9 subs versus 2 CV 4 ftrs, on defense

Island hopping is great, but its not critical.  Sometimes just having a presense in the region will do just great.  This is how I build my fleets…… My flagships are my carriers.  They are great for defense and their fighters can support amphibious assaults.  I will have no less than 2.  I then will support my fleet with destroyers.  I try to build 2 for every carrier.  If you build destroyers and in order to get more bang for your buck, get combined bombardment.  This will increase your amphibious firepower drastically.  Basically you’ll be able to do the job of a battleship at half the cost and twice the firepower.  Then build the rest of your force out of transports and a couple of submarines.  If you use this fleet right, you will have everyship being productive on every aspect, offense, defense, and logistics.  Your maximizing your money and strength.  Lets take a fleet of 2 AC’s, 6 destoyers, 2 subs, 4 troopships with 2 tanks, 2 artillary, and 4 infantry.  You attack the phillipines with an amphibious assault.  the 6 destroyers should pretty much wipe out all opposition.  But if not, you have 4 fighters and all the ground units to clean up.  Battle should be over without losing anything.  Your fighters land for fleet defense.  Basically you have a fleet that can hit hard on land and sea.  Your enemy will think twice before hitting you.

quite simply, transports have to be defended, and the allies can put have in range alot of threatening airpower before japan’s second turn…  and every ship that’s left defending them reduces your ability to cheaply destroy the various allied fleets that might be making a mess in the pacific on turn one.

Other than that, the additional transports allow for 6 units a turn, similarly to the IC’s.  The additional transports give you the ability to grab guys more quickly from the islands, as well as the ability to push on india and africa faster and harder.  But each of these require some tradeoffs (ideally, mass troops in manchuria, but if india looms you may have to deal with that, slowing the flow of 6 units/per turn.

transports assuming a factory build later also ends up reducing the flow of fast moving armor, if that’s necessary.

Don’t get me wrong, i’m a big fan of transports, but they have their drawbacks too.

@Renove:

Lately - when playing Japan - I’ve been experiencing huge problems when confronted with the UK1 fighter assault on the solomon sub and the following landing on the SZ 52 AC.

Well u better get used to these “huge problems” because that sorta stuff you mentioned is pretty standard.  Not THE standard, but standard enough that you should know how to respond right off the bat.  Sayin this is causing you HUGE PROBLEMS means you’re probably pretty inexperienced.

When it actually hits the sub - even when it doesn’t - the chances of an economic J1 sz 52 attack become very slim. My normal sz 52 assault consists of 1 AC 2 FIGS 1 Bom 1 Sub (if it survived UK1) 1 BS and 1 DST vs 1 AC 1 SUB 2 FIGS. With the SZ 37 AC - BS - FIG I attack the SZ 59 UK-DST (if alive), the other SZ 37 FIG supports the attack in China. The SZ 60 transport usually drops something off in Buryatia.

**FYI, the UK sub at Solomons usually attacks with the UK India fighter to try to kill the Jap sub at Solomons for a 2/3 overall shot of killing the Jap sub.

Another “standard” that I haven’t seen a lot (so is it really standard?  well it used to be) is UK transport block from Australia to New Guinea (or was that it, I forget).  The idea is that either you use a battleship to clear the transport, in which case any carriers you left at Solomons are more vulnerable to US attack, or you use a fighter at a time where you can hardly spare any fighters.

Blah blah, rest of ur stuff difficult to read.  I hate reading “SZ 52” blah blah reference.  Please write “Hawaii Island sea zone”.  I haven’t memorized the d*** map you know . . .

Anyways, you’re sending a battleship, bomber, destroyer, 2 fighter, destroyer.  That’s not “economical”.  That’s like saying “Hey US!  If you were planning on doing a KGF, here’s half my fleet giftwrapped!  Won’t you please smack my capital ships down by either strafing hard or if you’re lucky just smacking me dead on the spot?!”

