[Lorric]

Can you entirely wipe out powers in this game, or only clear the seas of their ships temporarily?

[Enioch]

The latter. You can also take over their colonial empires, which has a major impact on their budget and, if your victory was complete enough, even ask for some of their ships as war prizes. But you can never claim their 'core' territories / capitals as war reparations and that means that they'll still have a nominal budget.

Truly nominal, if you've hurt them badly enough. It's not by accident that Japan and Italy have the smallest starting budget, with their piddly colonial empires.

[Lorric]

I think I've got the perfect video for you then to symbolise coming events. Even the right gender. People avoid if you want to avoid spoilers.

https://youtu.be/DBfTk6Unddk?t=76

Stop at 2:46. Accurate?

[Enioch]

I think I've got the perfect video for you then to symbolise coming events. Even the right gender. People avoid if you want to avoid spoilers.

https://youtu.be/DBfTk6Unddk?t=76

Stop at 2:46. Accurate?

Spoiler:

Surprisingly so. There's even a decisive battle at the end!

[Enioch]

Well, the Germans wasted no time in sending raiders against Japanese tanker convoys. It was a tactic that had given them one of their best 'victories' in the last war; mayhap it could serve them again.



Furthermore, Convoy X-02 was escorted solely by destroyers, in an eery callback to the attack that had cost the Japanese the Asanagi and the Shimakaze; Captain Luedecke of the Hamburg thought it an opportunity to cripple the Japanese supply lines and also whittle down the enemy destroyer fleet. However, unlike the last war, the convoy was defended by three Asanagi Kai class desotryers - and two of the modern Nokazes. Even more importantly, the Admiralty had developed a doctrine for dealing with isolated cruiser attacks.



The Hamburg was a relatively modern, if small, light cruiser, with a 5-gun broadside, capable of 26 knots. The destroyer flotillas went out to meet her as far away from the convoy as they could, splitting up into two flotillas.



The Hamburg's options were limited. It was known to the German Admiralty that the range of Japanese torpedoes was, effectively, the same as their guns. Attempting a run on the convoy with her flanks exposed to destroyer flotillas would be tantamount to suicide.

Captain Luedecke decided to deal with the escorts first. The Hamburg turned to engage the two Nokazes, which were presenting a more inviting target. First shots were fired at 11:16, at which point the Nokazes simply turned and ran - away from the convoy.



What followed, was a gruelling 5-hour pursuit, until nightfall made it impossible to continue the engagement. Luedecke could not allowed himself to be sandwitched between two destroyer flotillas and the Nokazes made it a point to cut their speed when the range opened and circle around if he tried to return to the convoy. He was committed to the pursuit - but the Nokazes could also do 33 knots and so it was impossible for him to actually catch up.





This was by no means the honorable and exciting war that many destroyer crews had signed up for; but nobody could argue with the results. The convoy managed to reach Formosa without a single transport loss and the Japanese destroyers were also unscathed. Admittedly, no damage had been caused to the enemy - but that had never actually been the purpose of the escorts.







Throughout October, the R & D department presented the Admiralty with new improvements on machinery efficiency and fire control. The latter, being relevant to a core element of the Japanese battle doctrine were particularly welcome.





The Silent Service gave a good showing, but the German ASW patrols had learned their lessons well. Heavy losses were suffered by both sides, in both maritime traffic and lives of submariners.



Japan also dispatched her Unebis, to raid German traffic. Unfortunately, these ships were getting quite long in the tooth at the time and had not been refitted beyond basic servicing for more than ten years. Unebi herself gave a good showing, sinking a german coalship that tried to sneak its way to Java.



Chiyoda, on the other hand, was not so lucky. Her old machinery suffered a catastrophic failure near the Philippines. An internal explosion, attributed to metal fatigue in one of her boilers, ripped through the ship's internals, caused the deaths of twenty-two crewmen and flooded the Fuel Bunkers A and C. With her engines crippled and her fuel stores nearly depleted, it was all Captain Ahorangi could do to bring his limping ship into neutral Manila, for repairs. The ship was saved but interned by the Americans until the end of the war, according to international laws.



