WIkipedia says that the Total War Shogun #1 made AI operate under Art of War, is this true? Because I doubt it. It sounds like something PR would say because casuals understand it, but not something you pragmatically program.
>you shouldn't attack an enemy who's much stronger than you >it's smart to keep an eye on what your enemy is going to do >try not to starve your own dudes to death, it's not an effective strategy
Wow such big brain AI!
I know it's a meme to say this, but taken at face value it's impossible NOT to have implicit references to Art of War in any strategy game, simply because it includes such basic common sense stuff.
>>you shouldn't attack an enemy who's much stronger than you
It doesn't actually say that.
Sun Zu says that the bigger army is the more difficult its effective maneuvering becomes, and the clumsy the maneuvering the easier it is for the outnumbered opponent to defeat them in detail. So, while enlargement of the army is a blessing to a competent general, under the hands of an incompetent general it just exacerbates the problem.
Consider this:
It wasn't until the aftermath of WW1 that commanders started to even consider that maybe just throwing people into the grinder isn't the best way of waging wars. Or that having commanders that are in it only for personal glory is terrible for their actual decision-making. You'd think that's obvious, but turns out - not really.
So it's less about Art of War being some revolutionary or innovative set of ideas. Instead, it's bunch of common sense stuff that people actively ignored for centuries all around the globe. The biggest irony was Nips obsessing over that book ,then waging WW2 in the exact contrary to everything it says.
I don't know where to even begin with the "I fricking love history dude level of tard post"
72 British Generals died on the front line of WW1
In response to the high casualty battles like the Somme the mine campaign was started which was very effective and low in casualties.
I also love your tard reductive reasons that somehow been BC china and 1939 nobody cared about their soliders.
>It wasn't until the aftermath of WW1 that commanders started to even consider that maybe just throwing people into the grinder isn't the best way of waging wars. Or that having commanders that are in it only for personal glory is terrible for their actual decision-making.
Uh... How much do you known about military history? Commanders the opposite of how you described have existed since the days of antiquity. Hell, Sherman's Georgia and Carolinas campaigns in the American Civil War, just half a century before WW1, were basically just a game of chess between him and Joseph E. Johnston where they both kept trying to outflank each other and force the other to commit to a disadvantageous battle, all precisely so they could avoid having their forces ground up by attacking an entrenched opponent on ground of his choosing. Even the eastern front of WW1 was full of generals outmaneurving and outfoxing their opponents. In fact, pretty much every theater of WW1 EXCEPT the western front was like that.
Every board on Ganker is like this. Even Ganker. Lots of posts made by functional morons, semi-literate morons, mental midgets and underage children. That's the price we pay for one of the few relatively uncensored forums on the internet.
Consider this:
It wasn't until the aftermath of WW1 that commanders started to even consider that maybe just throwing people into the grinder isn't the best way of waging wars. Or that having commanders that are in it only for personal glory is terrible for their actual decision-making. You'd think that's obvious, but turns out - not really.
So it's less about Art of War being some revolutionary or innovative set of ideas. Instead, it's bunch of common sense stuff that people actively ignored for centuries all around the globe. The biggest irony was Nips obsessing over that book ,then waging WW2 in the exact contrary to everything it says.
Imagine b***hing about Art of War being basic, obvious shit, while STILL managing to misunderstand it. What is this saying about your IQ and reading comprehension, anon?
Just marketing. They probably did have the programmers read it, because it takes less than half an hour to read, and is a checklist of basic strategy that 30 minutes of brainstorming would make anyway (which more than they did for later games). There was an advisor in the throne room that would quote random Sun Tzu quotes at you depending on the strategic situation. The staff did read more literature and popular media though, just to get the atmosphere right along with exotic things like giving you fanciful formations like Ox, Crane, Keyhole etc that came out of Gunyou Senkou Zukai Gassatsu, or more likely an Osprey book.
I mean basic shit like "prefer high ground over low ground", "don't attack if at disadvantage" aren't hard to program.
As for OP's, no it won't make you gud, but it's a sort of basic tutorial for how to strategery, I recommend it if you're new to strategy games, it isn't a long read anyway.
Technically it does, because it's one of few games that implemented elements of battlefield mentioned in the book. Things like weather, terrain, leadership, morale, etc. On larger strategic level however, TW falls short especially on diplomatic front (Good luck finding games with human like diplomacy). The books also emphasized using deception in war, but the AI is too primitive to use something like feinting retreat.
>diplomatic front (Good luck finding games with human like diplomacy)
I have been toying with diplomacy in my own indie game.
I'm of the opinion that diplomacy shouldn't be just a collection of modifiers that determine acceptance or decline, but essentially battles of rhetoric.
Basically, of asking X to ally with you, and getting accepted or declined, you would instead dispatch an ambassador, assign him a budget, and using his rhetoric skill, budget, and luck he would over time build political influence in the country by winning the local politicians over.
And when you actually have to request something from X country, the ambassador's political influence would determine if the deal is accepted.
That's an interesting take on diplomacy. But what would happen if the AI sent its ambassador to build political clout on the player's country? How much does the player have in making the final decision?
Let's say that AI offers an alliance, offering alliance costs 50% political influence.
The player can reject those offers but it might cause civil war. Basically, the impact depends on player's actions and the political influence, different outcomes, for the alliance are: >AI has at least 50% influence and player accepts, the alliance is made, and normal >AI has at least 50% influence and the player refuses, for every percent over 50%, there is a chance a civil war is triggered, so with 60% influence the odds are 10% >if AI has fewer than the required 50% and the player rejects, nothing will happen >if AI has fewer than 50%, and the player accepts, there is a chance of civil war based on 50% - influence. Thus if AI has 10% influence, the chance of civil war is 40%
Civil war is a bit of an extreme reaction, but I like your idea - it'd probably be best if the more influence the AI has over you, the more expensive (if using some kind of political resource) to refuse.
Depends. Anyone can read it. Its pretty straight forward. Most people think they understand it. "Oh yeah, I need to occupy the high ground, lol"
Only a vanishingly small number of people actually do understand it.
Consider that it was a required reading for junior and senior Japanese officers for over two hundred years, and well known and praised by them for centuries before that. Then consider how during WW2 the Japanese then proceeded to ignore nearly every principle in the book, and would repeatedly do so until the nukes were dropped.
Draw your own conclusions from that.
For game related study observe the sort of discussion that take places in threads like hoi3, smac,and any TW game, where people are fixated by the details and not on the objectives. It like watching people argue about the various moves a knight can make in chess, rather than concentrating on how to win the game.
>As if Japan lost because they forgot to follow the book
Nta, but they kind of did lost due to that. Because they've made every possible mistake the treaty advise against, some of them multiple times. It's literally a textbook example of "shit we don't advise you to do, or else you will lose". And they've lost - battles, whole fronts and theaters and ultimately the war itself.
>Japanese population was 73 million >American population was 133 million >Japanese GDP was ~$10 billion (including plunder wealth) >American GDP was ~$100 billion >Japan produced a pittance in fossil fuels during the War >Americans produced 60% of the world’s petroleum (and around 75% of the refined petroleum fuels)
Forget any book, Japan lost because they didn't read
>you shouldn't attack an enemy who's much stronger than you >it's smart to keep an eye on what your enemy is going to do >try not to starve your own dudes to death, it's not an effective strategy
Wow such big brain AI!
I know it's a meme to say this, but taken at face value it's impossible NOT to have implicit references to Art of War in any strategy game, simply because it includes such basic common sense stuff.
Yes he would. If you are out of options you must fight. The alternative for the Japanese would have been to continue to wait until they run out of oil and no longer have a navy at all.
>I am a fricking imbecile.
Yes, you are a fricking imbecile. He would have recommended looking at the circumstances that lead to Japan running out of oil. >The US oil embargo
Why did the US embargo Japan? >Because of Japanese aggression in China
So make peace with China even if that means withdrawing from the Chinese mainland
Net result? Japan gets its oil back, keeps Korea, keeps Manchuria as a puppet state, keeps Indochina, and doesn't get nuked.
2 years ago
Anonymous
Nta, but the real problem with China is that Tokyo had virtually no control over it. Not in terms of "controlling conquered territory" (but that, too), but virtually zero control over the initial phase of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, and then just the momentum dictating their moves, rather than actual willingness to fight that war. or ability to withdraw.
There is such saying in my native, I guess English will have some equivalent: "the appetite grows as you eat". And this is roughly what happened with 2nd Sino-Japanese War. Because sure, we might barely control our own troops, but hey, they've took 10% of China on their own accord, maybe we should send them relief and more supplies (especially since it's still only late 30s, and there are no other concerns). And then it just turned into a sunk-cost fallacy as years were pushing on, while the Jap offensive lost any momentum come spring 1939. They've took too much at that point to say "ok, let's do peace talks and take a region or two", when they had two (and in reality four) puppet governments, each controlling more than they could get out of the peace talks. So let's keep fighting, because we can get more... right?
tl;dr it's a bit more complicated than that, but I'm not questioning your main argument - should they call for early peace in China, things would be dandy for them, rather than the pointless, idiotic meat grinder it turned into, not to mention being dragged into WW2 at all (assuming they wouldn't be stupid enough to do anything beyond seizing Dutch East India and staying the frick away from Burma).
