Monday Night Montage (ex-Moose Crossings) - (J) vs. Bullwinkle/Obvert (A)

[Lokasenna]

I lied. Here's a couple more.

[Lokasenna]

Outside of Boac (so was the last).

[Lokasenna]

The "results."

[Lokasenna]

Could've used any/all of these escorts on strikes against Boac.

[Lokasenna]

December 21, 1944

Just about the only blood we draw for the day.

CVE Ommaney Bay was confirmed sunk earlier by a few torpedoes from a strike that was almost entirely shot down, so this makes 2 probable kills.

[Lokasenna]

And of course, the sweeps (from several airfields) all arrived after the all the strikes (from several airfields). Overall the results actually aren't bad, but they needed to be better and earlier.

[Lokasenna]

December 21, 1944

This also happened. In the combat report (and in the animation) only 2 hits total were reported.

[Lokasenna]

December 21, 1944

The damage.

[Lokasenna]

And now, a simple copy/paste of my email to Obvert this evening.

In essence, his Deathstar moved 16 hexes NW into the South China Sea. The vast bulk of the IJN was moving NE through that area. He didn't have any intel on it as far as I could tell (no DL levels on various TFs), and I think he was actually just going for the gaggle of merchants in the area.

He basically got all the merchants and inflicted a heavy body blow to the IJN without suffering anything in return. His Deathstar conglomeration is literally one hex west of all of the IJN that isn't currently repairing in Japan. That would be 8 CVs (minus 1 that will need to be scuttled and 3 more out of action), 3 CVLs (minus 1 that sunk), Yamato/Nagato/3 Kongos, and various CA/CL/DD. But I don't think it's enough to inflict sufficient reprisal on a strategic level.

A strain of thought that I've been having, and which has been contributing greatly to the amount of time in my turning these around, is as follows. I'm going to post it up in my AAR thread as well for outside input.

Essentially, I feel like I've been flailing about since switching opponents (the various air combats over Atimonan are an example). It's extremely jarring to have set up a defense (and developed my own patterns of use for various assets) for one opponent and then have an entirely different array of things to respond to at a stage in the war where things are crucial. In essence, I feel that I can't avoid being strategically surprised at most turns right now.

I'm not sure what your objective was with this turn given what I think to be various intel levels on both sides, and in case we continue please don't share just yet. As I told my friend who I've been discussing this with, who doesn't play AE but is familiar with it and my games, this is a weird middle ground where if this had come out much worse, I wasn't going to be much interested in continuing to try to adapt my defensive play with the wholesale loss of a major asset. That didn't exactly happen, but it's still a body blow with slim chance of reprisal (which, even if tactically successful, still has negative strategic ramifications on my end) - and suffered with movements that were plotted out on my side based on long habit facing a different, more cautious opponent who would not have rushed away from invasion beaches like this. A pattern of behavior that I've been conditioned to react accordingly to (e.g., conservative movements) over the course of 2 to 3 years.

Yes, IRL sudden command changes happen. Sometimes they're vaunted. I don't particularly buy into the idea that changing to Grant won the Civil War for the Union, but I'm sure CR would be happy to expound at length on whatever his opinion is on the matter. I'm sure it hastened things, but like all wars between vastly disparate economies the outcome was basically only a matter of time. I'm still curious if there's enough of a VP cushion here, but I don't think so given the time involved (15 months) and various assets yet to be harvested for points (up to about 61K strategic VPs if only 2 VPs each). If I subscribe to my previously proffered idea that 9/1/1945 should mark a draw or minor Allied victory (if AV) rather than March 1946, it becomes a much closer thing or even perhaps still favorable to me. I'm just not sure I'm that interested, largely due to the late-stage switch.

I'm not decided, would appreciate your thoughts.

For the morbidly curious, the combat text is attached.

[ChuckBerger]

It's December 1944, the US has the most powerful fleet in history. Shouldn't you have done a bit of contingency planning around what that fleet was capable of, especially given you're facing a new opponent?

You can of course try to guess what your opponent might do, but once you start making assumptions about what your opponent will do, the fault is all your own. You took a calculated risk moving your fleet around within striking distance of the enemy DS, and the risk didn't pan out for you.

Not sure what you're asking of your opponent here. Is he meant to try to play like his predecessor? To not play to the best of his abilities? To not use his forces in the way he sees fit to use them to best effect?

It feels like your email to your opponent is sour grapes. You're blaming a "change of opponent style" rather than your own complacency for the defeat, and if I was your opponent and received that email I would be annoyed. It reads like an attempt to shift blame and take away from his accomplishment with his daring move.

If you've had enough, resign and congratulate your opponent wholeheartedly for his strategic and tactical skill. If you're continuing on, embrace the challenge, adapt and move on!

