• We have updated our Community Code of Conduct. Please read through the new rules for the forum that are an integral part of Paradox Interactive’s User Agreement.
I thought Japan was also looking for Lebensraum in China for their growing population
 
Not at all. They were looking to form puppet states like Manchukuo that would "govern themselves" and make the locals think the Japanese weren't the real people behind the scenes, and those puppets would supply Japan with raw materials and give Japan exclusive trading rights. Most of these puppet states would be formed in former European colonies, so Japan could be viewed as "liberators" of the Asians, which would reduce the chances of revolt. Japan would only annex places of extreme strategic importance like Ceylon or areas like Australia that likely couldn't be governed by puppet states.

Japan was looking to emulate the British colonial model, in which colonies were divided into two groups: 1) Crown Colonies that were part of the British administration system and 2) Vassal States like Rajputana and Burma that largely governed themselves. In both cases the local military was under full British control and no foreign trade was allowed. Only British merchants were allowed to buy and sell goods in the colonies, which resulted in the colonies sending raw materials to the UK at very cheap prices and the UK sending excess finished factory goods back to the colonies.

More info on Japan's plans here, including background information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_East_Asia_Co-Prosperity_Sphere

Sorry about the infodump SKoty, but the Asian theater is one I'm interested in precisely because it's not taught or discussed in the US and Europe, where the European theater is focused on the most since it impacted those areas directly (my grandmother lived in the state of Baden during the war). Japan and both Chinas tend to not talk about the war unless a Japanese politician visits a certain war memorial, and all Korea (both of them) does is demand money from Japan to handle "historical grievances" and cause a fuss every now and then about sea names, so not much meaningful discussion goes on over in Asia about the portion of WW2 that affected just as many people as what went on in Europe. Hope you don't mind the background info and reasoning behind what you're seeing in the mod :)
 
Last edited:
I took a quick look and only countries I can attack without intervention form either Allies, US (the Monroe doctrine) or Italy (not in Axis yet) are: Finland, Poland, Spain, Thailand (which I will receive as a puppet later) and US. In my opinion attack on any of those in Europe is highly unrealistic but you will see me executing operations in Europe after the war starts).

Maybe preemptive attack on US? :laugh:

@TheBromgev: You don't have to apologize, I am also interested in this theater for the same obvious reason you've mentioned. I am glad for every new piece of information I get to know ;)
 
Actually, I'd not wait for Vichy to happen. That's 3 years down the road from your point of the game, quite a long time doing nothing much. I'd rather use what I have to either prepare for the US or take what I have and run rampage in the parts of Asia I can easily knock over. After that'd it'd be closer to Dazig or war and I'd prepare to deliver some quick blows against ANZAC before committing to India.
 
Yes, I do not like the idea sitting there and doing nothing till Vichy gets created. If I am right I can still go into war with Allies and completely neglect Indochina and after Vichy gets created peace will fire with Vichy and their puppets (including Indochina) and then fire "Demand French bases in Indochina" and "Put pressure on Siam" - can Brom/SSmith/Ikar confirm that?
 
Yes, I do not like the idea sitting there and doing nothing till Vichy gets created. If I am right I can still go into war with Allies and completely neglect Indochina and after Vichy gets created peace will fire with Vichy and their puppets (including Indochina) and then fire "Demand French bases in Indochina" and "Put pressure on Siam" - can Brom/SSmith/Ikar confirm that?

I think you can be at war, at least the decisions don't have any "war = no" clause. It's not like you'd miss out a whole lot by not taking them anyway ;)
 
I checked the decision and the prerequisites are that Vichy and Indochina must exist and I have to be at peace with them. And when France falls and Vichy get created I should be able to use this decision. Another 2 puppets for greater co-prosperity sphere.
 
9. Moments of peace


37jw.jpg


Shortly after another territory was given to the Jingwei regime Hainan island was purchased back from them. This island will serve as a useful base for all operations in Indochina and Indonesia.


u579.jpg


Germany started acquiring new lands. In this case the fired it quite early so I hope that the extra IC for a few days will somehow help Germany. I am interested how the AI will fare with the 25% IC bonus.


wkos.jpg


Tibet is now a part of Jingwei regime controlled lands.


mo7v.jpg


Apart from Germany firing decisions there's nothing interesting in the game.


otl3.jpg


What surprised me was that after Treaty of Munich Czechs held early elections and Communists have won.


gypk.jpg


Not even new communist cabinet prevented 1st Vienna award.


at2f.jpg


This time AI decided to go non historical way and Hungary was awarded with rest of Slovakia. Italy is still neutral as their neutrality is pretty high but I think that it will drop after Danzig or war.


