Any good strategies for WWII in the Pacific?

[gunkulator]

I just started a game last night as the Americans. Japan bombed Honolulu right away but they only managed to sink 1 ship and blow up my barracks. They took a couple other small island cities.

All my units are regulars or conscripts while the Japanese have veterans and elites! Worse, the Japanese have a 6/5/2 amphibious unit while I have no amphib units and a bunch oh 8/4/1 defending units. I started research for marines right away.

The Japanese left their carriers and escort ships off Hawaii so my bombers, subs and battleships were able to sink 2 flat tops.

Not sure what to do next. Tarawa looks like a first good target however I have all of 1 transport and it started way far away on the US west coast. I played 6 turns before realizing that destroyers can carry 1 unit. Hey!

Surprisingly Japan hasn't taken Manila and the other nearby city that has NO defenders.

Is Wake Island worth defending? I'd have to use my only transport to get there. Midway and Hawaii have airports so I can just airlift units there.

What's a better deal: GI, Light Tank or the MG defensive units? How about ships? Destroyers are nerfed from the epic game. Are subs worthwhile?

What's the deal with my allies? I can see what they're building but I can't use their ports, can I?

 

[dgfred]

Probably the best advice for you would be to check out the SG thread on
WWII. You can see the best way to play each of the civs . You
will find the destroyer's capability to transport will become very important.
Marines are a must and then alot of light tanks and air power. You'll see
for yourself with the SGs and soon you will be . Hope this helps.

 

[gunkulator]

Yeah, I looked there. There's an SG game as the Commonwealth and as China. Didn't see one for the US.

 

[dgfred]

It is about the same for the US and the Commonwealth . Take some time
to build up, draft, and hunt down the Japanese fleet as best you can. I
found air power to be my best weapon later in the game to beat down hps
on enemy units, then to kill off. Make sure to get units to your unoccupied
cities as fast as possible. I like to build alot of Arty too. I'll look around and
see if I can find you a SG game to look at. You might also want to check out
the pbem games, and see how others play the US against human players . Alot of fun to lurk those games and read all the trashtalk .

 

[dgfred]

I found 'Yap', 'Kamikaze' and 'Tanaka' in the pbem section. Take a
look and maybe you can glean some good strats and ideas.

 

[Bluemofia]

Well, I get machine gunners to try to hold the Philipeans first, then get marines to go amphibious for the islands. Try to avoid getting your transports ambushed, because people have a tendency to get very mad when a transport full of tanks gets sunk by a sub.

 

[Own]

the japanese have really bad defenders. get medium tanks and attack. if you want, make it easier and use artillery, but they really aren't necessary.

 

[Grohan]

As USA hold Philippines!
After that build lot of marines, combat engineers, transports and heavy bombers.
Capture all VP islands and then invade Japanese mainland! It's usually weakly defended except Tokyo.
Also be fast because Japan usually has huge VP head-start!

 

[gunkulator]

Well, I won my game this weekend. It's a nice short scenario. Some observations:

1) US is a very frustrating civ to play. Your productive cities are way far from the action. You can't airlift medium tanks or artillery so you pretty much have to split your production between air units, marines and the occasional machine gunner. I did build a transport full of medium tanks but it never made it to the action before the scenario ended. Likewise, any ship you build will take forever to get anywhere.

2) Marines taking the Pacific islands is the easiest route to start with.

3) I made the mistake of going for Southeast Asia instead of the island of Japan. My reasoning was that taking Saigon would eliminate Japan's only source of oil. Their 2 sources of rubber were in adjacent cities. Unfortunately almost all of Asia is connected by rail so Japan could send tank after tank to beat me up. I tried bombing their oil but they had stuck 2 units on it and bombers don't have lethal land bombardment. I finally bombed a bunch of rail lines so they couldn't hit me en masse and then went after Saigon.

4) Airfields are your life. Every island got one.

5) Workers can airlift! Yes! Build them in those tiny useless islands and lift them to the Philipines or back to the US mainland.

6) Carriers can be devestating. Dart within bomber range, bomb, and then dash out of range of their air units.

7) Fighter bombers are what you want. Regular bombers and heavy bombers get torn to pieces by Japanese zeros.

8) Once I got fighter bombers, I shut off research so that I could buy some units in the Philipines.

9) Heavy bombers can lay waste to the Japanese homeland. I stuck 2 on Iwo Jima and bombed much of their land into ruin. The AI never has enough workers.

10) I never built any wonders. They didn't seem to be worth it.

 

[dgfred]

Congrats Gunk!

 

[riley555]

Dude you don't need tactics in WW2 Pacific scenario. The computer is so stupid at naval and amphibious warfare that you should be able to win regardless of circumstances.