How am I doing?

[johnbmac]

I was wondering if some more experienced japanese players could let me know. I am a novice PBEM player whose opponent says I'm doing pretty well. It's January 4th, 1942.

On the positive side I have Midway,Wake,Tarawa,Baker,Nanomea,Wallis,New Hebrides,New Caledonia,Solomons,Bismark Arch.,New Guinea,Mendano,Ambonia,Kendari and all Borneo except Banjarmasin and Sampit.

On the negative, He still has Manilla,Naga,Bataan,Singapore,Kuantan,Mersing,and Rangoon and of course java,sumatra etc.

I really have messed up in China. I took a few bases taking big casualties and he even retook Haiphong! I also pulled too many chinese troops forward and huge amounts of resource production has been damaged. I don't know what to do about that.

I must have done too much with my air production because supplies seem to be running out.

I sunk a lot of his subs in manilla turn1 and damaged all his BBs in PH turn2.

I've lost 1 DD and an APD along with a handful of AKs and APs.

Most of my air units are intact. I've lost 272 planes mostly nates,lillys,sallys, 132 through operations(is that right?)

[DuckofTindalos]

You're definitely behind the timetable.

[dekwik]

seems to me you're doing quite well. My first pbem saw me taking Manila and Singa after June 42, and Rangoon not at all. Not that you shouldn't do much better than that!

Best advice I can give in retrospect is figure out what you need to invade successfully, then double it and you *might* be ok

also remember the domino theory is to hit them hard one by one. Not to disperse your efforts invading all over the place at one time.

There's a lot of bases in China where if you don't keep enough AV there, the resources,airfields etc get destroyed by partisans. Some you may just decide to leave that way. Others may require you to turn a combat unit around to sit on the area. Try dividing your divisions to make your force more flexible in this respect. Most cities only require maybe 100av max

Best advice on production is to change it little. Expanding or changing and repairing costs supply. If you already did too much of that I think by turning off the HI and choosing do not repair you can improve the supply situation. Others can help you more on this than I can. I don't see why Japan needs to really increase HI at all at least in CHS. Youll have a huge stockpile by mid 43 that you can start to use up later in the war.

Lots of air op losses suggests you're driving the fly boys too hard, (and maybe not enough aviation support?) so check fatigue levels. Flying long distances also increases losses, as does anything you do at 100% (drives fatigue up)

All in all, remember it's a looooonnnggg game. What happens in the first 6 months does make a huge difference in that if it doesn't go well it's hard to win, but so long as you don't throw away your KB and LBA you shouldn't lose the game in the first few months.. but just be (more careful than I was ) about risking seemingly puny units like MLs and PCs in pointless ways. You realize how much you miss them later

BANZAI!!1 BANZAI!!! BANZAI!!!!!

[Q-Ball]

Hard to tell without more information, but I would say you're doing OK; not great, but OK. By now, good progress would be Phillipines and Malaya cleared except Singapore/Manila; most of the DEI cleared, and approaching Java with an invasion; and equivalent progress in SoPac.

For a newbie I would say you're doing quite well, that was further than I got in the first month during my first PBEM.

Watch your production though. That's why your supplies are probably low, turn off some factory repair if you are really desparate and get those supplies up. Also, capture resource centers in the DEI like Toboali, Palembang, etc, that will help alot.

Losing Haiphong is bad, but you should have gotten a whole bunch of new VM divisions as a result. Turn replacements on in those units, they will build up to full-size divisions over time. If I were the Allies I wouldn't invade Vietnam until 1943 for this reason, but that's just me.

[engineer]

One other bit of advice is that you might want to altogether turn off some of your aircraft factories like the ones making Hickories or some of the floatplanes.  As you start taking Allied resource centers, you'll also start to need to organize your convoys back to the Home Islands for resources and oil to convert those into supplies and fuel.  You should have plenty of stockpiles to get through the first few months, but I like to get resources and oil home to throw off some supplemental supply so my cities & factories will be above 10k stockpiles to repair.