The rise and fall of the Japanese empire.

Post descriptions of your brilliant victories and unfortunate defeats here.

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Mike McCreery
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Joined: Sat Jun 29, 2013 2:58 pm

The rise and fall of the Japanese empire.

Post by Mike McCreery »

Hey all,

Just finished playing my first full scenario of WTPAE and what a ride it was. Took me about 2 months of all my free time and I had some thoughts about it.

I won on December 1, 1944 with a Decisive Allied victory 114551/37834

It ended with me taking Kagoshima on the Japanese island of Kyushu. The only remaining base he had left on that island was Kanoya. I also captured and was holding Shimonoseki with the AI killing about 3,000 - 5,000 troops daily against my defenses.

I had played WTP in the past and even played a PBM game with a friend but had never picked up this version.

Anyway, the beginning of the game I had only one goal and that was to evacuate asbolutely as many troops as possible from Malaya and the Phillipines. It went wildly better than I expected with me having to use Victory Points to free up many restricted units. I moved all of these troops up into Rangoon and Moulmein. During the course of the war I managed to hang on to both of these bases.

The troops in the Phillipines I evacuated to darwin, port moresby and other nearby bases. The Japanese player eventually took the typical bases of Rabaul, Kavieng, Buna, Lae, etc.

Once the game stabilized early in 1942 I beefed up port moresby and stopped the Japanese advance. In fact, the Japanese lost a huge amount of shipping in the Solomon sea in the early part of that year. I was futzing around trying to get American troops over to Australia and pot moresby to begin staging counter attacks. Eventually due to air power I was able to get control of the area and isolate Rabaul. I captured and built up Kavieng and the 2 significant carrier battles of the war happened in this area with me using air cover from Kavieng to tilt the battle in my favor. Once I had sunk 2-3 carriers the AI slunk off to pout up in Northeast New Guinea. I ignored the troops on Rabaul and Guadalcanal until I was already almost to the Philippines.

I also took every available unit in India and marched them down along the coast thru Burma and into Thailand. I freed up a few reserved divisions using victory points and started turning the battle against the Japanese in this area. I think that one of the things that helped me most is that the AI kept trying to get an assault going up into this area only to run into my air and naval power. I must have killed 50,000 - 60,000 troops in failed attacks.

I used china's troops aggressively and it paid off. In the beginning of the war I conquered the bulk of indo china and parts of Thailand. During the war I was able to catch and cut off 3 or 4 huge groups of Japanese units and pin them effectively until I could surround and kill them although it took till mid 1944 for me to take Wuchang and there are still 34 units containing 160,000 troops near Kaifeng that have been completely surrounded for close to 2 years (cant figure out how they managed to live so long without starving...).

With the Chinese working slowly and methodically I managed to capture all of china and most of Korea.

I skipped messing with the Marianas, Marshall, Bonin, and Caroline islands and instead chose to move up along the eastern side of New Guinea into the Philippines. From the Phillipines I moved to Formosa and jumped over Okinawa to the Japanese mainland.

One of the major advantages in my game was my ability to conquer Malaya, Sumatra & eventually Java early in the game using the Indian, Australian and English troops. That dried up most of his oil and refinery capacity. The Japanese never attempted an invasion of Australia in my game.

Over the course of the game I took about 10 mulligans (redo a move with a task force re-routed, etc.) and I backed the game up about 3 in game days after I found out that Truk is not a place to be trifled with. But overall I took what the game had to dish out and did not replay battles until they were satisfactory.

On the downside, I didnt pay any attention to the chain of command and under utilized support units. I still dont even know what most auxiliary ships do nor how to properly utilize them. I mostly ignored the sub war reacting to sub threats only when they became overwhelming. I ignored the chain of command for airgroups. I didnt pay attention to crew staffing, or training and even let groups get grossly undersized due to pilot attrition. I still dont know how to properly deploy mines. CAPCOM is a complete mystery. I did not do any significant strategic bombing of Japan, Etc.

The game is like doing a 5000 piece jigsaw puzzle in the dark just to say you did it :]

The AI is ok but it certainly lacks the nuances of a human player. The Japanese surrendered with 12,500 points of Assault value sitting on it's butt in Japan. No human player would have let me take a base on the island without swatting me like a fly.

Overall though the game rocks... I cant think of any other games that have the flexibility, scope and depth. Highly recommended for anyone with too much time on their hands ;]





















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BBfanboy
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RE: The rise and fall of the Japanese empire.

Post by BBfanboy »



Sounds like you had a blast against the AI! A couple of points:

- where you say you used Victory Points for restricted units, the correct term is Political Points. VPs are what you earn for destroying the enemy or taking/building bases.

- other players have noted that the AI can get stuck in a loop where it keeps doing the same [unsuccessful] thing, over and over. To keep the game more challenging, they change their defences so that the AI can start a new train of action. This might mean backing out of a base you hold so the AI does not immolate itself there.

- there are something like 13 AI scripts that govern what the Japanese will do. It appears you got one that sent the Japanese heavily into the Solomons while leaving Burma and China nearly unmolested.

- I have noted the same thing about surrounded troops not cooperating in the starvation department. However, once their supplies [on-base and in-unit] are all used up, they can be bombed and bombarded and will not recover. Initially the bombing only causes some disruption [not seen in reports], then disablements, and finally destruction of units. Destruction really takes off after 50% of the unit is disabled.

- you mentioned CAPCOM, which I am not familiar with. Did you mean TRACOM [training command]? That comes into being sometime into the game to centralize pilot training. Essentially, pilots start out their training there and when they have some basic skills they are ready for the squadrons to take them on and train them up. You can hasten/improve their skill development by assigning some of the best pilots from operational squadrons to TRACOM.

- the whole use of HQs, pilot training, auxiliary ships, mine operations, etc. are a whole other level that you must know at least a little about before playing a human player, or the AI set at "Hard". I recommend you try the Guadalcanal and Marianas scenarios against the AI and post an AAR about each one. When you have questions about what to do or how to do it, you can ask the forum members for advice. Learning is much faster/more in depth than playing against the AI!

No matter how bad a situation is, you can always make it worse. - Chris Hadfield : An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth
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zuluhour
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RE: The rise and fall of the Japanese empire.

Post by zuluhour »

]
I backed the game up about 3 in game days after I found out that Truk is not a place to be trifled with.
[:D]
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