Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

Will Japanese soldiers in WinSPWW2 have special morale check? I mean if they are hard to retreat or route even in high suppression, and wil do the "Banzai Charge" in the rain of bullets if I order them to.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

As far as I am aware, Japanese are affected by suppression the same way as everyone else.

However, they usually tend to have high morale scores.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

Japanese simply do not surrender. That is the main difference.

Japanese have a bonus in hand to hand combat at range 0 with other infantry.

Japanese infantry elements do follow the normal dispersal rules, but have high morale and experience, so remnants may linger. I think in earlier versions of the game, you had to always eliminate every last man?.

Japanese tend not to "bug out" from a failed armour assault (lower tank panic).

Other than that, they are normally affected by suppression and so on.

Andy

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

JIA are very hard to to take on.

They have been trained where defeat is not an option.

Then they are battle hardened by the Sino-Japanese Wars in the early and mid 30's.

They do get suppressed, but recover quickly.

I consider every Japanese unit will fight to the last man,and pour on the fire,even it's just 1 man left.

BTW, a tip,,get 2-3 JIA units "not supressed" within a Hex or 2 of the enemy and then assualt,
Will simulate a "banzai charge" and routing of opposing infty will likely
happen.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

I rarely play scenarios in the pacific theatre because fighting the japanese is extremely frustrating at times. Often it comes down to endless slugfests with little in the way of maneuvre.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

So it is very difficult to begin a long campaign with the U.S. in the Pacific and in 1942 or early 1943. Be very power of fire with machine guns and artillery. You have to take care of the infantry to get experience. Avoid close fights.
Do not despair if the first battles were defeats or draws. The important thing is to keep men.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

Pretty realistic I would say. Otherwise you can try as the soviets in the chinese theatre.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

Look at the AAR I'm doing on a long U.S. campaign. We see the strength of the Japanese and the inexperience of the Americans in the first years of war. :)
And you will see how bad I am as a commander :(

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

Been awhile since I've played against the Japanese. But when I did in the past, I found it almost impossible to get them out of a hex. Short of wiping them out to a man.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

......which is why the battles in the Pacific were so nasty and why so few Japanese soldiers even tried to surrender and if we'd left them like every other nation that would have been pointed out right from the beginning. The SS doesn't surrender easily either.

Don

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

Both is as it should be. Though the Japanese might have been even more fanatical than the SS as a result of the way the Bushi-Do permeated Japanese society after the Meji Reforms.

In the past few years there has been some hints that more Japaneese troops actually tried to surrender than were allowed to, but were killed out of hand anyway.

This would be the natural result of a mixture of the racist attitude of westerners at the time, the war having hardened the soldiers (and the Marines were damn hard to start with), propaganda, the actual experience of veterans who would not expect a Jap to surrender- or if he did it would be a ruse to get close enough to detonate a last hand grenade, fright, shock, and propably many other factors. Much like German soldiers on the East Front in fact. These two theatres of war were incredibly hard and cruel, with predictable results for the poor guys deployed there.

It is a field of study I have not looked into much (I am a historian, but not specialising there), but I believe there is a Ph.D. Thesis there for any who dare.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

Really. In a just-completed British LC delay scenario I decided to take a break from North Africa to see what Japanese troops were like during their flood tide of conquest.

It was April 1942 in Burma. My forces were mostly elite or high veteran and I expected a cakewalk. Set up most maneuver elements forward, with tanks and MGs waiting to catch enemy forces advancing through grass, with infantry in depressions, reverse slopes or trees to bushwhack any units that made it through the kill zones.

While their tanks were laughably easy to deal with, they had plenty of artillery and air. Jungle grass interfered with LOS on infantry advancing in the open as they just kept coming. It seemed they had special toughness and spotting abilities; when they got close to my infantry they'd move, occasionally take casualties and return fire from pinned status with seemingly uncanny accuracy. Meanwhile my guys wasted so much ammo with such little result that many ran out of HE before the battle was two-thirds over (there were fifty-one turns in all).