Either way, reading through the documentation from that era makes it fricking clear that the HQ had no clue how to handle it all, while field commanders were entirely driven on "doing emperor's will" - read: whatever the frick I please, but mostly just fight and plunder.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>the real problem with China is that Tokyo had virtually no control over it.
That then shifts the problem back to the power structure in Japan. Sun Tsu is concerned with instructing a person how to win a war. The focus in this case becomes one of asking who was in control of Japan. Obviously its more of a case of Japan being in de facto anarchy if the Japanese state could not control its own military, which is further borne out by the appalling lack of cooperation between the Japanese army and navy during the course of the war. Basically it was a collection of disparate, and sometimes even antagonistic, groups rushing off to do their own thing without being restrained by a central authority.
Therefore it becomes more a matter of deciding to whom Sun Tsu's principles would be applied in this case. The Emperor, the non militaristic branches of government, or either of the two branches of the military. In all cases, to avoid the defeat in WW2, it would have been necessary for at least one of those groups to have seized total power, or cemented total power, in one central governing body, before embarking on any other plan.
"The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler"
>But the Emperor was the supreme power?
In that case he ignored Sun Tsu, as did the various military branches. Likewise could be said for the government if it is argued that the Emperor was merely a figurehead that could be circumvented or easily manipulated by factions within the government.
Then turtles all the way down.
2 years ago
Anonymous
I don't see how that is ignoring Sun Tzu. He does say that you can know how to win, but still be unable to do so. The Japanese efforts to brainwash the population into complete obedience of the Emperor was certainly in line with the Moral Law.
2 years ago
Anonymous
The oil embargo was over Indochina, anon. Americans didn't give squat about Chink land being taken over. But Japan installing itself with just few shots fired in Indochina, along with seizing French military bases and especially air fields? Now we are talking about some serious stuff that has to be dealt with.
If they cared about China, the embargo would be passed no later than year into fighting in China, probably before even battle of Wuhan. Instead, it was issued by mid-'41, whole fricking 4 years after war in China started and long after Japan lost any upper hand in it.
US Asian strategy up until 1950 or so was just one stupid idea chasing another stupid idea, with bad people in bad places making bad decisions. Their clusterfrick is one of the main contributors to why China is red, and RoC is reduced to Taiwan. Same with Korea, same with what eventually turned into Vietnam. That entire clusterfrick is result of Roosevelt policies and all the god-awful people he personally designated to enforce them, each adding their own load of shit to the scene. It's a wonder they didn't mis-manage Japan during and directly after occupation, like they've did with entire Asian Far East.
2 years ago
Anonymous
You got any more information or sources on the whole Roosevelt shit? I'm interested in learning more about it and why America just allowed half of the shit that happened in Asia to happen. Maybe a book?
2 years ago
Anonymous
The good starting point is going through China White Paper. It's an official US documentation of the investigation of the process after "loss of China". You know shit's fricked, when the official governmental investigation looking for cheap scapegoats can't find them and instead has to point at far higher echelon. It doesn't directly point on Roosevelt, but his policies and policy-making of his cabinet is being heavily criticised. Thing is, Roosevelt was making pretty much all China-related decisions on his own, so saying "his administration" in this case means "people he personally appointed to various China-related posts".
From there on, any further reading depends predominately on how deep you want to go, and, far more importantly, who you want to blame. Because like with all complex issues like this, there are few "schools" of finding the blame. They roughly divide on following camps:
- Roosevelt, personally, fricked shit up due to being unrepentant idealist with god-awful people-reading skills, appointing wrong people on wrong posts and making wrong decisions on every step regarding not just China, but Asia as a whole
- Stilwell actively turned manageable situation into multi-front disaster (logistics, goodwill, public opinion, military support) over nothing, but a petty grudge
- Chang-Kai Shek was half-decent military commander and god-awful politician, who's goals were both impossible and impractical, turning against himself his own generals, not to mention the motley crew of warlord allies, which hampered any sort of
- KMT, even before 2nd Sino-Jap War was dysfunctional mess that would collapse under own weight no matter what (this is usually the original cope reason, chiefly based on falsified reports made by Stilwell)
2 years ago
Anonymous
- The Northern Offensive started a domino process in which KMT lost ground, all thanks to overly ambitious goals and insufficient resources being allocated to wrong places
- Truman administration flat-out didn't understood why they even should bother with China and bailed first chance given, prior to that decision entirely mismanaging the logistics and military support for KMT - this was probably the greatest post-WW2 mistake Americans ever made, because the consequences are dragging to this day
There is NO middle ground over this issue. Every single existing publication picks a camp and even if it notes the points of various other camps, they champion a single case, rather than the big picture. The "neutral" camp is usually made by European sinologists and boils down to "Americans thoroughly fricked shit up". Which isn't wrong, but is too holistic and rarely gets into details needed to grasp it.
If you are looking for heroes in this, then there is Wedermayer, the poor bastard that inherited the whole mess after Stilwell and did his very best to clean it. Since he had juuuust enough clout to get things done in Washington, there is a slim chance that should Roosevelt die few months later, the whole thing would go differently. But that's alt-hist bullshit, and reality is that everyone had their fair share of frick-ups in this, and once Truman administration bailed on China, the remaining two years of the war were just postponing the inevitable
2 years ago
Anonymous
- The Northern Offensive started a domino process in which KMT lost ground, all thanks to overly ambitious goals and insufficient resources being allocated to wrong places
- Truman administration flat-out didn't understood why they even should bother with China and bailed first chance given, prior to that decision entirely mismanaging the logistics and military support for KMT - this was probably the greatest post-WW2 mistake Americans ever made, because the consequences are dragging to this day
There is NO middle ground over this issue. Every single existing publication picks a camp and even if it notes the points of various other camps, they champion a single case, rather than the big picture. The "neutral" camp is usually made by European sinologists and boils down to "Americans thoroughly fricked shit up". Which isn't wrong, but is too holistic and rarely gets into details needed to grasp it.
If you are looking for heroes in this, then there is Wedermayer, the poor bastard that inherited the whole mess after Stilwell and did his very best to clean it. Since he had juuuust enough clout to get things done in Washington, there is a slim chance that should Roosevelt die few months later, the whole thing would go differently. But that's alt-hist bullshit, and reality is that everyone had their fair share of frick-ups in this, and once Truman administration bailed on China, the remaining two years of the war were just postponing the inevitable
Interesting. Anything more to go on? I could probably read a few "camps" and then see the blindspots in one view over the other and see how they fit together from that. People that would only blame the KMT or only Roosevelt would probably deliberately ignore certain issues.
What wrong decisions did Roosevelt make for Asia entirely? Outside of only China, since you mentioned the White Paper for that case in particular.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>What wrong decisions did Roosevelt make for Asia entirely
He assumed that at the time:
- China is a functional country
- China has a functional administration
- China is a functional democracy, with just as functional republican system
- Chang-Kai Shek has a firm control over his country, and Central Plains War was just a small rebellion
- Communists are only in Soviet Union and they are kind of swell anyway
- As long as we send a military attache that simply speaks Chinese, things are going to be swell
- Sending people without asking them if they want to go first is not an issue, they are in the military, they will serve with distinction anyway
- Listening to journalists, rather than actual intel, is a good idea
- Japanese people are stupid and easy to trick, after all they aren't white (yep, that's the same Roosevelt who considered China future of the world, despite not being populated by whites, either)
- Since the US opened Japan to the world, they love Americans anyway
- Endangering colonial interest and possessions of European countries is a great counter-balance for lack of American presence
- Leaving Philippines to their own devices, without first propping them up, is gonna work out just fine, especially since it's a drain on current budget
- Siam? Where's that?
In other words: a whole fricking lot of idealistic thinking, combined with misguided way of "balancing" lack of American presence in China (no zone of influence, pushing for the open door policy etc) and worst of it all, barely any grasp on how things are in the actual field.
I get it, he really had bigger concerns on his head pre-war and then once war started, shit kinda went on auto-pilot, but in hindsight, whole lot of issues could be avoided. Even such things like the shape of UN (with China in the top 5, but Japan being given shit, and that project predates any military conflict involving Japan, so it's not even war-time punishment)
2 years ago
Anonymous
>- China is a functional country >- China has a functional administration >- China is a functional democracy, with just as functional republican system >- Chang-Kai Shek has a firm control over his country, and Central Plains War was just a small rebellion
You'd think stuff like Ways That Are Dark would at least paint some sort of picture of the actual state of China, or at least the government.
As for reading list:
Start with GENERAL history textbooks for history of Japan, Korea (by proxy, since those usually cover overlapping issues) and China that cover 20th century. They will create a good background on what's even going on, along with related list of textbooks covering the details. I no longer have my reading list from uni times, besides, third of it was in Polish anyway, so not much use for you. But it was a pretty diverse listing just to get 20 or so years covered, between 1930 to 1950.
The problem with covering the whole thing is also about periodisation in historical textbooks. KMT covers both warlord era and 2nd Sino-Jap War, along with continuation of the civil war, and those three are usually treated as two-three separate issues (which is moronic). If you sit to warlord era, then KMT is the tail end of it. If you sit directly to 2nd Sino-Jap, then you lack the background on why the frick China was such a clusterfrick. NEITHER covers American involvement pre-'44. And if American involvement in China is covered, then it's usually in the POST-war textbooks, related to either Truman administration (so skipping over Roosevelt era) or the Reds taking over, yet again lacking context. Then if you have KMT-focused publications, they usually either lionize them OR present them as bunch of crooked thieves, no middle ground ever detected.