2qkq.jpg


Last Germany peaceful acquisition of the land.


9062.jpg


Italians DoW Albania and it took them over 2 months to defeat them, I am starting to wonder about their competence.


j3yi.jpg


Newly constructed IJN Yamato joined the fleet under command of Yamamoto Isoroku. I've made Yamato pride of the fleet as there's nothing more satisfying that tearing your enemies fleets with battleships guns.


93dn.jpg


2nd SAG fleet of Imperial Japanese Navy.


t6h4.jpg


1st IJN carrier task force, this one consists of carriers Japan already have at the start of the game or are in the production queue.


c5u4.jpg


2nd IJN CTF, this one have 5 brand new modern carriers and with speed of 34 KM/H this is the fastest Japanese fleet.



u9io.jpg


Second half of the August of 1939 has been spent with mobilization of IJA reserves as situation in Europe is heating up.


jxef.jpg


Molotov-Ribbentrop pact has been forged and I am expecting Germans to deliver ultimatum to the Poles in near future.


1ttu.jpg


Bit later than in real history Germany has fired Danzig or war and the things were set in the motion.


4f9u.jpg


When first shots were fired in Europe, IJN left ports and headed to Indonesia. What is IJN up to? You will find in the next update.
 
Attacking the Netherlands! Indonesia! British India!:p
 
Those ship levels are insane, tier 9 carrier and tier 11 battleships? How does that correspond to the tech years, are they woefully ahead of time or is this different in HPP? I guess it's done to create more difference between different ships developed before and during the war, or is there a different tiering idea behind it?

and good going there, that's one massive puppet state, hope it can hold it's own. even just the fact they provide some troops to police the ground should be beneficial to you, right? but what about Manchukuo and Mengiang, can't those be integrated to create 1 large China, or does that make no sense? (I have no real grasp of the political situation at the time, other than it was a huge mess)
 
yeah, when I saw a level XII Battleship, I started to wonder the levels on HPP
 
Those ship levels are insane, tier 9 carrier and tier 11 battleships? How does that correspond to the tech years, are they woefully ahead of time or is this different in HPP? I guess it's done to create more difference between different ships developed before and during the war, or is there a different tiering idea behind it?

and good going there, that's one massive puppet state, hope it can hold it's own. even just the fact they provide some troops to police the ground should be beneficial to you, right? but what about Manchukuo and Mengiang, can't those be integrated to create 1 large China, or does that make no sense? (I have no real grasp of the political situation at the time, other than it was a huge mess)

In HPP, ship tier is very high compared to Vanila game espescially battleship. Reasons is ships carried gun were out-of-date between WWII, so most of gun-based ships are have initial tier as high tier. Other is to make initial advantage of Japanese at the start of WWII. Such as building material of Japs is 1940 tech, carrier design 1940 tech.
 
Ok. And what did Japan do in those interbellum period? And how much do you get from China in term of resources?
 
Ok. And what did Japan do in those interbellum period? And how much do you get from China in term of resources?

I have so much resources that storing problems have fired for every one of them and I am resource independent - I've been trading out mostly rares and buying fuel for money I've gained this way so the fuel supplies for whole campaign are secured. Japan is more than independent in terms of resources. (cca 80k energy, 35k metals and 15k rares are stored).
In the field of research I've mainly tried to keep infantry weapons and doctrines up to date, same applies for ship tech (I am lagging a year in terms of ship doctrines) and airforce doctrines are also up to date (training, interception, ground and naval attack) equipment upgrades are being researched. Industrial techs being up to date are matter of course.
I did one full IC run to increase base IC so one day Japan can become great power. Apart from that IC was spent on finishing the new CTF and on some marines and heavy fighters. Land forces are more than sufficient as first 15 months of the game were dedicated purely for them.

I can provide you screenshots of things you are more interested.
 
Did you trade rares with Euro Axis? They're usually short on that.
Wasn't there any country you could've attacked in the meantime (except for Tibet)?
 
