I'll interweave my commentary in yours Sully. It's been an honour and pleasure to play this game out with you guys.
I am at the point to concede victory to TechGuy.
He has played one of the best tactical and strategic games I've witnessed in TOS.
Let me recap a little....
First, A prolonged Kido Butai attack against PH and then moving to the West Coast and destroying a large part of the production/transportation network was his first success.
My objective for the US is to cripple its logistics support. The US has problems getting into the fight in time. Since the US has the greatest production potential, it's one of the main issues I have to take care of. I was lucky that Sully didn't catch my carrier TF travelling at the north map edge. There were two main things I had to take care to make this dangerous trip worthwhile. Blow away US oil resources and blow away rubber resources. Destroying productive tiles were secondary. Without oil and rubber, the US cannot mobilize and build tons of aircraft to harass Japan.
It took a chunk out of the US production early on...especially in production of SS's and Aircraft. I had several Seabee units in place thinking they would restore production quickly...it weren't so.
Once oil and rubber were crippled, I expected that no major US offensives were going to happen for at least 10 turns (several turns to rebuild the roads, several turns to build the oil/rubber dependent units, and finally several turns to move them to the front line). This bought me the breathing space I needed to turn my valuable forces elsewhere. Also, if you're spending money on Seabees, you're not spending it on military units that could hurt me.
I took some gratification at the time of eliminating Kido Butai entirely. But, by the number of air attacks that started showing in China...I'm guessing I didn't sink the CVs with the aircraft???
Here is where I would like to make the commentary that I did in fact got only some of my planes off the carriers before you blew them away. These naval aircrafts did indeed play a significant role in my other fronts as CW, China, and the Dutch do not have sufficient air support.
The quick demise of China was the linchpin to the defeat of the Allies. I look forward to commentary from TG and Luthor about this.
China did fall quite rapidly... that advance far exceeded my expectations. I think I just blitz'd so fast that Luthor didn't even get a chance to redeploy properly. I had the initiative on every turn and I was forcing him to respond to my threats instead of running his strategy. Naval aircraft from the Pearl Harbour force did indeed help me finish this front more quickly. What also gave me an edge is the amount of green troops I was able to promote by killing China's redlined troops. That gave me a sizable amount of NI to abuse.
From that point..The US naval units were fully engaged in their own backyard sinking IJN ships before it was at a point to break out and support Australia.
So while the IJA was mopping up in China, Borneo, and the Java Sea....
Quick comment here: the initial island hopping the US did, say Wake and Kwalajien, those victories are quite moot. It did not affect my war effort much. It neither depleted my production power or ability to fight the war overall. So I saw the fall of those two AF islands as buying time for me to rebuild my fleets. In hindsight, I was quite concerned that you would drive your huge TF straight to the home islands and bomb the crap out of it. If you did that, the outcome I predict, would be quite different.
The US was busy rebuilding its infrastructure and I focused on building Air Units. I was able to get advanced fighters built but by that time...I think TG had a huge air amada himself.
Here's where I make the comment that Japan's Nakajimas (Kates) is a superior air unit of the game. I built those green planes exclusively because they have the longest non-heavy bomber range and the same bombardment strength as a Betty at the fraction of the cost. At the end, I had about 36 aircraft.
Now as he pushed onto Australia...I tried to work with Botman to give me a major city on the east coast. But he hesititated for several turns before agreeing to give me two cities. But by that time TG was rolling in force and though I was able to move a score of air units to Australia...my attacks were more like a minor thing compared to the number of land units that were taking ground with the support of his air units.
Here is where I say that rebuilding the railroad from Pusan to Singapore really made a difference in defeating the Australians. I was able to quickly redeploy my troops from the China theatre to Singapore (ready to be transported) in a matter of 2 turns after crushing the major Chinese resistance.
Actually, that Australian city trade really hurt my efforts to advance deep. With the threat of redlining my units and the follow up with guerillas, I couldn't take the same ridiculous actions I did in China.
Although I think I got Advanced SS's before him...the lack of production and the long distance to get them into Australian waters was a real hinderance.
I think I actually might have got Advanced SS's about the same time. It took me a bit of time to gather cash and get them to harbours to upgrade my older SS' into adv ones.
My small advantage in CVs and surface units was finally overcome by his Advanced SS's and sheer number of AC. I had tried on several occassions to attack Truk..where there was a huge concentration of AC but I just couldn't get through to do it.
It wasn't the fact that I had more aircraft than you do that overcame your CV advantage, it's the fact that I could bring up reinforcements faster than you can. My forces had to travel less than yours.
I made extensive use of spying and well...lets just say that I "pissed away" a lot of cash in attempting city swaps with only a couple of sucesses. This was one area I was very disappointed in. In another game I was involved in at the time..one of our opponents seemed to be able to flip a recently captured city on several occassions. I really spent a lot of cash trying to do the same without his success. Though the mney spent spyong out his cities and locating where his land and land-based air units were....was well spent.
I thought I was in SERIOUS trouble when you did the two culture flips on mainland Asia. That was something I thought you wouldn't have invested, since I blew away your US production facilities. You had guerillas in those cities that could have totally taken out my major production areas.
But what brought me to the end was that TG had 4 fifths of the map under his control. I could not match that type of production even if I had developed nukes. So I concede the match. It was a lot of fun with lots of hair raising attacks and battles. I'm sure Luthor and Botman got a lot out of this game as well.
I had 50 workers working on improving the tiles around my major production cities. I actually improved ALL the tiles in the home islands so Tokyo produced about 53 production shields when mobilized.
It was a pleasure to see a Master (TG) at work!
Sully
The feeling is mutual here. Good game guys!
