Matrix Games Forums

Gents,
 
I finally found that post I was looking for - the one detailing my concerns about India.  The post is #888 (page 30) and took place around the July 15, 1944 point of the game.  In that post I detailed that I had already reinforced India with more coming (though not enough, it turns out!).  Anyhow, the timing of this post should clear up any lingering questions about whether I had foreknowledge of John's invasion.  John says he first began contemplating the India invasion about ten weeks ago game time.  That would be around mid-August 1944, at least a month after I had arleady taken steps to strengthen India.
 
Dan
 
P.S.  One or two nice folks responded to that threat-to-India post and poo-pood the vey idea.  See, I told ya!

Hi,

just some thoughts from an amateur strategist:

(1) Assemble a sizeable force at Singapore for the counterattack in India. Would make sense to employ British/Indian/CW here because of their high anti-armor values. Don't forget to include at least two tank brigades. Chinese forces are not that useful, considering that your opponent seems to employ sizeable tank forces in India. But some Chinese divisions could come in handy to garrison retaken bases.

(2) Send strong US forces to China, 4-5 divisions (including one USMC division), some tank battalions, at least one combat engineer regiment, corps HQ, army HQ, construction engineer assets. They would be useful to replace any British forces send to Singapore and ultimately India. And you should have more US forces in the Pacific than you need there now.

(3) Send enough forces to Bengal (Calcutta, Dacca etc.) to keep this area. This should be your base for the reconquest of India because you can easily send reinforcements by sea from Singapore under covered by air bases in Malaya and Burma. Bombay and Karachi are not that important now, doesn't really matter if you lose them.

(4) Ceylon is your operational carrier in the IO now and should cause your opponent some major headache. But it should hold on its own.

(5) Send the US Fleet to Singapore and then in the IO. Fury in the Slaughterhouse.

(6) Prepare to invade Java. Nemo's idea is quite good. Recon the place. If you can take Java, do it with secondary assets.

(7) China: You have enough time here. Shanghai should be your ultimate target.

(8) Take your time for the invasion of Formosa. It's not that important to take it now, 1-2 months won't matter.


Btw., I think your opponent lost the war in China. The forces that are now in India should be in China.

K

Thanks, Kereguelen, for taking time to give good ideas.  Some general responses:
 
1)  The Formosa troops are 100% prepped and I am inclined to proceed because it cuts the Japanese empire into two and will help me finish off China.
 
2)  It would take far too long to extract troops from China and get them to India, and it would also blunt the overwhelming might of the Allied army in China.  Shanghai is my ultimate target (three US Army Divisions on the way from the Aleutians to Iwo are already prepping).  Many other cities should fall in the meantime.
 
3)  I really don't need to invade DEI, because her resources and oil have already been diminished considerably.  However, I will invade Palembang as soon as I have transports.  I have 2000 AV 100% prepped.  John has 9 units about 60k strong.  The base has been bombed unmercifully for two months.  As soon as the Formosa invasion is complete, I'll have all the ships I need to handle DEI.
 
4)  Calcutta will be my primary rallying point.  The troops that were already there (small garrison units of 100 AV) are moving to Bombay and Karachi to reinforce them, but already units from Singapore are in the area.  This region will be safe.
 
5)  Ceylon is indeed a massive unsinkable carrier right where it hurts John the most.
 
6)  Most US fleet carriers and plenty of combat ships are heading to the IO.  The RN carriers will arrive first (with Bennington and Ticonderoga).  I may employ them if the KB remains scattered.  Certainly I can use them judiciously within range of LRCAP.
 
7)  John's going to go great guns for awhile in India, but there's too much space, he doesn't have enough troops, and Allied aircraft will eat him up.
 
8)  John is pulling back in China; he's going to lose most of it if the game lasts long enough.

Gents, early in the game something happened in China that has stayed with me throughout the game, and which makes the current situation there particularlly satisfying.
 
When the game started, John made a pretty big production of telling me that he wasn't going to move on any towns in China until his troops were 50% prepped for that base.  At first, I thought he was being sportsmanlike in alerting his inexperienced opponent that he was going to cut me some slack.  Later, though, I realized this was purely misinformation meant to deceive.  It was his way of coverning the fact that he was pulling alot of units out of China; he didn't want his lack of offensive action there to alert me to this fact.
 
