"In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success." - Admiral Yamamoto

The Pan-Asian Doctrine is the most unique doctrine in my opinion, and it requires a unique style to play well. It has been my favorite since my first World at War map. Axis Power, Comintern Quantity, and Allied high Tech all beat you in a straight up fight, but Pan-Asian relies on speed and surprise.

Sitting here on a World at War map on day 8, opposition has been lackluster and the only question that remains is do I get to solo victory on day 11 or day 12? So the solution is to write a guide because that is an infinitely more interesting way to spend the next 2 hours rather than actively steering the mop up job on the world map in Europe and Oceania...

I will chop the guide up day by day, and post by day to keep it in manageable portions.

Pan-Asian doctrine tries to win the battle before it is fought by catching the enemy by "Surprise" before they are ready to defend. Speed is essential. Surprise is your greatest weapon. The best defense is a good offense, and defense is at best a temporary maneuver to set yourself up for your next attack. The first 6 to 12 hours (Day 1) are critical to your success or failure, moreso than with any other doctrine. This guide focuses on mainland starts. Island starts are mostly the same but involve battleships more (with destroyers quickly too lest your BBs go ByeBye), and artillery less.

Disclaimer: "All warfare is based on deception." - Sun Tzu
Due to the reliance on surprise, Pan-Asian doctrine isn't for everyone. Your units will lose in a straight up fight with all the other doctrines, especially after the first few days. Surprise involves some degree of deception. To achieve success, your goal must be to surprise the enemy and attack them when they do not expect an attack. Some people do not want to play this way and that is fine. You can be deceptive without being a jerk, and as always, be respectful and friendly with your opponents, even while they get upset because you just conquered their capital overnight.

Be careful what promises you make. There is a reason you don't see Pan-Asian doctrine on the beginner maps
You don't want to win big battles, you want to win without having to fight big battles in the first place.

"In a fair fight, I'd kill you. Jack Sparrow : 'That's not much incentive for me to fight fair, then, is it?' "


Day 1:

Day 1 is by far the most important. If you can strike before the enemy is ready to defend you can win the battle before it starts. There is only 1 tech you need to research on the first 2-3 days, anything extra is fluff that slows you down.

Artillery. Pan-Asian artillery is cheaper, faster, has better terrain bonuses and does more damage to most of the units everyone has the first few days (unarmored). Best unit in the game if you ask me in terms of being a critical workhorse central to a winning strategy. It allows you to conquer without casualties as well, which is critical if you want to conquer lots of countries with limited resources. After the nerfs to rocket artillery, Pan-Asian artillery is King.


I recommend 2 ordnance factories, preferably on opposite edges of your nation, ideally pointed at the countries you want to attack first. As soon as the Artillery tech finishes, you need to pump out 6-10 artillery. Make no units besides artillery the first day or two.


Economy: You need goods, as well as everything else. Because the only unit you care about requires food and goods and only a little steel, use the rest, steel oil rares, on building industry, local industry and in your cities, especially Goods provinces. What level you build up to depends on the resource. More for goods, less for oil and rares. Recruitment centers will come after you get your artillery assembly line going at high speed because they require the same resources artillery does.

You need to attack and attack early. Group your starting units into 2 strike forces, attack 2 nations at once generally, sometimes 1 sometimes 3. If you are reasonably active, keep your artillery units separate from your infantry. Armored cars are for scouting defenses and taking undefended cities. Artillery does the actual work of killing defenders, and the infantry takes key enemy cities that you need quickly, especially a capital.

High command is preferred, and I personally am happy to support the game creators by subscribing to it. The Offensive Fire setting with artillery is essential to success, especially so you can make progress while sleeping, but not absolutely necessary if you are active enough.


Deciding who to attack:

Look at the profiles of your neighbors. Click on their flag, check their info ("i" button). Look at kill ratio, level, and maybe even what units they have the lowest K/D ratio for specifically, because they use those units more. What clues can you find about when they might be sleeping (pop culture references)

Message all your neighbors at a minimum, maybe more nations nearby. Start conversations, ask about their plans, Inquire about coalitions. Try not to join a coalition early, and whatever you do, don't ally with a neighbor if you can avoid it. Is English their first language? Don't make promises, but just be friendly. Be vague and act as if you want to work with them and be a good neighbor (spoiler alert: you don't). Skip this part if you like optionally, or if you want to be less successful.

Use your border units, especially armored cars to see who has moves units. Click on their cities to see if they built any buildings. Use your interceptor to scout to see if they built anything.

Who responded to your messages, who hasn't? Ideal early targets don'[t respond to messages and are inactive. You have 1 to 3 hours to make a decision, while your artillery produce and move up to the front. Ideally wait till you have 2 or 3 artillery before you start shooting.

Opening attack:

Tora! Tora! Tora!

Call of War battles happen in one of four circumstances, while you are both online, while you are both offline, while you're on and your opponent is off, and while you're off but your opponent is on. The ideal attack occurs while your are online and the opponent is offline. Investigating your neighbors and planning your day 1 schedule is all in hopes of finding and exploiting an sizeable chunk of time where these ideal conditions occur. I recommend sending a message that would likely get a response if they are online about 15 minutes before your attack hits, and if you don't hear anything go for it, if they are actually online, maybe pivot to another target or wait an hour or two for another round of artillery to come out and/or arrive at the front.

You want to find hills provinces (or mountains in a pinch) leading into the enemy territory that you can fire from and hit their units. Pan-Asian artillery has +70% terrain bonus from hills and mountains. that's nearly twice as effective, so don't ignore this terrain bonus when selecting a target and your route of attack. Mountains mean you go SLOW and that is a dirty word when playing Pan-Asian doctrine. But a nation like Tibet that has close by targets to the south could work out.

