Is it possible to win opium wars as britain or am i just that bad.

[Jotbe83]

How my 150 divisions are supposed to win against 450?

[6ap6apblckaAa]

It's not supposed to. Make friends with France/Russia and then you can win.

[WanderingUrsa]

Originally posted by 6ap6apblckaAa:

It's not supposed to. Make friends with France/Russia and then you can win.

Why would Britain need to ally with Russia or France to win the opium war?

To answer OP, your 150 divisions are skirmish soldiers with high moral defense and what not. Qing only has irregular troops with poor morale. You should be able to win very, very easily as long as you have enough commanders to to control your divisions.

[6ap6apblckaAa]

Whoops, my bad :) Though it is about Qing side

[Jotbe83]

Originally posted by WanderingUrsa:

Originally posted by 6ap6apblckaAa:

It's not supposed to. Make friends with France/Russia and then you can win.

Why would Britain need to ally with Russia or France to win the opium war?

To answer OP, your 150 divisions are skirmish soldiers with high moral defense and what not. Qing only has irregular troops with poor morale. You should be able to win very, very easily as long as you have enough commanders to to control your divisions.

I also forgot to mention i was playing on beta...which i find ridiculously hard for some reason..so yeah.

[Knight_Kin]

How are you distributing your generals in your armies on beta? You'll want to stack a variety of different specialists per army. I'll add an offensive general, defensive, logistics specialist, and maybe a terrain specialist. Helps to maximize how your fronts are fought given there are now multiple battles simultaneously in beta.

[Skinny]

"Helps to maximise how your fronts are fought given there are not multiple battles simultaneously in beta"

Mans gonna be real shocked when he finds out there is simultaneous battle's in the 1.5.5 beta.

[DarkMjolnir]

I dunno, I play as Qing a lot and GB will basically always beat my butt. Qing is a few tech levels behind you so they basically can't win even with more divisions.

[Skinny]

Originally posted by DarkMjolnir:

I dunno, I play as Qing a lot and GB will basically always beat my butt. Qing is a few tech levels behind you so they basically can't win even with more divisions.

Well it's accurate to real life then which is good, GB won both opium wars it fought with China.

[Dummkopf]

I just tried in the Beta. Nothing has really changed. you still just hold Beijing. AI isn't even using conscripts in the beta so it was still a walk in the park. Use enlistment efforts in Ireland and pump up conscript line infantry. They are extremely cheap to field, costing only small arms which you have a surplus of. Naval invade with the 100 regulars and activate their conscripts after they land. Transfer the ireland army to indochina HQ beforehand. The qing army won't even respond in time and will be bogged down in 2 battles from your other general, so there is no real risk of losing the front before it can be reinforced.

Sway east india company if you have to. They will distract a bunch of qings units in tibet.

[Menkerot]

Originally posted by Skinny:

Originally posted by DarkMjolnir:

I dunno, I play as Qing a lot and GB will basically always beat my butt. Qing is a few tech levels behind you so they basically can't win even with more divisions.

Well it's accurate to real life then which is good, GB won both opium wars it fought with China.

it's not good at all, actually.

[Knight_Kin]

Originally posted by Skinny:

"Helps to maximise how your fronts are fought given there are not multiple battles simultaneously in beta"

Mans gonna be real shocked when he finds out there is simultaneous battle's in the 1.5.5 beta.

It's just a typo you saw before I fixed it, read it again.

-> Helps to maximize how your fronts are fought given there are now multiple battles simultaneously in beta

[Skinny]

Originally posted by Menkerot:

Originally posted by Skinny:

Well it's accurate to real life then which is good, GB won both opium wars it fought with China.

it's not good at all, actually.

How is that not good, you're playing a game that is based on the historical course of humanity. Qing military was a trash-heap before they tried to start modernising their army, the only thing they've had going for them was overwhelming numbers. China under the Qing dynasty was still losing wars into the 20th century when they lost to japan in the first Sino-Japanese war and were losing the 2nd Sino-Japanese war until japan got stomped by america in the pacific.

GB had a total of around 19,000 soldiers active in the first opium war, china has around 200,000. GB lost around 800 soldiers (to all causes) and china lost around 7000 (to all causes). China lost after 2 years of fighting and the treaty ports/Hong Kong were given to GB.

The 2nd opium war reads about the same, overwhelming GB/France victory.

If you don't like that the game is modelled mostly historical and you don't want to get beaten by GB (like they did irl (twice btw) ), then either stop playing the game or look into a mod that updates the Qing military or something, cause you're most likely not going to beat them.

Originally posted by Knight_Kin:

Originally posted by Skinny:

"Helps to maximise how your fronts are fought given there are not multiple battles simultaneously in beta"

Mans gonna be real shocked when he finds out there is simultaneous battle's in the 1.5.5 beta.

It's just a typo you saw before I fixed it, read it again.

-> Helps to maximize how your fronts are fought given there are now multiple battles simultaneously in beta

Hehe whoops

[DarkMjolnir]

It is possible to win as Qing, but you basically have to delay taking the "ban opium" decision and rush military tech/production. So you spend basically the first part of the campaign trying to get ready for the war...that may or may not happen, sometimes by then AI doesn't seem to care.

