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I may have missed it, is the KB still intact at this point in this AAR ?

An interesting discussion for me on many layers.

While the sideline is interesting I think getting back to what Nemo was/is going to write is something I'm looking forward to...

I suspect though that it will cover the use of language and how that shapes/supports one’s own side thoughts and actions, and also shapes your opponent (being PSYOPS trained I subscribe to this a lot).

Conducting both actions, and the words they use (understanding their cultural context), tells you a lot about the person the player thinks they are. How they respond tells you how they actually are.

Of course if the player is self aware enough, they can in return act and talk in a way to shape back in return... this can be a very effective strategy, acting as you expect the other player expects you to act, then changing course creates cognitive dissonance (ala "Confusion") and a loss of confidence which enables you to take the initiative.

This is what I find intellectually interesting about wargaming, and why I don't play against the AI.Wars are one or lost in the mind of the enemy commander. Killing people is "merely" a way of influencing the enemy commanders mind.

Scary isn't it.
CheersRob

ORIGINAL: hartwig.modrow

First of all, I would rather prefer to isolate any discussion on strategy (which is determined by your national goal) from the opponent (who does not really influence your national goal). IMHO the underlying strategic principles are determined by objective parameters and quite independent of the opponent in a game like AE. Proper application of basic principles shall give you appropriate results.

Hartwig

Sorry Hartwig, but on this point I don't agree with your comment that it is "quite independent of the opponent in a game like AE".

Firstly, in AE the most basic issue to be determined even before the first turn is inputted, is the basis for play. Will victory be determined by VPs or some other criterion? Are HRs necessary and if so, what will they cover? Which scenario will be used and will there be any modifications made to it? These are all subjective matters which are greatly affected by your opponent's views.

Secondly, there are many different paths to victory. The efficacy of each one is very dependent on the qualities and skill of your opponent. Opponents usually have marked preferences in play style. One opponent could be very good in the air but relatively poor at naval operations, or dislike greatly land combat in China. Or perhaps not very good at logistics. There is great value in forcing your opponent to play what he does not want to play as this will increase the odds of him making unforced errors (to use a tennis concept).

Thirdly, the choice of strategy is dependent also on the dispositions made by your opponent. What exactly is the value of pursuing a strategy which on your objective grounds (ie dismissing your opponent as a key faactor) is the best but is actually failing due to timely actions by your opponent. Just because it was the "correct" strategy, there is no need to reinforce failure.

I don't know if you have been following Q-Ball's current AAR, but I would suggest you read my posts #38 and #84 in that AAR as I think they are pertinent to my argument here. Nemo's posts in that AAR are also relevant to this discussion.

Alfred

Alfred,

ORIGINAL: Alfred

Sorry Hartwig, but on this point I don't agree with your comment that it is "quite independent of the opponent in a game like AE".
...
Alfred

nothing to be sorry about, as always your comments is stimulating thought and will in the end lead to my improved comprehension of the aspects involved. Unfortunately, I am virtually out of time right now till Sunday or so. Will read up on your links and get back later.

As a short comment "from the stomach", I would most likely have assigned the VP question to the definition of the national goal and would argue that you have to work out a strategy ahead of beginning the game, which will be the only way to assess the dispositions and qualities of your opponent. I agree that strategy is to be continuously adapted, but as a function of results (which of course may be partly influenced by the opponent) rather than the opponent.

My feeling is that too strong a connection to the opponent leads to too much influence of tactical considerations (which are very dependent on your opponent).

But all of these remarks lack depth. I'll work with the links you provided and get back to the subject.

Hartwig

ORIGINAL: jrcar
While the sideline is interesting I think getting back to what Nemo was/is going to write is something I'm looking forward to...

+1

Welcome Canoerebel,

I can no more wrap my head around this discussion than I can fathom how Nemo is holding - and invading out FROM - the DEI in early 1942 in Scenario Two.

Simple enough. I'm not playing the map or the OOB as using those parameters such actions are rather difficult. Instead I'm mostly playing the person. Once you can befuddle the person all of the forces in the world won't do much good as they'll be misdeployed and one guy with a dagger in the right place at the right time is better than 100 divisions all gives the wrong objectives.



Stuman,
Yes, I don't believe I've launched a single attack on KB. I simply don't have the capability at this point in time to break their defences with brute force. I could conceive of a plan in which strong CAP over juice Allied targets would draw KB in to overcommit to escort missions with its few Zeroes ( about 120 within KB ) and then strike and overpower their own limited CAP but that isn't necessary for my current strategy to win. In my game vs Damian I first began experimenting with a play style which allowed advances without actually destroying KB and in the face of a far superior IJN. I found that such a strategy - advancing in the face of superior IJN and IJNAF forces - was tough but interesting and given my philosophy of play ( in terms of playing vs my own expectations vs playing to win or anything like that ) was a nice challenge. As such I was happy enough to come up with a strategy for this game which didn't seek to destroy KB early on but preserved it so that the challenge of advancing through late-42 and 43 ( if the game got that far ) would be preserved.

So, KB is fully intact but I've expended great effort trying to make it expend its airgroups and be misdeployed and, more latterly, trying to get MIke to engage in a "paralysis of over-analysis". I think KB's lack of action over the past 2 months has been a result of the relative success of that strategy. Mike may, of course, be just biding his time but I think he is unsure of how and when to best commit KB right now and he knows that if he commits it to the wrong area ( wrong being an area in which I'm luring him in and have lots of CAP ) then I'll maul his airgroups and he won't be able to commit KB for another 2 to 3 months as he rebuilds his airgroups. I think that knowledge/fear is causing him to hold it back when, really, IMO he should commit it.

Essentially we both know I can't destroy KB if it commits BUT I do believe I can culminate it and prevent it being useful for 2 to 3 months afterward. Mike doesn't want to allow me to culminate it as he knows I'll take advantage of that. I think he's going with a fleet in being approach right now combined with a few very low-risk forays to pick off reinforcements to Mindanao.



jrcar,
Ah, PsyOps eh? Interesting. I've not read Australian manuals of PsyOps but I've read a few of the US and UK ones and they are quite interesting. There were obviously some very learned psychiatrists/psychologists contributing to some of what is in there. I think there was a lack of emphasis on cultural differentiation of conscious and subconscious triggers and a general lack of focus on the subconscious which was unfortunate. It is more difficult to manipulate the subconscious but since such an attack manages to avoid most of the conscious defence mechanisms and can actually take advantage of subconscious mechanisms I think it is a very effective means of approach.