Obviously you have some clue that this is the case due to comments in your post.  But I want to emphasize this is not the “economical” attack you may think it is.

You gotta figure first that you stand a good chance of losing a unit or two on the attack, then the Hawaii fighter, the W. US fighter, and the E. US bomber are in range, plus the US battleship and US transport. can hit.  If the US gets lucky they can clear Jap’s capital ships at Hawaii, if the US is moderately lucky, they can kill the destroyer and a couple of fighters then retreat back to W. US (where Japan can’t hit them after a US1 build plus US destroyer moving west from I think it’s around Panama).  Remember as Japan you didn’t take Hawaii, so you have to land fighters close by if your carrier gets blown up, and if you didn’t send your other AC to Solomons or close by, then when US attacks, you have to assign hits to your fighters before your carriers (if you don’t, US runs away and your fighters die for free).

THEN

For the rest, you totally ignored the UK air and Anglo-Egypt situation, which is what you have to consider on Japan’s first move.  Either there’s a UK bomber in range to hit your transports east of Japan or there isn’t.  If there is, leaving your transports unescorted is real risky, making your battleship-carrier attack on the UK destroyer at Kwangtung a bad idea.  Probably in most cases you should just ignore the UK dispersed fleet, leave the Jap battleship east of Japan to battleship bombard Burytia and escort transports there.  If the UK sticks around on UK2, you hunt, if UK flees, ignore - they make it to Germany, but in a KGF they get there too late to make a huge difference, and in a KJF, Germany should have enough air to mess with the Allied fleet anyways.**

Now I am aware that most players here will probably use the UK FIG to counter the G1 Anglo-Egypt but when the German bid is placed in Libya and the G1 ANglo-Egypt isn’t desastrous that counterattack becomes very hard, thus the FIG is often used for other strategies.

Yeah, like grabbing Borneo - I think it is.  Anyways, it’s a 4 IPC island.  Japan makes an early play for it, Japan pulls itself out of position in Asia.  Japan doesn’t make a play for it, UK’s up 4 IPCs for a while compensating for loss of Africa.

The SZ 52 stack (1AC 1SUB 2FIGS) has an above reasonable chance to really hurt the attacking Japanse fleet and there is always a chance for an American counterattack USA1 on the Japanese fleet - if things go horribly wrong for Japan. The dice don’t even have to be desastrous, a slight dice advantage for the Allies in SZ 52 can result in rather painful Japanese losses.

Yeah, that’s why you see Japan hitting Pearl with 1 sub (optional), 4 fighters 1 bomber in Pearl Light (nothing for Allies to counter), or if Allies reinforced Pearl like you describe, Pearl heavy with ALL units able to reach with rest of Jap fleet dispersing so UK can’t hunt it down.

I don’t like moves where you really need a good twist of fate - definitly so early in the game, so my question is, how do you handle the SZ 52 stack - especially when the Solomon SUB was killed UK1? Do you send the transport in SZ 60 as fodder or do you divert FIGS from the SZ 37 fleet? I could use some help in this matter.

What I would do as Japan totally depends on the board situation.  I’m not gonna be a dumbass and say BLA BLA BLA U SHOULD ALWAYS DO THE KUNNING BLA BLA PLAN, because obviously that’s fulla crap.

If the UK flew its bomber east, if the UK split its fleet, if the UK hit Borneo, if the UK retook Anglo-Egypt, if the UK flew its India fighter to Hawaii’s carrier, if the UK bought 3 fighters, if the UK bought an industrial complex in India, if Russia put 6 infantry in Burytia, if Russia put 1 infantry in Burytia, if Russia put 4 infantry in Sinkiang, if the UK Australia fleet split or stayed together east or west - all these are things you need to think about when you’re doing your move!  Saying you lost the Solomon sub is NOT sufficient information to offer an informed opinion on what you ought to do!