Welcome to the joys of sieving through textbooks, I guess.
Well shit. I had honestly hoped there would be more general books presenting the situation, even if they contradicted each other for the reasons why it ended up as it did, like for the Great Famine.
2 years ago
Anonymous
As for reading list:
Start with GENERAL history textbooks for history of Japan, Korea (by proxy, since those usually cover overlapping issues) and China that cover 20th century. They will create a good background on what's even going on, along with related list of textbooks covering the details. I no longer have my reading list from uni times, besides, third of it was in Polish anyway, so not much use for you. But it was a pretty diverse listing just to get 20 or so years covered, between 1930 to 1950.
The problem with covering the whole thing is also about periodisation in historical textbooks. KMT covers both warlord era and 2nd Sino-Jap War, along with continuation of the civil war, and those three are usually treated as two-three separate issues (which is moronic). If you sit to warlord era, then KMT is the tail end of it. If you sit directly to 2nd Sino-Jap, then you lack the background on why the frick China was such a clusterfrick. NEITHER covers American involvement pre-'44. And if American involvement in China is covered, then it's usually in the POST-war textbooks, related to either Truman administration (so skipping over Roosevelt era) or the Reds taking over, yet again lacking context. Then if you have KMT-focused publications, they usually either lionize them OR present them as bunch of crooked thieves, no middle ground ever detected.
Welcome to the joys of sieving through textbooks, I guess.
2 years ago
Anonymous
This is correct, it was Indochina that sparked the US embargo. The important part was that the Japanese occupation of Indochina blocked the import of supplies into China including military supplies, much of which was provided by the US. To say the US didn't care for China is not correct in a broader context. The US cared about keeping China at war against Japan. Japan was obviously a threat to US interests in the Pacific and by keeping China in the game the US was denying Japan hegemony in the region.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>To say the US didn't care for China is not correct in a broader context
Again, if they cared, they would just embargo Japanese oil imports, plain and simple. Instead, they were sending maybe 1/20th of the guns needed, out of 1/40th demanded by Chinese, to call it a day and get Japanese busy
2 years ago
Anonymous
What do you think would happen to an American president who embargoed oil exports without a very compelling reason? Was there maybe some kind of reason why it was not a trivial action to take?
2 years ago
Anonymous
>What do you think would happen to an American president who embargoed oil exports without a very compelling reason
"Our interest in China are endangered by Japanese aggression and we are also threatened in the Philippines as a result" is a VERY compelling reason.
Have you tried not being moronic for even 5 seconds?
2 years ago
Anonymous
Doesn't sound like a very compelling reason for an isolationist public. Have you tried not being moronic for 5 seconds? Many decisions only appear obvious in hindsight. When you situate them in their own time, they are far from obvious.
2 years ago
Anonymous
"Never trust a donkey, they are mean hateful creatures and shall surely bite your balls"
-Sun Tsu
2 years ago
Anonymous
>>So make peace with China even if that means withdrawing from the Chinese mainland
You have no idea how states and humans work, if you imagine it is possible to just quit a major war.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>this is actually unironiically what a thinking american human being believes is true
2 years ago
Anonymous
You forgot Taiwan. Taiwan was effectively a Japanese colony after 1895.
A Japan that doesn't attack the Allies gets to keep Korea, Manchuria, Indochina ( North and South Vietnam ) and Taiwan.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>A Japan that doesn't attack the Allies gets to keep [...] French Indochina
2 years ago
Anonymous
Try reading history.
Otherwise keep your stupid mouth shut.
2 years ago
Anonymous
As you wish: >On 9 December 1940, an agreement was reached whereby French sovereignty over its army and administrative affairs was confirmed, while Japanese forces were free to fight the war against the Allies from Indochinese soil.[2] The Vichy government had agreed that some 40,000 troops could be stationed there.
Dumb frick.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>On 9 December 1940
Japan declared attacked the Allies in December 1941
Stupid c**t.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>AN AGREEMENT WAS REACHED WHEREBY FRENCH SOVEREIGNTY OVER ITS ARMY AND ADMINISTRATIVE AFFAIRS WAS CONFIRMED
Illiterate.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>typing in ALL CAPS makes me less of an ignorant idiot!
God you are a stupid goose. Take a chill pill and try improving your English comprehension skills before you make an even bigger fool of yourself.
2 years ago
Anonymous
>get proven that the Japanese never laid claim to Vietnam >try to ignore it
Whatever floats your boat mate. Just think next time you try to pretend you know history
>take as many islands as possible >fortify them to hell and back (and have a big navy) >dare the US to retake them and hope that the US don't find it worth to bother
Sure, it was a miscalculation, but it COULD have worked
It also would have worked, if their enemy had been a Russian tsar. They failed to account for the difference in internal cohesion between the Russian Empire and USA.
Japan was already involved in a land war in China for years, and then decided to attack the USA, Britain, France, Australia and the Dutch.
Just how fricking moronic was that?
You would know because you are fricking moronic.
their plan was never a full blown war, they were already fricked because of American embargo on oil so they went for risky play and decided to destroy good part of american navy hoping for better peace deal terms and that US wont have means or will to fight (war support before pearl harbor was below 10%)
Not that they ever could have won, but just look at some of the moronic Japanese campaigns in the Pacific, like Midway or Ten-go. >Attack Midway to lure American fleet out of Hawaii >no chance our coded communications could be compromised, cause Americans are stupid >no chance the fleet will be anywhere but in harbor cause Americans are cowards >no chance the enemy will take any action except the one we wargamed them to take >proceed to get ambushed and lose the entire fleet >could have escaped with a couple carriers, but frick it, send them back, captain's going to die either way whether in battle or by sepuku, what's a fleet carrier compared to personal honor?
"All warfare is based on letting the enemy win, for if they win then you have won"
-Justin Trudeau.
Real and based
>Would this help me to git gud?
I swear to god, I was stupid enough to get into the hype of this "book". It's just fricking common sense, nothing fricking special can be gained from reading it. No deeper insights. It's just common sense applied to warfare in that era.It's just fricking hipsters and zoomers hyping that shit up because they recently discovered that books are a thing.
You can learn more from reading Clausewitz and even that is outdated.
Stupid
You forgot Taiwan. Taiwan was effectively a Japanese colony after 1895.
A Japan that doesn't attack the Allies gets to keep Korea, Manchuria, Indochina ( North and South Vietnam ) and Taiwan.
If they hadn't attacked USA they would have been KANGZ!
Is that describing gay sex, or two bros sharing a girl?
Probably both
>What do you think would happen to an American president who embargoed oil exports without a very compelling reason
"Our interest in China are endangered by Japanese aggression and we are also threatened in the Philippines as a result" is a VERY compelling reason.
Have you tried not being moronic for even 5 seconds?
>you shouldn't attack an enemy who's much stronger than you >it's smart to keep an eye on what your enemy is going to do >try not to starve your own dudes to death, it's not an effective strategy
Wow such big brain AI!
I know it's a meme to say this, but taken at face value it's impossible NOT to have implicit references to Art of War in any strategy game, simply because it includes such basic common sense stuff.
Wasnt this just a book made as a quick guideline for incompetent generals who got in through nepotism ?
It was made for the entire upper class. Bureaucrats and nobles would send armies out without supplies and, when the generals told them they needed arms and victuals, they'd just receive notes like "Just forage bro. You can do it."
It was made for the entire upper class. Bureaucrats and nobles would send armies out without supplies and, when the generals told them they needed arms and victuals, they'd just receive notes like "Just forage bro. You can do it."
Yes, historically. Its more famous for being the first known text to formalize a procedure towards waging war. Basically a self help manual for casuals. But it grew in popularity since it focused discussion on the topic of war in an academic way. A step up from some warlord making shit up on the go and either failing or succeeding depending much on his level of common sense and resources. It marked a shift from "lets go and beat the enemy up and may the Gods be on our side" to "how do we construct the circumstances to allow us to decisively win?" As the geopolitical anon was basically saying earlier, it can also take into account what the definition of what actually defines "winning" in a much broader sense. That's why it has also been adopted by some businesses as a model for competing in the business world. Taking the principles and then considering how to apply them to the circumstances. As other anons have stated, the teachings are simple, but the applications of them is far more complicated. Its the consideration of the applications which is the heart of a modern understanding of Sun Tsu, even though modern applications were obviously never his intention.
Nice way of telling everyone you never read it.
Which is an achievement all by itself, given it's 40 pages long and at this point even been added to corn flakes.
you read an abridged version and you didn't even know it
all your posturing itt as seen in
Don't bother, you talking to a dimwit. Exactly the sort of idiot that would get men killed needlessly.
Haha, dude, I get what you are saying, but what what the frick do think you are trying to accomplish here? 95% of this board are children and fricktards who wouldn't understand one word of that. Save your spiels for University in political science 101, you are wasting your time trying to educate anyone here
was for naught because at the end you were a moron all along
Some anon once asked this and others said that much of the advice isn't really applicable, e.g.stuff about intrigue, subjugation, intimidation, ruthlessness.
Much of it appears to be common sense. Until you realize that common sense is something which appears to often ignored.
