RT02 Midway Island

Storytellers Wanted

* * *

This is an open roster with preference given to players I've *not* played with before. (There are too many of you I don't know.) One thing I want to stress is that quality of report is far more important here than quality of play. I want a thread everyone will want to read. If you're a noob, that's fine so long as you ask a lot of questions and get into the game. If you're a diety-level micromanager, that's fine as long you realize that most of us don't care to be. We'd rather have fun and read fun reports than be shown all of our mistakes.

* * *

The backstory

Welcome to the empire of Japan, December 8th, 1941. Yesterday, in a dastardly sneak-attack by the air and naval forces of the United States of America, our entire battleship fleet harbored at Midway island was sunk. All that is left of our once-mighty navy is a handful of aircraft carriers, each loaded with fighters.

It's up to you, Admiral Yamamoto, to determine whether Roosevelt has dealt us the knock-out blow or only awoken a sleeping dragon.

* * *

Game Mechanics

This will be an alternate history (sort of) based (very) losely on World War Two's Pacific Theater. Essentially, I want to see if Aircraft Carriers in CivIV can be used to any effect. So here's the deal:

The Americans have just taken Midway island, the only source of oil on a tiny islands map. There's one source of Uranium, but it's just outside of Washington. So we can't build any more oil-based navy besides the five carriers we start with. (I might throw us a transport or two as well.)

America has a ton of battleships, destroyers, etc. plus the capacity to make more. Can we, as the brave Japanese, use our fleet effectively enough to regain control of Midway Island's precious resources?

I want this to be a test of carriers, so I want us to role play as if 1) we're positive that carrier-based navies are the wave of the future or 2) we're scared to death that the big bad battleships are going to pound us into the dust. Either way, we're married to carriers. Even after we've wrestled oil from enemy clutches, we can't build any oil-based ships other than carriers or transports. We may *never* build bombers either. I don't want to just rebase bombers and take the next island from land. This will be island hopping, just like WWII (maybe).

In that spirit, I want to rely on marines to be our workhorses on ground missions. No blitzkrieg here. While there were tanks in the Pacific, I want to limit their use here. Gunships will probably go well with our theme, though. I'm open to other suggestions here.

Lastly, the game doesn't end until we've nuked at least two enemy cities, so I'm turning off all victory conditions. We'll know when we've won.

* * *

Obviously, this is a modern era start with a lot of water, but I'll be open to suggestions on other settings. Let me know what you'd like to play. I'll roll up a start after I see if we have any interest and after we decide difficulty, warlords or not, speed, etc.

Any takers?

I wanted to wait with joining another SG until I was down to just one at most. But to hell with that, I'll join. This doesn't look like a too heavy-duty task anyway (tiny, modern age start)

Great backstory btw

EDIT: That reminds me, I haven't been on the Deviant Minds forum for over a week. Have you achieved world conquest yet?

Thanks, Strauss. I don't think we've actually *played* together before. (Just a whole lot of spam in each others' threads.) So on a technicallity, you're in on the "people I've never played with" preference.

Regarding Deviant Minds, no world conquest, yet, though I thought that was your job. (Aparently you forgot that you signed up for an SG over there, too, huh? We skipped you, don't worry.)

Anyhow, to this game, I'd rather not do tiny, though I was going to limit us to one opponent. I don't know. If the group wants to do tiny, that's fine with me. ...Goes off and sulks... (I guess I'd like a bunch of island hopping and that means standard map to me.)

Either way, I'm open.

Well, we are in Chaos SG 2/3 together, but I haven't played a turnset there yet, just 'ed everyone around there. Seems like I need to do that at Deviant Minds as well if we're ever to conquer the world.

And when did I sign up for a Deviant Mind SG?

As for the settings, maybe archipelago would be better for island hopping? I'll look into it a bit more tomorrow.

lurker's comment: This game sounds like a lot of fun, but I don't think I'll have the time to play. So consider this a lurker's sign in.

@Strauss:

Well, I interpreted your post on DMI - I Menu Surprise as a sign-up. Did I overstretch your words there ? If so, I'll remove you from the roster and look for an alternate. If you want to play you'd be welcome !

Imhotep, Dungeon Master

I think I'd enjoy playing in this one if you'll have me. Doing some island hopping with marines and trying some tactics with aircraft carriers sounds like fun.

Okay, it's Strauss, LuvToBuild, and me. Two more people and we can probably get things rolling. BTW, I re-read my first post that confused Strauss. By tiny islands, I meant the map setting that yields about 60 little islands (I think it's archepelago, tiny islands), not the map size. However, if we want a quick, dirty game, setting this map to small might be a good idea. Definitely not dual, though.

A bunch of tiny islands on a standard map sounds good to me. Lots of fun island hopping. One or two AI's. Roosevelt and, if Warlords, Churchhill of course. Question though, can fighters completely sink ships? If not, should we be allowed a couple of subs to finish off limping American battleships and destroyers?

Lurker's comment

This sounds interesting. Too bad you couldn't recreate Kamakazis. I am a big fan of the Pacific theater of WWII. Would this be set during Pearl Harbor incident as during that time the Japanese had lots of battleships/carriers and it was the Americans who had their aircraft carriers out to sea.

[Jedi's Hypnoptic Hand-Wave]
You have never played with me before
[/Jedi's Hypnoptic Hand-Wave]

Now, may I join?



--

--

Alright, alright, I 'll lurk.