Usually I see the UK dispersing its Indian fleet.  Either UK retakes Anglo-Egypt and sends its Indian destroyer and carrier to hunt the Japanese transport at Kwangtung and attacks the Solomon sub with the UK sub and picks up 1 inf Aus and 1 inf New Zealand and sails east with the UK transport, in which case I leave Jap battleship east of Japan to protect transport plus 3 newly built transports (although I might switch this if UK bomber is in range of east of Japan - otherwise I don’t care if an usupported UK carrier and destroyer attack my Japanese fleet), and I hit Pearl with 1 sub (if it survived), 1 destroyer, 4-5 fighter, 1 bomber (saving 1 fighter for China), noncom battleship and two carriers to Solomons (leaving battleship, 2 carriers, 3+ fighters at Solomons, a hard target).

Or UK takes Borneo; I still build 3 transports 1 tank (retake Borneo next round), follow with standard as above.  Sometimes UK just sends 2 infantry to take Borneo and attacks the Solomon sub with UK sub and fighter, which can be inconvenient for the Japs given the extra fighter on Japan, in which case I might go Pearl heavy as described below.

If UK put a fighter on the US carrier, depending on the Asia situation, I might send EVERYTHING in range to Pearl.  (You NEED more than 2 fighters; if I remember right only 1 carrier can reach Pearl, and the US has a pretty good counterattack, so you need a loaded carrier on defense).  If you drop units, you can drop fighters, so your fleet is battleship, carrier, destroyer, 2 fighters (not bad), although you lose the fodder transport.  Drawback is, obviously, progress in Asia is slowed, which is why I really don’t like this option particularly if you see an infantry in Russian Burytia and an infantry in British India ready to take an underdefended Manchuria and French Indochina respectively.  You can typically respond by leaving 1 inf at Burytia and landing a fighter there (landing Jap fighter at French Indochina is better positionally, but usually due to UK transport in area threatening offload of troops plus UK bomber in range you lose the Jap fighter if you do this)

THERE!  If you wanted a simple answer, too bad!  Hahahahha.  Better give some more details if u want help.

This is absolutely right and not new discovery. In the very beginning several chapters of On War, Carl von Clausewitz has concluded the defense is stronger than attack in general. That’s why a war, although its nature is to use violence unlimitedly, can last for a long while and sometimes shows a medium-to-long-term stable status. The point is the defense itself can’t win a war. The purpose of defense is to dwarf off enemy’s force and to choose correct opportunity to launch counter attack.

Because a destroyer is cheaper.

You cannot buy 2 transports and a carrier on Japan 1.  That means trading in a transport to get a carrier, not a trade I want, or getting two transports (3 or 4 total available on Japan 2) and a destroyer thus not tying up your fleet on such non-sense as transport protection duty.

Not to mention, when I go after the American fleet with Japan, I always wish I had another destroyer.  I never wish I had another transport.  (Talking rounds 12+ when Japan goes after the Allied fleet to protect S. Germany)

Oob says that you roll a die, and that each bomber cannot do more ipc damage than production of territory. Maybe the explanation is confusing, but I would not say you must lose the max ipcs. I never played losing max ipcs in 2 years of face to face, and my mother language is spanish, so I suppose OOb are ok in that point. Anyway, a bit of logic says that even as confusing the sentence is, if you roll a die, that die must be used for determinig  the loss of ipc.

Oob rules, however, are wrong in rocket attacks, because they have a picture showing the Russia AA gun attacking Germany’s IC. This made me confusing until I read the FAQ, saying the picture was wrong. If I remember right, this is the only “big” mistake of rules.

@ncscswitch:

To be honest though, I think it is such an exceedingly rare occurance that I don;t think it will be an issue in 999 games out of 1000.

Agreed

And I still like the “logic” of not being able to blast away Parisian INF from the Normandy Coast; or Chicago National Guard Units from the Virginia coast…

Yeah, that is kinda wonky.  But no more so than some of the other abstractions the game makes.

In reality, did UK had naval industries in the north? If the answer is yes, it must be allowed. If no, it shouldn’t be allowed.