As I mentioned in
my last post, a big part of my prep work involves reorganizing the starting
armies. I’m rarely happy with the
structure of any of my divisions, and the hierarchy of the military. I usually march all of the army units to one
spot, and reorganize them all at once.
This doesn’t work so well for the Japanese, since the war starts fairly
quickly, but I’ve found if I do the reorganization near the Chinese border, it
works.
For starters,
let’s talk terminology. After
painstaking research (five minutes on Wikipedia) I have come up with reasonable
approximations for organization names. I
prefer consistency over historical accuracy, so I will call all theaters
So-Gun, and army groups Haken-Gun, despite the fact that these organizations
had more unique names in reality. I’ll
use Homen-Gun for the army level and Gun for the corps level. I’m not nearly ambitious enough to learn how
to count in Japanese, so I’m just going to use Arabic numerals for Homen-Gun
and divisions, Roman numerals for Gun, and some bizarre combination of
UK-English, American-English, and Japanese for the So-Gun and Haken-Gun. Infantry divisions will be called Shidan
(which seems to be the consistently used term; does anyone know where Paradox
gets Hoheishidan?); armor divisions will be called Sensha Shidan; Airborne will
be Teishin Shudan, garrisons will be Chindai, and marines will be
Rikusentai. I can’t really find a good
name for mountain troops, but the game suggests Gokujin, so I’ll stick with
that.
Over time, my
divisional plans have evolved quite a bit.
My current preference is for three types of special forces divisions:
airborne, marines, and mountain; three types of rear guard divisions: MP,
cavalry, and garrison; and two types of main combat divisions: heavy and light;
Special forces
divisions are fairly self-explanatory. Their
roles are very specific, so I use divisions made up of similar types of
brigades for maximum utility. I usually
prefer square divisions (four brigades), because they pack a bigger punch, work
out better in terms of battle frontage, and are easier to deal with when
transporting.
My rear guard
divisions are for suppressing uprisings.
They are usually binary divisions (two identical brigades). Cavalry makes up the bulk of the rear guard
units; I like them because they are fairly fast, even in rugged terrain. I use MP divisions on single-province
islands, and I use garrisons on small 2-4 province islands, where their speed is
not a factor.
The bulk of my
armies are made up of heavy and light divisions. Heavy divisions are usually 1 brigade of
infantry, 1 brigade of heavy or medium armor, 1 brigade of artillery, 1 brigade
of anti-tank or anti-aircraft, and 1 brigade of engineers. I have 2 anti-aircraft and 3 anti-tank
divisions per corps; I typically use medium armor with the anti-tank and heavy
with the anti-aircraft, but it depends on my tech research and industrial
capacity.
My light
divisions are made of 1 brigade of motorized or mechanized infantry, 1 brigade
of light or medium armor, 1 brigade of self-propelled artillery, 1 brigade of
tank-destroyers or motorized anti-aircraft, and 1 brigade of engineers. I prefer mechanized and medium armor brigades
whenever possible, but I don’t bother to upgrade earlier motorized and light
armor units.
The terms “light”
and “heavy” are a bit misleading. The
light divisions pack a bigger punch, use more fuel and supplies, and take up
more space on transports, and are more expensive to build. I call them light because of their speed, and
the designation of the armor. I would
prefer to have all light divisions, but I’ve found this is far too expensive
both for building and supplying.
As a side note, I
like to make a corps “reserve”, by adding the infantry, armor, artillery and
engineers to the corps HQ unit, which effectively gives me 6 divisions per corps. I’ve found this helps for several
reasons. First, it helps regulate the
speed of the hq unit. Having the corps
HQ out-run the combat divisions creates all kinds of trouble. Second, it helps balance the corps when it’s
split into several provinces. Five
divisions split unevenly; six divisions split nicely into either two or three
(or six) separate provinces.
The majority of
combat the Japanese face early on will be against comparatively poorly equipped
nations. Therefore, my heavy divisions
will be 2 brigades of infantry early on, with the artillery and engineers being
added in as they’re made. I will start
adding the less useful anti-tank and anti-aircraft later, once I get the
superior firepower tech. I will probably
only have 1 or 2 Gun of light divisions until around 1941 or so, when I have
mechanized researched and need the firepower to deal with the Americans.
The Japanese
start with 172 brigades. The bulk of
this is 89 infantry brigades (and 3 imperial brigades) and 63 garrison
brigades, with a smattering of others. I
am going to split the infantry into eight Gun of five Shidan each. Each Shidan will have 2 brigades of infantry
or imperial guards, with artillery, etc., being added gradually. The garrisons will be divided into 32
Chindai. Initially I will need them for
combat, but gradually they will be relegated to guard duty as I build up a more
conventional army.
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| My main land forces organization - June, 1937 |
I prefer to use
leaders with the Logistics Wizard trait for corps and higher slots. Supply requirements bring offensives to a
halt much quicker than enemy forces, and stacking multiple logisticians helps
alleviate supply requirements, sometimes by 50% or more. This strategy doesn’t work as well for Japan,
which has fewer logistics leaders than most other nations. But I’ll try to cobble it together as best as
I can, for now. My best general with
logistics is Kuribayashi (skill 4, offensive, defensive, logistics); he’s great
already, but he’d be better with battle master too, so I put him in charge of
II Gun so he can pick it up. Other
logistics generals are assigned according to skill, although considering the
options, maybe skill isn’t the best word.
My best general overall is Yamashita (skill 5, defensive, engineer,
offensive, trickster), and while I was tempted to put him in higher command, I
think he’s going to be relegated to “Best Division Commander” for the duration
of the war.
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