The Japanese Piracy Strategy: An insane plan that somehow worked

@arthur-bomber-harris said in A Nameless but Effective China Strategy:

Round 2: Japan captures 3 out of the 4 of the following territories: Malaya, Java, Sumatra, and Celebes. In your game you only captured Malaya.

Everything goes down the drain if you don’t have a strong J2 turn.

I’m not a fan playing against myself - it can make you go blind and miss obvious moves. The J1 was Cow, and J2 - 3 were Andrew’s moves from our mini-test.

The real problem is turn 3. The Allies have mid-sized fleets off both India and Queensland. As for as I can tell, Japan has 3 options for J3:
*Option #1 - Put the IJN in between the Allied fleets. This is what Andrew did, and is probably the least bad option. Most likely outcome is you trade the IJN for both Allied navies.
*Option #2 - Attack one of the fleets. Face the multi wave counter attacks ready on either side. Most likely outcome is you trade the IJN for only 1 of the Allied navies.
*Option #3 - Retreat north. Allow the Allied fleets to merge into a fleet bigger than the IJN. I haven’t played against this yet, but it feels like Japan is turtling.

Note - the absolute best realistic outcome Japan can hope for in the first 2 options is wounded capital ships limping back to a NB while facing another turn of Allied attacks.

I really hope I’m missing something and there is a 4th option.

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.

@AlphaAeffchen:

@ Kreuzfeld. You are totally right but the problem is if i do this buys for UK they can do nothing for many rounds in Europe. Italy gets very strong in the med. The USA have to fight Japan. The allies in Europe  are getting a problem because UK is isolatet because of only inf buy and USA has to Focus on Japan (but you are right i have to do this buy for UK).

In the scenario I made, US will only have to buy 2 bombers on US 1 (in most scenarios) and move 3 of the US planes to canada. They are capable of going towards Japan if Germany don’t buy the TTs in G2.

If germany doen’t buy 3 TTs on G1 (and save their money instead), I am doing taronto, and buy 6 inf and 1 ftr and lose no time in the Med. If they do buy 7 art on G1, I am buying a mIC in egypt and 5 inf in UK.

The only “loosing investments” UK has is : 3 inf instead of ftr on UK1, no taronto on UK 1 (I think 3 useless german transports might be too steep a price for germany to pay for this result).

The other losing investment is the canadian airbase and a few allied TTs on UK2/US2, however, they are more than offsett by the 9 german TTs that has to be bought to force me to do it.

The advantage I get for this plan is that no german should try for the sealion after US1, then that is just a lost game if they buy the 9 TTs. This means that I can (if I want to) send everything US builds against japan, including US turn 1 build. I am still taking Persia on UK1, so I can build the mIC on UK2 and shut down the middle east as fast as possible. My favourite way of playing the UK is to have 1 mIC in each of iran, iraq and egypt, and to use them to buy volumes of inf and mechs for a giant uk landarmy that can reach where i want them

I still think the game is favouring the axis, all I was commenting on was that in a J1, it is so much cheaper for the allied to prevent the sealion, so it will never happen.

@wittmann:

That is excellent. I would  not have the strength of character to keep that up.

In truth I was highly motivated to pull off what I did. In my group of friends there was one guy that was only friends with me because he was a buddy of my best friend. This guy was always correcting me. Always arguing with anything I said or did. I beat him at A&A all the time. That night I decide to “let” him win.

As an aside note this guy has serious anger issues to this day. In adult life we happily parted ways. In some of my other posts he’s referred to as the “Tank Chucker” for throwing a Russian tank at a radiator and literally making a loud clank as if it were hit by a bullet.

Another guy that was part of our group fo friends was one of the nicest guys you’d ever meet. However he was not a strategist and usually played fantasy games or ccgs. We played Classic over and over because he kept losing your insisting we keep playing till he beat me. When I did let him win he called BS saying I wasn’t really playing lol. So we continued playing. He still never won a two player match with me but he still enjoyed simply playing.

So I suppose that was a long post…but God I loved those days. Damn neard every Friday night we would play Classic until Saturday morning.

the best Sydney strike I have seen is when Japan takes West Aus, lands planes on it next round, and sacks Sydney the round after.