From what I've heard though these early millenial manuals are no longer indicative of the sophistication of some ( although by no means all ) of the approaches... and of course some of the nice theory I read ignores the reality that it can be tough to manipulate the subconscious of people who can't even read the pamphlets you generate and whose only knowledge of the one book they'll ever read may be generated through oral briefing by someone who has no interest in reading or otherwise coming into contact with your viewpoint/psyops pamphlets. Of course it seems some long-term work is being done to address this including, I am sure, many of the means of political/religious and military opposition leader selection through the acceptance and declination of targetted assasinations by one's own forces and proxies/deniable forces which proved so successful with the British in Northern Ireland since it appears to have been adopted as unacknowledged policy ( since at least the 70s although I don't pay too much attention to the ins and outs of that quiescent area so it could have begun a bit earlier ). There, I think that's sufficiently clear and yet obfuscated to make a good middle line for a public forum.

Conducting both actions, and the words they use (understanding their cultural context), tells you a lot about the person the player thinks they are. How they respond tells you how they actually are.

True. I'd just add two layers to that.
1. Seeing how they act when they know they are being observed/ the words they use when trying to play mindgames back with you tells you a lot about how they would LIKE to be perceived by others.
2. The layer you have where their actions tell a lot about who they think they are. - often layer 1 is made up of mostly layer 2 with a few small changes to their behaviour to make their actions more compatible with the reaction they wish to engender than their baseline personality would, in their opinion, generate.
3. How they respond tells you how they actually are.
4. The gap between 1 and 3 can be highlighted to create the sensation of an emotional assault on the individual. Such perceived assault can bring about either psychological collapse or anger - both of which are useful emotions to be able to engender to create errors of decision-making which can be goaded, guided and used to "lead" the individual whilst allowing them the sensation that their choices are their own.
4b. The gap between 1 and 2 can be used to generate a conscious cognitive dissonance.

Of course doing 4 or 4b is, in ordinary society, viewed as highly aggressive and abusive behaviour and if done on forums is often construed as an assault even if all you're doing is pointed out the difference between words, actual actions, expressed reasons for doing/saying something and the observable reasons which actually drive a person. It is somewhat amusing to read some of the sweep threads with that in mind. There's a lot of ego-gratification and ego-syntonic commentary going on their which has lost all objectivity and views any ego-dystonic responses as being personal assaults since those responses aren't responses to objective postings but ego-syntonic commentaries which are intensely personally, emotionally, valued - whether that's right or not.


re: behaving as one is expected to and then shifting to create cognitive dissonance.
Very true. Definitely that's a well-trodden path in high level chess and also warfare but I don't see too much sign of it in wargaming circles - which is a pity. Even when playing professionals most of the time they stick to doctrinal solutions.... Even if, as the Soviets used to say, the only reliable thing about American doctrine is that they never read the Fing manual [:D].
I think that the best that can be achieved in a gaming situation like AE is a sort of constructive unpredictability in which a general approach is expected but there's a general expectation that while that general approach will hold true the manner of its application is quite unpredictable. I, for example, am on record as stating that I think the perception of my play ( even in spit of these AARs) is flawed and that I amn't nearly as unpredictable or aggressive as people think. I actually think I'm quite conservative in my play in a lot of ways.

Wars are one or lost in the mind of the enemy commander. Killing people is "merely" a way of influencing the enemy commanders mind.

True, very true.

One interesting sidepoint to that is that the study of loss rates in combat has shown that the magical figure is about 30%. Kill 30% of a force in a short enough period of time or convince it that its local battle is lost and the overall force usually decides to pack it in and retreat from the field of battle. I strongly suggest a re-reading of Alexander and Hannibal's campaigns with that figure in mind.

Basically it explains why a Macedonian/Carthaginian force which was outnumbered could still defeat a much larger force. I'll use the example of Alexander as the force disparity in terms of numbers and quality s most marked there.
Persians: LOTS more men.
Macedonians: Far better defensive and offensive equipment. The sarissa might have just been an ueber-long spear but it was the BEST ueber-long spear of its time.

ANyways, in armies of the time you could only achieve great rates of killing by smashing one group of men into another and letting them butcher eachother with spear and sword ( and hand and teeth etc when the time came ). Missile weaponry ( archers, slingers etc ) just didn't generate the necessary casualties to win a battle without close combat occurring. In close combat a unit of a specified frontage ( say 100 metres ) would make contact with another force of the same frontage ( this wouldn't always be so but the Macedonians had flank guards to prevent the overlaps being too dangerous etc and this is only a broad example for those who aren't familiar with Macedonian vs Persian battles. I'm not going to go into how the Macedonian battle deployment presaged the Roman checkerboard of cohorts as that's not essential right now even though it is interesting in its own right. ).

Individual men have roughly the same width, especially in that time prior to rampant obesity. So a frontage of 100 metres per side would result in pretty much the same number of men facing off against eachother. Lets keep it simple and say 100 men can occupy 100m of frontage.

With a phalanx 20 men deep and an army of 20,000 you can make a front 1km long which makes a frontage of 1000 men. This can, so long as you pick your ground well, disrupt the enemy flanks and prevent their cavalry from winning the cavalry battle ( note a bit of a theme here with Alexander's battles and tactics? Yeah, I thought so. ) meet an enemy frontage of about 1,000 metres/men.

Persians were outfitted for mobile battles and most of their soldiers were light infantry to light-medium infantry. Macedonians were heavy to ultra-heavy infantry in the terms of the time. As such if Persians came at them one at a time in a line a Macedonian could be expected to cut them down one after another- a bit of bad luck, slipping on entrails and some missile kills would result in Macedonian losses but unless a phalanx was flanked or otherwise disrupted by, for example, chariots or elephants used to break the cohesion of such a force ( see a pattern of his opponents here ) just prior to contact with the Persian infantry.

So, when 20,000 Greek faced 200,000 Persians so long as they could, through choosing the ground, winning the cavalry battle and thus the flank battle the Greeks could create a situation in which in frontal combat their front 1,000 men faced 200 groups of Persians each 1,000 strong. Now, you may think that this is an impossible task as even the best warriors arm will grow tired after slaying the first 10 or 20 men.

In reality the 30% figure means that as soon as 30% of a force breaks the rest of it breaks. So, with good generaliship Alexander would ensure his main body would be engaged in frontal combat and would "tie up" tens of times its number of troops. Despite the numerical disparity, say 20,000 Macedonians vs 140,000 Persians in the frontal main body fight that would actually devolve into a series of 1,000 Macedonian vs 1,000 Persians battles spread over time ( this isn't entirely accurate because of the effect of the Sarissa but this is a forum and not a degree course so I amn't going to go into that ) in which the Macedonians could expect utterly disproportionate kill rates - quite possibly on the order of 100 to 1 for the initial hour or two of battle based on historical battle reports. Over time however sheer wear and tear would wear the Macedonians down and they'd be wiped out long before each Macedonian actually killed 100 men.