Make hay while the sun shines (or doesn't ideally if your target is asleep), don't be afraid to use an occasional force march. Gun down those units and capture key cities. The capital is the ultimate prize as it raises the morale of your provinces universally! Get it done quickly. Your units are faster than other doctrines, use that advantage to its fullest. Keep integrating reinforcing artillery units into the battle. Use the offensive fire setting and way points to capture as many cities and enemy provinces as possible fast. Try to keep some or most of your infantry from taking significant damage, on day 3 or day 6 you will be glad you did.

Before you finish up and log off for a while, set way points for your Artillery on Offensive Fire mode to clear through many key provinces of the enemy. If you choose a good target, and don't get unlucky, you will wake up with minimal losses and lots of new territory. Takes practice has some slight risk, but the payoff is big. When your opponent returns to a mostly conquered country ideally they give up and you don't have to deal with them counterattacking because you have destroyed the most important target: the enemy's will to fight.

Use those captured resources immediately, first to build more artillery, second to build industry for later. The market is your friend to balance out your needs. Place buy offers and wait a bit for them to be filled, try not to buy the overpriced stuff from people placing sell offers. Day 2 will come soon, as will part 2 of my guide

In all the games I've played, I might have used more than 30k gold on an entire game just one time, and that was after free gold from ads became a thing. I just wanted to make the point that gold use on day 1 hour 1 is exponentially more effective than even a few days into the game, especially with Pan-Asian doctrine. It doesn't cost anything if you get the 2750 gold a day from ads.

I'd rather have a honest and accurate guide that tells the truth about how powerful using that free gold early can be, than to pretend spending a 10-12k of that free gold on day 1 doesn't happen as much as it does.

I prefer Armored cars for sure, but to be completely honest I haven't experimented with Light tanks very much, maybe I should sometime!

Battleships are big expensive liabilities half the time. Forever to research and build, poor sub defense, poor air defense. You can't hide them in a bunker or in your central core provinces. They did get a small buff somewhat recently at least. It's like buying an expensive new sports car. You need the gap insurance, your collision insurance goes up, you are constantly worried about where you park it...

Regular infantry is often the only Infantry Tab tech I touch when playing Pan-Asian. Motorized take too long to make and to research, and are weaker at air defense. A stack of Upgraded Pan Asian infantry in Forest or Urban will take a chunk out of even TAC bombers trying to bomb them. Who needs anti air? Armored Car use means you already have a scout unit as well, making Motorized Infantry redundant in that regard.

Armored cars are better at many of the things central to Pan-Asian success, which are scouting/view range and slightly higher speed. Light tanks are certainly better at attacking during close combat, but if you find yourself in close combat early on as Pan-Asian you did something wrong, outside of using a stack of infantry to force a capital capture early or something. Armored cars are scouts, which mean all those cute little invisible Militia aren't invisible to you. Better air defense and the huge view range are important.

Also this early game Pan-Asian style is allergic to research early on. You have to research Armored Cars to get Light Tanks, but all you need for Armored Cars is just the one tech.


Land-locked bliss: This is better answered with a Walter White quote.

The more neighbors, the closer they are, the better! Protection is something that you get from conquering your neighbors to have a buffer of non cores between you and farther neighbors. This is why you don't want to ally your neighbors at the start.

I put my some thoughts on Starting position separately here, that top post got really long after an edit.

Start:

Where to start? I personally like inland starting nations. I don't have to worry about a coast line and I can successfully avoid spending resources on the Naval Tech Tab for days! Coastal nations are fine too but you have to keep an eye out for disembarking enemies, especially on a revenge mission because you plundered their core cities the day before. I want lots of borders with small provinces that can be attacked quickly. The more neighbors the faster you can grow. Mountains on a border means better sleep. Goods production is important, especially if you can find a nation with 2 rural goods producing provinces. Islands are blech. I suppose you can get Battleships but if you do you are obligated to get destroyers and/or naval bombers to protect them. Then you need cruisers so naval bombers can't sink your whole fleet. It is difficult to afford all that nonsense early on. I suppose it could work with a quick Battle ship only strategy if the enemy islands don't have inland provinces where enemies can hide.

Examples of what I think are great starting nations on the World at War Map: Nationalist China, Sichuan, Ma Clique, or South China. Larger nations like Xinjiang are a little too big with big neighbors and their oversized provinces taking forever to get across and capture. Burma and Indochina have too much Coastline to defend. The first few days, I want to make more and more artillery and eventually maybe some Armored cars and Infantry. To get a navy I have to pay for the naval tech then I have to pay for the naval base then I have pay for the unit and wait for it to build that only maybe stops an invasion. The naval bomber (very fast level 1 research, costs resources) is my 3rd favorite coastal defense options. My 2nd favorite is friendly noncommittal diplomacy (for free) with potential coastal invaders, and ultimate favorite is of course having no coastline to begin with (failsafe).

I spent a whole 4 minutes on ads for 2750 gold the other day, and the day after too. Those suckers not spending more than 2 minutes watching ads are missing out!

ZoomZoom is right, someone people don't want to have a rational conversation about gold so I'll avoid the topic now.
I'll take my nine lashings for mentioning gold in anything but shameful light.

The naval part of the game is fun and I wish it weren't so expensive. I often build carriers dreaming of battle fleets with lots of planes but I always get caught up in the land war and never find time to get the 5-6 carriers I build into action.

I do like the cruiser idea, and whenever I play Comintern I go for Navy somewhat early, cruisers are pretty strong and don't cost that much for them.

Quit with all these interesting replies! Too many interesting points to talk about instead of finishing Episode 2 of the guide