The beginning of November brought the first true fleet engagement between the two Navies. Ikoma while patrolling the Tsushima Strait, had encountered a German raiding task force consisting of a heavy cruiser, a light cruiser and a gaggle of destroyers. Upon sighting of the Teufelsschiff, the Germans had immediately changed course and slipped away toward the East, under cover of nightfall.



The Admiralty felt it likely that the Germans would try to sail east of Honshu and possibly reach the Tsugaru Straits to raid the local shipping - so Kongou was redirected to the area.

The Admiralty's guess proved correct. On the 3rd of November, three hours before sunset, HIJMS Kongou would get her first taste of combat.

[crizza]

On the Japanese imperialism
[…] We are at war, again, with the Japanese Empire.
While those in the military welcome the chance to rectify the earlier defeats, many wonder why the lives of German sailors are again thrown into the meat grinder for nothing more than distant lands.
Japan is ruling over a… what exactly?
We are not talking about a colonial empire, not in the strictest sense.
The emperor is the head of state of an absurdly successful conglomerate of states.
I have recently travelled through former German East Africa. I was curious, I never travelled much, but was intrigued about how the situation for the natives has changed.
To my surprise, Japan treats natives like equals.
Under German rule, we simply took their resources, started to build a railway and exploited them.
The Japanese on the other hand treated them as equals, allowing them to actually participate in matters of politics, appoint some sort of governor and so on.
It seems that the Japanese had learned the key of being successful in oversea, lies in a harmonious relationship with those calling the land home.
The Japanese have already started to develop the land, they continued the railway construction, they offered jobs which resulted in prosperity and most importantly, they allowed the natives to serve in the Japanese military. Thus they in cooperated the native population, giving them the feeling to matter in the greater picture of the Japanese Empire.
So, are the Japanese a colonial or imperialism power? Neither in my humble opinion, the Japanese with their emperor resemble a confederation of states, in such an ethnic diversity only seen in the United States.

With war being fought, my hopes of visiting the Japanese mainland are dashed. […]

[Enioch]

<3

An excerpt from the journal of a politically-minded student? Or of an academic? Or a disgruntled noble scion? Or, perhaps, a common man or woman?

It is an interesting thing to note that continuous war would make travel to Japan dangerous and something that you'd wish to avoid, unless you were going for profit, or reporting or some other very special and urgent reason. I wonder how that lack of contact between the everyday folk of the 'western' world and those damn Japanese that keep bloodying Germany's nose might influence the general opinion of the culture?

Would there be a weaboo movement in the early years of the century? Would the Asian culture be romanticised or vilified? Would there be long discussions in schools and universities about how katanas are clearly better than European swords? 

EDIT: Started a new 'Omakes' category in the table of contents.

[crizza]

As a student of histroy and political science, I'm quite intriduied, so there you have it.
My guess would be a student movement, discredited as cowards for not being overjoyed to fight yet another war and for being curious abot the Japanese.
Germany invested tons of money, without bettering the situation of the natives.
There is this famous sentence attributed to the german Kaiser: Am deutschen Wesen mag die Welt genesen, loosely translated "the world should be bettered by the german way of life.
And yet, nothing like that happened.
So I guess, the Japanese would be romanticised by some, like the Rastafari and such stuff and there would be young people actually trying to get in touch with the Japanese, like my 1915-self

[Enioch]

Kongou exits the eastern end of the Tsugaru Strait with her three Asanagi-Kai escorts and immediately spots the enemy forces closing from the south-east. It is not a pleasant surprise for the Germans.



They have a chance, if they can last until nightfall. Kongou is operating nder strict orders not to engage in a night fight; the Admiralty will not risk losing her to a random torpedo strike. She has three hours to do her work.





The enemy task force is led by a heavy cruiser. The lookouts identify her as a Freya class,  a slow, armoured beast with a small main battery but heavy secondaries. She's a commerce raider. She's escrted by the Hamburg and three destroyers of her own. Kongou just closes the range and opens fire. Killing cruisers is what she's made for.



The Hamburg peels off, in a mad dash to the north. Kongou ignores her - she has her directors set on the Freya. She scores her first hit at 16:23 and keeps closing.





