrastructure (if you can afford it, haven't played as China in a long long time) and a smaller more supply effective army would probably be the most safe option.

I don' think things improved that much from building infrastructure. What I ended up doing was having units at low org strategically redeploy to a city not horrible far from the frontlines. That'd get them supplies and get their organisation up really fast. Then I'd bring them back.

Be careful with strategic redeployment whn you lack supplies, it doubles the supply consumption while redeploying.

[Anvilfolk]

Be careful with strategic redeployment whn you lack supplies, it doubles the supply consumption while redeploying.

Ouch, did not know that. Next time I'll use the regular movement!

I don't really see how I can do with less than 4 divisions (1 corps) per province on the frontlines. Two divisions are too easy to get routed by a prong attack... and fronts tend to be large. I've been just using Divisions made of 4 infantry brigades, and then spamming infantry tech. I'd have about 3 or 4 extra corps to relieve frontline corps when they were either under attack or attacking.

And yeah, the only thing that happened when I got some convoys going was national unity going down from them all being sunk

[snelg]

You're probably right about not being able to pull out a lot of divisions to help with supplies. For division composition it's probably a sound one as China and in the regular game. At least from what I can tell looking up in the wiki. But I haven't played without mods for a long time divisions tend to look a bit different in the mods.

The problem with China, I guess, when compared to the great powers. They don't have as much leadership to spend on research or as large industry to build an airforce or navy to get around problems. If you have air superiority you could try to fly in supplies as well but it is sometimes a bit wonky.

[Jopax]

I'm not sure if there's a land contact with the USSR early on, but you could ask for some lend lease to help with production, they are usually able to spare some (unlike the cheap-ass capitalist pigs in the US). Also, if you can spare a single research slot for some of the supply efficency techs, that should help too. Not by much mind, but I'm guessing you aren't that short since your forces aren't excessively large.

[snelg]

I haven't really used them much so can't say how co-operative the ai is, but consider using production licenses when not being able to research something you want.

[Micro102]

At what point would you stop building military? Like what % of your IC would you dedicate to supplies and what % of those supplies would you use to maintain the army, if not 100%?

[Anvilfolk]

I don't have Their Finest Hour, so I think lend-lease works differently? It seemed to me like the lend-lease stuff I tried to get going ended up eating MY IC, which sucked. Might've gotten that wrong though? Was trying to get a second set of old tactical airplanes to be murdered by the Japanese zeros

[snelg]

I don't have Their Finest Hour, so I think lend-lease works differently? It seemed to me like the lend-lease stuff I tried to get going ended up eating MY IC, which sucked. Might've gotten that wrong though? Was trying to get a second set of old tactical airplanes to be murdered by the Japanese zeros

Yes, lend lease was changed in their finest hour. I don't remember how it used to work, or if it was only events and modifiers. But in the latest expansion it allows someone to give away part of their IC to another country by land or convoys.

At what point would you stop building military? Like what % of your IC would you dedicate to supplies and what % of those supplies would you use to maintain the army, if not 100%?

I don't think I've ever stopped building military things, there seems to always be something that would be useful to have. Although there are times when you have more use for new ships, planes or static structures than another infantry division. Remember you get more and more IC the more you grow (or just build) which along with supply techs give more supply production as time pass.

[Guardian G.I.]

Fallout mod for HOI2, incredibly good. This is arguably the reason to still play HOI2.

For normal overhauls HOI2 has quite a few that make it very deep and much more enjoyable to play as a non-superpower, like World In Flames and the ever-popular CORE

There's also Kaiserreich: Legacy of the Weltkrieg, a very good alternate history mod for HOI2 and Darkest Hour about the aftermath of Germany's victory in the First World War.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Oh my. I might need to try it.


Poland does not into space in this universe, I assume.

[Guardian G.I.]

What I love about Kaiserreich is that it doesn't have much railroading - some major events, like civil wars in the USA, Spain and Russia are practically inevitable, but otherwise anything goes. AI Austrian Empire, for example, may successfully consolidate its rule over Hungary and the Balkans in one playthrough, and fight its former vassals and break up Yugoslavia-style in another playthrough. Plus, there are lots of possibilities even for minor countries - Serbia can remove its neighbours from the premises, South Africa can try to wrestle control of the entire Southern Africa from Germans and Portuguese, Mongolia can reform the Genghis Khan's empire and go ape on its neighbours, etc.