Lawrence of Arabia Gambit for the Rising Sun

[2ndACR]

Shoot, I can do 6 turns a day easy. Lets dance. We can burn through a month of game time per week. I will even let all you "club members" help you with the turn speed. I can probably do even more given the right reason. And this is it. I can send the turn out as fast as you get it back to me.

Playing H2H with your Russia first strategy is just not the same. I KNOW what is coming. no matter how hard I try to be "surprised" and limit my knowledge it just is not the same.

[Henri]

Just 2 comments.

1) Hirohito's 'Lawrence' strategy has some valid points, and is an application of Liddle-Hart's "Strategy of the indirect approach" as described in his classic book "Strategy". Of course Liddle-Hart's ideas are based on Sun-Tzu and other earlier strategy writers.

2) Historically the Japanese were well aware that they could not win a war against the US, and their strategy was not to win, but to convince the US (by destroying the US fleet) to sue for peace and to give the Japanese some of what they felt they needed. Admiral Yamomoto felt that this would not work but he went along with it anyway. So it may well be that there is NO winning strategy for the Japanese...of course WITP is only a game, so it may be worthwhile to look for a winning strategy in the GAME.

Henri

[ctid98]

ORIGINAL: Hirohito

ORIGINAL: ctid98

Who needs to be a general here or a professional soldier??? You asked for reasons why it wouldn't work, you've been given them, but you don't seem to be able to accept them. Leaving the DEI until a later date simply means you've run dry on fuel and supplies and they've had time to build up there defences. You have therefore been so taken in by your grand strategy you've not bothered thinking about the logistics, hence my statement.

You've stretched yourself out North to South, East to West and are now trying to take a heavily fortified area like the DEI just as the Allies are getting all of their gear together and can hit you on your frontier anywhere they choose. You say all of this can be done but how many ships are in for repairs from subs, mines, air attack, naval attack and general sys damage??? How many ships does this leave for the invasion of the DEI and more importantly the supplying of the forward bases and the defence of the empire???

Yes, I admit there are a lot of people, me included at times, who are willing to put down a new Japanese strategy without giving reasons, but likewise you can't just claim this will work because you say so. Give us the AAR, about a dozen people were lined up ready to prove you wrong, if you're that convinced of your strategy, well, give them a game and prove yourself right. If you can beat just one of them you'll have taught us all something.

Someone said I was not a "professional" would inferred that they are a "professional", I just wanted to know what army they hold rank of general in so that they can complain that i am not a "professional".

You assume I haven't thought about the logistics. That is a false assumption.

Most of the posts here say things like "it wont' work because it wont work".

I see no real efforts at discussion being made.

Hirohito

I'd go through my reasons again for the comment and the reasons why your ideas, whilst bold, won't work, but you're clearly not interested. You seem to expect that because you come up with these ideas we should all stand in awe, sorry, but without a little bit of proof it doesn't work that way. I think one of your main reasons for your plan working is because you say so. Fine, have it your way......[>:]

[Oliver Heindorf]

does anyone remember this funny thing some time ago ? lmao ! [:D][:D][:D]

[Dino]

There was never a dull moment with Hirohito...Too bad he's not arround any more.

[rokohn]

I was reading this thread and getting excited for the AAR, until I noticed the date.

I assume that Hirohito never played this strategy against anyone?

I have always felt that any game that allowed the Japanese to take HI and keep it completely supplied without a crippling amount of shipping had problems.

Sometimes it is hard to remember that we are playing WiTP, not Axis and Allies. [:D]

[witpqs]

To the best of my knowledge, he never played against anyone or against the AI - never bought the game. Just came up with strategies for others to execute, then criticized them (on this forum) when said strategies failed.

Still, you should find at least one good AAR - I think Mogami ran it - called Hirohito Style or some such.

[mogami]

Hi, Not me. It was WITP_dude.  I can never force myself into letting go enough to play these "Lunacy and exploit" games. In my Lunacy games it was the Allied player who was to be the Lunatic (for letting me invade Soviets) But of the 3 Lunatic Allied players who accepted the game only one actually allowed the attack. So the other 2 games were completly normal except for a mild teleport on turn 1. (I used it inside DEI but not outside DEI) I'm not a lunatic. I am a manaic.

[RUPD3658]

I miss the days when we had people like Hirohito arguing strategy (no matter how screwed up it was) rather than arguing over what is gamey.

Had more of an academic feel to the forum back then. [:'(]

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

I'm not a lunatic. I am a maniac.

Okay - I'll try to remember that! [8D]

[Drex]

I think Horohito's plan would have worked against an unsuspecting human opponent, He should have tested his theory before he posted it. He could still play someone who hasn't read this thread but the present forum readers now know what his plans are. You can't really test it against someone who knows what he's going to do.

[AmiralLaurent]

ORIGINAL: Drex

I think Horohito's plan would have worked against an unsuspecting human opponent, He should have tested his theory before he posted it. He could still play someone who hasn't read this thread but the present forum readers now know what his plans are. You can't really test it against someone who knows what he's going to do.

