@Romulus:
“Why are you moving those ACs next to my naval base?”
“ACs? Which ACs? They are luxurious liners with tourists on board”
“Mmm… and why there are three of them?”
“Never heard what happened to Titanic? We do not allow our liners going around alone…”
:-D
Just joking and not sure my joke is understandable (it id difficult for me to make a joke in English)!
My point is: in A&A it is impossible to move “secretly” units in order to place them for a surprise strike. Only way of modelling something like a surprise strike is allowing combat move to be made as the powers were still at peace and then… in the combat phase declaring the state of war starting to roll dice. Even so I believe it is really difficult to obtain a surprise.
:-D
Yeah, it is impossible to make surprise attacks the only surprise Japan can bring is when it will attack.
I’ve read once about a variation on Classic that allowed for tactical surprises: you’d need 2 boardgames, each for 1 player and a 3rd player acting as referee. You’d only know the location of enemy units were adjacent to yours or if you sent fighters on recon missions to SZs/territories. The moves of both players were simultaneous: you’d make your combat moves together then the referee would inform each player of the number of enemies for each battle.