Solution to the Dutch East Indies debate

[PanzerKampfwagen]

I have read some of the various posts around on the debate as to whether the Dutch East Indies should be frozen or unfrozen, And after thinking the matter over carefully, I am going to make the no doubt somewhat surprising statement that I agree with both groups.

One of the major problems in WaW is the Axis double tasking of Russia, and the real reason for this is that the Japanese must get resources as fast as possible. They just don't have enough resources in 1940, and if they are to survive, they must get a half-dozen more or they will eventually perish for lack of production. There are basically 3 ways for the Japanese to get these needed resources: Russia (best), China (not so great, but OK), and the Dutch East Indies (not good at all because it unfreezes the U.S.).

Now I realize that Lebatron's modifications to make Axis double tasking harder work just fine on a game that is artificially shortened by auto-victory or by an end date, but they aren't strong enough to effect a game that has no end date and no auto-victory.

Because of this fact, in a WaW game with no end date and no auto-victory, even with Lebatron's modifications, it still pays to do Axis double tasking if you want to win the war in the end, probably somewhere around 1955-1960. The solution to the Axis double tasking is not so much an issue of strengthening Russia ( although that is a good idea ), but more of an issue of making it possible for the Japanese to get the resources they need somewhere other than Russia. Otherwise, even if Russia proves tough to crack, it will always be the best choice for a Japanese attack as long as China and the U.S. are even worse choices.

They way it is now, if you attack the East Indies, you bring the U.S. into the war, and that is a fate to be avoided at all costs in a long game, no matter what. If the U.S. enters the war in the early stages, the Axis will never win, period. They might be able to stick it out until 1950 if they try hard, but they'll croak sooner or later. I realize that the Axis might still croak in the end even if Japan could get to the East Indies without bringing the U.S. into the war, but at least the Axis would have a more historically accurate fighting chance.

Thus, if you are playing a WaW game with no end date and no auto victory, it is best for historical balance if the East Indies are unfrozen. However, if you intend to play a WaW game that has an end date and/or autovictory, The East Indies should be frozen in order to preserve game balance, since WaW was originally set up that way, and to mess with it would be suicidal.

I believe that this problem could be solved by an optional East Indies mod that players could install or uninstall to switch this East Indies frozen/unfrozen rule on or off. [;)]

[PanzerKampfwagen]

I just thought I'd post a couple screen shots to show the changes I was proposing in the Dutch East Indies.

This first screenshot shows how the East Indies look in the stock game:

[PanzerKampfwagen]

I attached that screenshot mentioned to my last post, but it evidently didn't appear on the screen, and you can't open it in Internet Explorer because it's too big and the bottom gets cut off. So, here it is again, and let's hope it works.

[PanzerKampfwagen]

Apparently, someone will have to explain to me how to make screenshots appear on a forum post, but I'll see if I can thwart the problem for now by attaching a zipped file with the two screenshots of the East Indies to this post. ( If it turns out you can't download them for some reason [8|], just send me a message about it and I'll kill myself. )

[PanzerKampfwagen]

Since it appears that it's possible to download the zipped file with the East Indies images in it [:D], I'll explain the second East Indies image so you'll understand what it means. The second East Indies image shows the changes I propose to make.

Red asterisks means land areas that I propose to unfreeze.

Blue means sea areas that I propose to unfreeze.

Sky blue means sea areas that I propose to freeze.

Transports surrounded with sky blue are transports I propose adding to the map in order to keep the Allied supply lines intact as before.

Red lines are the intact and frozen Allied supply lines when these changes are completed. This is so that the the Allies can still get supplies through to China via Burma, etc., and the Japanese can't get to Australia, nor can they get their ships out of the Pacific, nor can they cut off the Philippines.

And please, write in a note to tell me what you think of these ideas. [;)]

[PanzerKampfwagen]

I think I finally finally figured out how to embed these screenshots in my posts, so here goes, first with the East Indies stock game screenshot.

[PanzerKampfwagen]

Hey, it worked! [:D]

So, here's the screenshot with all the changes I propose to make to the East Indies:

MAP LEGEND:

Red asterisks means land areas that I propose to unfreeze.

Blue means sea areas that I propose to unfreeze.

Sky blue means sea areas that I propose to freeze.

Transports surrounded with sky blue are transports I propose adding to the map in order to keep the Allied supply lines intact as before.

Red lines are the intact and frozen Allied supply lines when these changes are completed. This is so that the the Allies can still get supplies through to China via Burma, etc., and the Japanese can't get to Australia, nor can they get their ships out of the Pacific, nor can they cut off the Philippines.

