Population Stats

[mcaryf]

I have been thinking about a problem raised by various posters as to how the attacks on Japan might be made more historic with a progression through the islands.

It raised a question in my mind as to how some other parts of the Japanese Empre might be made more valuable and worthy of attack and one possibility is through their populations.

Japan's production in its early period is very much limited by resources rather than factories or population. Each new acquisition of resources is preceded by a repair cost so supplies are a necessary task for the factories thus it is only subsequently that population can become a limiting factor on unit production. Thus it would not make a great deal of initial difference if Japan had access to even more population points but these could be important in the later game stages.

It does seem anomalous to me that Czechoslavakia can be deemed as contributing to German population whereas Korea and Taiwan do not to Japan. Both these countries/regions had been incorporated into the Japanese Empire for more than 30 years prior to WW2 whereas Czechoslovakia was annexed by Germany only a couple of years before the period covered by GGWAW. The population of Formosa was roughly equivalent to Czechoslovakia whilst that of Korea was around 4 times.

What would be the implication of giving the Japanese 1 additional population point for Formosa and 4 for Korea? I suspect that it might enable the Japanese player to considerably increase their numbers of units once the resources have come on line and make the final conquest of the Empire that much harder and give the WALLIES and/or China some incentive to attack Formosa and Korea. As a slight balancing act it might be appropriate to lower the population points generated by Honshu possibly by 2, thus the WALLIES would get a real advantage in the final attack if they took out these new population producers first. It might even be sensible in game terms also to give Okinawa (Ryukwu) a population point although that would be stretching reality somewhat (population was less than 1m but many died in the actual US attack).

I would apologise in advance to any Korean or Taiwanese nationalist who might point out that their people were not necessarily willing subjects of Japan but then nor were the Czechs of the Germans.

If this extra population were coupled with another idea I floated of giving the Japanese a Kamikaze unit that they could build then the end game could be interesting! I had previously suggested that they got Kamikaze's rather like Militia being automatically generated, however, that probably needs new coding (I tried substituting other names for militia in the scenario file which specifies auto generation and nothing happened). My new thought is to use the Japanese TAC AIR (which is not useful anyway, too close in spec to heavy bomber) giving it a production cost of 1, a speed of 3, an evasion of 3, a sea attack of 4 or 5 and a torpedo attack of 1, an air attack of 2 and a land attack of 2. This makes it pretty useless against anything but naval targets and then not heavy fleets. The Japanese player does not have the resources to tech it up but would be able to build quite a few with their extra population and try the sort of mass attacks on WALLY fleets that actually happened. The WALLIES might even need to tech up their ship's AA or possibly approach Japan via islands giving opportunity for land based air to shoot down the Kamikaze swarm!


Mike

[silodhlehan]

The Czechs made better tanks than the koreans, but I get your point.

I wish you could build factories. Most of the ones in canada were built during the war. They didn't exist at the start. We could not have given russia all those valentine tanks during the war with starting factories.


In WWI all we did was make munitions & rifles.



They still help our economy somewhat in winnipeg MCI makes all the greyhound busses. Used to make tanks was built in WWII.


However if britain could give the plans for lancasters, corvettes destroyers etc to canada when brazil joins the war could the WA not have the choice of building there?

as an aside does Brazil in the game join the war are they frozen can't remember when they came in but I know they fought in Italy.

Even if they only allow something like militia & supplies, I'm dubious of the science as most of that by all powers was done at home. Whereas in the games I play as axis more gets done in France than Penumunde.

However Italian east africa would be a swell place for an axis factory and I 'm curious now about if the British had enough coming out of south africa to qualify as one.

I read a book once where they had kiwi armoured vehicles is there a way I can put a factory there?

I know item 5000 for the wish list.

[:D]

[JanSorensen]

I dont recall ever being hindered by population as Japan - not at any stage of the game - so I am not certain what your suggestion would change.

You can make another factory in Canada if you want - but not in South Africa or New Zealand.

[silodhlehan]

I did that, but was unable to make tanks in Manitoba.

[:D]

I guess like I said I'd like to be able to build them anywhere that you can get resource pts and pop.

Do I want to be spoiled or what?

[JanSorensen]

You can modify the game quite easily to let you build armor in Canada if you so please. Heck, its such a minor change I doubt any human opponent would mind and I certain the AI wont mind

Edit: Sorry, the central part of Canada lacks population, my mistake. So, you would need to add 1 pop to that area in order to be able to make units there. Thats quite a change unless you take that from the eastern part of Canada. Then you cannot make Canadian ships though.

[silodhlehan]

To do it I built a new factory in eastern canada and moved it so I did make ships

What is the pop based on. Some seem higher or lower than I expect?

5 mil per?


How does one make this minor change?

can always give the axis the same to compensate. like you say ai will not complain

[mcaryf]

Hmmm - seems my thread got hijacked by some Canadians!

To answer Jan's point about Japan and extra population points - it does make a difference if you also adopt my idea to adapt the Japanese Tac Air into a cost 1 kamikaze with an effective sea attack against Allied shipping. You can go through quite a lot of population points that way. I just did a hands off game where I only handled the Japanese production with no end date. I had built 43 Kamikaze units before the Japanese finally succumbed in 1948.

Mike

[JanSorensen]

Sorry about the derailing mcaryf

True enough - using those two together would change the matter some. I can definitely see that. Interesting twist.


silodhlehan: check your PM - I have explained what you need to do there.

[SGT Rice]

I would apologise in advance to any Korean or Taiwanese nationalist who might point out that their people were not necessarily willing subjects of Japan but then nor were the Czechs of the Germans.

I think the nationalists would have a good argument; their people didn't provide important levees of soldiers to Japan, but many Czechs were ethnic Germans (part of Hitler's justification for the annexing the place) and were mobilized into large units for combat on the Eastern Front. They were among the best minor allies the Germans had in terms of fighting ability. Czech out (I couldn't resist) the OOBs for a few Russian front games ...

[aletoledo]

I dont recall ever being hindered by population as Japan - not at any stage of the game - so I am not certain what your suggestion would change.

I agree with JAn, I play a lot of axis and I'm never hindered by the population.

of course combining it with your kamakize idea would make more sense of it and then the allies will never dare to go close to the south pacific!! ....oh wait they don't already!

[mcaryf]

Hi Aletoledo

Now that I have fixed a minor glitch I found in the AI.TXT file for Japan's build, the North Pacific becomes pretty unhealthy for the WALLIES as well. In my latest hands off game the Japanese AI built 51 Kamekazes and held out until Summer 1949 sinking 9 WALLY CV's!

I must admit to one or two other minor tweaks as well (reduced militia transport capacity to 1 and Japanese transport carrying to 20/3 but increased number by 4, also made Japan generate 2 x militia for every pop point and of course this also applies to the extra pop points (net 4) I gave them in Korea, Formosa and Ryuku.

Even so I was rather pleased with the effect of mass Kamikaze attacks on the WALLY fleets as the AI interspersed them with some CAG's which could cause real damage to Heavy Fleets and which slipped through the WALLY CAP under cover of all the Kamikazes.

The AI did sort of cheat by using my Kamikaze horde also to fight Chinese and Russian ground and air forces but they were not very effective at that so no harm done.

I also modified the AI.TXT file (apart from making it work) to make Japan build rather more FLAK in the later period of the war.

Once I have finished fine-tuning it I might publish it as a mod to make the AI briefly interesting to play again for people not expecting this new strategy. I guess humans playing Japan might find even better ways to exploit this sudden accretion of aircraft strength so it might be unfair for human v human.

Mike

[aletoledo]

actually the more I think about it, the better your idea sounds. after all nobody ever uses the tac air for japan.

I don't think the kamakize should get a 2 in land attack and air attack. not that it would be exploited, just doesn't sound right to have anything above a one.

[silodhlehan]

Thanks again Jan sure is a lot different than the old days of third reich.

Will try it next time I start a game.

ORIGINAL: mcaryf
Hmmm - seems my thread got hijacked by some Canadians!

Thought I was close to being on topic. Bloody colonials! Was it Haig who used to say that?

[:D]



Question, were there precedents of manufacturing in Korea and Taiwan. Arty, air, armour, naval mfg? did they conscript them to fight in china etc?

I know the czechs built armour & arty as well as serving as soldiers. I suspect they built aircraft as well.


I'm always for the historical precedent, but that's an area I never looked at. Less than 1% of the WWII books I've read have been about the war in the pacific. And seldom do books on the war look at manufacture.

[a511]

im not WWII historian, and i know little about the korea situation.

but im sure that taiwanese were generally unwilling to help the JP, esp help the JP to fight CHN in the scale of this game.

i agree that ppl was seldom an issue for JP (at least in my previous games) as it seemed that JP could never build enough supplies and little PP can be allocated for building hordes of units. when the WA came, JP was surrounded and RP became the bottleneck. and the war was over for JP in 2~3 turns ...

