Doctrine for Japan

[Hallgeir]

What infantery doctrine for Japan and why ?

[Magni]

There is no "infantry" doctrine, they all apply to your entire army.

And specify, do you want advice as to what's the best-working or what's the ost historical? First is debateable, second is Grand Battleplan going down the Infiltration route.

[[CDU] |-| 3 |_ M u T |< 0 H |_]

Superior Firepower because it's superior.
Jokes aside though as Japan you'll be fighting an offensive war against China and unless you're memeing and playing a tank Japan, your army consists of infantry + artillery only. Superior Firepower is just the best doctrine for this.

[donalddawkins]

superior firepower lad


All the jungle and mountain region attrition will screw up armor in your theatre, so the main focus is infantry and air warfare. As a result, ♥♥♥ armies in MP (and so works in SP) will usually comprise of mostly infantry and artillery, and so you'll want to stack as much soft attack possible in your divisions, which superior firepower does.

You could of course try an armor doctrine for japan, but it would probably be best to stick to light tanks and then stack your armor divisions heavily in SPG and AA; in many mp games the allies won't try and send a lot of armor to asia due to the attrition and bigger problems in europe, and so if you hide your armor well you could blitzkrieg them before they can react and reinforce. Armor is also fairly good early on in the chinese campaign, as the chinese army simply wont have anything to stop hard units and you can quickly mop them up. The big negative of this however is again dividing your industry to provide armor instead of focusing on the main winner of the asia campaign: airpower. Armor also becomes pretty weak when it comes to invading india as the jungle reasons provide a combat penalty to divisions using them.

In short, japan usually has two strategies each with their pros and cons; an infantry heavy superior firepower force which lacks hard units and breakthrough, but compensates with a large air force that provides ground wide buffs and weakens the opponents defences, or a light armor route which overcomes most of your early asian opponents on the ground at the expense of sacrificing industry in the airwar, and a late game slog of attrition in the jungle infested regions of india which will usually render your armor inoperable if you invade by the conventional route (BURMA).

[Torrens]

The historical land doctrine is very good for Japan. Grand battleplan - Infiltration branch. It lets your troops consume less supplies since they will all be overseas anyway making your life easier and give hefty night attack bonuses and organisation/entrenchment for defending islands. Also lets you abuse planning bonus.

[Hallgeir]

My army usually is:
70% line infantery 20 with + eng+ recon
25% heavy infantery 40 included 4 artilery (my brekthrew units) with filled up of support companies
5% marines

most places japan fight got low infrastructure and long fronts so my line infantery holds the lines while I consentrate the 40 infantery divitions on attacks/ breakthrew

I have problems desiding between Grand Battleplan vs superior firepower.
If all my divitions was 40 with artillery it would be easy with superior firepower, but since my main army is line infantery it makes it more difficult to desside

[|H|H| Fr3ddi3]

On the mainland (China, Raj, Burma), I have no problems at all arguing in favour of GBP over SF. It is perfectly suited to the battles and theatre of the Pacific, the supply situation, terrible terrain and static nature of the front just plays into GBP's hand's. GBP's weakness is inflexibility, something which does not get exploited in the Pacific, at least not till you realistically should have owned everything east/ north of the Raj on the mainland.

However

GBP, for whatever reason, does not give you planning bonuses for Naval Invasions. This is a big deal because Japan is gonna be doing a lot of island hopping and GBP gives you nothing to aid that. SF's strengths are not tied to Planning, which ultimately makes it better for the Island hopping campaign ... and much latter on the invasion of the US, conversely GBP helps better with the invasion of Russia because much like the rest of that region, supply and terrain is absolute dog ♥♥♥♥♥ to fight in.

So it's on you, What do you struggle with the most. Pick accordingly. MW and MA are not worth considering you don't have the terrain for tanks and trucks and you don't have the manpower to blaze through like the Russians.

[Random]

Superior firepower is just mathematically superior (going right and right again)

[FDX]

SF; GBP isn't in a good state right now and it's inferior.