In the meantime however Alexander took his best forces with the highest potential for rapid casualty-generation and shock effect and used them to generate a rapid rate of casualties and shock among a small portion of the enemy force ( the cavalry and one flank guard force ). All he had to do to win the battle was actually beat this force - against significantly lower odds than his main body faced and the overall numbers of the battle would lead people to believe. Once he had used shock and a high casualty rate to convince the flank force to break this force would run and be cut to pieces by his cavalry ( cavalry and armies do most of their killing once the enemy's back is turned and they are trying to run away. War isn't fair or nice. ). The main body would be "transmitted" this shock and aware that the force to its flank is getting massacred. It doesn't compare the losses to the overall Persian force but each soldier and group of soldiers there compares it to the Persian force within eyeshot ( that's crucial ). With the entire flank in disarray once the magic 30% figure of troops within eyesight are killed or running that Persian in the main body begins to consider running.... and so the rout spreads and the entire army begins to disengage and then rout.

The basic point though is that for Alexander to beat a Persian army ten times his size he only needed to break a small portion of it by inflicting a high casualty rate over a short period of time. He could then cause a cascading rout which wouldn't be recoverable as his troops WOULD be butchering the enemy as they fled and ensuring that their actual casualties ( overall ) would be hitting or exceeding 30%.

So, in reality Alexander really rarely beat a full Persian force. What he did was stalemated most of the Persians with a small frontal battle and then hit a flank and caused a cascading failure of belief from that flank along the Persian front.

I don't think you can understand Alexander or Barca's victories without understanding psychology. It was crucial to why they won vs superior forces. You can also see command paralysis in Darius and a few of the Romans who went in against Barca. Hell, in one famous Carthaginian vs Rome battle the Roman consuls DID actually achieve the Roman objective during the battle. They also both died ( IIRC ) with one of them choosing to enter the fray to find a good death rather than actually exercise command once things went south. Most of their army died with them... even despite the fact that the army achieved its normal battle objective which normally guaranteed them victory.

I think a re-reading of Alexander and Hannibal ( and if you want to be really ambitious Xenophon.... and if you want a laugh at how OODA and preconceptionn can paralyse an otherwise intelligent man read about Crassus at Carrhae - "I'm sure they'll run out of arrows". Indeed, LOL! ) with OODA and the psychology of loss rates and loss %s as well as the transmission of panic being borne in mind would be very interesting.

Apologies for the delay in completing the other bits but work was rough. 4 on calls in 7 days led to a 113hr working week and I'm no longer inured to those hours. On the plus side I found out today that the research I want to do in combat-derived PTSD and prediction of same looks like it will be feasible. A few more hurdles to jump but Im really looking forward to it - especially since it could lead to better pre-deployment screening for vulnerability factors and better allocation of resilience-increasing resources intra-theatre and post-deployment. That should help a lot of people in time to come. *fingers crossed*

Anyways, this weekend I'll rabbit on about hermeneutics and the anchoring of discussions as well as syntonic and dystonic aspects and dissonance.

So, KB is fully intact but I've expended great effort trying to make it expend its airgroups and be misdeployed and, more latterly, trying to get MIke to engage in a "paralysis of over-analysis". I think KB's lack of action over the past 2 months has been a result of the relative success of that strategy.

I have to agree -- it seems to me the best historical analogy is McClellan after the Seven Day's Battles. Mike still has the superior force, but he has found stiff resistance in several places, and so seems to think that there must be still more units elsewhere. (Not realizing the lower caliber of such units.)

Kudos on an excellent PsyOps campaign!

From the outside looking in, this is fascinating. I have no training in psychology at all and didn't even take Psych 101 in college (went the Economics route for that part of my education). So much of what is being said here is over my head. That said, Nemo and Capt. Harlock have done an excellant job explaining their ideas to a point where I have a basic understanding of the premise. Even so, the finer nuances are lost on me and I suspect many others.

Still, when I put this into the perspective of playing the game, some thoughts arise. The first is that there is a tremendous variance on how people play this game. Ultimately we all play for enjoyment; it is afterall a "game". That said, the compexiity of AE and WiTP before it make the "play" much different than most games. There are players who are more interested in pushing the system to the edge of the envelope more than they are interested in the results. These are the type of players who make counterintuitive moves that ignore the larger strategic picture. They have no "national" goal other than to see how much they can "mess" with their opponent. These players will often undertake highly risky operations with little chance of success just for the sheer joy of seeing if they can pull it off. Please do not take that as a criticism of such play. It certainly can make for interesting games. When a game is played with this approach, broader strategic goals do become less important. I also suspect that such a player has a lot of fun playing AE.

Other players play within the historical context. Admittedly, this constraint is self imposed as there is no mandate from either the game rules nor the mechanics that requires such an approach. This is, however, a historically based game. For some, myself included, there is greater enjoyment when playing if they see the problems and challenges before them though the eyes of the historical commanders. Some may refer to this type of player as "risk adverse". There may be a lot of truth in that, but I would counter that some of timidity comes from a historical perspective. Certainly the Allied commanders in the RL PTO knew that public reaction to a strategic defeat could not be discounted. I do not think the Japanese commanders were completely immune to outside pressures either even if it was to a much lesser degree.

Also, individual player ability enters the equation. While I would say that most players have a basic understanding of the game systems, there is a great disparity as to the in depth knowledge of how the game mechanics work. Failure to comprehend some of the finer points of AE can lead to disaster even when you have the strategic/tactical advantage. This factor alone can lead to atypical results in game play. Often we will see claims of a "bug" or even accusations of "gamey" play when the truth of the matter is the problem lies in the neural pathways attached to the finger pushing the mouse button. Using college football as a model: early in the season the major programs usually play the lesser programs. In terms of talent and ability of the players, the outcomes of these games should be a foregone conclusion. Yet every year we see a few "upsets". While some times these outcomes can be attributed to "the ball bouncing the right way", usually it falls to poor coaching or execution. In other words, the loser had superior forces and resources available to him but failed to use them properly.

My point being that so many factors enter into the equation when playing a game that is this complex. I think Nemo's game is living proof that every operational plan requires some level of cooperation on your opponent's part in order to be successful. In other words, every plan has a level of expectation as to how the enemy will respond built into it. If the enemy fails to "play along", we now enter into the realm of OODA loops. The ultimate outcome then centers on which OODA loop is best able to handle the stress.