To make a long story short my forces lost about two of three companies of infantry, all six MGs, and two of four ATGs doing emergency rifle duty (they actually killed several depleted infantry units and a marksman before going under). A single Valentine rushed forward from reserve managed to hold off a gaggle of them with help from scouts and shrunken infantry squads but a breakthrough in another sector yielded several objectives, enough to allow the Sons of Nippon to suffer only a marginal loss.

While Andy says only Japanese experience and morale are affected the battle results screen for Player 2 displayed just fairly good
numbers, averaging maybe 75-80 for both. Apparently there are hidden variables which account for their potency and persistence in the face of supposedly overwhelming firepower (including repeated whacks from single 60-pounder and 4.5-inch batteries).

Needless to say survivors of this bloodbath are taking the next transport back to North Africa. They'll take SS fanatics over Japanese Supermen any day. Cheers!

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

[quote=jivemi;844816]The variables unique to the Japanese in this game are all mentioned in Andy's reply in post #3. There are no other "hidden" advantages beyond the ones he mentioned

Don

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

Oppose the Japanese with stuff they cannot easily counter. The US Stuart tank is excellent against them at short ranges - not just for the 37mm HE, but the 3 other MGs. It also deals with their tanks just fine. If Russian, the T-60 with its 20mm that has a 1 hex blast radius and a decent supply of HE is a good choice. Both are cheap. Bren carriers, with a scout team on board to spot that do not get too close or dismount can provide useful armoured MG support and spot better due to the infantry passengers carried (so should scout alongside or just ahead of your tanks). The M3 mediums are not brilliant versus the Germans, but are battlefield queens in the Pacific - if there is a CS version available with more 75mm HE in your OOB, use those. Shermans and T-34 are overkill, they are like far Eastern "Tigers". Just try to keep armour 2-3 hexes away from enemy infantry.

If you have good fields of fire, MMG and HMG sections following up your infantry are good, especially if fired at clusters of Japanese infantry that have bunched up due to the blast circle effect. Snipers are handy as well - especially for counter sniper work, as are the MMG sections, though less so.

Being an infantry-based army they do not like artillery. In a LC, your FOO and core arty will gain experience and become quick-response arty. Have plenty of mortars and 105mm or 25 pounder (smaller shells don't give them craters to hide in). Have ammo supply for your on-map arty. If you like the 60mm mortar - provide half-tracks to move these short ranged tubes up with the advance. Drop bricks on any annoying Japanese, suppress his on-map arty with some counter-battery fires etc. Any infantry advance of yours should be close (3-5 hexes say) behind a belt of fire that you advance a couple of hexes each turn - i.e. a rolling barrage.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

Thanks guys. Forgot to mention this was a delay battle (since corrected) and was already arty overloaded at 17% force value with a 43-point penalty. Still, I'd been overloaded in previous defensive battles at 21% and won handily giving away 150 or so. Since the Japanese are infantry-heavy I should've adjusted to circumstances.

No doubt my biggest mistake was presuming they'd act like other opponents and start routing away at a certain threshold of fleeing units. But since most didn't behave "normally" my attempts to accelerate their flight by premature infantry counterattacks were doomed to failure. Better to keep infantry under cover and let them come to you after they've run the gauntlet of MGs, arty and tanks. They just don't quit.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

The battle for Iwo Jima lasted 5 weeks and featured a massive aerial and naval pre-bombardment to the extent that Chester Nimitz is quoted saying "Well, this will be easy. The Japanese will surrender Iwo Jima without a fight."

N O T H I N G was easy about fighting the troops of Imperial Japan for anyone who fought them....including now you:D

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

In the 2019 patch/upgrade there are quite a few scenarios that pit either the US or the USMC against the Japanese, they are hard to fight against but not impossible. Use tactics that Andy suggested above. I'll have a small (2-3 companies for the USMC vs. 3-6 from the Japanese) on Guadalcanal around Alligator Creek in a 4-5 Mini-CG out in 3-4 weeks if you'd like to test that out.