His deception really bothered me.  I would've understood it more if it was a game against equals, but I thought it was a rather extreme way to take advantage of an inexperienced player.  John may not have realized just how egregious that was because he may not have stopped to think about it.
 
The Allies caught on pretty quickly, and I had enough time to move units out of China to counter his strategy.  This, in turn, led to the eventual Jap collapse in Burma, then Sumatra, then Malaya, then Vietnam, and now China.  It is a little bit of poetic justice that his strategem ultimately backfired.

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

His invasion of India is an example of vainglorious elan unsupported by deeper strategic consideration. It is spectacle but not war. In a real war this would fail terribly and then there would be medals all around in order to help conceal the extent of the failure. Individual stories of bravery would also be extolled in order to draw attention away from the errors in the High Command.

But this isn't a real war, it's a game, right? He has few good options in game terms. He can't go into the teeth of 50+ carriers in the northern Pacific/Iwo. He can't stop the VP erosion from overwhelming strategic bombing. He can at best, by total commitment to the Asian landmass, slow down VP losses in China while watching his supplies dwindle.

His "game strategic" goal is to avoid auto-victory in January and play on. Of course the Japanese wouldn't have invaded India in RL in these circumstances. But they didn't face auto-victory or know when the war "had" to end.

Can he reclaim enough VPs in India to slow the erosion enough to get past New Years 1945? I haven't done the math; maybe he has. A massive IO carrier battle is shaping up, outside LBA range if he has any say. Will he net out at positive VPs? Maybe. He already knows he can't "win." What he can do is extend. To do that he had to do something to equalize the Allies' vacuuming of VPs in the Solomons, etc., which he can't touch, and the strat. bombing, which he can only slow down a bit. India won't win the war for him, but nothing can do that now. It can change the end conditions.

Bullwinkle, very well said.  I agree, although the root of the problem in my opinion is that he should have hit Sikhalin Island with everything he had in early 1944.  Sikhalin has always been the real threat to Jap welfare, and early in '44 I was so weak that John had a decent chance of hurting me badly.  Not only were my ground forces wrecked, my ships were out of fuel, I was low on supplies, and I had a tremendously long and vulnerable supply line.  John didn't know my problems, of course, but he did know his - an Allied Sikhalin Island would be murder to the Japs.
 
John's best chance is to get a carrier vs. carrier battle in mid-ocean, but I'll do my best to see that he doesn't.  He's already lost a CVE and suffered some damage to Soryu.  (On the other hand, the American carries won't have the CVEs, but they will have the Brits).
 
It should be bloody and probably the outcome will persuade him to either give up or continue.
 
At the current rate the Allies wouldn't achieve auto-victory until late winter or spring.  I'm at 1.40 to 1, and probably will be about 1.60 to one on New Years Day barring some calamitous one-sided victory that either increases or decreases that ratio.

Hi Dan, I do read this AAR but rarely comment.

If you do go after his carriers in the IO the result is a forgone conclusion.....why? If I remember correctly one of his land based strikes flew into a CAP of over 800 fighters a while back. NOTHING can get through that.

Its a shame you are not playing with a HR limiting the no of carrier a/c in a single hex.....gives the Allies a chance early in the game and the IJN a chance later in the game......

Hey, Paul.  I won't have anything like that time, because the CVEs aren't coming (and they carry something like 600 fighters).  If all goes well, I'll have about ten US CVs, a similar number of CVLs, and the RN carriers.  I'll consider splitting them into different hexes if John is doing the same.  If he combines, I will too.

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

Hey, Paul.  I won't have anything like that time, because the CVEs aren't coming (and they carry something like 600 fighters).  If all goes well, I'll have about ten US CVs, a similar number of CVLs, and the RN carriers.  I'll consider splitting them into different hexes if John is doing the same.  If he combines, I will too.

