Conservative Japanese Strategy

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, She had nothing to do with it. Waiting for her to vist on Monday when she can scold me as well.

Well, never mind. It's all a bunch of pretty uncertain crapola, anyway.

One other thing about Lunga ... after the Allies take it back, it works as a pretty good depot. The way the map is laid out in this game, Lunga occupies sort of a central position between Rabaul, Kwajalein, and Noumea. I always enjoy it when I can stop routing my San Francisco convoys to Notonmeyoudon't Atoll next to Funandfruity Island, then, when they get close, re-routing them to their ultimate destination (this in order to avoid Japanese LBA - I use this as a "waypoint" for the return trip, too).

Every once in awhile, I forget to reroute one, and it starts unloading out there in the middle of nowhere. It's really annoying.

Of course, if the enterprising Japanese player has taken Noumea, I have to adopt a whole different approach. How about Noumea? Anybody besides me pretty successful in holding it as the Allies, or are my PBEM opponents just incompetent slugs (yeah, you know who you are)? When playing Japan, I like to snag it pretty early, even though I know I'm destined to lose it sooner or later. It's a real pain for the Allies to lose that base (best thing about it is the potentially 9-size port and the fact that it is non-malarial).

[RevRick]

ORIGINAL: pasternakski

ORIGINAL: Mogami
Hi, That is where Japanese players get hoisted on their own petard.

Sorry, Mog, you (and if your sister is in on this, too, she ought to be ashamed of herself) are suffering from the old "homonym disease."

"Hoist," as used in the expression "hoist on one's own petard" is an old post-Middle English reflexive verb that means "blown up." A "petard" is a bomb. When the bomb goes off, you are "hoist." When the bomb went off, you were "hoist." When the bomb goes off tomorrow, you will be "hoist."

The modern verb "to hoist" is a different word with its own conjugation, as depicted in your lengthy, boring, irrelevant (not you, Irrelevant) quote.

In my opinion Lunga is of no value what so ever once Allied player retakes Port Moresby. Port Moresby will close Rabaul and that will allow movement up through northern NG. Anything Japan has on Lunga will be out of play. If the Allies gain Wewak or Hollandia then they can make the jump towards Philippines.

Of course, you are right. All objectives in this game have shifting importance, depending on where the fighting is. Lunga is significant early on because of its potential to become the largest airbase between Rabaul and Noumea. It later becomes less significant, but frequently acts as a springboard for both sides - for a Japanese player in the early expansion looking to cut the connection between the U.S. and Australia, and for an Allied player later on looking to put the squeeze on Rabaul and points further northwest.

Now, let's get back to discussing the really interesting stuff, early English etymologies...

Whan that Aprille in his shoures soote...

Just don't start with "The Wife of Bath's Tale" or we'll be diving for our OULDE ENGLISHE dictionaries to find out about the naughty bits.

[Naskra]

 

The modern verb "to hoist" is a different word with its own conjugation

Simply wrong. And unimaginative. And also wrong.

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: Naskra

 

The modern verb "to hoist" is a different word with its own conjugation

Simply wrong. And unimaginative. And also wrong.

Pal, look, I've taught this subject for over 33 years, okay? Let's get back to having fun now, nobody needs to trot out his judgmental, assumed knowledge of something that is, of its own nature, unknowable.

[Naskra]

My apologies. I was unaware the the matter was unknowable.

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: Naskra

My apologies. I was unaware the the matter was unknowable.

Sort of like the the identities of units at an enemy base before you attack it.