[Lebatron]

Hi Panzer,

I see your still brain storming over this one. The problem as I pointed out before is that Japan would be getting 6 extra resources without going to war with any major power. What would happen in every game with this mod is that Japan would take these 6 island resources and use it to boost their production making their attack on Russia even stronger. So in fact you would only be encouraging an Axis double team on Russia. I see no other logical path for Japan to take with this change. If they can have the Dutch East indies resources without bringin the US in then why would they ever attack the US any earlier than Fall 1942? If you feel that Japan could have attacked the DEI without bringin the US in then I think you need to remove alot of the resources from these areas so it doesn't end up giving Japan a bunch of free production. Leave 1 and move 5 to areas that would unfreeze the US. Like put a couple more in the Philipines, Sarawak and maybe one out at New Guinea. Then you could have the historical 'what if' attack on the DEI without messing up play balance to much.

I also notice you really like to play with AV and end date off. Most all your posts concerning play balance put the game in that context. I think playing this game without these turned on is like playing Chess without a checkmate. Sure when I was a kid just learning to play Chess I did at first want to play on after Checkmate had been declared. Who hasn't done that at least once upon first learning the game. But after a while you should quickly realize that playing Chess till your out of pieces like Checkers compleatly changes how you play the game. If you don't have to worry about protecting your King from Checkmate then you will never be forced to make sacrifices to prevent a Mate. This analogy is very true to WAW, because if the Allies didn't have to worry and make sacrifices to protect the Capitals and resource rich areas they could play a compleately different strategy. One that would steam roll the Axis way before the dates you keep mentioning. If the Axis are surviving until after 1947 then you must just be playing the AI or the Allied player your playing against has yet to learn the full power he wields. Others will tell you this too. In the regular game with or without end date on the Allies will have conquered the Axis by the end of 1946. The only thing that prevents an Allied decisive victory is an Axis decisive victory and that can only happen if you turn AV on. If you don't have it on your short changing the Axis player and not giving him a shot at any kind of victory. It would kind of be like giving White the power of Checkmate but not to Black. Would that be fair?  

[PanzerKampfwagen]

In reply to Lebatron:

I realize what you saying about the fact that the Japanese would just use the extra production from the East Indies to pound the Russians into pulp, and I'll concede that with the present arrangement of my ideas, that's exactly what would happen.

However, I have another suggestion that would fix this problem:

Mod the game so that the U.S. enters the war 1 year after the Japanese take the East Indies. This will allow the Japanese to get the 6 resources there, but wouldn't let them use the extra production against Russia because they would immediately have to start gearing up to fight the U.S. If they wanted to attack Russia, they would have to attack it before they attacked the East Indies since if they took the Indies first, the U.S. would just roll in a year later and smash them while they were busy in Russia. Also, this would tend to make the Japanese player wait to conquer the Indies until a year before the U.S. would normally become unfrozen, and thus he wouldn't be able to get the extra resources until somewhat later in the game when he couldn't really use them against Russia anyway. This idea of the U.S. entering the war 1 year after the Japanese player conquers the Dutch East Indies is realistic in the sense that the Japanese invasion of the Indies would probably move the U.S. closer to war.

What do you think of this idea?

[Petiloup]

The problem would be that you can check an event on a date but not create a date based on an event in WAW.
 
Let me explain: you can create a date of war entry for the US if this or that region or more, is/are occupied by someone else than the original owner. The game will check if those conditions are met on that date.
 
I didn't see that you can create a date of war entry based on an event + a period P. So you could say if Japan occupies Java or Sumatra or Borneo,etc then in 1942 the US will declare war. This would be 1 year sooner than the 1943 date.
 
Now my idea would be that if Japan occupies the Dutch East Indies then he declares war on the Netherlands which are allies to Britain and in so decided to join Germany into the war against England. It will therefore unfreeze all the regions own by Britain and surely push the US to use whatever they can to go into war against Japan. What could be devised is to do something like Vichy. If the Netherlands surrender then they would authorize Japan to "use bases" into their colonies which means simple occupation of course. The only way to represent a surrendering of the Netherlands would be the invasion of UK and the fall of London.
 
This would also solves your issue against Russia as to take London you need to concentrate your effort to do a Sealion style invasion and would postpone the invasion of Russia to 1942 more or less. So even without US going to war when Japan occupies the Dutch Indies they will still be joining the war 1 year later.