When i play either major Asian Factions...

[kostas84]

...I lose.

When im with Nationalist China, i keep trying to pump out troops and research doctrines, but i still get beat and Shinxi keeps refusing Transit Rights, im thinking of taking them over when i try Nationalist china next time.

When im Japan, the enemy has too many troops and co-operate way to much for me to do anything.

I want to do good with one of the factions but i just cant, any ideas?

[TheBromgrev]

The trick to playing as Japan is to abuse the AI's tendency to throw all its units to the main front line. Build around 25 infantry divisions and keep them at home, then reorganize the rest of the army and place it along the Shanxi border. About a month after the war starts, grab the infantry you built up and ship them to Shanghai and blitz to Nanjing. After you take the capital China's supply system collapses and you've pretty much won.

When playing as China in 3.05 or earlier, lower your IC below 30 and enact the Prepare for War decision. You can do that by temporarily using the crappy ministers that lower IC. This will lower your neutrality and let you get better laws faster. Then, send 10 spies to the UK and raise it's threat. This will let you declare war on your neighbors. The first one you should go for is Shanxi, because that will break Japan's Marco Polo decision and the war won't start, letting you gobble up the other warlords. At this point the world is your playground, as you'll likely have more IC than Japan and about the same amount of LS. You should check out the nat. China guide in the HOI3 wiki. I wrote most of it and have strategies for 3.05 and 3.06 in there. 3.06 makes drastic changes to the map that alters China's defensive strategy.

[kostas84]

I was doing well as Nationalist China, pushed the enemy out of Shinxi and defeated the small Puppet but then suddenly my units which were over 500k strong on the front dissapeared, just, dissapeared.

Maybe im destined to lose as Nationalist China...

But hey, its definetaly a huge improvement over the other times that i played as Nationalist China where i just got steamrolled, i actually pushed back the Japanese and her Puppets forces all the way back to Japans big Puppet.

I am still curious as to how my units dissapeared.

[TheBromgrev]

Did they disappear in-game or after you saved and came back? Units you own can't disappear while playing unless they're either surrounded completely and defeated or they're retreating and the pursuer reaches the province your units are trying to go to before they get there. If neither of those two are the case and they disappeared while you were playing the game then that's not normal behavior, and there must be something wrong with your install.

If you saved and reloaded to find them gone, then your save was corrupted. If you check the ministers for every nation in the world and they are suddenly gone then your game was definitely corrupted and is lost

[kostas84]

I read the wiki and it was extremely helpful regarding playing as Nationalist China.

Do you guys have any tips and tricks that arent in the wiki?

[TheBromgrev]

Everything I know I put into the wiki already

[kostas84]

Main question is, how much of an investment on Officers should i make early on.

Maybe a few months before the Japanese invasion, ill declare war on some faraway nation that cant do anything to me, like Persia, and put in the best war law with +100% Officer recruitment, put all my points into Officer recruitment and leaving something like 2 or 3 for research.

Another question is, whether or not should i bother with spying on Japan and putting in a mission like Disrupt Research/Disrupt Production and Counterespionage if they have too many counterspies.

[TheBromgrev]

Nothing on officers until you have 2 or 3 year draft. That's true for every nation. If you want to fire up a phoney war to game the system, then go ahead. I don't do that since it's silly and not necessary, but the point of a game is to have fun.

Don't bother with spies. The only spy missions that are worth anything are Increase Threat and Disrupt NU. Disrupt research doesn't really work (it only slows research down, but not by enough to make it matter) and Disrupt production only works AFTER an enemy unit is finished, so it's especially worthless. In fact, most spy missions will be taken out and replaced with something else in the upcoming expansion. Chromos has a thread here with spoilers you can read.

[kostas84]

So i should keep Volunteer army and keep pumping out units rapidly, and some months before the War with Japan, i should switch to Three-Year Draft and prepare my units for war and have a huge investment in officers?

[TheBromgrev]

It depends on your manpower needs. Volunteer army makes it cheap to build reserve units at the cost of requiring more IC to mobilize (units need more time to get up to full strength), less manpower than you'd otherwise have with a higher law, and spending leadership on officers is a complete waste on volunteer army.

Since you're playing as China, you have tons of MP and a lot of units at the start, but an incredibly officer ratio and not that much IC. Going with volunteer army and building more units will make the ratio worse, but if you time the switch to 3y draft right then you can get your officer ratio up to around 100% in about 3-4 months at best if you devote everything you have to officers after the switch. Really, this is one of those things you should probably just try and see how it works. If it doesn't work, try the other way. Trying out different strategies is part of the fun.

According to the interview Chromos linked to in the new expansion's thread here, military statistics will be implemented so you can see how well you're doing in terms of IC lost to reinforcements and MP lost when compared to your enemies. Good way to see how well your strategies work out, though we'll need to wait for the expansion to come out later this year to use the feature.

The phrase “Their Finest Hour” is memorable for a specific time, place, and battle. Will there be any greater emphasis placed upon air combat, and more specifically, the Battle of Britain, in this expansion? If not, why was the name chosen?
Firstly, there's no such thing as too much Churchill, but the name is also party due to our new Strategic Warfare screen which player can use to judge how the overall war is going. The Battle of Britain, like the Battle of the Atlantic, was more of a campaign than an individual battle, with relative rates of production and losses being more important than who won a specific skirmish.

[kostas84]

Thats exactly what i do right now, i started a new campaign with this new strategy and it worked, i beat up both Manchuko and Menguko, but i didnt have enough units(i didnt build any in the duration of the war) to keep what i had, so even though i pushed and conquered, when Japan transferred troops to Korea, i couldnt keep what i had.

But problem is, when war starts, my convoys get destroyed and i run out of Rare Materials.