HSR Nationalist China Strategy
If you're playing with a mod such as Historical Stony Road (which I personally recommend), you will experience a slightly different and much more challenging gameplay as Nationalist China. Although the idea remains the same - building loads of infantry units and trying to upgrade most divisions to 1936 before Japs attack, you will also need to think and act quick about warlords that surround you.
Here are basic steps and warnings on how to play:
- Move most forces to the South and take Guanxi and Yunnan as soon as possible, try to just rush them with your huge forces. If you do it quick, you might have time to take Communist China as well. This is a bit trickier and requires you to surround their province one by one. The last province (the one with all the IC in it) will give you hell and will most likely hold for very long, so generally speaking, I wouldn't recommend attacking Com CHI until later on.
- Move most of your forces to the North and declare on Sinkiang, take them fast and annex. If Japan declares on you while you're still fighting, you might end up losing some provinces, but try to take the ones with most IC.
- When Japan declares, they will most likely whoop your forces to shred if you're not careful. Try to hold major provinces and if needed, retreat to your old provinces behind the Yellow river, holding each with at least 9 divisions. When winter starts, you should be fine since most of them will be frozen and Japs won't be able to cross the river, but don't try to attack them either or al hell will break lose.
- Build, build, build your infantry divisions while researching land doctrines with Von Faklenhauser. The other research slots should be used for industry stuff.
- Hold Jap advance as long as you can and when you have made enough divisions for a counter attack, push them back to Manchuria.
- Around April 1939 or no later than 1940 you should send or deploy about 9-12 divisions in the south, covering the border with French Vietnam. I made a mistake of not putting anything there and after Vichy France, Japan gets all those provinces and pretty much rushes into your major IC center in Yunnan, taking everything in their path. So don't make the mistake I did.
- Always cover every beach landing with at least 2 units. If you don't, japs will land and create another front quickly. Their units are more mobile than yours, so you won't even catch up with them.
- When South is secure and North is advancing toward Manchuria, you might think about starting to research some naval doctrines.
- You won't catch up with japs in their doctrines, but you sure could try.
- Remember, Carriers are the key to success, but take time to build. Building Super Heavy Battleships will guarantee your triumph over anything but carriers and are accessible early in the game, but take a lot IC to build. Don't bother with subs since in HSR they're only used as convoy destroyers and well you won't be needing that. If you like to take chance, you can build 50 or so transporters and try to invade mainland Japan using just them without defence. It's quite possible if USA DOWed Japan or if Japan is busy fighting UK somewhere else. Their fleet will be absent and you might land 20-30 units before Japan annihilated your TP fleet. If you do decide to land, remember to use marine divisions or the stacking penalty will negate every attack power you have (i.e. don't land with 50 divisions at once, stacking penalty will be -99.9 to attack and you'll just end up wasting time, attack with 3 marines instead).
- If Japan surrenders/you manage to annex them. You can get back to solving the internal problems - i.e. taking Com CHI and the rest. It's possible that by that time the events have turned your nations into democracy and you might not be able to DOW anyone, in which case you have officially created a very successful Nationalist China state and should be proud of yourself:)
- With Japan gone, your potentials are limitless, USSR is there for grabs, but England with its Indian abbundance is probably easier and quicker to take.
- Good luck, commander!