There is also a chance (feels like a cop out but it helps) that when GB gets the event that the AI picks the "shrug" choice instead of being pissed.

I think realism is good....it should be hard for Qing to win, but possible. I think how it plays out in the actual game if you do win seems pretty forced though. idk.

Originally posted by Skinny:

Originally posted by Menkerot:

it's not good at all, actually.

How is that not good, you're playing a game that is based on the historical course of humanity. Qing military was a trash-heap before they tried to start modernising their army, the only thing they've had going for them was overwhelming numbers. China under the Qing dynasty was still losing wars into the 20th century when they lost to japan in the first Sino-Japanese war and were losing the 2nd Sino-Japanese war until japan got stomped by america in the pacific.

GB had a total of around 19,000 soldiers active in the first opium war, china has around 200,000. GB lost around 800 soldiers (to all causes) and china lost around 7000 (to all causes). China lost after 2 years of fighting and the treaty ports/Hong Kong were given to GB.

The 2nd opium war reads about the same, overwhelming GB/France victory.

If you don't like that the game is modelled mostly historical and you don't want to get beaten by GB (like they did irl (twice btw) ), then either stop playing the game or look into a mod that updates the Qing military or something, cause you're most likely not going to beat them.

[Ashling]

Originally posted by Skinny:

GB had a total of around 19,000 soldiers active in the first opium war, china has around 200,000. GB lost around 800 soldiers (to all causes) and china lost around 7000 (to all causes). China lost after 2 years of fighting and the treaty ports/Hong Kong were given to GB.

Only 100,000 were mobilized, counting the full 200,000 would be like counting the British fire fighters and policemen, who weren't even in the fighting, as though they were full combatants. And, if you look at the few land battles which did happen, the numbers usually favored the British side by a few thousand.

Which puts what you're saying here into question:

Originally posted by Skinny:

Qing military was a trash-heap before they tried to start modernising their army, the only thing they've had going for them was overwhelming numbers.

The reason this game isn't a "good representation" is because it pulls out these weird "game-logic-y" types of sentences from people. There wasn't a "debuff" or whatever on the Chinese, they didn't magically have 200,000 people fighting in one battle, and they were actively modernizing their military even before this war (with academies that trained soldiers on how to use cannons and firearms, even. They weren't "modern" by any stretch of the definition, but it just feels wrong to call their military a "trash heap").
Even the idea of taking and holding land is a bit of a misnomer in the war as only strategic forts were kept.

Plus, I feel like it misses the entire point of the conflict. This was more of a naval war than a land war (and the British fleet most likely out tonnage the Chinese fleet, but I'm not going to pretend to know the weight of these things).

[Skinny]

Originally posted by Middling Cheese:

Originally posted by Skinny:

GB had a total of around 19,000 soldiers active in the first opium war, china has around 200,000. GB lost around 800 soldiers (to all causes) and china lost around 7000 (to all causes). China lost after 2 years of fighting and the treaty ports/Hong Kong were given to GB.

Only 100,000 were mobilized, counting the full 200,000 would be like counting the British fire fighters and policemen, who weren't even in the fighting, as though they were full combatants. And, if you look at the few land battles which did happen, the numbers usually favored the British side by a few thousand.

Which puts what you're saying here into question:

Originally posted by Skinny:

Qing military was a trash-heap before they tried to start modernising their army, the only thing they've had going for them was overwhelming numbers.

The reason this game isn't a "good representation" is because it pulls out these weird "game-logic-y" types of sentences from people. There wasn't a "debuff" or whatever on the Chinese, they didn't magically have 200,000 people fighting in one battle, and they were actively modernizing their military even before this war (with academies that trained soldiers on how to use cannons and firearms, even. They weren't "modern" by any stretch of the definition, but it just feels wrong to call their military a "trash heap").
Even the idea of taking and holding land is a bit of a misnomer in the war as only strategic forts were kept.

Plus, I feel like it misses the entire point of the conflict. This was more of a naval war than a land war (and the British fleet most likely out tonnage the Chinese fleet, but I'm not going to pretend to know the weight of these things).

Okay so i looked it up, you're right about the 100k. My bad.


Just gonna leave this here to back up their military was a trash heap since the inception of the Qing Dynasty. This is what Wikipedia has to say about the Qing military.

And when i say this, i'm talking about European standards. Sure, i guess you could say that as a power in Asia they had a okay army, but their army was basically just local warlords with regional troops which suffered multiple civil wars on how the army should be run.

"The military technology of the European Industrial Revolution made China's armament and military rapidly obsolete. In 1860 British and French forces in the Second Opium War captured Beijing and sacked the Summer Palace. The shaken court attempted to modernize its military and industrial institutions by buying European technology. This Self-Strengthening Movement established shipyards (notably the Jiangnan Arsenal and the Foochow Arsenal) and bought modern guns and battleships in Europe. The Qing navy became the largest in East Asia, but its organisation and logistics were inadequate, officer training was deficient, and corruption widespread. The Beiyang Fleet was virtually destroyed and the modernized ground forces defeated in the 1895 First Sino-Japanese War. The Qing created a New Army, but could not prevent the Eight Nation Alliance from invading China to put down the Boxer Uprising in 1900. The revolt of a New Army corps in 1911 led to the fall of the dynasty."

Source - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_of_the_Qing_dynasty