It certainly was not in either the British nor Dutch plans to surrender Malaya and the DEI without a fight. They lost because the Japanese had better forces available to them and used them properly. The lack of a decent command structure and to a large extent appreciation of the Japanese forces arrayed against them led to the fall of these areas. AE allows us to rectify these shortcomings and we see the results in Nemo's game. I think Brave Sir Robin has taken a major hit, and the player delivering that blow is playing the Allied side. I am quite sure that the more astute players will take the success displayed in this game and modify their approaches in the future. I would not be at all surprised to see the "Palembang Gambit" become common where the Japanese make a dash to Sumatra in the first week of the war. Too much is at risk to let the Allies build up southern Sumatra as Nemo has quite expertly done

Actually most of the good ideas come from commercial PsyOps, otherwise known as marketing The basics are the same, understand your message, understand your target audience, develop a means of presenting your message, monitor and provide a feedback loop to refine your message. Repeat.

I think some of the problem is we go in with a Western expectation of how we deliver a message, usually mass media like TV in particular, 'cause that is how it is done... to a largely homogenous population (although marketing Gurus will tell you western societies are incredibly complex as well, socio-economic, religious, ethnicity. The reality of many of these societies is they are illiterate (but that does NOT equate to stupid), very complex at a mico level (I.e each village is different) and it is hard to get a message in...

Paper and personal contact is the best. Every action you do is PsyOps/Marketing. You are right about the sub-conscious triggers, it takes a lot of research and model-test-model which is hard to do in a mere 9 month rotation (frankly as I an ex-soldier and a family person 9 months is too long, but far too short for this type of operation).

I'm no longer current in this sphere and haven't been for ten years. I haven't been involved with any of the middle east actions, and I don't envy the people who have to deal with it.

I'm still heavily involved in marketing, now convincing Army about the benefits of simulation... not sure if that is easier or harder!

Cheers
Rob

jrcar,
Ah, PsyOps eh? Interesting. I've not read Australian manuals of PsyOps but I've read a few of the US and UK ones and they are quite interesting. There were obviously some very learned psychiatrists/psychologists contributing to some of what is in there. I think there was a lack of emphasis on cultural differentiation of conscious and subconscious triggers and a general lack of focus on the subconscious which was unfortunate. It is more difficult to manipulate the subconscious but since such an attack manages to avoid most of the conscious defence mechanisms and can actually take advantage of subconscious mechanisms I think it is a very effective means of approach.

From what I've heard though these early millenial manuals are no longer indicative of the sophistication of some ( although by no means all ) of the approaches... and of course some of the nice theory I read ignores the reality that it can be tough to manipulate the subconscious of people who can't even read the pamphlets you generate and whose only knowledge of the one book they'll ever read may be generated through oral briefing by someone who has no interest in reading or otherwise coming into contact with your viewpoint/psyops pamphlets. Of course it seems some long-term work is being done to address this including, I am sure, many of the means of political/religious and military opposition leader selection through the acceptance and declination of targetted assasinations by one's own forces and proxies/deniable forces which proved so successful with the British in Northern Ireland since it appears to have been adopted as unacknowledged policy ( since at least the 70s although I don't pay too much attention to the ins and outs of that quiescent area so it could have begun a bit earlier ). There, I think that's sufficiently clear and yet obfuscated to make a good middle line for a public forum.

AFTER ACTION REPORTS FOR Apr 21, 42

It looks like I'll be ready to strike Singapore by the end of the month. I have about 3 days worth of work before Djambi reaches Level 3 AND today I showed that my planes could sweep Singers even at extended range using drop tanks. I have almost 150 torpedo bombers ni range of Singapore and expect them to make pretty short work of the enemy shipping there. I'll take losses to the torpedo bombers but Avengers will be arriving in May and allow me to replace many of them.

The B-17s will go after the airfield and then I think I'll split the medium bombers 50/50. Divebombers will be tasked with hitting the shipping. If it flies properly it should be a pretty impressive show of force for Mike.


In the air the battles in the air over northern Sumatra yesterday saw 21 IJAAF bombers downed in return for a total of 9 Allied planes ( 7 of them ops losses ).

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Night Time Surface Combat, near Manado at 75,99, Range 8,000 Yards

Well, the IJN is nicely out of position. I have been leaving some AKs in Manado to draw KB and SC TFs and today they struck. It was a very strong force but one my RN and USN detachments can handle in the future once all the upgrades are done. In the fullness of time once I can mount a suitable CAP ( about 200 fighters ) at Manado I'll happily commit the necessary BBs to cover Manado and the reinforcement convoys to Mindanao.

Japanese Ships
BB Mutsu
BB Ise
CA Ashigara
CA Suzuya
CA Furutaka
CA Kako
CL Nagara
CL Abukuma
CL Kiso
CL Kitakami
CL Tenryu
DD Yukikaze
DD Hayashio
DD Amatsukaze
DD Tokitsukaze
DD Murasame
DD Harusame
DD Samidare
DD Umikaze
DD Yugure
DD Ayanami
DD Tadeshiwa

2 BB, 4 CA, 5 CL and 11 DDs. He must have been expecting heavy opposition. Instead he just butchered a dozen expendable ships which were waiting for Manado to become a level 3 port so they could unload motorised support and engineer vehicles. Everything else is already ashore and building Manado up nicely.

Allied Ships
AM Whippoorwill, Shell hits 9, and is sunk
AP Tasker H. Bliss, Shell hits 5, Torpedo hits 1, and is sunk
AK Almaack, Torpedo hits 1, and is sunk
xAK Peter Kerr, Shell hits 6, and is sunk
xAK Wallingford, Shell hits 1, Torpedo hits 3, and is sunk
xAK Am. Builder, Shell hits 7, and is sunk
xAK Am. Packer, Shell hits 4, and is sunk
xAK Am. Press, Shell hits 5, Torpedo hits 3, and is sunk
xAK Red Jacket, Shell hits 10, Torpedo hits 2, and is sunk
xAK Mount McKinley, Shell hits 9, Torpedo hits 2, and is sunk
xAK Hosang, Shell hits 25, and is sunk
xAK Indira, Shell hits 5, and is sunk
CM Gouden Leeuw, Shell hits 6, and is sunk


Allied ground losses:
Guns lost 2 (2 destroyed, 0 disabled)
Vehicles lost 244 (223 destroyed, 21 disabled)