I would never do such a thing without a house rule! Offer a plane limit per hex to him - or do whatever you need to do.
If you split your carriers and he combines them in the turn they clash - you have lost several carriers and will be angry about your own concession.

In my pbem with bigbaba I try never to forget that both should have their fun. If something works fine but is either unrealistic or exploiting the game mechanics, I'm always willed to negotiate a new house rule.
You might think about that regarding the extremly powerful naval search - but that's your choice!

If you haven't already, I'd give very careful consideration to the implications of the "Nemo Plan" as a counter to John's invasion of India.

I think there's more there than is readily apparent.

Thanks again for the advice and comments, guys. Some responses.

Historiker, do you really think John's suffering unfairly to LBA in India? He has hundreds of mostly unguarded merchant ships within a hex to about six hexes of hundreds of highly experienced bombers. In this situation in real life, the Japanese transports would be shredded, I think. So, I believe these results are plausible, and that John should have known that if he moved into close range of Allied LBA and failed to adequately guard his ships he would take fearful losses.

DW, as I recall, Nemo asked me to not blunt my drive in China (I'm not) and to hit DEI (I can't until I have troop transports).

We've played another turn and it appears that John only has five infantry divisions and four tank divisions and a mishmash of other troops in India. That isn't enough to do anything but rumble around like marbles in an empty metal bucket making lots of noise. I'm proceedings with my plan to to reinforce India to make sure I have some security, but I'm also going to re-evaluate what's going on here.

If the threat isn't that great, is he trying to spring a trap? Is so, what? Drawing the carriers into a fair fight isn't exactly a trap, but could he orchestrate something that would be one? The American carriers will have to go through several very narrow straights to make the IO. Could he massively mine them? Before I sail through most of those straights, I'll send a destroyer through to see if there are mines. The first chance will come at the straights between Aparri and Batan Island in a day or two.

That's the only trap that I can presently envision, but I'll give the map a careful lookover tomorrow and see if I can find any others. Most options I'm considering keep the Allied carriers within range of LBA, so there's not too much risk in a fair fight.

If it's not a trap, is he trying to draw my carriers away from some other strike? I believe Australia is safe (It's heavily garrisoned east and west because I don't have transports to shift Aussie troops right now); Sikhalin Island is safe (massive mining, stout garrisons, tons of air power, and winter is about to set in); Hawaii is safe (massive garrisons, massive air presence on multiple bases); West Coast is safe (massive garrisons, massive air, etc). Anything else isn't vital.

Hmm, what's going on here?

Most of the time you are well-advised not to ascribe to Machiavellian planning and obfuscatory planning that which can be ascribed to idiocy. That's a paraphrase of a well-known saying.
 
Now John isn't being idiotic here but in our terms it is certainly possible that he has mistaken daring action for advisable action. One of the biggest problems players have when they reach an above average level of play is to realise that just because they CAN do something doesn't mean they SHOULD do that thing.
 
In my AARs you'll note that I decline combat at least as often as I actually accept it. Operational art is the pattern of declinations and acceptances in the furtherance of a strategic goal. The greater the art involved the fewer acceptances and the greater the declinations whilst still achieving the strategic goal.
 
John, IMO, often decides that because he CAN do something he should do it and often makes the wrong decision in terms of declination and acceptance. He didn't accept combat over Sakhalin ( which he should have done and which cost him this game ) but now he is seeking combat in a theatre which isn't even secondary any more but tertiary. A lot of people are applauding his hubris but I think that strategically this is an utter disaster and the applause he is getting from people who aren't appropriately parsing the risk benefit analysis here is preventing him from objectively looking at this operation and seeing it for the chimera that it is.
 
 
So, just because you can't see any firm., reasonable strategic underpinning for this doesn't mean that there is a firm, reasonable strategic underpinning. It may just be that there is NO deeper plan. Sure if you were facing me then there would be and the invasion of India would be designed to create other opportunities on other fronts. John, while a good guy in general and an above average player specifically is NOT a deep strategic thinker. He runs uni-dimensional operations which feature little exogenous "shaping" of other theatres.
 
