All Chinese territories border far superior Japanese forces. By round 3 the Japanese will have pushed through China (worst of all usually after only having lost three infantry or so!) and be knocking art Moscow’s back door!
What’s worse, it doesn’t really seem that Germany needs the help!
What I don’t understand about many A&A games lately is that historically Japan had three war aims, which they could never hope to execute all at once:
- Conquer China
- Conquer the Pacific Islands (most importantly the Dutch East Indies)
- Attack Russia in the East thereby aiding Germany, but more importantly for the Japanese secure Siberia’;s raw materials and oil, materials which were denied by them by the US oil embargo.
They never did manage to conquer China, despite of having an army there of almost a million strong. Not so much because the Chinese army was so strong-on the contrary- but simply because of the vast distances involved.
They did indeed take much of the Pacific, but only held on to it for a very short time until the US war economy completely made final victory an illusion for Japan.
As the Japanese High command realized that going for options 1 and 2 at the same time meant that Russia would have to be left alone as Japan’s resources had alreay been stretched to the utmost, this option was discarded (among other reasons).
Why then is it that in nearly all A&A games Japan can easily attempt and ever so often succeed at achieving all of the three above??? Why couldn’t the designers offer some strategic options and/or gambles? (Example: they did this for the Indian fleet: the UK player can try and take out the battleship and the carrier off the East-Indies and the rewards can be great, but if it goes terribly wrong then the UK is in a bad position right away. However, it’s a risk one can take or not. Japan doesn’t take any risks when taking on China or Russia. It’s simply a matter of pushing your troops forward.).
Solutions would be so easy:
Add some more Russian punch in the far East, so Japan would be forced to either commit larger forces to really threaten Soviet terrritory or-if they choose to stay on the defensive in the far-East- that they’d be obliged to leave considerable forces in Manchuria. A Russian tank, artillery and fighter added would go a long way.
Secondly, it might have been an option to add more territories to China so it’d at least take longer to reach Moscow this way. Alternatively 3 or 4 Chinese infantry could have been added to set up.
Finally, the US could have been given a much higher starting income (since this is already '42) or could get an increase of 5 IPC each turn to symbolize the ever expanding US war economy.
What do you all think?