Germany invading Russia
Japan attacking the USA >"Yes, but..."
and to every objection you will be able to find at least one instance in Sun Tsu that overrides the objection.
One problem is people often misquote and paraphrase Sun Tsu. At the end of the day its also a translation of ancient Chinese from a period many centuries ago and from a military era very different from today. However the main take away is apply the general principles in the appropriate setting, and to consider the strategy of winning within a wider geopolitical context.
Using Sun Tsu we can consider the Vietnam conflict in a number of ways.
At a tactical level it can be considered a US victory, for US forces were usually successful in battle.
At a strategic level it can be considered a defeat for the USA, for they did not meet their objectives of preventing the fall of South Vietnam
At a grand strategy level level it can be considered a draw, for although South Vietnam fell, it did prevent the further spread of Communism in SE Asia
At a geopolitical level it can be seen as just one victory as part of a much wider industrial-military-economic conflict between the USA and Communist Russia/China. The USA demonstrated the continuation of their political ability to commit ground forces to a distant war and demonstrated that their economic power to sustain a war footing, in both Asia and Europe with their support for NATO, was greater than that of both Russia and China. In the wider geopolitical conflict Russia basically beggared itself trying to keep up and underwent collapse. China forsook its communist ideology in all but name and embarked on a course of market orientated economics. This left the USA as the undisputed superpower ever since. So who do you think won?
Haha, dude, I get what you are saying, but what what the frick do think you are trying to accomplish here? 95% of this board are children and fricktards who wouldn't understand one word of that. Save your spiels for University in political science 101, you are wasting your time trying to educate anyone here
Absolutely based. >Japan attacking the USA
Japan's military strategy for the Pacific War was basically "Let's attack the US, secure resources in the Pacific, and let's HOPE we can severely damage their Pacific fleet. Then let's HOPE we can beat the rest of the US fleet in a big naval battle when they come after us. Furthermore let's HOPE that after beating them in a big naval battle they will sue for peace rather than using their massive industrial fleet to build another fleet. Then let's HOPE Germany and Italy wins the war against Britain so Britain doesn't come after us when they are no longer busy fighting two other major powers."
The Japanese plan was more: "If we give them a big enough humiliation they will sue for peace"
Problem Japs had was that getting surprised attacked without a declaration of war by a nation that for the past 7 years has been engaging in warfare so brutal that Nazi Germany was disgusted by them doesn't feel humiliating but aggravating.
Its even more insane when you consider the Japanese must have known that the chances of catching the entire US fleet in port at Pearl was problematic, especially as a naval power themselves. But the icing on the cake was that they knew that the entire US Pacific fleet was less than half of the US naval forces available for operations. Even if the Japanese had entirely destroyed the US Pacific fleet the US could have replaced them with the carriers and other heavy naval units operating at the time in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Panama regions, not to mention the reserve units stationed on the west coast.
Then we can also consider the fact that the Japanese were well aware of the effectiveness of submarine warfare, yet went to war on the basis on supplying their war industry from distant overseas war conquests ( specifically Indonesia and Malaya ) while having absolutely no plan or means to adequately protect their convoys. In fact it was only becasue the US had defective torpedoes ( the Mark XIV ) which failed to explode that the Japanese didn't suffer grievous losses in the opening months of the war. When the US fixed their torpedo problems they absolutely raped the Japanese convoys as well as inflicting heavy losses on Japanese Navy ships. The more you look into Japanese strategy and the conduct of their operations the more utterly delusional and incompetent it becomes.
The US was already hostile to Japan, and if Japan had gone ahead with their wars in South East Asia without first crippling the US as best they could they would be extremely vulnerable to later intervention. Imagine Germany leaving France alone in 1940 and invading USSR instead.
Based.
In fact, Communist Soviet Union already lost in WW2, Vietnam War was the one last thing that pushed China into the side of USA.
This is the classic example of winning the battle but losing the war.
What? Just how would the Vietnam war, into which China might well have entered on the opposing side if the USA had entered into North Vietnam, convince China to side with the USA?
Probably not in most video games. One of the lessons in art of war is how to predict the winner of a conflict using the human element. This is usually either completely absent or transparently revealed to you in most games. There is still some useful stuff in there, such as the instruction to attack the enemy's plans.
>decide to check something about the art of war so google it >wiki page is first result >this is on top
wikipedia really is edited by trannies isn't it?
Play Shogun 1 tutorial. Congrats, you've just learned 90% of what The Art of War has to offer. Which is I guess the infamous marketing of "AI operates under the guidance of Sun Tzu!", given the whole fricking gameplay is just that.
I read the book like two years ago and it felt like almost all of it was common sense. Because people actually act very much in accordance to those principles whenever things get hyper-competitive. And what is four chinners if not one hyper-competitive, constant internet argument?
But it's not just that. Deceit is better than honorably attacking forward like a dumbass? Wow. Having more information makes you able to make better decisions? No way. There was a time when these things weren't obvious, but that was centuries ago.
Ironically I read an abridged edition that had omitted all the ancient warfare-related battle tactics, I think because the point was to only have the parts that could somehow be applied to modern world. But I have already lived in the modern world for a while, and I've learned all those lessons through living there already. It's actually the parts related to "staunch line of spears" that would've been most enlightening.
is better than honorably attacking forward like a dumbass?
It goes a little deeper than that. In a competitive game where others can sabotage your efforts, the best chance of success comes when others do not know (or understand) how you intend to win. You can see this very clearly in games where players can interfere with each other: the ultimate winner is rarely the player with the obviously best position but usually another player who has managed to conceal the strength of his position.
more information makes you able to make better decisions?
This one is a lot more basic than that. It is not about having more information to make more rational decisions. The basic lesson is to abandon the natural intuitive mode of decision making and instead using rational analysis. It can seem obvious to nerds who frequently engage in this mode of thought, but it is not at all obvious to the general public.
I read an abridged edition that had omitted all the ancient warfare-related battle tactics, I think because the point was to only have the parts that could somehow be applied to modern world.
It is such a short book I don't know what you could omit that would not be relevant. Obviously a modern army does not spend a lot of money on lacquer, but if you cut that bit out you also cut the point about war being ruinously expensive.
>In a competitive game where others can sabotage your efforts, the best chance of success comes when others do not know (or understand) how you intend to win. You can see this very clearly in games where players can interfere with each other: the ultimate winner is rarely the player with the obviously best position but usually another player who has managed to conceal the strength of his position.
This ignores general fear: If someone can't understand your motivations or movements, he may attack you simply because you're unpredictable, and therefore, a threat. (This has happened to me in a game). You have to present at least the facade of organized movement toward a separate goal, or natural human fear will bring you enemies who have no greater reason to oppose you.
In your example they did not understand what exactly you were going for, but they did understand that you were going for something hidden from them and they acted to stop you. As you have learned, you must provide a plausible explanation for your actions to fool your opponents.
>You can see this very clearly in games where players can interfere with each other: the ultimate winner is rarely the player with the obviously best position but usually another player who has managed to conceal the strength of his position.
Even this is pretty obvious if you think about it even a little. I mean it's pretty much in all those stories about badguys who have a superweapon. If you have a superweapon or any kind of advantage you keep it secret for as long as possible. The reasons to do this are obvious, it's rarely even portrayed as some huge keikaku even in fiction.
When I was a little kid I watched the history channel talk about how Jap snipers would hide in trees and let American's pass beyond their position and then start sniping them in the back.
I then started hiding in attics in BF:BC2 and then sniping people in the back when they moved to the point beyond my position
And then I came along as a chad engineer and blew you out of your hidey-hole with my RPG since I always got kills by randomly placing RPG-shots in buildings (partly since the destruction system was so great, partly because they were likely hiding spots)
Art of War is like how Seinfeld is Not Funny
You're likely already familiar with everything in the book, so it wont feel like you're reading a 4D chessmaster
Considering how many people have read it (not to mention those claiming of doing so and/or misquoting it) vs number of people who get the memo, it's rather bleak stat.
On the flip side, it's so fricking short, it's always amazing how much people miss the memo.
>I read a version that contains a memo. >Therefore every rendition of the book, either printed or online has the memo. Furthermore every memo is the same. I am very smart. Can someone please clean my bottom now? I made poo poos in my pants again.
Simply reading it? Not really.
Reading it with assumption that this is ultra-deep, 5000 times folded military science? Definitely not.
Reading it while possessing even a modicum of reading comprehension? Sure, it's very useful.
"A friend who fricks your mother, then your girlfriend, then your dog, and then fricks you, without the goddamned courtesy to give you a reach-around, is not a friend. He may be an enemy."
-Sun Tsu
"It is not advisable to huff Jenkum before battle"
-Sun Tsu
"If the enemy is bigger, stronger and smarter, give up."
-Sun Tsu
"A friend who fricks your mother, then your girlfriend, then your dog, and then fricks you, without the goddamned courtesy to give you a reach-around, is not a friend. He may be an enemy."
-Sun Tsu
It’s like 10 pages of philosophy. The only reasons it’s hailed so highly are because easy to swallow for anyone and its historical significance due to its age
"When opposing an enemy with more ox carts, collect your oxen's poo, store it on your carts. At the critical moment hurl the poo at the enemy and your victory will follow"
-Sun Tsu
"In choosing officers for your army, one must be as cautious as choosing your own wife. If your bride-to-be has breasts that sag to her knees, labia shaped like wizard's sleeve, and rose blooming out of her anus, then one must question her claim of virginity."