 
DEI: I am invading DEI with fewer than 20 transports and a dozen DDs. I am sure you have at least this force at your disposal. Sure the games are different but the key is that you mightn't be able to mount as big an invasion as you want but I'm sure you can invade somewhere.
 
 
As to the naval search... You know, if he put those AKs and APs in under the protection of CV CAP your B-24s etc would suffer losses and the hits you score would be minimal. He is bitching about something he has the capacity to limit. Instead of bitching he should be focussing on examining his play, analysing the data and improving his decisions. Keep the bombers on naval search, they CAN be countered, John is just not doing so properly. It is perfectly appropriate that he be punished for failing to see the obvious solution.
 
 
Bullwinkle - If you play the game with VPs in mind then your point has some merit... although even then I think this Indian adventure is misjudged... but I tend to discount VPs. They are a crude measure which encourages less than ideal strategic decision-making. You should want to take Singapore because it is a developed port with 2 different routes of exploitation along SLOCs NOT because it will give you x hundred VPs. Different strokes for different folks though.

Canoerebel, I think that John's early strategem regarding China and attempting to misguide you there was entirely within the realm of gamesmanship and I think you should re-examine your characterisation of it as being possibly unfair.
 
Your perception of this as a game not between equals and in which he shouldn't have used all the tools at his disposal is just that, YOUR perception. Your error lay in allowing your bias to alter your perception at all. I amn't saying this to give out to you but to try to give you a tip for future play. Don't make assumptions, look at objective reality and within objective reality rule nothing out because YOU wouldn't do it.
 
John tried a strategem which was within the realm of gamesmanship. You didn't expect it because you had assumed he would share your view of the game ( a mistake on your part ) but in the end the strategem ended up being an error on John's part.
 
Learn from this and in your next game don't go in assuming that your opponent will go "Ah, Canoerebel's a newbie, I'll go easy on him". I have, often, had an issue where I know I could crush someone in a PBEM or chess if I go in full-bore and I have to decide whether or not it would be more beneficial to them and/or condescending to them for me to go easy on them or to bring my best game.
 
Nowadays, most of the time, I ask what type of game they are looking for and then I pitch it to their expectation BUT if they assumed I would go easy and never checked this with me then I would view it as being beneficial to them to teach them the error of making such assumptions by being extra-tough on them, beating them quickly and then explaining that this constituted a lesson about assumptions and the fallacy of generalising from our own biases.
 
 
In the long run though I think that strategically you have played a better game here than John and that in more recent months his strategic decision-making has been aflounder. I think there may be exogenous reasons for that which I won't go into here but of which I know you are aware but that doesn't change the fact that strategically he is making serious errors these days which you can capitalise on... so long as you assess objective reality and don't get blinded by assumptions about him which aren't warranted by the evidence of our senses.

DW, well sometimes we play well and we lose, sometimes we play badly and we win. Thus victory and loss are insufficient yardsticks of good play.
 
Style and maximising efficiency, minimising the margin of success is the best arbiter of good play and thus, I think, a very important factor. I don't care if I win but I do care if I don't put a high efficiency, low-margin plan together which is succesful both operationally and strategically.
 
Different people weight things differently and to some winning is important. That's fine though, different strokes for different folks.
 
I should point out that when I criticise plans in other AARs it isn't to make anyone feel bad but is simply my attempt to promote "style" and using objective reality as a basis for planning such that the level of play will improve. If any AAR writer doesn't want me to comment then he need only ask and I'll shut up.

Nemo, DW was complimenting your plan. 

ORIGINAL: Nemo121

DW, well sometimes we play well and we lose, sometimes we play badly and we win. Thus victory and loss are insufficient yardsticks of good play.

Style and maximising efficiency, minimising the margin of success is the best arbiter of good play and thus, I think, a very important factor. I don't care if I win but I do care if I don't put a high efficiency, low-margin plan together which is succesful both operationally and strategically.

Different people weight things differently and to some winning is important. That's fine though, different strokes for different folks.

I should point out that when I criticise plans in other AARs it isn't to make anyone feel bad but is simply my attempt to promote "style" and using objective reality as a basis for planning such that the level of play will improve. If any AAR writer doesn't want me to comment then he need only ask and I'll shut up.