[Gen.Hoepner]

Well, beside the really interesting debate about "hoist" ( yes, i admit i never even heard this word before you mentioned it[:)]), Lunga and New Caledonia aren't, in my honest opinion, a sensitive objective. As Japan i always take PM and Lunga just to enlarge the defensive ring around Rabaul, but i never fight for them as soon as the allies gets strong and bold enough to approach them with a significcant invasion force. Too far away from your main bases. Too hard to keep them supplies. Simply hold them and use them to slow your enemy down as long as possible, then retreat and leave your betties do the dirty job for you from Rabaul and Bouganville (this one i consider important and i always try to build it up as a main base, due to its ability of having 3-4 mutual supporting air-bases in a little ring of 2-3hexes)

[worr]

 [size=-1][/size]  The American Heritage[size=-1]®[/size] Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition.  [size=-1]2000.[/size]

 

hoist

 



[size=-1]PRONUNCIATION:[/size]
  hoist

[size=-1]VERB:[/size]
Inflected forms: hoist·ed, hoist·ing, hoists


[size=-1]TRANSITIVE VERB:[/size]
1. To raise or haul up with or as if with the help of a mechanical apparatus. See synonyms at lift. 2. To raise to one's mouth in order to drink: hoist a few beers.

[size=-1]INTRANSITIVE VERB:[/size]
To become raised or lifted.

[size=-1]NOUN:[/size]
1. An apparatus for lifting heavy or cumbersome objects. 2. The act of hoisting; a lift. 3. Nautical a. The height or vertical dimension of a flag or of any square sail other than a course. b. A group of flags raised together as a signal.

[size=-1]ETYMOLOGY:[/size]
Alteration of dialectal hoise, perhaps variant of Middle English hisse, heave!, possibly from Middle Dutch hissen, to haul.

[size=-1]OTHER FORMS:[/size]
hoister —[size=-2]NOUN[/size]

[Brady]

Hmmmmm.

[el cid again]

There is a bit of a consensus among historians and military analysts that Japan was overextended - that it could not support its operations well at the distance attempted.
But WITP as designed does not impose such a limit - you have "AKs to burn" - and way too few problems finding ample local supplies. So it is hard to model that in game play. The first attempt to change that is RHS - which is still experimental - and probably will need to make adjustments before it is properly difficult to go just anywhere.

There is also a bit of consensus that the Japanese didn't think things through - they were not ready to exploit their victories - that in fact they were stunned by them. And the official Japanese history (not available in English) says Adm Yamamoto himself concluded they should have invaded Hawaii - and indeed were trying to do that at Midway - with no less than three divisions tasked for the job. [This is not how Midway is taught in the West. But apparently it is the truth - time to start telling it. It first appeared in a history of Hawaii, and now appears in documentary form in The Pearl Harbor Papers - revealing Japanese plans for Hawaii dating as far back as 1910.] My view is that Japan should have gone for Noumea at a much earlier stage. The move south from Truk occurs far too late - and would not have been stoppable three months earlier. Take Noumea (for resources - again not in most WITP games but it is in RHS) and Fiji (to make it hard to get to Australia efficiently) - and you make a build up in Australia problematical. You don't see the supply issues in stock or CHS, but in RHS you MUST send supply to Australia - or it won't be that great a base. [Now this is a two way street - you ALSO can send resources FROM Australia to the USA - and if you do you will get even more supply. Australia was an important source of many things. So was New Caledonia. If the game does not reward shipping out from these places, it is not simulating the real world case.]

Mogami is right - but I carry it farther. You indeed take places to cause the enemy to delay his offensive. You do NOT build their airfields - and NEITHER IS HE as long as you own them! Same for ports. I like to use many points as just detectors of enemy units - and then I harass them - and their lines of supply.

One can go farther still: taking Hawaii is very smart - if you can. The enemy will try to take it back. Win, lose or draw - more correctly usually when you lose this battle - you have won!!! Because that focus was NOT directed against some place you need. I love to fight battles I can afford to lose, far from the battles I do not want to fight - delaying fighting over the things I really need. Conservative strategy is bold - you take the SRA - you hold it undamaged as long as possible - and you stockpile resources and oil - against the inevitable day you can't get them there any more. Hold out long enough the game is right - the Allies lose (on political grounds). Losing lives and perpetual war is not something that is going to keep you in office a long time. In effect, stockpile, and "run out the clock". It is also smart to deny the US a base halfway across the ocean - with decades of fuel in it - and smart to capture some of that oil and fuel. It may be smart to do what Japan did in the north - deny US bases in bomber range of Japan - and maybe smarter still to obtain bomber bases in range of Boeing Renton. Just focusing enemy operations against Hawaii and Alaska is a great victory - in my view - because you are not fighting over things Japan needs. A strategy of misdirection it might be called.

