Wanted to respond further last night, but I fell asleep reviewing my troop and plane deployments. I was trying to figure better ways to assign them because clearly, I need to review and modify my early war moves and change a number of other things. I will bet no one here EVER falls asleep studying game moves, while your eyes become more and more unfocused... Yup! Bet I am the only one that ever does this... [:'(]
This is the best possible scenario I can come up with, in regards to nabbing Singapore earlier:
As for troops, the exact troops remain undecided, bottom line is I need to ignore China as much as possible (currently I have two divisions being dropped here to stop/push back the early AI attacks at/near Amoy and Foochow). These two divs should beeline to Singora instead along with extra supplies to keep the front moving better. Also, the two divs being sent up towards Rangoon, I will send these troops south instead. Once Singapore has been capped, route them northwards to push into Burma. (as an aside, this should allow me time to add a little supply and supply capacity to those northern Thai bases before moving troops that way). As far as Manchuko garrison troops, I avoid overusing these and primarily send a few engineer corps from the area to assist with base build ups (supply capacity) in North China. There are a few key units I do remove from this region always: The tank corps and enough garrison troops for Peiping and Tsientsin ( to free the troops there for front line actions). I do use PPs and assign them to Southern Army for future possible offensive actions. Anything less would be cheating I think. Perhaps I should utilize a few more of these garrison troops seeing that I will not be dropping those two divisions in the Amoy region. As for Luzon troops, I think my first clear action should be to identify the exact troops being sent there, and funnel the rest to Singora and beyond ( Palembang prep possibly?). I like my current strategy of going heavily for Mindinao, despite it possibly not being the 'ideal' action. To further this effort and allow me to also still hit Manado, Tarnate, Ambon, and beyond, I will not land ANY troops on the southern tip of Luzon until a bit later. In my next game, I will consider messing with mostly ignoring Mindinao and pushing harder south.
This gives me a total of 7 divisions worth of troops, with a few extras, to attack Singapore. Two of these counted divisions is of course just piecemeal troops approximating the strength of a division.
Feedback on the above thoughts?
Also, a question:
As for rebuilding units, I only rebuild one division which I had been sending to Luzon. The rest of the divisional components involved in Luzon and Malaya remain separated. What are your views on this subject?
On to the planes:
Best possible scenario I can see here is to keep the majority of the Army planes deployed at/near Takao in place. This would be excepting only a small squadron or two(bombers most likely) to assist with activities in Malaya. Especially the Army fighters need to stay here to protect shipping and troops. I would still focus all of my Oscar I-c production into upgrading my Malayan army air corps. As for Navy planes however... Move the 3rd Ku S-1 (zeros) towards Malaya after the initial sweeping(s) of Philippine skies. I can also see moving one or two Betty squadrons (or Nells even) into the Malaya region( Bangkok or Georgetown based shipping attacks possibly?). The two zero squadrons at Soc Trang that I move down towards Miri and Brunei- one of these should be shifted towards Malaya(or both and just send the first Oscar I-c squadron down here?). I still think for shipping protection, one of these squadrons should remain at Miri/Brunei. This should give me close to 200 fighter planes to operate in the skies near Singapore, plus the wealth of bombers.
Feedback?
I have already considered restarting this game with new moves taken into account..........
In fact, not long after writing the above sentence, I went ahead and did it. Deleted all I had written after it, and just getting busy on 1st turn moves. I still have the save and can easily return to it, but I doubt I will. Obviously, my assignments needed major review so I can do a proper 'Japanese supernova' in the DEI
After seeing some essentials flaws in my overall plan, adjusting them, I believe this game restart will be the one that breaks the '44 mark. While I dont get my industry exactly humming yet, I have been doing quite well for production and HI/resource pools. I will be sure and update yall on my progress.
Now it's time to get tweaking that industry!
Once again, thanks to the community for being here and I apologize for any bad grammar.