-Sun Tsu
>Would this help me to git gud?
I swear to god, I was stupid enough to get into the hype of this "book". It's just fricking common sense, nothing fricking special can be gained from reading it. No deeper insights. It's just common sense applied to warfare in that era.It's just fricking hipsters and zoomers hyping that shit up because they recently discovered that books are a thing.
You can learn more from reading Clausewitz and even that is outdated.
>I swear to god, I was stupid enough to get into the hype of this "book". It's just fricking common sense, nothing fricking special can be gained from reading it. No deeper insights. It's just common sense applied to warfare in that era.
Here's a bit of common sense for you: >Common sense, isn't.
No.
🙁
WIkipedia says that the Total War Shogun #1 made AI operate under Art of War, is this true? Because I doubt it. It sounds like something PR would say because casuals understand it, but not something you pragmatically program.
just something they said to attract morons and midwits
>you shouldn't attack an enemy who's much stronger than you
>it's smart to keep an eye on what your enemy is going to do
>try not to starve your own dudes to death, it's not an effective strategy
Wow such big brain AI!
I know it's a meme to say this, but taken at face value it's impossible NOT to have implicit references to Art of War in any strategy game, simply because it includes such basic common sense stuff.
>>you shouldn't attack an enemy who's much stronger than you
It doesn't actually say that.
Sun Zu says that the bigger army is the more difficult its effective maneuvering becomes, and the clumsy the maneuvering the easier it is for the outnumbered opponent to defeat them in detail. So, while enlargement of the army is a blessing to a competent general, under the hands of an incompetent general it just exacerbates the problem.
>having a good general is good, having a bad general is bad
such insight
much wisdom
No, I think the lesson is that incompetent generals should sit at the kid's table (fight with smaller armies) until they get a hang of it.
Don't bother, you talking to a dimwit. Exactly the sort of idiot that would get men killed needlessly.
t. incompetent general
>t. impotent poster misusing the t. meme
Do you also go full spastic when you are fricking your mom?
what's common sense to us probably was such wisdom back then
Consider this:
It wasn't until the aftermath of WW1 that commanders started to even consider that maybe just throwing people into the grinder isn't the best way of waging wars. Or that having commanders that are in it only for personal glory is terrible for their actual decision-making. You'd think that's obvious, but turns out - not really.
So it's less about Art of War being some revolutionary or innovative set of ideas. Instead, it's bunch of common sense stuff that people actively ignored for centuries all around the globe. The biggest irony was Nips obsessing over that book ,then waging WW2 in the exact contrary to everything it says.
>I know nothing about what I am talking about but I will still say it with great confidence
>I have nothing to say at all, but yet I post
I don't know where to even begin with the "I fricking love history dude level of tard post"
72 British Generals died on the front line of WW1
In response to the high casualty battles like the Somme the mine campaign was started which was very effective and low in casualties.
I also love your tard reductive reasons that somehow been BC china and 1939 nobody cared about their soliders.
I'm not even that anon, I'm just posting tango
>It wasn't until the aftermath of WW1 that commanders started to even consider that maybe just throwing people into the grinder isn't the best way of waging wars. Or that having commanders that are in it only for personal glory is terrible for their actual decision-making.
Uh... How much do you known about military history? Commanders the opposite of how you described have existed since the days of antiquity. Hell, Sherman's Georgia and Carolinas campaigns in the American Civil War, just half a century before WW1, were basically just a game of chess between him and Joseph E. Johnston where they both kept trying to outflank each other and force the other to commit to a disadvantageous battle, all precisely so they could avoid having their forces ground up by attacking an entrenched opponent on ground of his choosing. Even the eastern front of WW1 was full of generals outmaneurving and outfoxing their opponents. In fact, pretty much every theater of WW1 EXCEPT the western front was like that.
/vst/ everybody!
Every board on Ganker is like this. Even Ganker. Lots of posts made by functional morons, semi-literate morons, mental midgets and underage children. That's the price we pay for one of the few relatively uncensored forums on the internet.
Bad posts
>No argument of any kind, no real statement, just bad-faith bait
Here, a (You).
Imagine b***hing about Art of War being basic, obvious shit, while STILL managing to misunderstand it. What is this saying about your IQ and reading comprehension, anon?
Just marketing. They probably did have the programmers read it, because it takes less than half an hour to read, and is a checklist of basic strategy that 30 minutes of brainstorming would make anyway (which more than they did for later games). There was an advisor in the throne room that would quote random Sun Tzu quotes at you depending on the strategic situation. The staff did read more literature and popular media though, just to get the atmosphere right along with exotic things like giving you fanciful formations like Ox, Crane, Keyhole etc that came out of Gunyou Senkou Zukai Gassatsu, or more likely an Osprey book.
I mean basic shit like "prefer high ground over low ground", "don't attack if at disadvantage" aren't hard to program.
As for OP's, no it won't make you gud, but it's a sort of basic tutorial for how to strategery, I recommend it if you're new to strategy games, it isn't a long read anyway.
Technically it does, because it's one of few games that implemented elements of battlefield mentioned in the book. Things like weather, terrain, leadership, morale, etc. On larger strategic level however, TW falls short especially on diplomatic front (Good luck finding games with human like diplomacy). The books also emphasized using deception in war, but the AI is too primitive to use something like feinting retreat.
>diplomatic front (Good luck finding games with human like diplomacy)
I have been toying with diplomacy in my own indie game.
I'm of the opinion that diplomacy shouldn't be just a collection of modifiers that determine acceptance or decline, but essentially battles of rhetoric.
Basically, of asking X to ally with you, and getting accepted or declined, you would instead dispatch an ambassador, assign him a budget, and using his rhetoric skill, budget, and luck he would over time build political influence in the country by winning the local politicians over.
And when you actually have to request something from X country, the ambassador's political influence would determine if the deal is accepted.
That's an interesting take on diplomacy. But what would happen if the AI sent its ambassador to build political clout on the player's country? How much does the player have in making the final decision?
Let's say that AI offers an alliance, offering alliance costs 50% political influence.
The player can reject those offers but it might cause civil war. Basically, the impact depends on player's actions and the political influence, different outcomes, for the alliance are:
>AI has at least 50% influence and player accepts, the alliance is made, and normal
>AI has at least 50% influence and the player refuses, for every percent over 50%, there is a chance a civil war is triggered, so with 60% influence the odds are 10%
>if AI has fewer than the required 50% and the player rejects, nothing will happen
>if AI has fewer than 50%, and the player accepts, there is a chance of civil war based on 50% - influence. Thus if AI has 10% influence, the chance of civil war is 40%
>civil war over a rejected alliance
I don't think so fren
Civil war is a bit of an extreme reaction, but I like your idea - it'd probably be best if the more influence the AI has over you, the more expensive (if using some kind of political resource) to refuse.
Depends. Anyone can read it. Its pretty straight forward. Most people think they understand it. "Oh yeah, I need to occupy the high ground, lol"
Only a vanishingly small number of people actually do understand it.
Consider that it was a required reading for junior and senior Japanese officers for over two hundred years, and well known and praised by them for centuries before that. Then consider how during WW2 the Japanese then proceeded to ignore nearly every principle in the book, and would repeatedly do so until the nukes were dropped.
Draw your own conclusions from that.
For game related study observe the sort of discussion that take places in threads like hoi3, smac,and any TW game, where people are fixated by the details and not on the objectives. It like watching people argue about the various moves a knight can make in chess, rather than concentrating on how to win the game.
>Draw your own conclusions from that
As if Japan lost because they forgot to follow the book, Christ you are fricking moronic and autistic
>As if Japan lost because they forgot to follow the book
Nta, but they kind of did lost due to that. Because they've made every possible mistake the treaty advise against, some of them multiple times. It's literally a textbook example of "shit we don't advise you to do, or else you will lose". And they've lost - battles, whole fronts and theaters and ultimately the war itself.
>Japanese population was 73 million
>American population was 133 million
>Japanese GDP was ~$10 billion (including plunder wealth)
>American GDP was ~$100 billion
>Japan produced a pittance in fossil fuels during the War
>Americans produced 60% of the world’s petroleum (and around 75% of the refined petroleum fuels)
Forget any book, Japan lost because they didn't read
post.
I think what Sun Tzu would have recommended in a situation like this is not to bomb Pearl Harbour.
Yes he would. If you are out of options you must fight. The alternative for the Japanese would have been to continue to wait until they run out of oil and no longer have a navy at all.
>I am a fricking imbecile.
Yes, you are a fricking imbecile. He would have recommended looking at the circumstances that lead to Japan running out of oil.
>The US oil embargo
Why did the US embargo Japan?
>Because of Japanese aggression in China
So make peace with China even if that means withdrawing from the Chinese mainland
Net result? Japan gets its oil back, keeps Korea, keeps Manchuria as a puppet state, keeps Indochina, and doesn't get nuked.
Nta, but the real problem with China is that Tokyo had virtually no control over it. Not in terms of "controlling conquered territory" (but that, too), but virtually zero control over the initial phase of the 2nd Sino-Japanese War, and then just the momentum dictating their moves, rather than actual willingness to fight that war. or ability to withdraw.