Maximum visibility in Overcast Conditions and 32% moonlight: 8,000 yards
Range closes to 11,000 yards...
Range closes to 10,000 yards...
Range closes to 9,000 yards...
Range closes to 8,000 yards...
CONTACT: Japanese lookouts spot Allied task force at 8,000 yards
CONTACT: Allied lookouts spot Japanese task force at 8,000 yards
Allied ships attempt to get underway
BB Mutsu engages CM Gouden Leeuw at 8,000 yards
CM Gouden Leeuw sunk by BB Mutsu at 8,000 yards
BB Mutsu engages AP Tasker H. Bliss at 8,000 yards
AP Tasker H. Bliss sunk by CA Ashigara at 8,000 yards
DD Ayanami engages xAK Am. Press at 8,000 yards
AK Almaack sunk by DD Murasame at 8,000 yards
Range closes to 7,000 yards
xAK Indira sunk by BB Mutsu at 7,000 yards
CA Furutaka engages AM Whippoorwill at 7,000 yards
CA Suzuya engages xAK Red Jacket at 7,000 yards
CA Ashigara engages AM Whippoorwill at 7,000 yards
CL Tenryu engages AM Whippoorwill at 7,000 yards
CL Kiso engages AM Whippoorwill at 7,000 yards
AM Whippoorwill sunk by CL Abukuma at 7,000 yards
xAK Am. Press sunk by DD Tokitsukaze at 7,000 yards
DD Amatsukaze engages xAK Red Jacket at 7,000 yards
Range closes to 5,000 yards
BB Mutsu engages xAK Mount McKinley at 5,000 yards
DD Ayanami engages xAK Red Jacket at 5,000 yards
xAK Am. Packer sunk by BB Mutsu at 5,000 yards
CA Ashigara engages xAK Mount McKinley at 5,000 yards
DD Amatsukaze engages xAK Peter Kerr at 5,000 yards
xAK Mount McKinley sunk by CL Kitakami at 5,000 yards
DD Harusame engages xAK Hosang at 5,000 yards
xAK Red Jacket sunk by DD Amatsukaze at 5,000 yards
Range closes to 2,000 yards
xAK Peter Kerr sunk by BB Ise at 2,000 yards
BB Mutsu engages xAK Am. Builder at 2,000 yards
BB Ise engages xAK Hosang at 2,000 yards
xAK Am. Builder sunk by BB Mutsu at 2,000 yards
xAK Wallingford sunk by DD Ayanami at 2,000 yards
CL Kitakami engages xAK Hosang at 2,000 yards
xAK Hosang sunk by BB Ise at 2,000 yards
xAK Hosang sunk by BB Ise at 2,000 yards
Combat ends with last Allied ship sunk...


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Night Time Surface Combat, near Singapore at 50,84, Range 8,000 Yards

Japanese Ships
E Shimushu, Shell hits 16, and is sunk
xAKL Genkai Maru, Shell hits 16, and is sunk
xAKL Nichirei Maru, Shell hits 15, and is sunk
xAKL Yamamizu Maru, Shell hits 23, and is sunk
xAKL Gozan Maru, Shell hits 21, and is sunk

Another convoy at Singers is sunk by my raiders basing from Palembang.

Allied Ships
CL Enterprise
CL Emerald
CL Ceres
CL Caledon
DD Tjerk Hiddes
DD Fortune
DD Griffin
DD Hotspur



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASW attack near Brunei at 66,86

Japanese Ships
PB Teibo Maru #2

Allied Ships
SS Snapper

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on Manado , at 75,99

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 15 NM, estimated altitude 20,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 4 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 22



Allied aircraft
P-40E Warhawk x 8
F2A-3 Buffalo x 8
F4F-3A Wildcat x 4
F4F-3 Wildcat x 8


Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 3 destroyed

Allied aircraft losses
F2A-3 Buffalo: 1 destroyed
F4F-3A Wildcat: 1 destroyed

In reality most of the Zeroes were destroyed.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on Manado , at 75,99

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 39 NM, estimated altitude 17,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 12 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 3



Allied aircraft
P-40E Warhawk x 3
F2A-3 Buffalo x 4
F4F-3A Wildcat x 2
F4F-3 Wildcat x 7


Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 1 destroyed

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on Kanhsien , at 81,57

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 35 NM, estimated altitude 15,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 10 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 6
Ki-30 Ann x 17



No Japanese losses



Airbase hits 2
Airbase supply hits 1
Runway hits 6

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on Kukong , at 79,57

Weather in hex: Heavy rain

Raid spotted at 34 NM, estimated altitude 12,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 11 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 9
Ki-48-Ib Lily x 3
Ki-51 Sonia x 21



No Japanese losses



Airbase hits 1
Airbase supply hits 5
Runway hits 17

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on Kweilin , at 76,54

Weather in hex: Heavy rain

Raid spotted at 35 NM, estimated altitude 13,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 16 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-27b Nate x 8
Ki-36 Ida x 17



No Japanese losses



Airbase hits 1
Airbase supply hits 1
Runway hits 7

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on Kiukiang , at 85,53

Weather in hex: Thunderstorms

Raid spotted at 22 NM, estimated altitude 13,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 6 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-48-Ib Lily x 19



No Japanese losses



Airbase supply hits 2
Runway hits 16

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on Kukong , at 79,57

Weather in hex: Heavy rain

Raid spotted at 27 NM, estimated altitude 13,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 8 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-48-Ib Lily x 11



No Japanese losses



Runway hits 4

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on 102nd Infantry Regiment, at 82,60

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 21 NM, estimated altitude 10,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 7 minutes


Allied aircraft
A-29A Hudson x 3


No Allied losses

Japanese ground losses:
43 casualties reported
Squads: 1 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 3 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on Kwajalein Island , at 132,115

Weather in hex: Severe storms

Raid spotted at 34 NM, estimated altitude 12,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 7 minutes


Allied aircraft
A-20A Havoc x 9
A-29 Hudson x 6


Allied aircraft losses
A-20A Havoc: 5 damaged
A-29 Hudson: 1 damaged

Japanese Ships
SSX Ha-27, Bomb hits 1, heavy damage

Runway hits 1

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Morning Air attack on Langsa , at 46,74

Weather in hex: Clear sky

Raid spotted at 34 NM, estimated altitude 15,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 9 minutes

Japanese aircraft
Ki-21-IIa Sally x 23
Ki-30 Ann x 25



Japanese aircraft losses
Ki-21-IIa Sally: 2 damaged


Allied ground losses:
12 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 2 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled


Airbase hits 6
Airbase supply hits 5
Runway hits 17


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Afternoon Air attack on Singapore , at 50,84

Weather in hex: Light rain

Raid spotted at 43 NM, estimated altitude 38,000 feet.
Estimated time to target is 10 minutes

