Nemo121
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A true "Sir Robin" is basically about taking whatever you can move and running away faster than the Japanese can logistically support their advance. Basically, "run faster than the hunter can hunt". Many adopt it fully, some adopt it in part and both groups tend to call it the same thing which adds to confusion immeasurably.
I'll deal with those who basically run without fighting whenever possible.... IMO ( and it is an opinion not gospel ) that's a choice taken by poor players who aren't interested in improving their play. Pulling back until the Japanese logistical culmination point requires almost no skill whatsoever and doesn't promote the development of any skill beyond the estimation of where that logistical culmination point will be. It doesn't promote the use of subterfuge, the art of assessing enemy capabilities and predicting their courses of action, of misleading them, of mounting spoiling attacks of phasing into and out of areas of operation in order to spoil strategic dispositions, of using small, relatively lesser skilled, less mobile forces operating along external lines ( the Allies ) to take the initiative away from larger, more skilled, mobile forces operating along internal lines (the Japanese ) and force those larger, more skilled, more mobile forces along internal lines to react rather than imposing their will etc etc etc.
There are many AARs where reasonably good players have stung the Japanese in the early months of the war. There are AARs ( jrcar's chief amongst them ) in which the Allies have used excellent judgement and strategic nous to stalemate the Japanese far earlier and more conclusively than was achieved. Lastly there are other AARs where the Allies have mounted large strategically important offensives by mid-42 although those games are due to confluences which are probably rather rarer.
The key point is that the Allies can and have stung the Japanese, stopped the Japanese and even turned them back well within the timescale of the Sir Robin. So, those who argue that the Sir Robin is the only or even best option are flying in the face of the objective reality of what has been achieved within AE. Each of the situations within which the Japanese have been stung or halted has featured players who have focused on strategic goals, players who have not been diverted by the ephemera of tactical gains at strategic cost, players who have subordinated the tactical to the strategic at all times, players who have identified points crucial to the Japanese plans and concentrated forces at those points and who have recognised that to maintain a threat does not require the maintaining of a presence.
Of course those skills and those ways of thinking are difficult to develop... they take time.... they take effort .... they require the losing of games in the learning, games which could have been won with the tactics of Sir Robin. The question really is whether or not you want to be a much, much better strategic thinker in 3 years time or whether you want to win this current game. If you want to win the current game then use Sir Robin but don't expect to be a better player next game. If you are willing to lose the current game in order to be better next year ( choosing to subordinate the tactical to the strategic in your own life ) then turn from the Sir Robin and find the best player you can to deliver the most comprehensive victory possible.
Sir Robin works but it lacks ambition and the potential for honing oneself.
As to KB.... The key really is two-fold.
1. To take KB on with one's unsinkable carriers. Or, rather, to have KB choose to tackle your unsinkable carriers as people will perservere longer on a suicidal path if they think they're in control.
2. To realise that the Japanese carriers are meaningless. Only their planes ( and really their elite pilots ) matter. THOSE are your target. I don't care if the Japanese player has 10 CVs with 600 planes if they are all 30 Exp rookies. That's just 120 Allied Aces waiting to be made and 10 CVs waiting to be turned into reefs.
< Message edited by Nemo121 -- 4/15/2013 11:45:31 PM >
_____________________________
John Dillworth: "I had GreyJoy check my spelling and he said it was fine."
Well, that's that settled then.
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RE: Early war strategy for Allies - 
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