There is such saying in my native, I guess English will have some equivalent: "the appetite grows as you eat". And this is roughly what happened with 2nd Sino-Japanese War. Because sure, we might barely control our own troops, but hey, they've took 10% of China on their own accord, maybe we should send them relief and more supplies (especially since it's still only late 30s, and there are no other concerns). And then it just turned into a sunk-cost fallacy as years were pushing on, while the Jap offensive lost any momentum come spring 1939. They've took too much at that point to say "ok, let's do peace talks and take a region or two", when they had two (and in reality four) puppet governments, each controlling more than they could get out of the peace talks. So let's keep fighting, because we can get more... right?
tl;dr it's a bit more complicated than that, but I'm not questioning your main argument - should they call for early peace in China, things would be dandy for them, rather than the pointless, idiotic meat grinder it turned into, not to mention being dragged into WW2 at all (assuming they wouldn't be stupid enough to do anything beyond seizing Dutch East India and staying the frick away from Burma).
Either way, reading through the documentation from that era makes it fricking clear that the HQ had no clue how to handle it all, while field commanders were entirely driven on "doing emperor's will" - read: whatever the frick I please, but mostly just fight and plunder.
>the real problem with China is that Tokyo had virtually no control over it.
That then shifts the problem back to the power structure in Japan. Sun Tsu is concerned with instructing a person how to win a war. The focus in this case becomes one of asking who was in control of Japan. Obviously its more of a case of Japan being in de facto anarchy if the Japanese state could not control its own military, which is further borne out by the appalling lack of cooperation between the Japanese army and navy during the course of the war. Basically it was a collection of disparate, and sometimes even antagonistic, groups rushing off to do their own thing without being restrained by a central authority.
Therefore it becomes more a matter of deciding to whom Sun Tsu's principles would be applied in this case. The Emperor, the non militaristic branches of government, or either of the two branches of the military. In all cases, to avoid the defeat in WW2, it would have been necessary for at least one of those groups to have seized total power, or cemented total power, in one central governing body, before embarking on any other plan.
"The Moral Law causes the people to be in complete accord with their ruler"
>But the Emperor was the supreme power?
In that case he ignored Sun Tsu, as did the various military branches. Likewise could be said for the government if it is argued that the Emperor was merely a figurehead that could be circumvented or easily manipulated by factions within the government.
Then turtles all the way down.
I don't see how that is ignoring Sun Tzu. He does say that you can know how to win, but still be unable to do so. The Japanese efforts to brainwash the population into complete obedience of the Emperor was certainly in line with the Moral Law.
The oil embargo was over Indochina, anon. Americans didn't give squat about Chink land being taken over. But Japan installing itself with just few shots fired in Indochina, along with seizing French military bases and especially air fields? Now we are talking about some serious stuff that has to be dealt with.
If they cared about China, the embargo would be passed no later than year into fighting in China, probably before even battle of Wuhan. Instead, it was issued by mid-'41, whole fricking 4 years after war in China started and long after Japan lost any upper hand in it.
US Asian strategy up until 1950 or so was just one stupid idea chasing another stupid idea, with bad people in bad places making bad decisions. Their clusterfrick is one of the main contributors to why China is red, and RoC is reduced to Taiwan. Same with Korea, same with what eventually turned into Vietnam. That entire clusterfrick is result of Roosevelt policies and all the god-awful people he personally designated to enforce them, each adding their own load of shit to the scene. It's a wonder they didn't mis-manage Japan during and directly after occupation, like they've did with entire Asian Far East.
You got any more information or sources on the whole Roosevelt shit? I'm interested in learning more about it and why America just allowed half of the shit that happened in Asia to happen. Maybe a book?
The good starting point is going through China White Paper. It's an official US documentation of the investigation of the process after "loss of China". You know shit's fricked, when the official governmental investigation looking for cheap scapegoats can't find them and instead has to point at far higher echelon. It doesn't directly point on Roosevelt, but his policies and policy-making of his cabinet is being heavily criticised. Thing is, Roosevelt was making pretty much all China-related decisions on his own, so saying "his administration" in this case means "people he personally appointed to various China-related posts".
From there on, any further reading depends predominately on how deep you want to go, and, far more importantly, who you want to blame. Because like with all complex issues like this, there are few "schools" of finding the blame. They roughly divide on following camps:
- Roosevelt, personally, fricked shit up due to being unrepentant idealist with god-awful people-reading skills, appointing wrong people on wrong posts and making wrong decisions on every step regarding not just China, but Asia as a whole
- Stilwell actively turned manageable situation into multi-front disaster (logistics, goodwill, public opinion, military support) over nothing, but a petty grudge
- Chang-Kai Shek was half-decent military commander and god-awful politician, who's goals were both impossible and impractical, turning against himself his own generals, not to mention the motley crew of warlord allies, which hampered any sort of
- KMT, even before 2nd Sino-Jap War was dysfunctional mess that would collapse under own weight no matter what (this is usually the original cope reason, chiefly based on falsified reports made by Stilwell)
- The Northern Offensive started a domino process in which KMT lost ground, all thanks to overly ambitious goals and insufficient resources being allocated to wrong places
- Truman administration flat-out didn't understood why they even should bother with China and bailed first chance given, prior to that decision entirely mismanaging the logistics and military support for KMT - this was probably the greatest post-WW2 mistake Americans ever made, because the consequences are dragging to this day
There is NO middle ground over this issue. Every single existing publication picks a camp and even if it notes the points of various other camps, they champion a single case, rather than the big picture. The "neutral" camp is usually made by European sinologists and boils down to "Americans thoroughly fricked shit up". Which isn't wrong, but is too holistic and rarely gets into details needed to grasp it.
If you are looking for heroes in this, then there is Wedermayer, the poor bastard that inherited the whole mess after Stilwell and did his very best to clean it. Since he had juuuust enough clout to get things done in Washington, there is a slim chance that should Roosevelt die few months later, the whole thing would go differently. But that's alt-hist bullshit, and reality is that everyone had their fair share of frick-ups in this, and once Truman administration bailed on China, the remaining two years of the war were just postponing the inevitable
Interesting. Anything more to go on? I could probably read a few "camps" and then see the blindspots in one view over the other and see how they fit together from that. People that would only blame the KMT or only Roosevelt would probably deliberately ignore certain issues.
What wrong decisions did Roosevelt make for Asia entirely? Outside of only China, since you mentioned the White Paper for that case in particular.
>What wrong decisions did Roosevelt make for Asia entirely
He assumed that at the time:
- China is a functional country
- China has a functional administration
- China is a functional democracy, with just as functional republican system
- Chang-Kai Shek has a firm control over his country, and Central Plains War was just a small rebellion
- Communists are only in Soviet Union and they are kind of swell anyway
- As long as we send a military attache that simply speaks Chinese, things are going to be swell
- Sending people without asking them if they want to go first is not an issue, they are in the military, they will serve with distinction anyway
- Listening to journalists, rather than actual intel, is a good idea
- Japanese people are stupid and easy to trick, after all they aren't white (yep, that's the same Roosevelt who considered China future of the world, despite not being populated by whites, either)
- Since the US opened Japan to the world, they love Americans anyway
- Endangering colonial interest and possessions of European countries is a great counter-balance for lack of American presence
- Leaving Philippines to their own devices, without first propping them up, is gonna work out just fine, especially since it's a drain on current budget
- Siam? Where's that?
In other words: a whole fricking lot of idealistic thinking, combined with misguided way of "balancing" lack of American presence in China (no zone of influence, pushing for the open door policy etc) and worst of it all, barely any grasp on how things are in the actual field.
I get it, he really had bigger concerns on his head pre-war and then once war started, shit kinda went on auto-pilot, but in hindsight, whole lot of issues could be avoided. Even such things like the shape of UN (with China in the top 5, but Japan being given shit, and that project predates any military conflict involving Japan, so it's not even war-time punishment)
>- China is a functional country
>- China has a functional administration
>- China is a functional democracy, with just as functional republican system
>- Chang-Kai Shek has a firm control over his country, and Central Plains War was just a small rebellion
You'd think stuff like Ways That Are Dark would at least paint some sort of picture of the actual state of China, or at least the government.
Well shit. I had honestly hoped there would be more general books presenting the situation, even if they contradicted each other for the reasons why it ended up as it did, like for the Great Famine.
As for reading list:
Start with GENERAL history textbooks for history of Japan, Korea (by proxy, since those usually cover overlapping issues) and China that cover 20th century. They will create a good background on what's even going on, along with related list of textbooks covering the details. I no longer have my reading list from uni times, besides, third of it was in Polish anyway, so not much use for you. But it was a pretty diverse listing just to get 20 or so years covered, between 1930 to 1950.
The problem with covering the whole thing is also about periodisation in historical textbooks. KMT covers both warlord era and 2nd Sino-Jap War, along with continuation of the civil war, and those three are usually treated as two-three separate issues (which is moronic). If you sit to warlord era, then KMT is the tail end of it. If you sit directly to 2nd Sino-Jap, then you lack the background on why the frick China was such a clusterfrick. NEITHER covers American involvement pre-'44. And if American involvement in China is covered, then it's usually in the POST-war textbooks, related to either Truman administration (so skipping over Roosevelt era) or the Reds taking over, yet again lacking context. Then if you have KMT-focused publications, they usually either lionize them OR present them as bunch of crooked thieves, no middle ground ever detected.
