@KGrimB:
What did Russia do with Amur?
No idea how I missed this question… Russia had already moved 6 west towards Moscow and the other 12 holding one back. I seem to recall trying to bait him into attacking Manchuria or Korea but he didn’t go for it.
As for Hawaii, I’ve tried it a few times and have cooled on it. Its viable but I simply prefer not to.
My first choice is most all the same choices I usually make with a J1 (Hong Kong, Borneo, Philippines) with an eye to turtling Calcutta (bomb J2/J3, convoy with subs J3/J4+), and worrying about taking it J6 or later so I can focus on keeping the money islands, closing the Burma road and gobbling up China so I have the option to help take Moscow, and making sure ANZAC doesn’t grow.
This means Japan’s fleet can mostly hang out on the Philippines for J4-J6 once the U.S./ANZAC fleet becomes a threat.
These days, Japan’s buy is fast movers for the mainland factories and carriers for the fleet, since Japan already has plenty of planes to land on them.
Doing this, the past few games, Japan ends up making over 60 a turn by end of J3 and the U.S. has a hard time threatening since I make up the difference in income via using the huge advantage in existing planes to build up my fleet or to threaten his.
Example: last game Japan’s fleet was at Philippines, with some more planes on Japan. U.S./ANZAC parked at Caroline. Both huge fleets (all of Japan’s original ships, and a total of 6 or 7 carriers). But the advantage in planes/carriers meant Japan sank everything they had with carrier planes landing on Paulau and Japan Island planes landing on carriers. He lost around 200 ipcs of ships.