Why 2 germans?

The Japanese would fit in this game just fine. Good agressive early infantry, supported by a t-70 (the ha-go) eventually leading to thr chi-nu, an m4c rough equvalent. The type 4 70 mm anti-tank rocket could be a rough raketenwerfer equivalent, and the ho-ni 2 would do fine as a mobile artillery piece.

The only difficultly is giving them a heavy TD. Frankly, I think that the ho-ni 3 would be a fine SU-85 analogue, but a reusable AT strafe would work okay too (so long as a shoot down hurt as much as losing an su-85 or so).

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...but It is the truth Its not like people made up stuff and It becomes meme. WW2 lasts relatively 6 years. How many days pass for France and Polish forces defeated? If there we CoH3 which sets in Afrika&Mediterranean I would love to see Italy there. Japanese faction could be made as well but not in CoH2 setting. Cuz of the terrain has to be changed completely for uniqe Japanese faction to give them adventage. Its not like people made up that Japan focus almost only naval warfare. There are only 4 major Nations were doing the fighting and they all representing in the game.

Imo they shouldn't have made Brits and polished WFA armies first...

RUSE is a gimmick based game...
MoW:AS2 also has them, but the stuff happening there is just hilarity incarnation.

Balance & fun > realism

You know it well. (ofc the $$$ relic could make)

Balance & fun > realism

You know it well. (ofc the $$$ relic could make)

There is only so much balance & fun I can take in a non fantasy based RTS. I don't care for realism.
I care for immersion. RUSE has none.

"ww2" setting for RUSE is completely repulsive to me.

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If you are willing to augment those armies with equipment that was either given to them by their allies or captured on the enemy it is possible of course. The only non ballance problem that arises is that this will still lead to the number of allied factions being much higher than axis one. But it is a minor issue.

Still I'm not sure if it wouldn't just be better to give each faction a commander, maybe even more than one, that has for example french or italian goodies in it. That way you still have a strong core in existing army and a chance to see your favouirte real army uniforms and weapons in actions. It is also much easier to do and relic can be quite easily convinced to this idea as it would mean making a lot of money in respective countries. The commander could be called for example "italian infantry doctrine" or "italian armour doctrine" and so on, just like "german infantry doctrine". Don't you think it would be enough while also being more probable and with shorter ETA?

There is also another good idea but it bases on playing community being much bigger than it is right now. Its using current 1941 (ToW) armies in separate automatch pool. Then you would be able to add factions that took part in the war between 1939 and 1941 with ease without adding foreign equipment to them. Maybe only the japan faction would have problems but it could be solved. Real problem is that splitting the playerbase would kill the game...

I'd say I would rather Relic first nail down the balance, and specifically focus on anti-blob balance, than a new faction, but at this point I think it is a lost cause so might as well wish for a new faction before Hearts of Iron IV takes up my time.

I personally think the Japanese are the best of the lot to fill a third faction. Any new German faction, I think, would just be pointless and arguably a "dick move" on Relic's part. Any and all new German units should go to existing German factions, preferably for free. I mean, take the Panzer III, that tank should have been in the game from the start.

The problem with the Japanese is that the popular notion of CoH2 is that the tanks are incredibly important. I would argue that tanks are kinda overrated in this game, but it still stands: MOST people care about the tanks when they get this game, and people would be pretty repulsed by the Japanese (though it is a case of "don't like it, don't get it", but it is a waste of resources on Relic's part). As for tanks themselves, I think they are very much overrated. I rarely build tanks as either the Allies or the Axis, though I admittedly play the Allies a lot and struggle with vehicle micro so I like infantry (no, I don't blob, before you accuse me of it, I MICRO infantry). Japanese infantry of the era would be pretty good, all being veterans with decent weapons.

Now, I won't make a suggested list of units, because plenty of people have made comprehensive equipment trees for a hypothetical Japanese faction that would be better than anything I can think of, but the Japanese should and would act very much like a mix between the Soviets and the Americans in play style. Otherwise, Japan had decent rifles and LMG's, they had AT rifles, they had paratroopers, their light tanks could be balanced to act like armored cars, and the only real question I have is if Japanese rocket artillery was bullshit historically or not. Limbered anti-tank rockets like in Men of War (IF and ONLY IF they aren't historically bullshit) should exist for heavy-tank crackers like the Tulip Rockets. Otherwise, just balance the 57mm AT gun to be like the American one, or if people don't care use the home-defense Type 99 AA 88mm cannon for heavy-AT to balance the fact that the Japanese cannot field heavies.

I personally like the theater of war settings and love getting rolf stomped by t34s when my tanks have short 75mm. Would it be feasible to add them to that sort of a scenario? A few powers had comparable stuff during that period they just hadn't mobilized.

Make a mod out of it? Doesn't seem on topic.

Imagine, there are a few that want another one, which woulz mean more panzer IV ausf. Someletter and more panthers

Thoughts:

- Third German faction could contain all the self-propelled guns from CoH1. Germans loved their Wunderwaffe.
- lol Italians; srsly might as well have Romanians - they saw more action, but really, both were mere blocking forces used to shore up secondary lines than actual armies, and were most often the weakest parts of the overall lines.
- Japan DID have a very sizable mechanized army. It just had no heavy armor because it spent 12 - twelve - years fighting the Nationalist and Communist Chinese armies in Manchuria, who were themselves using loaned WWI equipment from America and Germany (!). The two times Japan actually did fight an enemy with medium and heavy armor in maneuver warfare was at the beginning of the war - the Battle of Khalkhin Gol, which included cavalry and sword charges against tank columns - and at the end of the war - the Soviet Invasion of Manchuria, which was a curbstomp battle that was completed inside of three weeks. It's lopsided in the extreme, and the Pacific islands weren't better - as the forces there had no strategic depth, no armor to speak of, no support and no reserves. Basically, they were fanatical blocking forces being taken apart in detail after the initiative was lost forever.

Personally, I love the idea of a third faction being comprised of blocking infantry protecting glass cannons, but only because I love playing the Soviets, and the Soviet war machine would eat that up for breakfast.

If you want Afrika Korps, or an Italian campaign, or Japanese island-hopping, you need to basically have a separate game entirely, or at the very least limited campaigns using period forces, so as not to overwhelm those armies with late-war heavy armor. A Japanese faction would work well in tandem with, say, a US Marines faction, where medium armor IS the heavy armor - essentially an American faction where you pull all the punches. Otherwise no dice.