The comment I made wasn't a criticism, Nemo.

It was a compliment regarding your ability to see past the immediate immediate strategic implications of John's offensive in India and come to a less obvious, but more devastating response than a direct confrontation of John's forces in India would be.

As you said... "Artful".

With the exception of a vital strategic goal, which John doesn't have, it seems to me that John's invasion of India is little more than a Pacific version of the Ardennes Offensive.

And, John's invasion of India suffers from many of the same weaknesses that the Ardennes Offensive suffered from.

More specifically...

The only fuel he has, aside from a bit that he might capture, is what he took with him.

He has a big fleet of fuel hungry ship in the Indian Ocean.

Canoerebel's goal should be to make certain that they can't get to a gas station.

Either John's gas station is in the Dutch East Indies, or he has to go through the Dutch East Indies to get to it.

Deny John the opportunity to refuel his fleet by capturing the Dutch East Indies and he is well and truly screwed.

As you've noted, that can probably be accomplished with a minimum of force and without blunting his main thrust around China.

Canoerebel, DW... Oh I know you weren't criticising it... The bit about any criticism not being intended in anything but the best way was simply because I thought that MY posts here might seem a bit harsh or critical when, actually, they are intended to be useful.
 
I got that DW was complimenting the plan... My apologies if it came across differently. Sorry DW.

Historiker, do you really think John's suffering unfairly to LBA in India? He has hundreds of mostly unguarded merchant ships within a hex to about six hexes of hundreds of highly experienced bombers. In this situation in real life, the Japanese transports would be shredded, I think. So, I believe these results are plausible, and that John should have known that if he moved into close range of Allied LBA and failed to adequately guard his ships he would take fearful losses.

In difference to Nemo, I see this as exploiting the game.
Its nothing to complain about when your experienced bombers devastade his fleet - but IMO, it should be in an acceptable way. For me, using naval search isn't acceptable, but everyone may regard that his way.

If your bombers are that experienced, what's the problem with unleashing them with the usual naval strike mission?
On the other hand, most games have a house rule regarding the altitude 4Es have to fly doing naval attack. This rule can easily be bypassed by letting them fly naval search with lower altitude. I don't know about how you handle this in your game...

Anyway: I never try to forget that its just a game and that both sides should enjoy it...

Historiker --- just to be the devil's advocate here.
1. What's wrong with using 4-engined bombers on naval search, the Japanese use twin-engined bombers and four-engined patrol planes on naval search all the time?
 
2. I am presuming that you don't have a problem with naval search a priori ?
 
3. Is the real issue here NOT that bombers are being used on naval search ( since both sides can do that ) but, rather that Canoerebel's use of them is proving effective. ( I think this isn't an issue since John's poor planning is allowing them to be more effective)
 
 
In a game I played a player tried this so I withdrew my shipping under my CV CAP. In the next 3 turns I had about 5 ships hit and he had lost over 100 planes to my CV CAP. He quickly stopped doing it and my invasion went ahead.
 
So, this tactic can be countered. John is just not countering it. Why should we legislate away the failings of poor tactical play? Surely rather than banning something because it is effective the focus should be on helping John realise his error and correcting it so that his overall play improves?

ad1:
Nothing is wrong about that. IMO, naval search is naval SEARCH - not strike. I use it to spot enemy ships and to hunt down subs but not offensive against ships.

ad3:
Indeed. If there weren't 50 ships hit in one turn, John wouldn't complain.

Interesting to see that the CAP proves to be that effective. I guess its more a psychological question. If you have an ordinary strike coming and it breaks through the fighter cover (or there is none), you accept your ships being hit. Witnessing your ships being hit "out of nowhere" is something totally different. Moreover, it seems that both aerial mining and naval search may be countered with CAP - but it can not be ended no matter how strong the cap is. A naval strike with 50 B-24 against 400 fighter will usually end in the downing of most bombers with the rest withdrawing. Doing naval search may also mean the downing of 30 bombers but also with some hits. In this case, the different use seems as an exploit to me.

Maybe someone should tell John how to counter it. In this case he might accept it.