The Tide Turns - brief AAR

[Grotius]

I have been playing the scenario "Turning Tide" (August-December 1942) as the Allies vs the AI, historical AI, 100% commitment, Japanese sub doctrine, advanced weather, pretty much all default settings. (I know, I know, I should try PBEM. This is my first "full" game vs the AI.) I've got a month to go; here's a brief AAR.

I started with Gili Gili, PM, and Wau in the west, and Luganville in the east. (And with 1500 fewer victory points than the IJN.) My strategy throughout has been a holding action in the west combined with offense in the east; once I reached the Russel Islands, I figured I'd start moving forward on both fronts. True to form, I had to play some scrambling defense to hold Gili Gili, which the IJN subjected to merciless bombing raids and night bombardments in August.

The only way I stopped the bombardment TF was to send a CV TF just south of Gili Gili, barely out of reach of Rabaul, to growl for a while. But even with fighter support from the CV TF, I found it a challenge to resupply Gili Gili. Thank goodness for air supply. I held and expanded Gili Gili, and soon enough I was able to release the CV TF back east to help spearhead my drive there.

My progress in the east was a bit too slow at the start. Ever cautious, I tiptoed into the Santa Cruz islands, slowly building up the engineer force on Nevea. As that base developed, I established a new one in San Cristobal, at Irau, and again built it up too slowly; I had trouble managing my engineering units, some of which were still in Brisbane. Eventually, though, I had a good base in Irau -- good enough to provide some fighter cover over Guadalcanal.

Indeed, the great battle of my campaign was fought over, around, and on Guadalcanal. My first landing was at Lunga, in late September, and my transports almost collided with IJN transports reinforcing the base there. An indecisive ground war raged for days while planes tore each other up overhead, transports from each side reinforced the base, and surface combat TFs sparred offshore. The decisive blow involved aircraft carriers.

The IJN's carriers entered the Slot, and my suspect intelligence showed six carriers. (Midway has been fought, so I'm not sure if there really were six.) I moved my carriers forward, just south of Guad, and set all my LBA fighters on Irau to LRCAP on the carriers. As my carriers' dive bombers still could not reach his carriers, I set my own carriers' fighters to defend my carriers. So I had about 185 fighters defending my carriers, all in one hex. Sure enough, he launched a large carrier-based airstrike against my TFs. Large, but not large enough. My fighters outnumbered his 2-to-1. In the most memorable battle, 158 of my fighters destroyed each and every one of his 60-70 escorts, and then destroyed each and every one of his 60-70 bombers. Oddly enough, his range advantage became a curse: because I had no choice but to play defense, my forces were more concentrated than his.

Stripped of aircraft, his carriers started to shrink away. My CVs gave chase, but could not catch him -- and also had to attend to the furious battle still being waged for Guadalcanal. Without fighter cover from its CVs, the AI struggled to reinforce its positions, and gradually my marines won the day. By late October I controlled the entire island. In early November I occupied the Russell Islands. On 11 November 1942 -- the 11th hour of the 11th month -- I finally pulled ahead of the IJN on points. By 50 points or so.

It is now late November and my forces in the west have started to move around the "horn" to challenge Buna. We're about to land at Goodenough Island, and we're bombing Buna daily. With only a month left, I don't know if I can achieve a decisive victory, but some sort of victory appears to be in the cards.

[Grotius]

I have paused for a cease-fire on Christmas Day, just a week before my scenario ends. December has been an eventful month. My AI opponent isn't brilliant, but it does manage to catch me with my pants down on occasion.

In early December I marched my troops through the jungle northeast of Wau and took the next inland base there. In the meantime, I established bases on Goodenough Island and Dobenedau <sp?>, to prepare the way for invasion of Buna, which is heavily defended. My level bombers began pounding Buna daily.

I put together my invasion force, confident that my enemy's carriers were in the east, and gave them CAP and a destroyer escort or two. I wasn't surprised that the AI pounded the invading transports with air attacks, but I was surprised to find a pack of submarines waiting for me. Ouch. Scratch a couple of transports, and several hundred marines. I'd also timed things poorly, so I had too many transports, not enough CAP; some bombers got through. Ouch. I did land an invasion force, but it's not nearly as large as I'd planned, and now I've got a big land fight on my hands. On Christmas Day, Buna is still in Japan's hands.

The fight in the east has gone more my way. I established a base on the Russell Islands, and it quickly grew to level 4, big enough to house bombers. The AI must not have noticed that, because it made the mistake of placing all its carriers within striking dange of Russell. Finally, after months of waiting, my dive bombers got some action! The IJN CVs *did* have the sense to put up strong fighter cover, and I lost most of my escorts, but many of my Dauntlesses and Avengers made it to the target. They pasted the Shokaku and a couple of CA's, all three of which are now limping home while the rest of the CV TFs fled back toward Rabaul. The Shokaku is still floating, but just barely; after my Christmas cease-fire, I hope to finish it off. It better sink; otherwise I have lots of dive-bomber losses to show for not much!