Japanese aircraft
A6M2 Zero x 5
Ki-43-Ib Oscar x 8
Ki-43-Ic Oscar x 8



Allied aircraft
Hurricane IIb Trop x 15


Japanese aircraft losses
A6M2 Zero: 1 destroyed

Allied aircraft losses
Hurricane IIb Trop: 2 destroyed

A costly exercise but an important proof of concept. If one squadron of Hurri IIs can sweep Singers at a range of 7 hexes then 300 Allied fighters can sweep Singers at the same range and sweep the IJAAF and IJNAF fighters from the sky.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ASW attack near Peleliu at 90,98

Japanese Ships
DD Uranami
xAKL Nanka Maru

Allied Ships
SS Grayback

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ground combat at Canton (77,59)

Allied Bombardment attack

Attacking force 20652 troops, 119 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 675

Defending force 17990 troops, 186 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 509


Allied ground losses:
34 casualties reported
Squads: 1 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled


Assaulting units:
25th Chinese Corps
4th Chinese Corps
49th Chinese Corps

Defending units:
66th Infantry Regiment
68th Ind.Infantry Battalion
1st Ind.Inf.Group
Yokosuka 1st SNLF
20th RGC Division
Yokosuka 3rd SNLF
1st Sasebo SNLF Coy
20th Ind. Mtn Gun Battalion
1st JAAF AF Coy
Canton Special Base Force
31st Special Base Force
47th JAAF AF Bn
2nd JAAF AF Coy


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ground combat at 86,42

Allied Bombardment attack

Attacking force 25037 troops, 110 guns, 0 vehicles, Assault Value = 970

Defending force 17661 troops, 132 guns, 32 vehicles, Assault Value = 647


Allied ground losses:
16 casualties reported
Squads: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Non Combat: 0 destroyed, 1 disabled
Engineers: 0 destroyed, 0 disabled


Assaulting units:
43rd Chinese Corps
5th New Chinese Corps
9th Chinese Corps
15th Chinese Corps
93rd Chinese Corps
27th Chinese Corps
8th New Chinese Corps
14th Group Army
15th Group Army

Defending units:
35th Division
3rd Ind.Mixed Brigade


I'll return to the hermeneutics discussion later. Hopefully, if we can do 1 to 2 turns each day over the weekend I can hit Singers before Monday and post the results here.

Recently there's been quite a bit of discussion about various Allied strategies on the forum. I've engaged in a couple of the discussions but, honestly, the reality is that in life most people are satisfied once they have an explanation which exonerates them from responsibility. Whether that be due to the game hating them, their opponent being ueber-awesome or some supernatural entity/deity making the crops fail --- Note to self, sacrifice more virgins next year so the rains come.

In any case I've been interested recently to see various people anchor the discussion of strategy with various assumptions both explicit and implicit and I've also been thinking of the hermeneutics of the situation - Yes, you've guessed it. I'm on call to the ER for 72 hrs straight and I'm a bit bored - which is good because it means no-one is currently psychotic or trying to kill themselves - and desperately trying to avoid having to look at statistics for my research * shudder*.

So, for those of you who aren't aware of hermeneutics it is the concept that communication is a process of interpretation and that words have meaning only because we ascribe them meaning. When you listen to a foreign language which you don't know it is simply a collection of sounds, just as English ( to choose an example ) is simply a collection of sounds which ONLY have meaning because those who "speak" English have all agreed that those sounds have meaning. The smallest conglomeration of sound to which we ascribe a meaning is called a phoneme and words are made up of a series of phonemes which are joined together to create a unique-sounding collection of phonemes which everyone ascribes a meaning to. We call this collection of phonemes a word and in the truest sense of the word words have NO meaning beyond that which we, humans, agree them to have.

E.g. The word "automobile" has no objective uniqueness which associates it with a car. It could refer to anything if we all agreed that its meaning would change. So, words have meaning because we agree on their meaning. Without our agreement these collections of phonemes have no meaning. If we went back in time we could decide that the first time we saw a plane we'd not call it a plane but call it a "zoomer".

There are some caveats to do with compound words - which are very common in agglutinative languages like German and to a lesser extent in English "aero-plane", "auto-mobile", "sub-machine-gun" etc.

Ok, so those are the basic terms.... It gets a little more complicated when we realise that combining hermeneutics with neuro-linguistic programming ( and not in the "How to pick up any woman in 10 minutes" books which claim to channel NLP to make you irresistible to the opposite sex ( or same sex, or both if that's your thing ) sense but in the proper, psychologically researched sense of the term ) means that collections of sounds have meaning because we agree them to have meaning and that agreement on meaning comes with all manner of other, inter-related, implications ( this can be seen when we have to translate from one language into another and can get a literal translation but are told, by the translator - or have to tell others if we're translating - that the literal translation doesn't capture the entirety of what was said because a certain word carries various other connotations in the foreign language.... said connotations arising not out of the phonemes or their arrangement but out of the cultural context of the foreign country/culture etc and thus being unknowable unless that cultural context is explained to you. ).


So, to summarise. A phoneme is a sound. Words are collections of phonemes to which we agree to ascribe a meaning. A language is a collection of words all with different meanings put together according to certain rules. Languages only have meaning because we all agree on the meaning of the words ( collections of phonemes ) and agree to follow the same structures. Sometimes when people have serious brain injuuries or psychotic illnesses one of the signs is that they make up their own languages and words and lose sentence structure and thus become incomprehensible to the rest of society.

So, all of that is the obvious bit of words. The other aspect is the subconscious aspect ( an oversimplification but correct enough for our purposes ) wherein words and sentence structure convey all manner of other information which isn't actually, strictly, contained within the sentence structure. E.g. Informer in Ireland carries a very negative connotation which "passing on of information" doesn't.

E.g. In Ireland to call someone an informer would be one of the worst things you could ever call someone. Even the police when they refer to informers in their employ tend not to use the term. Why not? Simple, most Irish uprisings in the timeframe 1400 to 1916 were destroyed by informers who infiltrated the organisations and undermined them. So, in Ireland, saying someone "informed" on someone else carries a huge weight of emotional information conveying disapproval of the person doing the "informing" and a very real sense that they should NOT have done so.

Saying someone "passed on information", however, carries with it the sense that they didn't betray people and that what they passed on was appropriate and right. It is the phrase which is often used officially since it doesn't have the unfavourable subconscious connotations.


All cultures have similar words, phrases etc which we often don't even think about and those words/phrases influence how we interpret things ( the hermeneutics of the situation ). That's words and phrases taken care of.... Now we move on to interpretation and subconscious anchoring of entire discussions.