Welcome to the joys of sieving through textbooks, I guess.
This is correct, it was Indochina that sparked the US embargo. The important part was that the Japanese occupation of Indochina blocked the import of supplies into China including military supplies, much of which was provided by the US. To say the US didn't care for China is not correct in a broader context. The US cared about keeping China at war against Japan. Japan was obviously a threat to US interests in the Pacific and by keeping China in the game the US was denying Japan hegemony in the region.
>To say the US didn't care for China is not correct in a broader context
Again, if they cared, they would just embargo Japanese oil imports, plain and simple. Instead, they were sending maybe 1/20th of the guns needed, out of 1/40th demanded by Chinese, to call it a day and get Japanese busy
What do you think would happen to an American president who embargoed oil exports without a very compelling reason? Was there maybe some kind of reason why it was not a trivial action to take?
>What do you think would happen to an American president who embargoed oil exports without a very compelling reason
"Our interest in China are endangered by Japanese aggression and we are also threatened in the Philippines as a result" is a VERY compelling reason.
Have you tried not being moronic for even 5 seconds?
Doesn't sound like a very compelling reason for an isolationist public. Have you tried not being moronic for 5 seconds? Many decisions only appear obvious in hindsight. When you situate them in their own time, they are far from obvious.
"Never trust a donkey, they are mean hateful creatures and shall surely bite your balls"
-Sun Tsu
>>So make peace with China even if that means withdrawing from the Chinese mainland
You have no idea how states and humans work, if you imagine it is possible to just quit a major war.
>this is actually unironiically what a thinking american human being believes is true
You forgot Taiwan. Taiwan was effectively a Japanese colony after 1895.
A Japan that doesn't attack the Allies gets to keep Korea, Manchuria, Indochina ( North and South Vietnam ) and Taiwan.
>A Japan that doesn't attack the Allies gets to keep [...] French Indochina
Try reading history.
Otherwise keep your stupid mouth shut.
As you wish:
>On 9 December 1940, an agreement was reached whereby French sovereignty over its army and administrative affairs was confirmed, while Japanese forces were free to fight the war against the Allies from Indochinese soil.[2] The Vichy government had agreed that some 40,000 troops could be stationed there.
Dumb frick.
>On 9 December 1940
Japan declared attacked the Allies in December 1941
Stupid c**t.
>AN AGREEMENT WAS REACHED WHEREBY FRENCH SOVEREIGNTY OVER ITS ARMY AND ADMINISTRATIVE AFFAIRS WAS CONFIRMED
Illiterate.
>typing in ALL CAPS makes me less of an ignorant idiot!
God you are a stupid goose. Take a chill pill and try improving your English comprehension skills before you make an even bigger fool of yourself.
>get proven that the Japanese never laid claim to Vietnam
>try to ignore it
Whatever floats your boat mate. Just think next time you try to pretend you know history
Their basic strategy wasn't all that bad, though.
>take as many islands as possible
>fortify them to hell and back (and have a big navy)
>dare the US to retake them and hope that the US don't find it worth to bother
Sure, it was a miscalculation, but it COULD have worked
It also would have worked, if their enemy had been a Russian tsar. They failed to account for the difference in internal cohesion between the Russian Empire and USA.
Go back to school and get a real education this time
Japan was already involved in a land war in China for years, and then decided to attack the USA, Britain, France, Australia and the Dutch.
Just how fricking moronic was that?
You would know because you are fricking moronic.
their plan was never a full blown war, they were already fricked because of American embargo on oil so they went for risky play and decided to destroy good part of american navy hoping for better peace deal terms and that US wont have means or will to fight (war support before pearl harbor was below 10%)
Not that they ever could have won, but just look at some of the moronic Japanese campaigns in the Pacific, like Midway or Ten-go.
>Attack Midway to lure American fleet out of Hawaii
>no chance our coded communications could be compromised, cause Americans are stupid
>no chance the fleet will be anywhere but in harbor cause Americans are cowards
>no chance the enemy will take any action except the one we wargamed them to take
>proceed to get ambushed and lose the entire fleet
>could have escaped with a couple carriers, but frick it, send them back, captain's going to die either way whether in battle or by sepuku, what's a fleet carrier compared to personal honor?
"All warfare is based on letting the enemy win, for if they win then you have won"
-Justin Trudeau.
Real and based
Stupid
If they hadn't attacked USA they would have been KANGZ!
Probably both
moronic
Wasnt this just a book made as a quick guideline for incompetent generals who got in through nepotism ?
It was made for the entire upper class. Bureaucrats and nobles would send armies out without supplies and, when the generals told them they needed arms and victuals, they'd just receive notes like "Just forage bro. You can do it."
Yes, historically. Its more famous for being the first known text to formalize a procedure towards waging war. Basically a self help manual for casuals. But it grew in popularity since it focused discussion on the topic of war in an academic way. A step up from some warlord making shit up on the go and either failing or succeeding depending much on his level of common sense and resources. It marked a shift from "lets go and beat the enemy up and may the Gods be on our side" to "how do we construct the circumstances to allow us to decisively win?" As the geopolitical anon was basically saying earlier, it can also take into account what the definition of what actually defines "winning" in a much broader sense. That's why it has also been adopted by some businesses as a model for competing in the business world. Taking the principles and then considering how to apply them to the circumstances. As other anons have stated, the teachings are simple, but the applications of them is far more complicated. Its the consideration of the applications which is the heart of a modern understanding of Sun Tsu, even though modern applications were obviously never his intention.
>if you are going to lose, just don't fight
thanks for the genius insight sun
Like half the book is about Chinese polearm tactics
Nice way of telling everyone you never read it.
Which is an achievement all by itself, given it's 40 pages long and at this point even been added to corn flakes.
you read an abridged version and you didn't even know it
all your posturing itt as seen in
was for naught because at the end you were a moron all along
>abridged
Wrong you fricking moron. That is the only version. You probably read the version that included The 9 rings or whatever its name is.
Some anon once asked this and others said that much of the advice isn't really applicable, e.g.stuff about intrigue, subjugation, intimidation, ruthlessness.
Much of it appears to be common sense. Until you realize that common sense is something which appears to often ignored.
Germany invading Russia
Japan attacking the USA
>"Yes, but..."
and to every objection you will be able to find at least one instance in Sun Tsu that overrides the objection.
One problem is people often misquote and paraphrase Sun Tsu. At the end of the day its also a translation of ancient Chinese from a period many centuries ago and from a military era very different from today. However the main take away is apply the general principles in the appropriate setting, and to consider the strategy of winning within a wider geopolitical context.
Using Sun Tsu we can consider the Vietnam conflict in a number of ways.
At a tactical level it can be considered a US victory, for US forces were usually successful in battle.
At a strategic level it can be considered a defeat for the USA, for they did not meet their objectives of preventing the fall of South Vietnam
At a grand strategy level level it can be considered a draw, for although South Vietnam fell, it did prevent the further spread of Communism in SE Asia
At a geopolitical level it can be seen as just one victory as part of a much wider industrial-military-economic conflict between the USA and Communist Russia/China. The USA demonstrated the continuation of their political ability to commit ground forces to a distant war and demonstrated that their economic power to sustain a war footing, in both Asia and Europe with their support for NATO, was greater than that of both Russia and China. In the wider geopolitical conflict Russia basically beggared itself trying to keep up and underwent collapse. China forsook its communist ideology in all but name and embarked on a course of market orientated economics. This left the USA as the undisputed superpower ever since. So who do you think won?
psa: don't waste your time reading this post, it's just a roundabout americope
Haha, dude, I get what you are saying, but what what the frick do think you are trying to accomplish here? 95% of this board are children and fricktards who wouldn't understand one word of that. Save your spiels for University in political science 101, you are wasting your time trying to educate anyone here
You just be tired, jerking yourself off that hard.
>I dont like anyone agreeing on anything I dont understand!
childish fricktard detected
lmfao
>Sun Tsu
>Tactical
>Strategical
>Grand Strategy
>Geopolitical
>Tell me you haven't read the book without telling me you haven't read the book
>doesn't understand its application.
Another fricking moron. Many such cases.
>He thinks Grand Strategy is a real term
>He thinks anyone takes anything he says seriously
>grand strategy isn't a real term
Literally one google search could have shown you it is. Do you actually think Paradox invented the phrase?
Interesting perspective, one that I haven't thought about. Thanks anon, here's an actually positive (you)
very good post
Absolutely based.
>Japan attacking the USA
Japan's military strategy for the Pacific War was basically "Let's attack the US, secure resources in the Pacific, and let's HOPE we can severely damage their Pacific fleet. Then let's HOPE we can beat the rest of the US fleet in a big naval battle when they come after us. Furthermore let's HOPE that after beating them in a big naval battle they will sue for peace rather than using their massive industrial fleet to build another fleet. Then let's HOPE Germany and Italy wins the war against Britain so Britain doesn't come after us when they are no longer busy fighting two other major powers."
Sun Tsu: "You stupid stupid stupid b***hes!"
The Japanese plan was more: "If we give them a big enough humiliation they will sue for peace"
Problem Japs had was that getting surprised attacked without a declaration of war by a nation that for the past 7 years has been engaging in warfare so brutal that Nazi Germany was disgusted by them doesn't feel humiliating but aggravating.