[Lokasenna]

We've played 3 weeks so far. I'm asking him, basically, if he still has an interest in the game. He's got other games going on, so do I. It's a check-in on the status and slow pace of the game (mostly on my end, but he's also busy).

Yes, I know that I should have thought through everything he could/would do - but that's precisely my point. I have nearly 1000 turns in this game prior to playing any turns against obvert (990); it's been 21 since he took over. It doesn't matter how cognitively aware one is while doing the turn that "things are different now", there is still a certain "head space" that you will be in while doing the turn for the same game that you've done for the past 1000 turns.

As I said in my email to him, this isn't exactly a catastrophic blow. But it's just another example of strategic surprise.

The more I look around at it, the more I think he wasn't even trying to attack the IJN. I think it more likely he thought it was entirely absent. Regardless of his intended goal, which neither of us know, other than acknowledging my relative complacency, in no way was I belittling his move. You said you'd be annoyed to receive that "sour grapes" email; I'm moderately annoyed at your suggestions.

Do I think it's intrinsically unfair to the defensive player to have a new opponent beginning in December 1944? A little bit, yes. Maybe that's sour grapes to some folks, but honestly I don't give a rat's ass if they think that unless they've been in the same position or I know they can conceptualize all the factors involved. There are literally years of preparations (and expenditure of precious, limited resources) that were made against one opponent in this game and his patterns of attack. Some will still be useful, others that I think I can reasonably assume would have been won't be. I didn't think of this extreme shift when I reached out to several folks to continue the game. I wanted to see if I had enough of a VP cushion. I've lost a fair amount of interest in that question.

[mind_messing]

FWIW, I understand your pain. Our late '45 game is just a drain on my morale at this point, there's a reason why you get the '42 turns back first.

It's a different kettle of fish if the IJ player has a legitimate shot at victory; that does wonders for keeping morale up.

However, I think there's an element of SCLS with you at present. The IJN was just going to eat up fuel at this point, and Luzon isn't the Home Islands...

That said, I really can't blame any IJ player for wanting to focus on games that aren't a foregone conclusion. Fast forwarding through turn after turn of endless bombing raids isn't amazing fun.

Plus, you'll have more time for our new game

[dave sindel]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

We've played 3 weeks so far. I'm asking him, basically, if he still has an interest in the game. He's got other games going on, so do I. It's a check-in on the status and slow pace of the game (mostly on my end, but he's also busy).

Yes, I know that I should have thought through everything he could/would do - but that's precisely my point. I have nearly 1000 turns in this game prior to playing any turns against obvert (990); it's been 21 since he took over. It doesn't matter how cognitively aware one is while doing the turn that "things are different now", there is still a certain "head space" that you will be in while doing the turn for the same game that you've done for the past 1000 turns.

As I said in my email to him, this isn't exactly a catastrophic blow. But it's just another example of strategic surprise.

The more I look around at it, the more I think he wasn't even trying to attack the IJN. I think it more likely he thought it was entirely absent. Regardless of his intended goal, which neither of us know, other than acknowledging my relative complacency, in no way was I belittling his move. You said you'd be annoyed to receive that "sour grapes" email; I'm moderately annoyed at your suggestions.

Do I think it's intrinsically unfair to the defensive player to have a new opponent beginning in December 1944? A little bit, yes. Maybe that's sour grapes to some folks, but honestly I don't give a rat's ass if they think that unless they've been in the same position or I know they can conceptualize all the factors involved. There are literally years of preparations (and expenditure of precious, limited resources) that were made against one opponent in this game and his patterns of attack. Some will still be useful, others that I think I can reasonably assume would have been won't be. I didn't think of this extreme shift when I reached out to several folks to continue the game. I wanted to see if I had enough of a VP cushion. I've lost a fair amount of interest in that question.

I didn't think your email came across as sour grapes. I haven't experienced your situation with a late-game change of opponent, but I can certainly appreciate the point you are making. Has Obvert responded with his thoughts yet ?

[Canoerebel]

I suppose nearly all players who have taken up the gauntlet to play this game know how you feel, Lokasenna. You seem to have arrived in the game at peak form, some years ago, just immediately establishing a presence based upon the quality of your play and the evenness of your demeanor. I thought it likely that you were a prodigy - one of those rare individuals who doesn't have to learn the hard way. With that in mind, a few encouraging words, because I think I know just how you feel at the moment.

The suddeness and unexpectedness of that battle and your losses was hard enough, but even harder is the (mostly subconcious) knowledge that your forces are now battered and remain in harm's way. There is a (mostly subconcsious) reluctance to carry on when you know that yesterday's bad day can be repeated, albeit in diminishing occurrences, over coming days. It's hard to get jazzed about extracting a defeated force from the presence of an untouched (except for aircraft losses) and mobile enemy force in the hands of a capable opponent.

