ORIGINAL: Mistmatz
ORIGINAL: HansBolter
It was an innocent question about Pearl.
It wasn't my intent to set off a string of bash the Japanese opponent replies.
While I agree completely and a similar episode with an experienced Japanese opponent as a UV newbie is the reason I have refrained from PBEM play in this game, I already have too much of a reputation as a Japanese player basher for me to allow this spate of bashing to fall on my shoulders.
All I did was ask an innocent question about how PBEMers deal with a protracted Pearl strike. [8D]
The japanese player needs all the help he can get and I am happy to be on the receiving end for a week at PH. I can't speak for scenario 2 though.
It's scenario 2 and the fact that the Japanese got way, way more help than they ever needed in scenario 2 that I continue to point out. I'm never going to argue that they don't need help in scenario 1, although sceanrio one is far from the actual imbalance of history as they already have many advantages beyond historical even in scenario 1.
It how far overboard scenario 2 goes in giving them all the help they can get that throws the game in scenario 2 so far out of balance. Japan conquering all of India or Auatralia and even New Zealand and China, expanding to a point and growing to a strength that the historically shackled Allies can never hope to create the kind of turn around and collapse that occured historically, makes for avery fun game for the japanese player, but leaves the Allied player with a bad taste in his mouth at teh end of teh day. As Miller so eloquently put it in another thread "there comes a time when the Japanese player has to drop his shorts and take it up the arse like a man". This is what sceanrio 2 allows the Japanese player to avoid ever having to do. That so few Japanese players seem willing to play anything other than scenario 2 is simply deplorable.
Everytime I try to make this point I get a chorus of Japanese players responding that the scenario enhancements for Japan provide "balance". This I find to be completely comical. It the early imbalance in their favor they are seeking to perpetuate by claiming a balance is needed in the late game. By virtue of the logic they invoke the Allied players should be clamoring for an early game rebalance. If we balanced the early game in the way that they want the late game balanced, there would be no game because Japan would never get to expand in the first place. The entire game is predicated on imbalance. An early imbalance in favor of Japan and a late imbalance in favor of the Allies. I believe Alfred has made light recently of the clamoring for balance with a comment that balance has nothing to do with war.
Sorry for climbing on my soapbox again but this whole "balance" claim is so spurious it gets my goat every time.