--

Rex Tyrannus said:

Okay, it's Strauss, LuvToBuild, and me. Two more people and we can probably get things rolling. BTW, I re-read my first post that confused Strauss. By tiny islands, I meant the map setting that yields about 60 little islands (I think it's archepelago, tiny islands), not the map size. However, if we want a quick, dirty game, setting this map to small might be a good idea. Definitely not dual, though.

Click to expand...

Ah I see it now. Since we're fighting against one opponent I would limit the size to small.

EDIT: @ Imhotep: I re-read my post and I see that I typed a whole story which came down to 'maybe I can play'. However, since I've joined this one I can't take another game now that my holidays are over.

@Cosmichail: yes, I wanted to create a Pearl Harbor incident, but I also wanted my "one island in the middle with oil" scenario. So I made my role reversal at Midway Island instead. Our carriers were "out on maneuvers" (wink, wink, nod, nod) while our battleships were sunk. Honestly, the reason I switched roles was because I've never played an SG as Tokugawa.

@Luv: Fighters can only bring ships to 50%, if I remember correctly. Now, that presents a problem. 50% of a 40 strength battleship is still four strength mightier than a 16 strenght carrier. So we need a way to kill them. Now, in CivIII, half-bombed battleships always retreated. Do they also in IV? (This is why I want to play this game, my naval knowledge sucks.) If they don't retreat, we need a means to kill them. Subs are probably a good idea, as they're authentic to the theater and not so powerful as destroyers. Let's let the group decide. Of course, we can always build mobs of Kamikazee ironclads.

@Fox: Right now, we only have three players, so I'd say you're in unless a mob rushes this game in the next six hours. I guess these aren't the droids I'm looking for.

@Strauss: I say we have two paths to follow. Path A is a small map, us vs the Americans and no one else. This could either be vanilla or Warlords. Path B is a standard map with us vs Roosey plus Korea and China as vassals to the enemy. Obviously, this is Warlords. Anyone have a preference.

To all, depending on how much I stack the deck against us, I'll either have this be a prince or monarch game. If someone's uncomfortable with that, please let me know.

Also, I'd like to keep this pretty well set in WWII times, which means that Stealth Bombers, Mechanized Infantry, and Jet Fighters might not jive too well. I know it takes an entire aspect out of the game, but I'd really like to decapitate the tech tree. Either that or make this a marathon game so tech plays less importance.

Any thoughts?

@ sinking ships: I think we should limit ourselves to a few ships other than Aircraft Carriers.

Nihon Kaigun said:

http://www.combinedfleet.com/kaigun.htm]The[/url] maturation of naval aviaition, of course, drastically reduced their utility in actual practice, so that Japan's battleships (even mighty Yamato) did what most other nations' did in World War II: escorted aircraft carriers and provided additional anti-aircraft screening for them.

Click to expand...

I'd say we can build a maximum of 2 Battleships, which is as much as Japan built during WW2. However, they may only attack after the Aircraft Carriers have attacked. If this goes against your view of this game, then we'll have to find another way. I would suggest looking through that site I quoted, it may give you some ideas (and it's just an interesting read).

@ suggested paths: Both paths sound interesting. However, I assume this will be an Always War-type of game. Wouldn't it drastically increase WW if we get 2 more opponents to fight? Besides, I like the sound of a duel between Japan and the US. I would choose Path 1. I have Warlords so no problems with that.

Nice link, Strauss. Lots of good info to fuel this SG. Though, I'll admit, I'm a lot less into technical accuracy than fun, but it's nice to have the history behind things, too.

I'm leaning toward the "US v Japan and no one else" scenario, too, as I had thought up this variant long before warlords and that's how I imagined it. Any other votes? Sorry, Fox, still no Singapore in CIV.

I'm not really into technical accuracy either. I don't know a thing about naval stuff. I'm more into land and air forces. But if we're trying to portray the WW2 Pacific Theatre (more or less), I would like some historical accuracy. It just adds to the immersion IMO, and I'm very fond of immersion .

Preferred difficulty level would be Monarch.

I'm fine with Vanilla CIV Japan vs USA on a small map. I think we should either be allowed to have a handful of subs or no more than say two battleships at any one time. I think I'd prefer a limited number of subs but having only one or two battleships is fine too since we would have to use air power to tip things in our favor before engaging with the battleships. The loss of a battleship would mean more too since they take longer to replace. I think subs probably fit better with the original theme though. Monarch sounds good since the AI tends to suck at naval combat and amphibious landings. It may also end up spending a good deal of it's time building and settling instead of fighting a war. Marathon would probably help to keep things in a more WWII setting.

looks like my joke had a twist ... does my jedi hand-wave trick realy do work ? Hmm ... let me go try that on my wealthy neighbor next door and the sexy babe across the street ...

@Strauss:

Okay, then I'll remove you from the roster of DMI - I. Have fun with this one here instead !

@rex:

You should be aware that Fighters and Bombers get a -50% malus when attacking naval units and can be intercepted by Destroyers and Battleships. It may not be easy to drag those Battleships even to half strength. Submarines are no solution to that because they can't sink naval units either (which is rather stupid given the amount of damage they did in WW I and II). So I guess you should allow a hand full of destroyers. The problem with kamikaze ironclads is they can't leave your cultural borders...

Imhotep

I don't know how often they update the units page around here, but according to that, only bombers get the -50% against water units. Also according to it, battleships do not intercept aircraft, only destroyers. Further, it doesn't say anything about subs not sinking ships and ironclads can't enter ocean, but can leave cultural borders into coastal tiles.

I'll try testing all of these things to see if they're correct.