Boli said:
if the result went the other way I could have taken a surprising amount of territory before offering a ceasefire basically winning the war for me in the pacific.
Yes, I think you easily could. I was especially worried about the potential for japanese paratrooper landings in Texas, taking out my valuable oil fields, so I quickly built anti-aircraft defenses etc. there.
I think the key to a successful pbem game is three things, primarily, worked in combinations : 1) diplomacy - securing not to fight two fronts at once, 2) surprise - including covert ops and false propaganda, drawing enemy attention and forces to places of lesser importance, and 3) overwhelming strength at the point of attack, so you can lessen the possibility for a counterattack.
All these points are not always possible, but when they are, you have the best opportunities to strike where your opponent expect it the least.
If your strategy should have worked, Boli, you should have waited to attack me until the point where you were absolutely certain you could take out the west coast, and not enable me to counterattack. Your attack would have come as a complete surprise, because I thought you were pretty blasted after those first encounters, as you say yourself.
Secondly my fleet was away from the west coast at the time. By taking those worthless islands and attacking prematurely, you gave me ample warning to protect my coasts and think about building coastal fortressess and gathering all my forces on the west coast.
When you didn't come back a second time, I knew I needed to get to Japan quickly, but also that I needed maximum strength in order to devastate you, by taking enough cities and destroying enough units, so my fleet wouldn't get wiped out in the counterattack. The US pacific fleet that invaded Japan consisted of 7 battleships, 1 cruiser, 1 carrier carrying a lot of fighters and bombers, and 6 transports worth of infantry (including engineers and paratroopers) and material (at least one of these transports is still underway). I knew there was no way in heaven you could match this fleet, but I was still worried about your air power. Actually I intended to wait a few turns with the attack, since my air support was about 1 or 2 turns from Japanese airspace, in order to take out your capital, but when you discovered a couple of my ships I decided I had to go for it, although I was not completely ready to take out the entire island.
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