She plows through the destroyer formation, her secondaries and tertiaries hitting them hard. Her main batteries stay trained on the Freya. At this point, the German cruiser is resembling grey swiss cheese.





And then, unceremoniously, she slowly rolls to the side and goes down, stern first.





Kongou leaves the task of picking up survivors to her destroyers. She returns to where the German escort is limping along, their engines and funnels shot to hell and back by her 8'' secondaries and her destroyers' popguns - and finishes the job with a couple of close-range main battery strikes.



Night falls and Kongou returns to the Strait and sets course for home. The Hamburg has escaped, but she's no match for any of Japan's cruisers and is sure to be picked off another day. Captain Hotarou will not risk his ship in a nighttime pursuit.



OOC: I forgot to screenshot my victory stats, but you can see that the fight netted me ca. 350+ VP. Not bad. EDIT: That's actually quite bad, strangely enough. The death of a heavy cruiser should have netted me at least 800-100 VP. There are negative modifiers but this should have been a really ****ty ship and crew to give me so few VPs. Looks like the Germans were scraping the barrel with this one.

[Enioch]

The German submarines -and the ever-elusive heavy cruiser Victoria Louise keep up the pressure against the Japanese merchantmen, but the Japanese strike back just as hard. The new Itsukushimas prove to be relatively good raiders.





One of them, the Matsushima intercepts a German Gefion-class popgun cruiser off Sumatra.







The superior Japanese 6'' guns rip the German to shreds, with Matsushima suffering minimal damage in return.





Then, January brings bad news for the Admiralty. The Russians are laying down a new light cruiser and it's revolutionary. It sports a fully-centerline broadside, sloped armor, mine rails, and above-surface swivel torpedo mounts. It's also as fast as the Itsukushimas, which are a thousand tons heavier, just for the benefit of another turret on their broadside.

This is bad and spirits in the Admiralty fall considerably.





On the 9th of January, Itsukushima is intercepted off the coast of Java by a german cruiser. Her lookouts identify it as the Hamburg. Itsukushima turns to engage and scores the first hit at extreme range, but thinks twice of it when she spots a second inbound cruiser.





She's a Niobe. Not much of a threat at long range, but if the Hamburg were to score a lucky hit on Itsukushima's engines, her 4'' popguns could prove to be veritable buzzsaws at close range against the lightly armored Japanese ship.

The Japanese decide that discretion is the better part of valour and set a course for a fighting retreat.





By nightfall, the Hamburg has had two of her turrets jammed and is flooding in her fore compartments. Luedecke calls off pursuit and the Itsukushima fades into the dark, without having been hit a single time.



It's more of a draw than a minor victory, but it does help to raise Japanese spirits.

[StarSlayer]

Out of curiosity how advanced can the cruiser designs get?  Can you eventually build something analogous to a New Orleans or Myōkō or do they cap out at armored cruisers?

[Enioch]

Yes, you can, although you will definitely have to continue playing after the 1920s and you might have to settle for a bulkier than RL design.

Spoiler:

See here for my 1930 Takao-class, which weighs 16.5ktons fully loaded, can reach 33 knots and was originally launched with 15 6'' guns, only to be upgunned to a 10 8'' configuration (remind you of anything?  ). They have all-or-nothing armor, with a 4'' belt and a 2.5'' deck (better deck but worse belt than the RL Takaos), 16 torp launchers in four quadruple mounts and OTL American WWII levels of damcon, paired with the best torpedo protection you can imagine. Pretty decent ships, actually. The one thing they don't have enough of are secondaries (only a pair of 4'' anti-DD rifles per side), minelaying capabilities and particularly reliable engines.

I've also built Myoko expies, that are 500 tons lighter, with the same armament but fewer torps. And, in the late thirties / early fourties, I also laid down some Zao expies, with their fearsome 12 8'' guns.

[Spoon]

Reminds me of Mogami

So uh, why is kongou represented by kaga? 

[Enioch]

Because she's not Kongou.   

And that's all I'm saying on the matter.

[Spoon]

[Enioch]

OK, Spoon?

