How to balance a round 1 Japanese Declaration of War

I don’t think that it is necessarily a J1 that throws the game, but a turn 3 India that makes the game unbalanced.

If your getting $20 bid and still loosing, you have a big problem. What are you buying? If UK just bought 4 INF 2 ART and placed it in Hong Kong That would cause Jap a whole lot of problems.  Or 1 Crusier + 1 Destroyer with their BB and Tranys.  With a bid that large Japan should loose everytime.

I have played with a number of combinations.  What you propose won’t save India.  Hong Kong can be overwhelmed with how many planes?  As for your fleet, 4 bmb and 1 fht will still take it out.  Nothing changes.  The bid needs to be higher.  Maybe $24

hey jim,

are you getting the 20ipc after a j1 attack or is this a bid at game start?
are you playing that you can place the 20ipc in units? if so are there any restrictions?

what we do right now is bid for sides and place units pregame. we have no restrictions on how many units can be placed in any one territory, except that the territory must already have a unit of the same power.

what i would like to do is keep bidding to determine sides, however we are having problems balancing a j1 to a j2 dow. i think my idea number 2 is best right now but am hoping for some critiquing or new ideas. right now our bids are between 17-11ipc. if we were to use my idea number 2 with x=5, i think the bid would drop to 6ipc or less

The bid is a pregame placement.  Unrestricted in territories you own, at sea, you must have a ship in the space already.  We start at a number and bid down until someone is not willing to go any lower.

I have not played this game enough to know how they normally turn out. For a J1 attack what if the US focused ALL of its support on saving Australia (this is historically accurate as one of our 1st objectives was Guadalcanal. Then if the UK only focuses on buying infantry to keep India alive then it seems like even if Japan had slightly more IPCs then the Allies then it would be in a tough place trying to contain the US from expanding their island-hopping campaign starting from Australia and containing the british from starting to push back with all the infantry they have been buying to protect India.

Is the amount of air power Japan starts with just too powerful for the british to defend india using only infantry?

Trackmagic, the US can’t do this as it leaves Honolulu open and doesn’t threaten Japan. UK/infantry strategy doesn’t work as it allows Japan to overrun the SW Pacific and SE Asia and then with their 60+ IPCs a turn over the next few turns build a tank army, rebuild their air force, crush India and defend Japan.

The problem is the Allies don’t have time to develop any long, drawn out strategy of island hopping or war of attrition. I usually don’t deploy the IJN against India, keeping them in reserve to deal with island hopping strategies. The Japanese quickly reach parity in income and are already ahead militarily. Once they shut down the UK/China front, they can focus on Sydney or Honolulu and the Allies only have enough forces to successfully defend one or the other.

@jim010:

I don’t think that it is necessarily a J1 that throws the game, but a turn 3 India that makes the game unbalanced.

If your getting $20 bid and still loosing, you have a big problem. What are you buying? If UK just bought 4 INF 2 ART and placed it in Hong Kong That would cause Jap a whole lot of problems.  Or 1 Crusier + 1 Destroyer with their BB and Tranys.  With a bid that large Japan should loose everytime.

I have played with a number of combinations.  What you propose won’t save India.  Hong Kong can be overwhelmed with how many planes?  As for your fleet, 4 bmb and 1 fht will still take it out.  Nothing changes.  The bid needs to be higher.  Maybe $24

hey jim,

are you getting the 20ipc after a j1 attack or is this a bid at game start?
are you playing that you can place the 20ipc in units? if so are there any restrictions?

what we do right now is bid for sides and place units pregame. we have no restrictions on how many units can be placed in any one territory, except that the territory must already have a unit of the same power.

what i would like to do is keep bidding to determine sides, however we are having problems balancing a j1 to a j2 dow. i think my idea number 2 is best right now but am hoping for some critiquing or new ideas. right now our bids are between 17-11ipc. if we were to use my idea number 2 with x=5, i think the bid would drop to 6ipc or less

The bid is a pregame placement.  Unrestricted in territories you own, at sea, you must have a ship in the space already.  We start at a number and bid down until someone is not willing to go any lower.

We start the bid low and who ever bids highest gets Japan.  1 $7 transport on you bid purchace placed in India is also a great buy.  Slows Japans DEI efforts, and gives UK extra cash to hold out longer.  With a $21 bid I would get 3 Transporst and get the DEI bonus first turn.

Problem I see is you’d get 5 more men at best before Japan hits on turn 3.  Not enough.  You need to calculate what you need against a max of 6 loaded Japanese transports and a max of every plane they have.  It just won’t hold.

I’d like to throw one additional idea into the mix. (I’m not necessarily saying this is the best possible idea or anything.) While at peace, the U.S. could collect income at half its normal rate. That would simulate the fact that the U.S. peacetime economy was less focused on military production than it later became. The Japanese player would want the U.S. to collect income at this reduced rate for as long as possible, and so would have a strong incentive to postpone the declaration of war. Also, the lower American income would reduce the extent to which the Japanese player fell behind in the cold war with the U.S. in the absence of war.

There are, however, several disadvantages to this strategy.

1. Implementing it online would be slightly cumbersome, and would require editing American IPCs for the first few rounds. (Not a huge deal though.)
2. It would affect the balance of the game. I know you wrote that game balance issues can be dealt with via bids; but this is a fairly big issue. Probably if you were going to do this increasing the Americans’ base income by a moderate amount would also make sense.
   3. This, alone, still might not be enough to balance the J1 attack with the J2 - J4 attacks. Moving that British fleet away from the Japanese might be a good thing to do in conjunction with this.

Do you mean half of 57 or half of 17? If it’s half of 17, that’s a greater disadvantage to the allies.