Once, after I had taken India as Japan, the British attacked a transport I built in Z39 with a plane and landed it in Ceylon, and my transports and planes were out of range to kill the plane. Other than similar cheeky raids, has anyone ever used Ceylon at all? I guess it’s worth taking with a spare transport just so you don’t fall for the sneak attack…
No, never.
Just like Crete, Sicily or Sardinia. But you’ll never know, maybe in some future game… :-)
I have seen it taken on the turn before a Calcutta smash to give JP a place to land its planes on two different occasions.
Yunan and Shan State are strictly better options, but in one of the games the JP player wasn’t great, and in the other Yunan/Shan weren’t options to hold against a counter-attack, so he didn’t have much choice if he wanted to take Calcutta the next turn.
I’ve seen Ceylon taken as a landing space for planes or to prevent a landing space for planes. That’s about it. It probably should be worth 1 IPC to make it worth while to occupy. I mean, what about all that tea?
If I remember correctly, the Royal Navy’s main base in the Indian Ocean during the war was on Ceylon. Maybe you could have a house rule moving the NB from Calcutta over to Ceylon.
If I remember correctly, the Royal Navy’s main base in the Indian Ocean during the war was on Ceylon. Maybe you could have a house rule moving the NB from Calcutta over to Ceylon.
That might be historically accurate, but in terms of game play not too sure. Japan would have easy access to a naval base to jump to Africa or w/o taking India first.
I love having it as Japan. Worth losing a transport for, even. If you have an airbase in Kwangsi, you can attack India with all your air and then land them on Ceylon. It’s a beautiful thing.
I love taking Ceylon as a place to land my planes as Japan.
Newest tactic with a super aggressive UK Pacific: dropping AB on Ceylon along with the 3 Anzac fighters so six ftr scramble along with the boats for Japan Calcutta invasion.
@dazedwit When Calcutta falls, there is often no naval battle whatsoever. You would be better off spending the money on more infantry which will help your land defense rather than investing in infrastructure which will likely not be used. Any Anzac fighters can be used to defend the land territory of Calcutta and will have much more utility than if they were used in a sea battle.
Even if there were a naval battle before an amphibious assault on Calcutta, only if the UK Pacific’s navy is large enough to nearly win a battle against the Japanese navy would a second airbase be useful. If your UK Pacific navy is strong enough to stand toe-to-toe with the Japanese navy, either something disastrous has happened to the Japanese navy (in which case the Allies probably have the game in the bag) or you have nearly no UK Pacific land units (in which case the Japanese army will walk their way to Calcutta and ignore your boats).
@PGsquig said in Anyone ever used Ceylon?:
@dazedwit When Calcutta falls, there is often no naval battle whatsoever. You would be better off spending the money on more infantry which will help your land defense rather than investing in infrastructure which will likely not be used. Any Anzac fighters can be used to defend the land territory of Calcutta and will have much more utility than if they were used in a sea battle.
Even if there were a naval battle before an amphibious assault on Calcutta, only if the UK Pacific’s navy is large enough to nearly win a battle against the Japanese navy would a second airbase be useful. If your UK Pacific navy is strong enough to stand toe-to-toe with the Japanese navy, either something disastrous has happened to the Japanese navy (in which case the Allies probably have the game in the bag) or you have nearly no UK Pacific land units (in which case the Japanese army will walk their way to Calcutta and ignore your boats).
Depends if Germany does something really weird you might be able to afford pulling the med navy back to india. If your pacific fleet consists of 3 destroyer 2 cruiers 1 BB and loaded carrier adding another 6 planes to the defence might really make it hard to japan to overcome that. IT wont be a walk in the park.
It could be something like letting 110 survive and then when you group at gibraltar having bad dice and losing the italian navy for no real damage to the UK navy.
But then again japan can then just dont invade and first take out the fleet and then a turn later invade anyway.
