Copy of USA and Japan Reference Cards

very true my friend, but you cannot let japan cross the suez canal.

Honestly, I like unification of the British Fleet in SZ 30 with 1 Infantry from India.  This makes it financially worse for Japan to attack than for England to be wiped out, strategically worse for Japan to attack (since they’ll lose their air force and have to leave Pearl unattacked maybe even not take China’s fighter out) than for England to be wiped out (all those ships are generally dead by UK 2 anyway, so what have you lost?)  BUT

it really tempts Japan to try!  Furthermore, form here, you can hit E. Indies with 4 Infantry, Fighter if Japan leaves you alone, or you can hit Egypt or you can just dump the infantry in S. Africa to bolster the defenses there.

Furthermore, if you build an IC in S. Africa (which negates the risk of losing Africa and thus your paycheck and allows you to stay in the upper twenties, lower 30s) you can be a relatively annoying pain in the butt. (Once Africa is secure, you can always dump a submarine or two in S. Africa making SZ 34 a threatened zone if you want too.  Or at least pose the risk of doing so if you don’t want too.)

That said:

if I had to attack the japanese iwth England, I’d go Destroyer/Carrier to SZ 59; Fighter, Submarine to SZ 45 and land the fighter in SZ 52.  I’ve seen quite a number of Japanese attacks on SZ 52 go south because of that extra fighter.

But you have a good three rounds before you need to really keep up with America, maybe 4 if you play your cards right.

And the raiding would help out.  5 Submarines = 10 IPC a round if you can ever knock out the American fleet, which, honestly, is doable, but difficult.

You’d still want an IC in W. Europe for England so that you can move the British fleet into the Med to pincer the Japanese fleet then.

Anyway, most players will just surrender after Moscow or Berlin falls. (Assuming a normal situation, which is to say, massive Axis armies, pitiful Allied armies or badly positioned Allied armies.  (switch if axis falls not allies.))

Normally I would go for transports.
That would be buy two on J1 (fleet total is 3 or 4 now) and on J2 buy one or two more.  Coordinate this with ground unit builds in Japan to fill all the transports and do the infantry push to Moscow.

In the current game, the Allied/UK player (RJ), placed his bomber within reach of Japanese home waters (Novo) and moved his Australian submarine up within reach also (Coral Sea).  This put any unprotected transport build in home waters at risk.  The added cost of either diverting fleet assets to cover them or building cover and still over building to deal with losses actually made me move toward factories on the mainland. Add in that he moved most of his India forces to Egypt and skipped on the UK1 DD vs Trans option.

I built two, one in FIC and one in Manchuria.  Sure, they will never out build the home islands but now my infantry push into Russia is independent of any transport issues.  For 30 IPC I have the equivalent of three transports that won’t sink.  I would have spent 24 for those same three transports plus a DD to protect them (12 more) then probably another transport to replace loses (8 more).  So it was two factories at 30 IPC or 4 Transports and a DD at 36 IPC.  The factories are at least one turn closer to the front so discount a turn of Infantry in the pipeline (6X3=18IPC) and now I have 30 IPC for factories vs 54 IPC for transports, DD, and infantry to fill the pipeline.  I will have to build AA guns for the factories to keep the SBR from becoming annoying but they will also be able to move up with the front lines making my kill stacks harder to hit.

As an additional bonus, I can still add transports to the fleet in later turns and if they are not moving gear to the mainland they are now available to support fleet operations / threaten Alaska/Austrialia/Africa.  This decision meant I could send the homeland transport to Hawaii with the fleet for a low odds invasion of Hawaii and the Kwangtung transport is busy supplementing the mainland, ferrying Inf from the islands, and joining the fleet facing India.

I won’t claim these are perfect moves but faced with an opponent who was looking to disrupt the J1 transport build, it was not a bad counter.  At least, so far…

I don’t know why but it can be a difficult concept to master. It took me a wile. It was very frustrating b/c I understood the concept but I might forget to unload troops when they got there or something like that then it would slow down the whole operation. Like the shuc-shuc strategy in classic. It can take some time to master but it is very effective when you do.

-LT04

I think the only thing Japan can do IF he wants to build 2 IC’s: go defensive for one or 2 turns.

defend those newly build IC’s or you’ll lose them :-P

(still think it’s a better idea to buy one IC and a transport)

GG are you there, so please answer my question. :-?