It is possible through the selection of words to impart the exact same information yet create entirely different emotional responses in the readers and it is possible to predict this pretty accuracetly if you've got a homogenous audience drawn from a single culture ( either born there or assimilated ) and you know the triggers for that culture. Phrasing and word selection creates subconscious associations and also anchors the discussion at a certain point and towards a certain goal. E.g. When asked "Have you stopped beating your wife yet?" It is very difficult to begin having a discussion about what a good relationship you and your wife have. The question anchored the discussion in the territory of either, yes, you still beat her or, no, you used to but don't anymore. Either way the subconscious anchoring among listeners even before you answer is to view you as a piece of slime who is capable of serious violence and who, if he denies the question entirely, is probably lying.

Another example is as follows:
In a game one player may be complaining about the lack of surface interceptions in the game. The other player, who mightn't be trying any such interceptions might want to:
a) convince the 1st player that he's trying interceptions to force the other player to commit naval search assets in vain or
b) think the 1st player is probably making an error in his taskings which is causing the failed intercepts but not want to highlight this.

The 2nd player could stay silent or he could say, "Yeah, I'm having problems with surface intercepts too." That's a reasonable phrase but it is the sort of phrase which will automatically be run through the 1st player's filters for accuracy. We don't want that as that will set the first player to thinking and analysing and maybe coming up with a better option next time. So that's a BAD phrase to use. Much better would be, "Yeah, we're both having the same trouble with those damned SC TFs."

The use of WE helps communicate a commonality of experience which is shown to promote identification and limit the amount of scrutiny to which the rest of the phrase is subjected - after all when someone experiences exactly what we're experiencing we don't tend to waste time double-checking their experience. That's a time-saving measure we've learnt as a child. So, WE subtly takes advantage of that childhood schema to both sidestep some of the scrutiny we'd normally experience and also sets up a commonality of experience - which immediately shifts us away from being "the other" - of which humans are naturally included to be suspicious and sets us up as, at least, potentially a common journier.

BOTH builds on the subconscious "pairing" which was initially promoted by WE.

SAME is the third of the troika of building blocks to subconsciously assert that you're both co-journiers on this road of trouble with those damned SC TFs. You're both in this together, experiencing the same thing and you're fully supporting his findings... so he needn't check into things any deeper.

TROUBLE - The problem you BOTH SHARE in COMMON

"THOSE DAMNED SC TFs" - Finally identifying the common enemy you BOTH SHARE in COMMON which is TROUBLING you BOTH EQUALLY in the SAME WAY.


The same basic information has been imparted but the first method is pretty obvious and direct and doesn't take advantage of any psychology to promote identification between your opponent and you and doesn't then use that to label the trouble as an external thing you both share in such a manner as to confirm your opponent's prejudices and thus cast the problem as something he needn't waste time studying in detail ( a la childhood mental schema ).

Obviously you can't rely on every such sentence working to the above extent. That's only an example but if you throw enough such phrases in there then, eventually, you should be able to build a belief in a commonality of outlook vs the game and things you say will be scrutinised less allowing you to slip in disinformation without it being properly analysed.


Since I don't care to put up with the wailing and gnashing of teeth which arose when I used a bit of psyops early on in the game I amn't doing so in-game BUT neither do I feel compelled to tell Mike my entire plans. So, if he mentions something then I feel free to be not entirely honest about it or, at least, use it to push him a bit more in a given direction.

E.g. Mike said in his email accompanying the last movie...

Here's the movie. I sure hope those were allied tanks that went down @ Menado. In truth I thought you had carriers there (according to mouse-over intel). I suppose any intel named after a mouse should be suspect anyways... <grin>.

He states a hope that the vehicles were tanks.... He also states he thought I had CVs there. He's fishing for info. He then makes a joke about mice and the quality of intel they provide.

My reply:

Nah, they were remnants of Base Forces and some infantry units. I think the port was too small to take the motorised support elements of the troops or the engineer vehicles of the BFs. Now those units will rebuild using the supplies on Manado so that's ok. A pain to lose those ships but c'est la guerre.

The above is all entirely true... I do think he sank ships loaded with motorised support and engineer vehicles which can only unload at a greater than level 2 port. So, that's perfectly true. The fact that those units will rebuild on Manado is also true.

The observation that his raid with all those BB and CAs etc will only result in my land forces rebuilding using the supplies at Manado and my endless reserves also is the nth example of me recharacterising the result of one of his missions so as to reduce the damage he feels he inflicted and to paint a picture of myself as viewing the setback he caused as inconsequential. Over time I believe this has inculcated a belief that his attacks aren't hurting me and aren't achieving what he wants them to achieve. Over time if he believes the results of his missions are less than he would like he will begin being reluctant to mount missions as the risk reward ratio is not, in his mind, in his favour. R|ight now he isn't mounting many missions because the risk vs reward ratio isn't, in his mind, favourable. Do I think that is related to my policy of downplaying those results to highlight my limitless reserves and my ease of replacing losses? Absolutely. I think that he has, by now, incorporated THAT viewpoint into his planning and it is making him avoid missions which WOULD hurt me.

My CVs are a bit further back. I can't face you straight up so I'm hoping you'll impale yourself on my land-based defences and then my CVs can nip in and get a few licks in.... Not tomorrow though, I'[m sure your BBs are well-covered.

This is also true. My CVs ARE a bit further back.... In Capetown but it is war and I'm not bound to tell him that. Right now he is afraid of impaling KB on my land-based air ( as is every Japanese CO ). By telling him openly that that's my hope also I promote his view that I'm creating fighter CAP traps. I actually am but by telling him I am I am hoping to make him exaggerate their size and numbers. Right now I can CAP trap about 3 bases on the map. Everywhere else KB can roam with impunity. In his mind though I'd bet he views every one of my bases as a bit of a CAP trap.

The "then my CVs can nip in and get a few licks in" is an example of building on and reinforcing a fear he must have. The obvious Allied plan is to destroy his fighters over my base and then nip in with CVs to hit him. Again, it is what he fears and I'm happy to reinforce that fear to promote indecision --- people are pretty quick to believe you if what you tell them promotes no cognitive dissonance ( a fancy way of saying that they'll believe you if you tell them what they want to hear ).

"Not tomorrow though, I'm sure your BBs are well-covered." Each aspect of that phrase is true.... I won't attack him tomorrow AND his BBs are sure to be covered by CAP. By linking them with a comma though I promote a linkage between them which is erroneous. I promote the idea that I won't hit his BBs as they are covered by CAP. In reality I won't hit them because my strike groups are gathering to hit Singers. Reading that sentence without that knowledge though would feed into one's own expectations and be readily accepted. The ramifications of said acceptance is that you would expect anti-naval strike groups to be in the area - when they are not.