Again, I made my share of mistakes in the eastern theater. I learned the hard way that bombers don't bomb if you set them to "Nav Search 100." I had thought I was telling the bombers to go all-out! A quick look at the manual set me straight -- a turn too late. I'd have probably sunk more IJN ships had I figured this out sooner. <rolls eyes>

As of Christmas Day, the score is 6000 to 5000 in my favor -- just short of a decisive victory. If Shokaku sinks, or Buna falls, that should put me over the top. Provided I don't do something stupid in my last week. I may win vs the AI, but I sure don't feel ready for a human opponent via PBEM! All in good time.

[XPav]

I find Naval Search 100% at 100ft quite effective for attriting transport groups actually. That's the "AG 123 is report ::::HIT::::" messages you see in the search phase.

[Grotius]

Ah! One more thing I didn't know.

I know this is the AAR forum, not the war room, but I'm also a bit confused about how CAP works. I gather "area CAP" -- e.g., fighters assigned to patrol a particular hex, rather than a particular TF in that hex -- is a little less effective than CAP assigned to a particular TF. If one has 4 TFs unloading APs as part of an invasion, is it still more efficient to assign all fighters to area CAP? Also, if I set Escort to 90% CAP, is that like assigning area CAP (to 90% of my squadron) over that base and all TFs at that base?

I should finish "The Turning Tide" today. Report to follow.

[Grotius]

The scenario "Turning Tide" proved true to its name. My Allied forces rallied for a decisive come-from-behind victory.

The last two weeks of the scenario, 15 December - 31 December 1942, was dominated by the Battle for Buna. I pounded the enemy's ground positions mercilessly with level bombers based in Australia, Port Morseby, and Gili Gili. Meanwhile I landed five combat units, plus an HQ and a couple of other supporting units, under fighter cover from the bases I'd built up around Buna. I lost a few transports and a lot of men because of poor timing, but eventually the IJN just ran out of bombers; my CAP wore 'em down. The ground war for Buna raged from about 18 December to 30 December. Finally, on New Year's Eve, my troops broke through and captured Buna.

At game end (1 January 1943), I held Buna, Wau, Marimula, Port Moresby and Gili Gili in the west, and all of Guadalcanal plus the Russell Islands in the east. I also held Rossell Island in the middle. I had been behind on points all the way until 11 November 1942, when I pulled even; at game end, I scored a decisive victory by 6,866-5,126. The biggest factors in the score were my bases and the Japanese air losses.

The IJN actually sunk more of my ships, but I sank "bigger ships", so I scored higher than Japan in this department too. All my carriers survived, as did most of Japan; I'm still not sure of the fate of Shokaku, the Japanese CV, which I did hit several times. I should've checked on its status when the map was revealed at the end of the game. In any case, our carriers did clash a couple of times, but the flattops mostly managed to stay afloat.

When the map was revealed at the end of the game, I better understood my adversary's problems. He had few land-based bombers left -- just a handful in Truk, really -- since he'd thrown wave after wave from Rabaul at my transports landing on Buna. Yes, he sank some transports (and infantry), but he also suffered brutal air-to-air losses. He did try a desperate carrier-based assault on Guadalcanal in the final month of the campaign, but I easily repulsed him.

One oddity was that my AI opponent had formed a TF of around 20 APs, and as far as I could tell it was carrying nothing. I may mention that to the devs in another section of this forum. Oddly enough, I thought the AI played better on offense than on defense. There's no way I would've done this well against a human. I made too many mistakes. And after a while I was able to predict where the AI would make its airstrikes. It was, for example, obsessed with striking Lunga long after there was no hope of taking it back. It bombed the base there while ignoring transports resupplying less stable bases surrounding Guad.

Anyway, this was an ideal scenario for learning the game. I got to play both defense and offense, and I learned most (though doubtless not all) the mechanics of the game. The ebb and flow of the scenario was quite fun. It did take more than a week of real-time play, though, which makes me wonder if I can handle a longer scenario. With PBEM in particular, I worry about committing myself to weeks of play. We shall see.

In any event, victory is mine! Thanks for reading.

[mogami]

Hi, Stick a fork in your-self your done. Do you want Japan or Allies in Scenario 17? (scenario 19 is Japanese players wet dream. You can have 200 percent commitment. All other settings historical.)

[Grotius]

LoL, Mogami, I might be interested, but I'm not quite ready to commit yet. I do have a hankering to play one of those two scenarios, perhaps as the IJN, but I've barely tried the Japanese side vs the AI, so I have little familiarity with their OOB. Also, I worry that it would take a loooong time, and other interesting games (Hearts of Iron, MOO3) are looming on the horizon. How long *does* scenario 17 or 19 take to play via PBEM, anyway? Three months?

[mogami]

Greetings, If you use 1 day turns and go the whole route there are 610 turns. 3 months is 90 days so to finish you would need to do 7 turns per day. (most turns take under 5 minutes, the long turns are few and far between) so your looking at 40 minutes a day (abeit in 7 parcels) The Japanese can auto end the game on (or anytime after) 1 Jan 43 (knocking off up to 400 turns)