Its even more insane when you consider the Japanese must have known that the chances of catching the entire US fleet in port at Pearl was problematic, especially as a naval power themselves. But the icing on the cake was that they knew that the entire US Pacific fleet was less than half of the US naval forces available for operations. Even if the Japanese had entirely destroyed the US Pacific fleet the US could have replaced them with the carriers and other heavy naval units operating at the time in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Panama regions, not to mention the reserve units stationed on the west coast.
Then we can also consider the fact that the Japanese were well aware of the effectiveness of submarine warfare, yet went to war on the basis on supplying their war industry from distant overseas war conquests ( specifically Indonesia and Malaya ) while having absolutely no plan or means to adequately protect their convoys. In fact it was only becasue the US had defective torpedoes ( the Mark XIV ) which failed to explode that the Japanese didn't suffer grievous losses in the opening months of the war. When the US fixed their torpedo problems they absolutely raped the Japanese convoys as well as inflicting heavy losses on Japanese Navy ships. The more you look into Japanese strategy and the conduct of their operations the more utterly delusional and incompetent it becomes.
The US was already hostile to Japan, and if Japan had gone ahead with their wars in South East Asia without first crippling the US as best they could they would be extremely vulnerable to later intervention. Imagine Germany leaving France alone in 1940 and invading USSR instead.
>Operational level not detected
As expected
Good summary.
>So who do you think won?
Vietnam won and there's zero discussion to be had about it.
what does winning mean in this context?
These morons dont understand the difference between tactics and strategy, you shouldn't expect them to understand the meaning of context.
Based.
In fact, Communist Soviet Union already lost in WW2, Vietnam War was the one last thing that pushed China into the side of USA.
This is the classic example of winning the battle but losing the war.
What? Just how would the Vietnam war, into which China might well have entered on the opposing side if the USA had entered into North Vietnam, convince China to side with the USA?
Probably not in most video games. One of the lessons in art of war is how to predict the winner of a conflict using the human element. This is usually either completely absent or transparently revealed to you in most games. There is still some useful stuff in there, such as the instruction to attack the enemy's plans.
What's the west equivalency of Sun Tzu AoW ?
Usually Clausewitz's On War is considered that.
Its completely different you idiot.
The two books do not have identical content, but they occupy a similar cultural position as the venerable but still relevant book about war.
>decide to check something about the art of war so google it
>wiki page is first result
>this is on top
wikipedia really is edited by trannies isn't it?
It's not a troon but an honest to god Femcel that curates Wikipedia
The Art of War really just has incredibly obvious things that anyone with even a passing interest in military history will already be familiar with
Play Shogun 1 tutorial. Congrats, you've just learned 90% of what The Art of War has to offer. Which is I guess the infamous marketing of "AI operates under the guidance of Sun Tzu!", given the whole fricking gameplay is just that.
I read the book like two years ago and it felt like almost all of it was common sense. Because people actually act very much in accordance to those principles whenever things get hyper-competitive. And what is four chinners if not one hyper-competitive, constant internet argument?
But it's not just that. Deceit is better than honorably attacking forward like a dumbass? Wow. Having more information makes you able to make better decisions? No way. There was a time when these things weren't obvious, but that was centuries ago.
Ironically I read an abridged edition that had omitted all the ancient warfare-related battle tactics, I think because the point was to only have the parts that could somehow be applied to modern world. But I have already lived in the modern world for a while, and I've learned all those lessons through living there already. It's actually the parts related to "staunch line of spears" that would've been most enlightening.
is better than honorably attacking forward like a dumbass?
It goes a little deeper than that. In a competitive game where others can sabotage your efforts, the best chance of success comes when others do not know (or understand) how you intend to win. You can see this very clearly in games where players can interfere with each other: the ultimate winner is rarely the player with the obviously best position but usually another player who has managed to conceal the strength of his position.
more information makes you able to make better decisions?
This one is a lot more basic than that. It is not about having more information to make more rational decisions. The basic lesson is to abandon the natural intuitive mode of decision making and instead using rational analysis. It can seem obvious to nerds who frequently engage in this mode of thought, but it is not at all obvious to the general public.
I read an abridged edition that had omitted all the ancient warfare-related battle tactics, I think because the point was to only have the parts that could somehow be applied to modern world.
It is such a short book I don't know what you could omit that would not be relevant. Obviously a modern army does not spend a lot of money on lacquer, but if you cut that bit out you also cut the point about war being ruinously expensive.
>In a competitive game where others can sabotage your efforts, the best chance of success comes when others do not know (or understand) how you intend to win. You can see this very clearly in games where players can interfere with each other: the ultimate winner is rarely the player with the obviously best position but usually another player who has managed to conceal the strength of his position.
This ignores general fear: If someone can't understand your motivations or movements, he may attack you simply because you're unpredictable, and therefore, a threat. (This has happened to me in a game). You have to present at least the facade of organized movement toward a separate goal, or natural human fear will bring you enemies who have no greater reason to oppose you.
In your example they did not understand what exactly you were going for, but they did understand that you were going for something hidden from them and they acted to stop you. As you have learned, you must provide a plausible explanation for your actions to fool your opponents.
>you must provide a plausible explanation for your actions to fool your opponents.
And your allies, apparently. Damn.
Yes. Your conduct must answer all questions, so that people stop thinking about you.
>You can see this very clearly in games where players can interfere with each other: the ultimate winner is rarely the player with the obviously best position but usually another player who has managed to conceal the strength of his position.
Even this is pretty obvious if you think about it even a little. I mean it's pretty much in all those stories about badguys who have a superweapon. If you have a superweapon or any kind of advantage you keep it secret for as long as possible. The reasons to do this are obvious, it's rarely even portrayed as some huge keikaku even in fiction.
When I was a little kid I watched the history channel talk about how Jap snipers would hide in trees and let American's pass beyond their position and then start sniping them in the back.
I then started hiding in attics in BF:BC2 and then sniping people in the back when they moved to the point beyond my position
And then I came along as a chad engineer and blew you out of your hidey-hole with my RPG since I always got kills by randomly placing RPG-shots in buildings (partly since the destruction system was so great, partly because they were likely hiding spots)
Art of War is like how Seinfeld is Not Funny
You're likely already familiar with everything in the book, so it wont feel like you're reading a 4D chessmaster
Considering how many people have read it (not to mention those claiming of doing so and/or misquoting it) vs number of people who get the memo, it's rather bleak stat.
On the flip side, it's so fricking short, it's always amazing how much people miss the memo.
>I read a version that contains a memo. >Therefore every rendition of the book, either printed or online has the memo. Furthermore every memo is the same. I am very smart. Can someone please clean my bottom now? I made poo poos in my pants again.
Simply reading it? Not really.
Reading it with assumption that this is ultra-deep, 5000 times folded military science? Definitely not.
Reading it while possessing even a modicum of reading comprehension? Sure, it's very useful.
"If the enemy is bigger, stronger and smarter, give up."
-Sun Tsu
"When your enemy drinks water, steal his horse"
-Sun Tsu
"A friend who fricks your mother, then your girlfriend, then your dog, and then fricks you, without the goddamned courtesy to give you a reach-around, is not a friend. He may be an enemy."
-Sun Tsu
"It is not advisable to huff Jenkum before battle"
-Sun Tsu
It’s like 10 pages of philosophy. The only reasons it’s hailed so highly are because easy to swallow for anyone and its historical significance due to its age
>It’s like 10 pages of philosophy
And yet you still failed to read it, so not sure what's your argument here
There's a shocking amount of advice about ox carts in the AoW. I feel this is underappreciated compared to the strategic stuff.
Indeed. I think the focus should be on the ox carts now.
"neither are his supply-wagons ( ox carts) loaded more than twice."
What did he mean by that?
"When opposing an enemy with more ox carts, collect your oxen's poo, store it on your carts. At the critical moment hurl the poo at the enemy and your victory will follow"
-Sun Tsu
"Before battle be sure to clean your teeth. A man who dies in battle with clean teeth has won."
-Sun Tsu
"A warrior can not win without breaking eggs. Be sure to steal a lot of chickens"
-Sun Tsu
"In choosing officers for your army, one must be as cautious as choosing your own wife. If your bride-to-be has breasts that sag to her knees, labia shaped like wizard's sleeve, and rose blooming out of her anus, then one must question her claim of virginity."
-Sun Tsu
>and rose blooming out of her anus
What?
prolapse
in a related note, Edgar Snow, based or cringe?
"If you have a wiener up your ass then you are probably gay"
-Sun Tsu
That's literally Mencius, not Sun Tsu, you illiterate homosexual.
“Friendship is two wieners in one body.”
― Mencius
Is that describing gay sex, or two bros sharing a girl?
Yes
>Would this help me to git gud?
I swear to god, I was stupid enough to get into the hype of this "book". It's just fricking common sense, nothing fricking special can be gained from reading it. No deeper insights. It's just common sense applied to warfare in that era.It's just fricking hipsters and zoomers hyping that shit up because they recently discovered that books are a thing.
You can learn more from reading Clausewitz and even that is outdated.
>I swear to god, I was stupid enough to get into the hype of this "book". It's just fricking common sense, nothing fricking special can be gained from reading it. No deeper insights. It's just common sense applied to warfare in that era.
Here's a bit of common sense for you:
>Common sense, isn't.
"Pointy end goes towards enemy."
-Sun Tzu
no