Here is the USMC (I recommend playing as USMC against the Japanese until you're ready for a challenge, then take the USA, Russia or GB, ANAZC) as player one for 2019 (via the default sql query supplied, I can provide more info later):

And these are all the ones where the USMC is defending (or player two):
ScenarioID Title
Personally I think that 625 and 691 would be good USMC vs. Japan scenarios but I am biased since I created them :D

Attached is all the scenarios (in the 2019 patch up to 3/27/2019) where Japan is player two.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

Just tried a meeter UK v Japan in Burma - and got to meet the Imperial Guards (The nasty bunch that marched some nurses into the surf and machine-gunned them in Hong Kong, IIRC..)

HQ, OP, 2 troops 25 pounder, 4 bishops (as sturmartillerie), 6 Humber A/C, 3 scout sections of 3 carrier + 3 scouts, a Stuart squadron, 2 platoons of grunts.

Simply charge forward and take all objectives, easy as you have the speed and set up reception committees with Stuarts interspersed with the carriers, scouts stay mounted.

The Imperial Guards arrive and we start attriting them. Arty eventually arrives - Imperial Guards do rout, they will be back soon though (like SS).

20mm AT rifles are a pain on lighter armour - lost a carrier or 2 to those. Stuarts not bothered by them.

Japanese planes arrive, delete a carrier or 2 and a couple of the armoured cars. Must remember to buy flak!.

Some infantry tanks arrive in the North - stuarts cream them, and some little tankettes with a 37mm popgun in the South - target practice for Stuarts.

About halfway through, Japanese advances in 3 spots repulsed.

Stuarts alone may not have done so well - but having scouts in carriers intermingled helps spot the enemy advance.

Will not bother with the Bishops next time - expensive if used as arty, and as sturmartillerie not brilliant, a CS-tank would have been cheaper, and not incurred arty overload.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

Another interesting scenario involving the Japanese is 393 The Walls Breached. The Japanese have mostly infantry and only a little artillery. You have to defend a town against their attack. The catch is that you play as the Chinese and have no artillery at all...

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

That's the kind of scenario where you start to think " if only I had a tankette".........

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

I'm actually a big fan of the Japanese LC. It's probably the earliest you can start, at around '31. But if you do so, you'll find the first 6 years fighting nothing but Nat Chinese and Comm Chinese. It gets boring very fast.

Instead, start at Jan '38. You'll still start the first few battles against Nat Chinese and Comm Chinese, but by July-August, you'll be up against the Russians in Lake Khasan. The dynamic changes alot. I think the code deliberately chooses more armor for Russia, so you'll see lots of tankettes and small tanks. From then on, you can always choose to fight in Mongolia against Russia till Nomonhan around Sept '39. This is just the curtain raiser.

From Sept '39 till Nov '41, you'll be back to fighting Nat Chinese and Comm Chinese. Take this time to train up your units to Elite.

Dec' 41 is the one where it all erupts. It allows you to fight against UK, ANZAC, British India, US, USMC, Dutch??, depending on where you choose the campaign map. There's so much variety to entertain till '45.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

The typical Japanese section was 12 men strong, so it accounts for alot of staying power. After taking 3 casualties, they are still 9 men strong.

The main issue is their lack of Armour units which are able to go toe-to-toe against the big Russian, UK, USA tanks. But this is only largely a issue if you're fighting in say Mongolia, where the terrain is steppe and favours armour maneuvring. In most of South Asia, Southwest Pacific, it's all going to be thick jungle, punctuated by occasional dirt tracks and streams. So not much opportunity for armour to go fast and exploit flank and rear.

Re: Will Japanese soldiers fight to the end?
 

Harumph. Well if mostly elite British troops and tanks can't hold 'em off better call in the US Marines. Still don't get how experience and morale ratings between mostly 70 and 80 (as per the battle results screen) give them such phenomenal powers, especially the ability to recover so quickly from retreat or rout. Anyway it was a learning experience :smirk:.

Here's a save (Turn 31) in case anybody's interested. Shows a lone Valentine holding off the center horde, like Horatius at the bridge, while up north the position crumbles and helpless tanks run for cover: