Mongol raiding: thousands of km of open border, raiders hit-and-run frontier settlements
- Jianzhou has world's earliest mechanized army (armored cars, motorized infantry, early tanks)
- Quality vs quantity: best per-unit military in the world but can't cover vast borders
- Classic settled-vs-nomadic problem with 1910s technology: machines need roads, raiders don't
- V3: periodic raid events that drain resources but don't threaten survival

Military doctrine: small, elite, mechanized
- Early tanks/armored vehicles, motorized infantry, automatic weapons
- Total guild mobilization (every factory converts to war production in 48 hours)
- Chemical weapons as last-resort deterrent
- Liaodong = fortified meat grinder for any conventional invader

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

NOT a city-state — all of outer Manchuria (Liaodong + Jilin + Heilongjiang)
Huge territory but only ~8-12M people. Black soil plains undeveloped.

Corporatist guild system (行会体制):
- Society organized vertically by industry, not horizontally by class
- Left wing (worker welfare) and right wing (social credit) coexist within guilds
- No aristocracy but guild chairmen becoming de facto ruling class

Song protectorate: accepts powerless Governor in exchange for not being invaded
- Song Influence meter: too defiant → invasion risk, too compliant → absorption

Four gameplay pillars:
1. Population crisis: not enough people for the territory (mechanized agriculture as solution?)
2. Sea of Japan: Japan controls access to Pacific, Sakhalin port as strategic lifeline
3. Trade exploitation: heavy industry dominance over Japan (steel for food/minerals)
4. Deterrence equation: Song's 200M vs Jianzhou's 10M

Flavor: "Born in Fire, Forged in Steel", coldest republic, empty interior frontier

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>

Japan: Pacific industrial power (Tier 1.5), Jianzhou rivalry, Alaska/Kamchatka empire
- Core: catch up to Tier 1, Sakhalin dispute, Pacific expansion vs consolidation
- 150yr modernization legacy, fur empire declining, naval dominance

Korea: "Belgium of NE Asia", small industrial mining state
- Nationalized mining, squeezed between 3 powers, survival through balance
- Identity question: Korean vs Chinese-influenced vs independent nationalism

Jianzhou Republic: industrial city-state, oligarchic republic
- World's oldest industrial zone (400yr), porcupine deterrence strategy
- Arms dealer to everyone, Song reconquest threat, Sakhalin dispute with Japan

Mongol Khanate: vast, sparse, mineral-rich
- Resource curse vs resource blessing dilemma
- Multi-vector diplomacy between great powers
- Genghis Khan legitimacy, nomad vs miner cultural split

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>