I encourage you to never again entertain serious thoughts on the day of a serious mishap. It's just so hard to process things with any degree of perspective. Always give it a few days before making any semi-permanent decisions or communicating your thoughts to your opponent. Nearly always, you'll have recovered your equilibrium by then and will know that you wish to continue and to see things through.

I'm re-reading Ambrose's D-Day right now. Yesterday, I read the chapter in which an American officer at Omaha beach was convinced the invasion had failed, that the Allies would have to withdraw, and that it was a complete disaster. After a few days revealed the true state of things, he wrote a "lessons learned from Omaha" paper in which he concluded, "Never, ever believe that something is a disaster. Things are never as bad as they seem."

You are a terrific player. Few games go long term. Few games get handled by very good Japanese players who know how to fight in '44 and '45. We need to see how you handle things. And the fact that you and Obvert are matched in this game makes it that much more exciting to the forum.

Fight on!

[Lokasenna]

We'll be continuing. I feel like I knew this before arriving at the conclusion specifically, but it would not be fair to have asked him to invest time and energy into picking up the game only to take my ball and go home later because I didn't like how it felt to have to put in more energy than I thought simply because I didn't think about it beforehand.

But I'm no longer terribly interested in seeing what the end of the game is. I hope that doesn't rob obvert of worthy adversarial play, but it might do so unintentionally.

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

FWIW, I understand your pain. Our late '45 game is just a drain on my morale at this point, there's a reason why you get the '42 turns back first.

It's a different kettle of fish if the IJ player has a legitimate shot at victory; that does wonders for keeping morale up.

However, I think there's an element of SCLS with you at present. The IJN was just going to eat up fuel at this point, and Luzon isn't the Home Islands...

That said, I really can't blame any IJ player for wanting to focus on games that aren't a foregone conclusion. Fast forwarding through turn after turn of endless bombing raids isn't amazing fun.

Plus, you'll have more time for our new game

The pain isn't the losses as the losses aren't particularly painful.

The frustration is in having to learn a new opponent at such an extreme late stage. I wish I had given literally any thought to this prior to actually picking up a new opponent.

This game isn't a foregone conclusion, even had I lost all of my CVs. The next turn isn't even foregone - he's got his deathstar literally 1 hex from the biggest guns on the map, and the USN BBs (and particularly CAs) have taken brutal beatings in this game.

Keep in there in our '45 game, I'm trying to give you what you seemed to want to see before you run out of gas entirely [;)]. I wasn't planning to do so, but at this point why not?

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel


The suddeness and unexpectedness of that battle and your losses was hard enough, but even harder is the (mostly subconcious) knowledge that your forces are now battered and remain in harm's way. There is a (mostly subconcsious) reluctance to carry on when you know that yesterday's bad day can be repeated, albeit in diminishing occurrences, over coming days. It's hard to get jazzed about extracting a defeated force from the presence of an untouched (except for aircraft losses) and mobile enemy force in the hands of a capable opponent.

It's not even this. OK, so I lost a CV, CVL, and CL, with possibly a few more to come on the next day but we'll have some firefights and see how it goes. I'm relatively cold-blooded when it comes to assets, at least once they're in the thick of things. It'll either work out or it won't, and the choices are obvious or simply probabilistic decisions. It's all of the things leading up to that which bother me. I don't spend enough time allocating my forces, particularly air support. I don't spend enough time looking at possible avenues of Allied advance at this point in time, and haven't for 5-6 game months or so, and it's coming back to bite me in terms of lack of contingencies (airfields) for things. Yes, that's on me, but it's a compounding factor. Some of the lessons have been fun to learn (like seeing how Asia plays out from this side); others aren't lessons so much as a repetition of, "Well, you should have known better, you big idiot. You already knew this." Failing to account fully for Allied movement capabilities, as in this instance, is just one more example of the latter. In short, they are dumb mistakes that I make because I haven't internalized my opponent's patterns (yet) and am not spending enough time on the game. I don't forgive myself for making dumb mistakes (mistakes from ignorance do not qualify as dumb).

It's just... not a very fun game at this point, and honestly hasn't been for a while - for reasons to do with my life and nothing to do with the game itself, the game's mechanics, the state of the game's design/victory condition balance, or opponents. I can't (won't) give this game the time that it requires. Late-game Japan in this situation requires several hours at a stretch at times unplanned-for (for me; I can't do turns in pieces or they suffer). Most often, I am doing the turn not because I want to but because it has sat in my inbox for enough days (usually 4ish) that my guilt at not doing what I said I would do (play some turns) overrides my reluctance to carve out the time to do so.