Actually, Hirohito plan wasn't probably even tested against the AI. Even by exploiting the turn 1 move, you can't take half of the Pacific Island and invade Alaska and Hawaii Islands some days later, and also advance in DEI. Just ignoring PI is not enough to have troops to do all that.

Seriously this plan has a major flaw, it didn't take in accound the size of WITP. Japanese convoys take a month to go from Japan to NZ, Hawaii or Alaska. And if you have all your CV off PH, off can you invade Pacific island without support with several US CVs in the area?
And it had a second flaw, it didn't take in account the fact that India and Australia are mostly self supplied.

In fact by reading the first page I even wonder if he had the game at the time he wrote it. I like his plan of attacking PH in 3 waves, one targetting the ships, one the AF and one the port... not the way WITP works.

[BlackVoid]

The plan has 2 flaws IMHO: attacking Alaska and PH.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: AmiralLaurent
In fact by reading the first page I even wonder if he had the game at the time he wrote it.

In a word, 'No'.

[RUPD3658]

ORIGINAL: witpqs

ORIGINAL: AmiralLaurent
In fact by reading the first page I even wonder if he had the game at the time he wrote it.

In a word, 'No'.

Got to respect someone who doesn't let facts get in the way of a good plan. He must be in management somewhere.

[Halsey]

Isn't this the same Hirohito who prescribed the "Dec 41 Attack Strategy on the USSR"?[:D]
Around a year or so ago, I think it was.
He got the same treatment for that idea also.

He vanished after posting that "Grand Strategy" too.[;)]

But when you only play the AI, anything unrealistic is possible.[;)]

[AmiralLaurent]

ORIGINAL: Halsey

Isn't this the same Hirohito who prescribed the "Dec 41 Attack Strategy on the USSR"?[:D]
Around a year or so ago, I think it was.
He got the same treatment for that idea also.

He vanished after posting that "Grand Strategy" too.[;)]

But when you only play the AI, anything unrealistic is possible.[;)]

I don't know if Hirohito proposed it, but Moses also talked about it and even did a (partial, because only Russia was active) AAR game against me, the goal being to prove that the forces he proposed he will conquer Russia in 2 months (after one month preparation).

He did it (he was more experienced with the ground model than I was at the time, now maybe results will be different).

Anyway at the end of the game he thought he had confirmed it was the right thing to do is a real big campain, while I conceded he had won, but will have troubles to conquer DEI, Malaya and so on without the troops sent to Russia (5 Div from S Area Army and 5 from China).
In fact I sent the same number of troops taking PH and it took about the same time. And I had no real difficulty taking DEI and Burma, so I figure he was right.

On the other hand, it was in v1.4 or v1.5 IIRC, there was no forced shock attack by crossing river, attacker losses were not so high than they are now, and there had been no home rule to activate Soviet troops before the crossing... They were totally surprised. In all my PBEM Soviet troops are active (but on defensive mode) since the start of the game.

I prefer taking PH, at least it is not playing on the map edge and is not putting artificially the US out of the war.
On the other war, I wonder if with a home rule that Soviet will be active on day one, and that Irkust won't be taken, it won't be a exploit (except maybe of the weak Soviet OOB, but the Chinese OOB is also weak and nobody complains about it) and will be more interesting than taking PH because of all the extra oil and resource and HI just near Japan.

[moses]

I took his idea and ran numerous tests to find out how to make it work. After demonstrating the correct way to conquer Russia quickly he still was unhappy and claimed I was deliberately doing my invasion wrong in order to make him look bad!!!! Go figure.

My purpose in doing the three Russia AAR's was not to show that invading Russia was wise or historical. I just wanted to highlight problems with ground combat that I thought should be fixed. The logic being that if I could defeat Russia in 2 months against a good player then something must be wrong. I think I was somewhat successful as many changes were eventually made.

The AAR's are still posted and I strongly suspect that Russia can still be conquered quickly despite improvements to ground combat. BUT it is entirely unclear as to if this strategy would be good on a whole map game.

It requires 5 Chinese and 5 SRA divisions plus a couple zero squadrens be commited to Russia through February. I doubt that conquering Russia will make up for the reduced capapility in other areas of the map.

[RUPD3658]

Was this before the update that put every Chinese and Russian unit that will ever be in the game on the map on 12-7-41? I doubt it would succeed now.

[AmiralLaurent]

ORIGINAL: RUPD3658

Was this before the update that put every Chinese and Russian unit that will ever be in the game on the map on 12-7-41? I doubt it would succeed now.

It seems to me it was allready the reinforced Soviet OOB. In fact forces were even, the problem being the Soviet deployment... (as in China). For example, two Soviet Rifle Divisions are in the hills NW of Vladivostok and will go out of these hexes one month after activation... At this stage Vladivostok is gone already and they are cut of supply and surrounded and easily pinned down.

My own opinion is that troop situation in China and Siberia may be close to history, but as the ground model is so different from history (a WITP player would never put troops there), it should be modified to produce a better game.