Today is HOI4's big day with the Japan and China DLC, has anyone played it yet?
Played Japan. Attacked China super late (1940-ish) because I was distracted with trying to make the Japs have decent economy and army and so I struggled because China's AI managed to reform its army. Won by like 1943 or something. They removed the bridge accident debuff (now you have a small timed one), so I think early waring China should be insanely easy.
Issues:
Military Experience is literally worthless now
Naval superiority mechanics are okayish if you don't plan to invade the Soviets. Naval superiority is literally impossible if you want to navally invade that one naval base north east of Sakhalin islands even if you build naval base right next to it. The mechanic seems like a band aid fix to prevent one-second-naval-superiority invasions that used to be popular, and it does this job pretty decently well.
Faction rework has absolutely no value except to get your doctrines done quicker if you share doctrines with your allies
Some new mechanics are almost filler (influence over Emperor mechanic is less of a power struggle and more of a "spend pp to make country good")
The focuses are bloated (which has been an issue since Germany rework). I ended my playthrough at around 1944 after attacking and separate peaceing the Soviets, and I still had like more than half my focus tree left including the entirety of the section dedicated to fighting USA and the Allies.
The way you invade China is stupid. You basically have to wait for a ticker to tick down. Your only option for control is either doing it a year earlier or two years later
Pros:
Nukes seem much faster to get now.
You can FINALLY share airbases with your non-faction allies
Doctrines rework is kinda fun and more realistic (not a plus by default). Instead of spending army exp on it (now its useless), you choose a doctrine and four subdoctrines (Doctrine, subdoctrine, and army modification are the only things that cost exp), and each has a few "sections" that contain buffs that you get the more you're fighting (these sections do not cost exp).
There are now limited wars (though only via focuses).
You can get disgusting compliance growth as Japan.
You can get a few more allies as Japan (no good ones, but ones like Mongolia, Tibet, Bhutan)
Focuses end up building (some) special facilities for you, which is nice
Japan starts with Mil Police unlocked.
Neutral:
There's been more ships added (escort cruisers, repair ships, supply ships), but I haven't tested them out.
Some things that used to be decisions have been made into 70 day focuses (like demanding indochina from Vichy)
Germany seems to be somewhat nerfed, and is no longer capable of beating the Soviets as AI unlike before the DLC.
Italy seems weirdly competent for some reason
USA spends the entire game doing nothing (it's protect Dutch East Indies focus is broken) but sending metric tons of guns to Japan, so if you kill the entire ship production for conveys, this could be a good strat.
There's a lot more pop up events that are essentially filler ("We caught spies! Should we deport them (bunch of green numbers) or should we say sorry to the spy host nation (bunch of red numbers)?")
Japan can get winter gear.
You can get offensive bonuses for specific areas of China you attack. BE CAREFUL. They are one time.
Ichi Go got its downsides removed, IIRC
That's all I can remember from the top of my head
