Russia/Japan/China/ Friendly Neutrals

Very interesting. I’d agree that Japan usually wants at least one factory in China no later than turn 3, even if you’re primarily playing a naval game. It’s rare to see a board where you’d want zero factories, although I believe it is a possibility. You can use up your limited 10 production slots pretty easily when you’re building serious naval units. Even if you’re pulling in 80 IPCs a turn, that can usefully go to something like 1 BB, 1 CV, 1 DD, 1 SS, 2 trans, 2 inf, 1 art, 1 tnk.

The USA sub build is a special case, because subs are optimized for killing your navy, but subs are bad at protecting American transports. If the USA builds more than 3 subs in the first 2 turns, then you do want to build Japanese factories, because, as you say, the subs make it too difficult for Japan to protect its fleet, and the subs also make it easier for Japan to nuke any transports that the USA tries to bring west to take over your factories. The USA is rich, but it can’t afford to build a huge sub stack and a huge carrier stack and a huge stack of loaded transports all in the first few turns, even if it ignores Europe altogether.

Thanks for the replies everyone.

As it happens, there was some confusion about when the planes actually landed, so it turns out both my opponent and I were correct in a sense.

The UK planes actually landed on Greece during Italy’s turn after an adjacent UK carrier was damaged, so the move was legal after all.

My bad for incorrectly believing the planes landed on Greece during the UK turn, and neither of us realized what the other was talking about.  :-D

Good to see our fellow AAAers always ready to help out with good answers, though, so thanks again all.  :-)

@Charles:

4.  If your planes have any movement points left, they must try to land elsewhere.  If the planes have used their full movements and their carriers have been damaged, the planes are destroyed.  Ouch!

That’s in the case USA attacks.

If USA was on the defensive side (Japan attacks USA fleet in sz6) the planes are allowed 1 step to find a safe landing space, not 4. That can be an Allied-controlled territory 1 step away or an undamaged carrier with room to spare 1 step away. In this particular case : Korea or Japan (if Allies control it) or a carrier in sz5/7/16/17/18/19.

I see what you guys are saying and I agree. I’ve been kicking around the idea to replace the $5 NO for Japanese control of Borneo, Celebes, Java and Sumatra with the following:

$5 for Japanese control of Okinawa, Formosa, Iwo Jima, Marianas, Palau, Caroline Islands and Marshall Islands. This occurs when Japan is at war with the Western Allies. So if UK and/or ANZAC declare war on Japan, with USA still neutral, then Japan will collect this NO.
I’ve also modified the $5 NO for Japanese control of Midway, Wake, Guam, Solomon Islands and Gilbert Islands. I changed it to $1 for control of each island.

I also removed the US NO of $10 for US control of Eastern US, Central US and Western US because I think that falls in the same category as the DEI NO. The continental US is worth $42 to the US all together, has all their main manufacturing plants and includes two Victory Cities, one of which is their capital. That’s more than enough incentive to not lose any of those three territories. However, I didn’t want to just take away US NO money, so I replaced it with the following:

$1 each for Allied control of the following: Midway, Wake Island, Guam, Marshall Islands, Caroline Islands, Palau, Marianas, Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Formosa. This occurs when US is at war with Japan.

So you see, there is still the possibility for the US to make the full $10 in NO money, plus 3 of the Japanese Islands are worth $1 which will be an extra bonus. Also, since 3 of the islands are already US owned, the US can still collect $3 when at war with Japan but before their offensive gets moving.
I thought that might do something to get a little more action in these valueless islands. I wonder if I ought to change Japan’s because once the US is in the war, Japan’s NO is really easy to disrupt because the Marshall Islands are close to the US and they are unguarded. Do you think that I should remove the Marshalls from Japan’s NO?

Oh yea, the old battle of who rolls better 2’s  :-P

Waiting till J3 is a pain, but it allows me to get more into the battle.

you end up getting blocked though which is the problem. unless you move naval over the islands you are going to take and have the boats loaded on J2.

usa tends to get everything to queensland still even if you can sink it (tend to just block with a dd or two).

no real advantage money wise waiting for j3. you lose the 10 NO. to pick up 12-13 in islands and FIC. usually -7 or -11 for allies. so usa getting his NO for the other powers to be weaker is the tradeoff.

I’ll add a vote for J2, so you can take India on J3.

Yes its one turn early, but its not that huge of a swing, esp if Japan can go up nearly 20 with the UK going down 7 for the US to go up 30.

Sea units may share a sea zone with anyone.  Land units may not enter another power’s territory, and no other power’s land units may enter their territory.