Finally, a conservative Japanese strategy would have exploited anti-colonial sentiment more than it did. European and Indian scholarship indicates India might have been withdrawn from the war. That matters. It isn't in any scenario, but major assets to the Indian National Army (correctly modeled in CHS and RHS as a tiny force) might be very smart.

[mogami]

"and way too few problems finding ample local supplies"
 
Hi, Sounds like a statment from a person who never got past May 1942.  In stock scenario there are no "local" supplies in Central or South Pacific.
 
How anyyone can calculate in advance what the SRA will produce is beyond me.  I have games where SRA imports more supply the it produces because of damage.
 
Can production be damaged in these mods?  You mean you reduce the possible to start with and then allow this to be further reduced? 
 
I have 2 games that are both around same period (mid -late 1943) I don't monkey with production that much and I don't go on advantures. In 1 game I have over 4million supply on map.  (SRA is largely repaired) In the other I have a little over 2 million supply on map. (SRA still has high damage dispite large import of supply for repair)
 
To provide a Sentai of fighters fpr 50 bases for a year costs 1.3million supply. To provide search planses add 328,000.
 
When you reduce the on map supply you do the Allied players job for him.  Japan should have the required supply to move where needed but the Allied war effort should make it difficult to move supply and impossible to maintain isolated bases in range of Allied air.  If you do it right there will be mounds of supply/resource/oil at production centers that is never moved.

[bradfordkay]

I was interested in Past's lecture on "Hoist by his own petard". I will admit to only knowing the general usage of the verb "to hoist". As a sailor (ragman, not stinkpotter) I had long used the commands "hoist the mainsail" or "hoist the ensign" (flag, not an obnoxious junior officer). I had always thought that a petard was some sort of neck dressing, like a cravat or tie - thus "hoist by his own petard".

[ctangus]

What's even more interesting is the derivation of the word petard: [:D]

The French used pétard, “a loud discharge of intestinal gas,” for a kind of infernal engine for blasting through the gates of a city.

[bradfordkay]

So, was their fist petard (bomb) a bloated carcass?

[Mynok]

Sounds to me like "hoist by his own petard" means he farted himself into the air.

[el cid again]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

"and way too few problems finding ample local supplies"

Hi, Sounds like a statment from a person who never got past May 1942.  In stock scenario there are no "local" supplies in Central or South Pacific.

How anyyone can calculate in advance what the SRA will produce is beyond me.  I have games where SRA imports more supply the it produces because of damage.

REPLY: Possibly you are misinformed? We have some tests running as far as 1943...

Can production be damaged in these mods?  You mean you reduce the possible to start with and then allow this to be further reduced? 

REPLY: This is difficult to understand. Production comes from resource centers, oil centers, industrial centers - and whereever you find it in any mod it can be damaged.
So the technical answer is "of course - why bother to ask?" I think you had some specific meaning in mind - and it isn't clear - so if you do have a real question - try to restate it please. What I call 'secret supply' is different: it is NOT from proper production centers, but just appears in a hex. And, yes, there isn't much of this in the South Pacific. There is some (Nauru for example, and of course New Caledonia) in CHS. I don't do - will never do - would not consider - stock games - and was very upset by the sloppiness of them. It is CHS that caused me to dust off the never played version 1.0 game and update. I did not mean my remarks to be considered ONLY in the context of a move into the South Pacific either - which possibly I should have stated. There are many more islands with tiny sources of supply in RHS in fact - I use supply points to represent fish and copra production where there is no real resources - while I use resource centers where something is mined (ores or guano) - and oil represents rubber or oil. But these are technical: not enough to matter except on New Caledonia and New Zealand in the entire region.