I can only see the image in my mobile phone. In fact, any image you've posted so far, I can only see in my phone. My computer screams at me that there's a secure connection certificate error. Am I the only one tis is happening to?

EDIT: Possibly. My antivirus has ibin.co marked as a harmful site.

[Thisisaverylongusername]

Try using a different browser. The last time I had an error like that, I was using IE, but you're not using IE.

At least, I think you aren't using IE. I hope you're not using IE.

[Enioch]

It's an antvirus thing. All of my browsers behave the same way on this matter. And that includes bloody IE.

Which, no, is not my main browser. That'd be the Fox.

Added an exception. Seems to be working.

[Spoon]

[Enioch]

At the start of the new year, the Japanese Alliance scored a major diplomatic victory. After a short period of negotiations with the USA, the Japanese secured a small two-part war loan at a nominal interest rate, backed by limited military basing rights granted to American Navy forces for no less than ten years. It was not so much the funds that helped the Japanese (the loan total rose to the modest equivalent of fourty million pounds, backed in American gold) as the clear message that the Americans considered them the ones to back in this war. The Americans had pulled out most of their forces from the South China Sea, with the tacit understanding that the Japanese Alliance would handle security in the region; the European powers, less trusting but unwilling to thrust their hands into the quickly developing mess there, assumed a more measured, neutral stance. One notable example was France, very worried about her own holdings in the Far East but not willing to side with the Germans. The political mess that ensued by contradicting statements and flip-flopping from the French Foreign Ministry was a joy for Minister Katō  to watch.





In February, the R & D folks presented the Admiralty with a few minor, but significant designs. First were small diesel generators, that could serve as backups for a ship's main electrical systems. One of the most terrible ways for a ship to die was for a lucky hit to disable its electrics, leaving its pumps dead and damage control only able to stand and watch as they lost their ship from under them. This would, hopefully, no longer be an issue. Another development was the submission of designs for mine rails in light ships (Destroyers and light cruisers), partly inspired by the Russian Pallada-class designs the Russians were working on. Until then, laying minefields was the responsibility of the 'Maru boys'; now the destroyer jockeys and scouting forces could share the burden and further reinforce the Japanese defenses.





In an effort to bring the German fleet to battle, Kongo and Ikoma sailed to the coast of Northern Korea with a destroyer escort. The Germans (Japanese intelligence had accoutned for at least three capital ships in the area) wanted nothing to do with that, and preserved their forces as a fleet-in-being.





They also made some overtures for peace through the Russians; Kaiser Wilhelm II counting on his cousin, Tzar Nikolai's goodwill. Queen Victoria would have been proud to see them working together; the Japanese Government, however, were not impressed and said so in no uncertain terms, especially when it became clear that the Kaiser's Cabinet was unwilling to contemplate any territorial concessions.

What followed was a month of the Japanese Silent Service patiently explaining to the Germans that hiding in their harbours was unacceptable.





I-26, under the command of Captain Yokota Makoru casually sailed into a Korean anchorage and torpedoed the German destroyer S20 - quite the embarrasment for the Germans.





She then proceeded to sink two ammunition ships with her deck gun. I-18 and I-14 provided two more kills.



The Germans tried to counter the Japanese successes with their own submarine fleet, but lost more subs than they sunk ships.



Encouraged by the Navy's success, the Army submitted a proposal for a concentrated push into Northern Korea. The Navy, seeing an opportunity to force the Germans into a decisive fleet battle, if the army push should succeed in depriving them of their infrastructure, agreed to support the Army advance. The advance started in late March, with the Japanese ships laying supportive fire on contested coastal sites.



It was a good thing that the second and final part of the American war loan was released to the military budget in April.









The Silent Service once again dealt a crushing blow to German shipping, putting more than triple their German counterparts' sunken tonnage to the bottom. Some losses were suffered, but the submariners were highly praised for their undeniably spectacular performance.



Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the Chishima. Returning home after an unsuccessful raid with her fuel bunkers near-empty, the Japanese cruiser was pursued by a German Armoured Cruiser over several hours, which forced her to run at sustained flank. By the time she successfully managed to disengage, she no longer had the necessary fuel to reach a Japanese port and had to find refuge in Manila, where she spent the rest of the war nest to Chiyoda. Captain Miyamoto Daichi was heavily criticised for allowing his fuel stores to run so low before returning to refuel.





In May, the Navy reached one of the most controversial decisions in its history. In what was considered to be a morale-raising move, the Kongou was brought to Yokohama where, in the presence of the old Fuso she was renamed to match her lauded predecessor.

The ceremony was a grand affair, with the (increasingly weakening) Emperor and his family present and officiating; and multitudes of crowds massing in the quays and docks. The renaming itself caused mixed reactions among the crews. On the one hand, many sailors and officers thought it disrespectful to both Kongou (who had, so far, honoured her name) and the old Lady of China. On the other, Fuso was thought to truly be a lucky name for the Navy.

Of some apocryphal interest was the response of the most spiritual of sailors, who thought that the renaming would do more harm than good. They feared that the ship's spirit would be confused and angry, having to shed her own battlecruiser mantle to vest that of an old and honoured battleship. How could such a profound change in the nature of the ship not affect her and those aboard her?





They were proven wrong. Whether it was in the name or not is debateable, but Fuso proved to be as lucky a ship as her predecessor. Less than a month after the renaming, Fuso and Takachiho were patrolling off Formosa, when the battlecruiser's hull clanged on something. The watch officers were sure that they had struck a mine; fortunately for the ship, it had proved to be a dud. The Takachiho did not have the time to avoid the minefield before the destroyers could begin a sweep; she struck another mine less than a hundred yards off Fuso's port stern. Spectacularly even though she was more than fifteen years old at the time with no torpedo and mine protection whatsoever, in a stroke of amazing luck, the blast only cracked her forward three compartments. Thhe crew managed to get the flooding under control in minutes. Fuso towed her to Formosa, where she would spend the next five months being repaired.



The news from the front were not as good. The Army had run into prepared German defenses and the advance had bogged down. Massive losses were taken on both sides; the Battle of Korea was quickly becoming the bloodiest conflict of the new century. New tactics were tested and employed by both sides, but nothing could break the stalemate.



In July, Fuso spent a short time in the drydocks. Thanks to new improvements in gun mountings and elevation gear, space could be economised in her crowded triple turrets. This gave her gun crews considerably more elbow room and alowed for a substantial increase in her rate of fire.



Meanwhile, Ikoma was holding the northern front and keeping the Germans pinned into their Korean harbours. Twice she offered battle; twice the German capital ships exited the harbours, saw the Teufelsschiff waiting for them and immediately returned to the cover of their coastal batteries and minefields.



There was grumbling among the crews that Ikoma felt...frustrated.



By August, the reconstruction of the Tsukuba was complete and funds could now be allocated to new construction. It was debated whether a batch of new light cruisers might be a good option; however, upon review of the performance of the various services, it was finally decided that the Silent Service could use some more toys.

Six massive new submarines, almost as big as a contemporary destroyer were laid down. Nothing like them had ever existed in the world. They could roam faster than their smaller siblings; pack more torpedoes and bigger deck guns; and run more silently than any other submersible. The Admiralty intended to give command to their best-performing crews and the submariners threw themselves into the frey with wild abandon.



This brought the Germans to the breaking point. In September, new overtures were made for a compromise, 'white' peace. The Admiralty scoffed at the idea and pointed at the massive losses the Germans had suffered - and were continuing to suffer daily. Minister Katō , on the other hand, had ideas of his own - and the skills to implement them.

In a month-long, grueling negotiation meeting that took place in London, with the Japanese battlecruisers shelling German harbours in Korea and the front finally buckling in places, he laid down the Japanese demands and refused to budge an inch. He furthermore informed the Germans that, should a peace not be signed, the Japanese Alliance would not engage in any other negotiations or accept cease-fires until every last German soldier had been ousted from East Asia - including the nearly fallen Korea and Java. If the Germans wanted to keep their bases there? They would have to back off now.

What did Katō  want?

He'd settle for Africa. All of it.