AN

[mdh1204]

Very interesting. Mike, did you develop the Kamikaze option? As I don't otherwise recall ever seeing it in the straight W@W. If so, you might consider that Kamikazes were only used as a final option after the terrible defeat at Midway, I believe. Even then, the option was denounced by Emperor Hirohito, but through fighter-pilot activism it became accepted, however frowned upon. Point being, if you have created the option, however it works (I'm still in the dark regarding dynamics), it should somehow become available after a significant loss of life, territory, or in the presence of impending doom.

[mcaryf]

Hi Mdh1204

I have made myself a Kamikaze version of GGWAW by adapting the TAC AIR to perform that role and I have both corrected and then amended the AI file for Japan so that it will start building Kamikazes from about 1943 onwards. In fact I would disagree with the person who suggested the Japanese adopted that strategy after Midway (1942) as it was really after the Marianas' Turkey Shoot. They worked out then that their pilots were effectively on suicide missions anyway with poor training and poor planes so might as well go the whole 9 yards.

As I make the Kamikaze cost 1 FP, I do not know any method of making it unavailable until 1943 to a human player. The Japanese are so resource poor that they could not afford any research cost to develop it and anyway, the whole point is that it was not researched it was just loading bombs onto planes and flying them into ships!

Letting the AI play itself effectively results in Japan lasting typically until 1947. I have not run the AI standard against itself so I am not sure if this is a lot different.

Personally I think it is a fun variant and not unreasonable from a historic perspective. The enormous damage caused by the Kamikazes was undoubtedly a factor in the US going for the A Bomb and I think it should be in the game as an option for humans to play. I am not sure that it matters if it is available earlier - it is only effective against ships and not too many of those come in range of Japan in the early days that they could not sink with their other air assets anyway. Obviously the Kamikaze unit is cheap in resource terms but costly for population points, hence my addition of extra populations in Korea etc. I know this is a bit of a cheat but in the real world it did not take the equivalent of 40,000 people to make a Kamikaze unit which is what a pop point is worth. So my cheat is not really unreasonable.

I realise human players will find exploits - if you conceal good quality air units in the Kamikaze horde then they are less likely to get shot down against other air and land AA but what the hell, I think the Japanese need a bit of help to be competitive!

You will see in another thread that I am also developing a V2 for the Germans, once I have both reasonably ironed out I will publish the mod as a fun to play variant which Matrix can adopt if they wish.

Mike

[mdh1204]

The Marianas, eh? Thanks for the insight. Naturally, Midway was the turning point spelling disaster, though you must know that. Not being a programmer, I'm unfortunately unable to help with the game upgrade (IMO), although if the introduction of the Kamikaze were contingent upon the Japanese fleet being reduced to 50% or so, that might be a means of introducing it circa 1943. My hunch is it would be a great deal of work to program such if-then variables.
Also, you may be aware of the fact that the Japanese had Kamikaze-type Subs - Kaiten - which were essentially just oversized and manned torpedoes (LMAO). Crazy bastards - God luv'em.

[Daykeras]

Well... It'd be easy to impliment... It'd be very hard to balance.

[mcaryf]

Hi Daykeras

You may have gathered from my various threads that I enjoy playing around with wargames to see how they can be modded to produce some extra historical capability.

You are absolutely correct in saying that the difficulty might be in producing a balance in any change. This is one of the big issues in wargames - you try to produce a reasonable historic parallel but still an interesting game to play. Obviously irl WW2 was pretty well decided when the Germans failed to knock out either the Russians or the British by Autumn 1942 and the Japanese had lost their ability to do anything other than dogged resistance after Midway. My own favourite theory as to how the Axis might have avoided losing would be a Japanese move through the Indian Ocean instead of to Midway - by this means they block the Allied supply to the Mid East, Rommel wins and attacks Baku from the South.

Anyway the trick with WW2 simulations is to attempt to keep them interesting after 1942.

As I more commonly play against the AI the question of balance does not really arise since humans pretty well always have a better strategic understanding of what is happening so the game is inherently unbalanced if a human plays one side. The various "AI combat help" features are often just annoying - an AI unit looks at one of yours and it immediately falls down! You give the AI lots of extra supply etc and it does not really know what to do with it and so on. Thus my approach is to try to identify real opportunities or actions by the protagonists in WW2 and see if I can tack that on to the existing game mechanism to see if that gives the AI some chance to provide interesting resistance, obviously these changes would help a human even more.

If I can get my various add ons/changes to work, I will possibly publish a mod designed for the AI to play one side (I guess it will be the Axis) and the human will have to cope with some extra hurdles and surprises to win. Although if you read my threads you will probably know what form the surprises might take just not how many or when.

Mike

[Daykeras]

Sounds good. I look forward to it. I for one would love to see the AI do something different for a change