I have 2 games that are both around same period (mid -late 1943) I don't monkey with production that much and I don't go on advantures. In 1 game I have over 4million supply on map.  (SRA is largely repaired) In the other I have a little over 2 million supply on map. (SRA still has high damage dispite large import of supply for repair)

To provide a Sentai of fighters fpr 50 bases for a year costs 1.3million supply. To provide search planses add 328,000.

When you reduce the on map supply you do the Allied players job for him.  Japan should have the required supply to move where needed but the Allied war effort should make it difficult to move supply and impossible to maintain isolated bases in range of Allied air.  If you do it right there will be mounds of supply/resource/oil at production centers that is never moved.

I agree with this last in whole.

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: bradfordkay

So, was their fist petard (bomb) a bloated carcass?

Who you callin' a bloated carcass?

The whole "hoist by his own petard" thing comes from some obscure 18th century attempt at humor by one of those goofy English essayists whose name I can't remember right off hand.

Like I said to my new playmate a little while ago, the whole deal is not subject to rational understanding - like so many things about language, particularly when a couple of languages are involved.

And I didn't mean to lecture Mog, I was just poking a little fun...

[pasternakski]

ORIGINAL: Gen.Hoepner

Well, beside the really interesting debate about "hoist" ( yes, i admit i never even heard this word before you mentioned it[:)]),

...and it's getting less interesting by the second...

Lunga and New Caledonia aren't, in my honest opinion, a sensitive objective. As Japan i always take PM and Lunga just to enlarge the defensive ring around Rabaul, but i never fight for them as soon as the allies gets strong and bold enough to approach them with a significcant invasion force. Too far away from your main bases. Too hard to keep them supplies. Simply hold them and use them to slow your enemy down as long as possible, then retreat and leave your betties do the dirty job for you from Rabaul and Bouganville (this one i consider important and i always try to build it up as a main base, due to its ability of having 3-4 mutual supporting air-bases in a little ring of 2-3hexes)

Yes, I think this is the sensible approach, and well stated, too. If I was a drinking man, I would hoist one to you, general.

I just hate it, though, when the B-17s and B-24s start moving in like ants at a picnic and dropping petards all over my nice, orderly airfields...

...whoops, I'm not sure, but "petard" might be a collective noun, like "moose" (you know, "one moose makes a big pile. Eighteen moose make a he11uva big pile"). Maybe I should have said, "...dropping petard."

[el cid again]

Actually, New Caledonia matters in two different senses -

it SHOULD be a major source of resources - vital sorts no nation can live without - things like Antimony (of which it is the world's largest source) - although this is not modeled in stock at all - only hinted at by CHS - and even understated in RHS because - if the tonnage is right - the VALUE of the tonnage is not so great you SHOULD go for it.

But it ALSO was a good base for operations against the South Pacific LOC - Japan planned to base submarines there - and it is a good plan. You probably cannot really isolate Australia from the USA - but lengenthening the line of supply is a good idea. It greatly reduces the efficiency. Japan does not fight all the Allies resources - ONLY that portion that makes it to the front lines.

The other reason to sweep the area is Mogami's - preventive ball. If they are not there, building like beavers, they have to come and build later - and it buys time. And maybe the act of taking over the area (again) will give some opportunities to hurt them?

[el cid again]

[quote]ORIGINAL: el cid again


[quote]ORIGINAL: Mogami

"and way too few problems finding ample local supplies"

This is a structural problem with the game as released. It was not addressed directly - although I am told two different people tried to address it and gave up - until now. And the attempt is only a first pass one - there needs to be some medium term game analysi before we can see how well or poorly it works.

Local supplies - to be sure - are not an issue in the South Pacific. But they really are a big problem in India, SE Asia, Indonesia, Australia - and possibly China and Russia.

The good news is that the basic engine is functional. It has the ratios wrong (it should demand a lot more resources) - but it can be adjused to come close to working properly - and when you do that - even tiny economies (say New Zealand or the Philippines) work well.