I’m a big fan of doing damage to Italy early on and basicly keeping them from accomplishing anything meaningful. In Alpha 3 this is accomplished namely by trading navy’s in the med. I brought the cruiser and transport from India to Africa to facilitate amphibious assults on Italian territores on the eastern coast.

My buys for turn 1 Europe almost always include a transport (placed in South Africa to bring my Infantry up the coast), 1 in New Brunswick (shift material from Canada to the UK, but this will depend on U-Boat positions) and a Minor IC for Egypt (implications of this should be obvious). I’ve never lost Egypt to Italy so I don’t think this is a huge risk.

The only real danger to this strategy of focusing on the Med is if Germany takes Southern France, with that Minor IC they can do what I’ve done and place ships directly in the med. Because Germany is such a power house they can (and likely will) obliterate the RN there. You’ll certainly lose Gibratler and likely Malta as well.

For England I generally end up trading navy’s with Germany as well, after Germany has gone and you’ve taken the usual losses to shipping it’s simply too dangerous to leave the German Battleship and Crusier (can’t recall if it’s a cruiser or not offhand) laying around and they must be attacked. I haven’t found a way around doing this yet. With the destruction of Germany’s surface fleet you arn’t under serious threat from Sea Lion until Germany’s 3rd turn.

In the Pacfic I keep the ANZAC island hopping and use them to harass the islands Japan leaves lightly defended. I generally also use them to take Brazil. I never thought of using ANZAC fighters to land on US Carriers (can’t happen until the US enters the war) but I think it deserves some thought. Generally they end up used in an attempt to contain the Imperial Navy.

Hope this was helpful and offered some ideas. I’m open to any critiisms/thoughts on this strategy, always looking to build on my game.

C

Been checking the FAQ and it seems to say that Iceland is indeed part of Europe.

@strategic:

I like the strategy but what are the logistics?

Try this and see how it goes:

G1:  Build five subs.  Use two subs to take out  the British destroyer by Canada.  Use three subs to take out the destroyer by the UK.  Ignore the battleship and cruiser by Scotland.  Use your airforce to take out the rest of the British fleet that you can reach.  The point is to sacrifice your airforce to keep your navy alive.  You may even use your bomber with the three subs and take it as a hit if the destroyer hits you back.  Then noncombat your battleship and cruiser into SZ 109 with your three subs.  Place your new subs in SZ 112.  This gives you 10 subs (if both of them by Canada survived), 1 battleship and 1 cruiser.  The UK can most likely destroy any one  of your fleets but there is no way they can destroy the other two.  SZ 109 is more important to them since they got to take out that fleet in order to prevent you from convoy raiding 8 IPCs.  The side benefit of them taking out your fleet in SZ 109 is that the Italian navy will not be destroyed and they can then quickly secure the med and earn their national objective.  If UK attacks the Italians anyway then no problem since you now are convoy raiding them for 11 IPCs (assuming that both of your subs off Canada survived).

J1:  Do not make any attacks that would get the USA involved in the war.  Since the USA gets to declare war on you at the end of turn 3 and get their income bonus on that turn, you will be attacking the UK/ANZAC/USA on turn 3.  Of course, you can still attack the Soviets with your infantry and massive airforce.  Just make sure that airforce is in position by turn 3 to take out the DEI, Malaya, Hong Kong, the Phillipines and the British fleet (if they are still in the area) on turn 3.

I1:  Either secure the med on turn 1 if your fleet survived or start rebuilding if it didn’t.  You may have to save your money for one turn in order to build more naval units on turn 2.  Also, take out as many friendly neutrals that you can as well as Southern France and Greece.  Once all enemy destroyers are gone then you can build subs without fear of being attacked.

G2:  Build 10 subs.  By the end of turn 3, you want to have around 25 subs.

Remember, you goal isn’t so much to take out territories right away but to deny UK /ANZAC/USA IPCs by convoy raiding them.  After the first 4 or 5 turns, you have to spend some money buying infantry to protect yourself from the Soviets.

I haven’t tried this, but it seems like it would be possible for Germany to take out the West Indies on turn 3 while Japan takes out Brazil, also on turn 3.  All three of the Axis would have to coordinate this to pull it off.  Then, on turn 4, Germany builds an airbase while some of the Japanese airforce lands on West Indies, allowing them to scramble if the USA attacks back.  Perhaps Japan should also build a minor IC on Brazil to help dominate the Atlantic