Beginning my Japan play-through

For the last week and a half I’ve been doing the data entry portion of my blog.  I’ve got the USA, UK, USSR and Italy entered in, and by the time I was about half-way through Germany and their godforsaken umlauts I decided to start up my after-action report / play-through sooner rather than later.  I’ve picked Japan for the first one, primarily because I have not played them often, or at all since I got Their Finest Hour.  I was never particularly satisfied with how my Japanese games had turned before, but I’m hoping that the changes made to the combined arms bonus and my own improved skill at the game will help.

Phase 1

My grand strategy for Japan is fairly simple.  One of Japan’s biggest benefits is the ability to fully mobilize fairly early in the game by declaring war on Nationalist China.  I will do that at the earliest opportunity.  Then I hope to be able to expand that war into a general Chinese war, by also involving Communist China, Guangxi Clique, and possibly Xibei San Ma, Tibet, and Yunnan.  If possible, I’ll extend even further against Siam, and I would like to hit Australia and New Zealand before they join the Allies.  If I can’t, then I’ll just declare war on the Allies as soon as possible, focus on British and Dutch colonies first, then Australia and New Zealand.  Simultaneously I will progress through British India, and then start to work on the Middle East, including wars against Persia, Afghanistan, Sinkiang, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the British puppet states.  I will send small groups of troops, probably transferred from Australia, to take Africa, including South Africa if necessary, while focusing primarily on conquering North Africa and the British Mediterranean (Malta, Cyprus, Gibraltar).  I will use North Africa as a spring board to Great Britain.  I hope to have the Allies knocked out of the game by mid-1942.

Phase 2

At this point I will have I have control over a very large, but unfortunately not very useful, section of the globe.  I will probably want to take a brief breather to reorganize the army.  Smaller wars against Spain, Portugal, Turkey, and perhaps other still-neutral European nations will keep me busy for awhile.  Then I will focus my efforts, most likely, on the Western Hemisphere.  I will try to invade from both the East and West, focusing my main armies on the USA/Canada while taking over the Latin American countries with special forces troops.  I plan to have the West under my control by mid 1944.

Phase 3

Then will come time for the battle-royal.  I have left the Germans and the Soviets to duke it out, and that little skirmish should be over by mid 1944.  Generally the Soviets win, but with me wiping out the British, the Germans have a fair chance of winning.  Either way, the grand finale will pit my forces of East and South Asia, Africa, Oceania, and America against the combined forces of Continental Europe and Russia.

I have never really gotten much past phase 1 of this plan before.  Even conquering Great Britain is a big step, and things usually bog down deep in the Americas.  If I get even phase 2 completed successfully by 1947, I’ll consider it a victory.

Finally, a few notes.  I’ll be playing on hard difficulty.  I tend to use very hard when playing as the US, Soviets or Germany, but based on my past experience with the Japanese, I think hard is challenge enough.  Second, I like to do everything manually.  Research, division design, assigning supply routes, everything.  So, the game may take a while.  Also, I generally prefer to use semi-accurate historical terms, but my knowledge of the Japanese language is nonexistent, so I apologize in advance if any of the names or terms are factually or grammatically incorrect.