Another try on a campaign

[stretch]

Back in the day, I finished a WiTP game vs the AI. Bought AE the day it came out, I've tried 3 times to begin a campaign and never made it off the first turn.

Give me your one best tip for getting past this initial hump and into the game. If I can get started, I'll be fine.

Planning on Allies vs Japanese AI.

Gracias.

[bradfordkay]

As the allies, I don't sweat the opening move. In fact, my favorite way to play the AI is to play the Dec 8 scenario, picturing myself as the sucker put in charge to clean up after the previous day's debacle. 

[CaptBeefheart]

Against the AI you might want to give yourself various handicaps. One handicap is to simulate that the Allies were caught flat-footed and therefore other than being sure to take care of scattering your fleet in Manila and properly positioning your CVs and a couple of other TFs on Day 1, you might do the rest over the course of a week or so. For example, you might ensure all air units have proper settings on Day 2, tackle pilot training on Day 3 and set up convoys on Day 4. Heck, other than minor tweaking I usually don't even touch China until 1944.

Cheers,
CC

[Yaab]

Gave up on grand campaign as Alllies vs AI after about 20 restarts. Frustrated as hell, I went back to the Coral Sea scenario. Played it to death, then had a short stint with Gudalacanal scenario to take the hang of amphib operation. Then came back to grand campaign. Created tons of notes for each theater starting with off-map convoys. Installed Tracker and learnt how to use it. Started the GC.

You can save a lot of time if you decide to learn the game (reading the manual and forum) while playing the Coral Sea, yet everyone wants to play the GC and they should receive medals for doing so.

[witpqs]

One best tip: use the latest Beta in the Tech Support sub-forum. It has many, many aids/improvements in the interface that ease play.

[LST Express]

Don't have any great tips, I'd just say start the game and keep playing. Read some of tha aar's and have fun. I've played thru 2 witp and 1 Ae games vs the Japanese ai and learned a lot just playing the game. I'm in early 45 in my first pbem game and even though I'm not real happy with my overall performance I'm still having fun and refuse to fret too much over playing a game.

[Sardaukar]

Might get some ideas from here:

tm.asp?m=2564541

[Misconduct]

ORIGINAL: Commander Cody

Against the AI you might want to give yourself various handicaps. One handicap is to simulate that the Allies were caught flat-footed and therefore other than being sure to take care of scattering your fleet in Manila and properly positioning your CVs and a couple of other TFs on Day 1, you might do the rest over the course of a week or so. For example, you might ensure all air units have proper settings on Day 2, tackle pilot training on Day 3 and set up convoys on Day 4. Heck, other than minor tweaking I usually don't even touch China until 1944.

Cheers,
CC

This is a major factor, you cannot play the AI as a "real player" it tends to act like a poptart and quite often. Handicaps like - don't make any major "attacks" until at least 1943, allow it sometime to build up. Best thing to do is learn to work out the supply lines, for example setting your AK's to supply San Fran to Pearl - Tactical or Minimum Fuel, Tankers the same way.

Depending which AI scripts you get - which become obvious (if they are aggressive etc) you hope for the defensive scripts.

After a few months of turns (you certainly want to stay on the defensive, dont try putting up any fights early against the AI - you can easily hold places like Java - but again this is the AI not a real player).

I would honestly not do much until 8/42 - this gives the AI plenty of time to conquer the pacific and stock up. In the mean time some of the small islands like Palmyra, don't really start construction till 4 or 6/42 - start working your way around towards Pago, thus should be around 8/42 - when you can start thinking about Noumea and Luganville.

This is where your supply lines must be learned, you want ASW aircraft, along with naval search - the AI might send raiders, or might not, make sure you don't have any of your tankers threatened (big no no to run them early in game).

Dont worry about oil, you simply want FUEL, which is going to be impossible to come by early on, this is where the logitics war comes in, it takes some time, but eventually you will get the feel for it.

Finally as far as the first month, I simply take whatever I can out of Philippines/Singapore/Java and either send to Darwin for use later on, If you don't have "no unit withdrawls" it would be a plus, it can hurt you severely if you forget monitering this, as some air and naval units have to be withdrawn at a certain time date.

Enjoy the game, dont WORRY if you get slaughtered early on, let the AI have the pacific and look at some Tropical Girl photos and read your manual often, it will be boring, and the logitics alone can be nerve racking, but if you really leave things alone (i.e dont start anything major till after 8/42 or even later) the Ai can give an interesting game.

Make sure the AI also is on "Very Hard" mode, its still beatable even if you make a dozen mistakes (dont use saved games also unless you absolutely screw up horribly, learn from them and continue).

[stretch]

thank you all for the advice, I'm going to go with not worrying about getting everything done on turn 1 and considering it an AI helper.. I'm sure I'll be back with questions from time to time, already solved several with forum searches.