I played the grand campaign as allies, using all default settings, including Dec 7 suprise. Now is January 1942, the situation is: the allies has already occupied the whole Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku, the score is above 70,000 compared to 23,000 of Japanese.
My experience is: I almost abandoned southeast Asia and South Pacific at the very beginning, and focus on attacking Japan directly. I found that Tori Shima, the nearest island to Japan, is a perfect spot for landing Japan though it is too small to construct airfield. I gather most of my strength onto this island, without much challenge. Another great reason for using that island is, japanese planes can reach it and the wildcat could take off from it, so I used it a trap to weaken japanese air force. My VMF-221 squad has killed 376 japanese planes during three months.
After three months' preparation, I successfully landed my troops on the beach of Shimuzu in May 1st, 1942 with the escort of my BB fleet. The defence was not strong and I took it after one week. During the following months I transported more than 200,000 american sodiers and airplanes to Shimuzu, from where my troops started to conquer other territory. The most important event is: Aug 13 1942, after a month's fight, the allies took Osaka/kobe, the key port of japan, my wings has sunk hundreds of enemy ship soon after that. And the sky over japan has been cleared by more than 1,000 allied airplanes in Shimuzu, which made every movement of mine much easier.
I also found that Chinese army has much strengh at that time, and planned counterstrikes in China. The only but very important achievement is they beat japanese in Hongkong and took it back.
Till Nov 1942 Honshu has almost be occupied by allies except Tokyo and Sendai. There were 109 enemy troops in Tokyo so I dare not attack immediately. Then I recoganized the chinese army and transported about 160,000 men from Hongkong to Shimuzu. So before the final assaul I gathered 530,000 men in Shimuzu with an assault strengh at 11,000.
The attack started from Nov 29, and process is much easier than I imagined. My BB fleet made several successful night bomberyard action and got huge killings (the enemy casualty: once 50,000 and once 40,000, 15,000 twice, OOOOOHHH, it's unblievable!!!!). So I conquered Tokyo on Dec 11, one year after the war started. The 109 japanese are were totally destroyed in Sendai by Dec 20th.
By now I have sunk more than 1200 japanese ships and destroyed 5200 planes, my loss is about 380 and 3200.
Only one doubt: why have I never seen the enemy carriers near Japan? But if they came now, it would be suicide.
By the way, I also found some bugs after taking japanese cities, and I will report later.
I don't konw how to save screen during the game, otherwise I would poet them here. If anybody need my SAVE doc, please contact me.
Now comes the photos. This one is the day before my army atttacked Tokyo. More photos will be followed.