Did you trade rares with Euro Axis? They're usually short on that.
Wasn't there any country you could've attacked in the meantime (except for Tibet)?

I doubt there are any targets around that wouldn't provoke a world war at this point. whichever direction he would ttack, he would probably run into the Soviets, British or Americans.
 
Did you trade rares with Euro Axis? They're usually short on that.
Wasn't there any country you could've attacked in the meantime (except for Tibet)?

Yes Germany is buying rares as wild and also Italy is buying some energy from me. I would like them accept debt so they can buy from even when they are out of money just to be sure.
No other countries were attacked as only states in Europe (Greece, IIRC Bulgaria and Spain are only countries that are not protected by non-Axis countries) and I would consider my engagement in Europe before war unrealistic + some areas will be out of supplies due to sealed Med.
 
Those ship levels are insane, tier 9 carrier and tier 11 battleships? How does that correspond to the tech years, are they woefully ahead of time or is this different in HPP? I guess it's done to create more difference between different ships developed before and during the war, or is there a different tiering idea behind it?

yeah, when I saw a level XII Battleship, I started to wonder the levels on HPP

In HPP, ship tier is very high compared to Vanila game espescially battleship. Reasons is ships carried gun were out-of-date between WWII, so most of gun-based ships are have initial tier as high tier. Other is to make initial advantage of Japanese at the start of WWII. Such as building material of Japs is 1940 tech, carrier design 1940 tech.

Pretty much what GumdonKickass said. In the base game, the Bismark is a level IV while the Dunkerque is level IV. The base game completely ignores the 13 years between the signing of the naval treaties, which prevented any of the signatories from building new capital ships for 10 years, and 1935, when the Dunkerque was built as the newest, most modern capital ship in the world (it still had to adhere to treaty tonnage and armament limitations). The Bismark, which was constructed a few years later, had no such political restrictions and was truly top-tier. The problem with the vanilla Bismark being level IV, is that the Nelson is a level III, but the Nelson-class was first introduced in 1927 and were inferior in many ways to the Queen Elizabeth-class from 1914. The difference between vanilla model levels is mostly just one tech, and we felt that wasn't enough to really model the differences between the old WW1-era ships and the modern ships that reflected the 14-year gap in technology fielded by Germany, the UK, Japan, Italy, and the US after 1939 (USSR too, had its ships been finished). It's not like the majors spent those 14 years ignoring their naval techs. They improved as much as they could, but weren't allowed to build new ships until right around the time the game starts, so they were stuck with old ships but had the technical capabilities of building ships that were superior to everything they were allowed to field.

In the mod, level I represents pre-1914 ships. Levels II-V are most often WW1-era ships, since there was still a big enough differences between them to warrant different models. Levels VI through VIII/X are ship designs from the 20's and early 30's, while levels VIII+ are from 1936 onward. Some countries have more 1936+ levels than others to represent historical modernizations to their existing ships.

As far as tech years go, here are the components of the Bismarck followed by the Yamato. Level 8 is a 1938 tech while level 7 is a 1935 tech.

capitalship_armament = 5 # 38cm SK C/34
const_material = 6 # Krupp Non-Cemented Face-Hardened Steel
capital_ship_armor = 3 # 32cm Main Belt
multi_purpose_guns = 7 # 10,5cm SK C/33
capital_ship_engine = 8 # 46,000shp Blohm & Voss Turbines

capitalship_armament = 8 # 46cm Type 94
const_material = 7 # Kure Molybdenum Non-Cemented Steel
capital_ship_armor = 6 # 41cm Main Belt
multi_purpose_guns = 8 # 12.7cm Type 89 Twin
capital_ship_engine = 7 # 37,500shp Kanpon Turbines

The Bismarck uses 1929 year gun techs (this is still way better than what the Allies' treaty ships had), while the Yamato has 1938 year gun techs. The Yamato has much thicker armor, but a slightly slower engine. In the mod, armor and main guns lower the speed of ships, so if you want to, you can lower the size of your main guns or armor (aka use a lower-level tech) to speed up your ship and increase its range, just like the naval designers did IRL.
 
Last edited:
extensive reply

That's very interesting, thanks for the quick (and thorough) reply!
Makes a lot of sense the way you explained it, a good chance I'd say.
 
Thank you, it needs to be spread around the world that Japan wanted to replicate British India in China. Otherwise, it's war time conduct makes no sense whatsoever.