The core reason for why I've posted so whinge-ingly (whingingly?) is because I signed up for learning a new opponent's asset usage patterns at possibly the most crucial stage without thinking about it from that angle first. It's cost me time and assets to learn them. In 1943 or even early 1944, that's a piece that doesn't have the same implications for final victory or final defeat as it does in this time and place.

To use a baseball analogy, it's a high leverage situation in the final innings. 1943 and earlier in 1944 are, by comparison, middling leverage in almost all cases. If you screw up, there's time to adjust and score some runs of your own. You still have bench players and relievers you can burn, there is still time to observe the opposing manager's moves and consider their impact.



I'll play this out to the end, but I'm finally acknowledging what I've felt for perhaps the last 6 game-months now: I'm almost definitely not going to enjoy it. When my other Japan game gets through this stage 2 or so years from now, I do not currently plan to play late-war Japan again.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
When my other Japan game gets through this stage 2 or so years from now, I do not currently plan to play late-war Japan again.

I enjoy late war Japan, so much so in fact, I accelerated late war to March of 1942 in my game against Obvert.[:D]

Just looked at the turn, ouch. You were definitely not in run and hide mode, like I normally am. [X(]

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Lowpe

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna
When my other Japan game gets through this stage 2 or so years from now, I do not currently plan to play late-war Japan again.

I enjoy late war Japan, so much so in fact, I accelerated late war to March of 1942 in my game against Obvert.[:D]

Just looked at the turn, ouch. You were definitely not in run and hide mode, like I normally am. [X(]

I was running silent to avoid detection from him spotting ASW patrols. I've also had CVs get detected simply from air ops, it seems. I didn't want him to know where I was.

I'm pretty sure it worked - but it worked too well and there was other chum in the waters.


OK, so here's the plan then. I'll play through August, 1943, as Japan. Then you take over. Rinse and repeat. I'll be Yamamoto, you'll be Koga.

[Lowpe]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

OK, so here's the plan then. I'll play through August, 1943, as Japan. Then you take over. Rinse and repeat. I'll be Yamamoto, you'll be Koga.

Man, I don't know if I could handle the pressure of being in a good position![:D]

[Bif1961]

Now you know how Lee felt, every time he beat a Union General on the battlefield it was the next one up to give it a go. He lost to Meade at Gettysburg, in a close run contest then had to deal with Grant. Grant understood, as probably few union generals did that he could win a war of attrition and maneuver by getting Lee to react to him instead of the other way around. he still got bloody noses in the Wilderness and at Cold harbor, but he maneuvered and made Lee chase him to Petersburg, Richmond siege where Lee was fixed and was worn down by attrition of men and logistics. That in the position Japan finds itself in 44-45. No matter how successful you have been winning many if not most battles, by that late date you are like Lee 1864-65.

[Lokasenna]

I finally completed the next turn. I feel I got rather unlucky during it, but mostly it was neutral-ish.

I lost 3 Agano CLs and 1 Kuma CL (IIRC) in surface actions. A couple of IJN DDs went down (3-4), and a couple of USN DDs went down (1-3).

I crippled BB Alabama. She might sink trying to make port, but I have no subs nearby to try to finish the job. Also sunk CA Louisville, and through air strikes off Luzon we sunk CA London and a gaggle of LSMs with guns/vehicles onboard. Might have sunk CA Exeter.

I lost 2 Kongos, partially to 16-inch shells but finished off by air strikes. Hurts, but I knew they were probably outclassed and they're less important than CVs.

CV Katsuragi sank from accumulated fires, as expected, but Sys damage was low enough that there was a chance she'd put them out instead so I hadn't scuttled.

Yamato and Nagato engaged Allied SCTFs, ran out of ammo, but didn't get damaged much... until 4x Clevelands and 4x Fletchers sunk both, presumably via fire. I didn't check.

CV Hiyo and CV Soryu both failed damage control rolls while withdrawing and are now in the deep red Sys and Fires, but with Float and Engine damage under 10.


So on the plus side, most of the CVs escaped even if those 2 go also blow up. On the unlucky side, the damage control rolls (which are also presumably what sunk Yamato/Nagato) really bit me in the ass. The posters who complain from time to time about how a single torpedo sunk Taiho IRL because of bad damage control, etc., but that it never happens in the game... [8|]

BBs Fuso, Yamashiro, and Ise with 2 CAs and some DDs got in on a 6x Essex, 1x RN CV, 3x CVL, 2x CLAA, and 8x DD force... and pursued the fleeing ships... in a night action... with basically no results. Also unlucky here. There were no messages about any CVs being screened by DDs, etc. Range was short to medium. My guys just missed their shots.