Such simple measures can be used to promote a significant missassessment by the enemy of your allocation of forces using little more than words and their own fears and assessments.

As to mouse-intel... Maybe if it said there was cheese we could believe it?

It'd be weird to reply to the other two aspects and not the third so I replied to that also.

Please stow any complaints about PsyOps. It is valid and, to be honest, if Mike fishes for info I don't see why I should be bound to give him the exact co-ordinates of my CVs etc etc. If he fishes for intel in a game he should expect a little misdirection to be sent his way. Technically though, I'm mostly using correct intel to misdirect him through creating linkages and implications which are incorrect. That's my concession to the "uproar" here and why I doubt I'll be playing AE anymore after this.


Ok, so I'll end this post here now and go onto the post dealing with the discussion of good players/bad players and suchlike next.



PresterJohn,
"It is an avenue which can bring advantage only if your opponent doesn't know what you're doing."

I disagree. I think that as with all things even in the full knowledge of what is happening some people are better at it than others and so can play double and triple-layered games in which they use the knowledge that their opponent is aware of conscious ploys to show him what he expects ( consciously recognised ploys which make him think he's on top of this aspect of the game, relaxing his guard as he luxuriates in his brilliance at spotting the ploy ) whilst either:
a) double-thinking the conscious layer of ploys to make the reaction to the obvious ploy fit his deeper plan or
b) using the obvious ploy which is spotted as a mere carrier for the deeper ploy which insinuates itself and achieves the objective.

So, I don't think awareness is, necessarily, a guarantee of immunity. I think it comes down to the quality and depth of knowledge, usage and self-reflection. People who are used to self-reflection and objective self-reflection are usually pretty good at identifying their triggers and how someone might play on them. They can guard against those things. Most people, however, are very poor at objective self-evaluation and don't engage in it much at all.

So far a lot has been said about how words convey meanings and how those words and those meanings can be used to influence others. There are other aspects to this though and one of them is assessing the other person and how they see themselves and what drives them.

The words a person uses convey a lot of information. Does the person use contractions or not, do they use allegory, do they spell things properly, do they use archaic sentence structures, do they deviate from the vernacular? Those things all tell us about the person's educational level, their upbringing, whether it was a first language or not etc. Those are things we're all aware of.

The words one uses also frame one's thought processes. Words have meanings and meanings are specific and limited. E.g. The word "two" means two items, not three, not one etc. When we say there are two birds outside the window that not only conveys information but primes the other person's thought processes. As they look outside the window their occipital lobe is being primed to interpret whatever they see outside the window as being TWO BIRDS. Not three birds or two cars but two birds. Some interesting experiments have been done which show that if you prime people and show them something pretty close to what they are expecting but not quite what they were expecting that they interpret it as being what they were expecting. E.g. Show them two pictures of birds stuck to a tree branch out that window and they may process it as being two real birds since that's what their brain is primed to see.

Alternately if you show them something so utterly different than the two birds - e.g. an abattoir - then their brain can be even more shocked by the dissonance they are experiencing than if they had looked out the window and seen an abattoir without having any expectation of what they'd be seeing.

Dissonance requires the brain to abandon its schema ( mental shortcuts we use to reduce processing power required to process a situation ) and begin examining the situation from its most basic elements. That puts a lot of strain on the brain and frequently overloads it. In survival situations the first senses which disappear are colour vision ( as colour vision isn't essential to survival), sound ( again, not essential to survival - if you were a caveman 20,000 years ago and a wolf was trying to eat you you didn't need to hear it howl to be able to kill it and survive the attack ) and field of vision ( which is replaced by a tunnel vision ). All of the above remove extraneous information from the processing loop in order to limit the amount of information your brain has to process in this new, unique situation it has no mental schema for. Lessening the information to be processed directly feeds into improved survival.

Anyways back to the topic. Words influence but also constrain. The words a person uses not only tells you about their education etc but ALSO tells you the limits of their thought processes. The meanings of words ( both obvious and subconscious ) limit thought and thus limit what the person typing/uttering those words is capable of grasping or mentally manipulating.

For example: Is a caveman who doesn't know the words surprise or ambush and has never spoken to anyone of the concepts able to individually come up with the view that a surprise attack sprung from an ambush situation will give him an advantage when attacking another caveman? I would suggest that he is but it is highly unlikely that he is going to be so innovative and so it is highly unlikely that he'll do so. Humans innovate but do so relatively rarely mentally and much more frequently mechanically.

So, by looking at how someone talks you can tell what their cultural context is and also the constraints on what they consider possible ( or ethical/religuously acceptable etc ) and can, mentally, fit into their mental schema. Once you have that done you:
a) know which levers are available to you to gain effect
b) know what they have mental schema for and what they don't - and thus know how to throw them back into a processor-intensive situation for them which will cause them to begin ignoring more and more crucial data as they focus more and more of their brainpower on solving the unfamiliar situation they find themselves confronted with.

In real life in various boat sinkings, plane crashes etc they've found that up to 1/3rd of people become so overwhelmed that they literally can freeze in place waiting for someone else to tell them what to do - obedience is, despite what we might like to tell ourselves, a natural state for most humans and one which is eminently comforting when the situation is threatening and unfamiliar - hence the rise of dictators who offer us easy solutions to unfamilar problems which frighten us.

As a commander you don't have someone to turn to to tell you what to do. You are it and so, often, commanders find themselves overwhelmed and lapse into inappropriate actions or just abandon command entirely and seek a soldierly - and operationally ineffective death ( a la one of the Roman consuls at Cannae ).


This sort of thing is particularly important to us nowadays when we have to realise that people opposing western forces in Afghanistan and elsewhere have very different cultural contexts than we have whcih create a cognitive dissonance between the two sides which renders much of the psyops both sides try to engage in relatively ineffectual. The simple matter of what Jihadis consider recruiting material tells us this. They post pictures of the dead bodies of their ex-comrades to recruit others to the battle. Often these pictures show these guys having suffered horrific wounds. I imagine if Western armies used similar pictures as recruiting tools enlistments would plummet. However the cultural imperatives and viewpoints are very, very, very different and this can be seen through what they put out as psyops material and how they speak both amongst themselves ( to the limited extent that I'm aware of that ) and how they address the west in psyops efforts to turn the population masses against the various wars/invasions/whatever you want to call them. Look at the language they use and what they link things to and you'll find many interesting meanings which often go unmentioned by western media. E.g. What does Bin Laden's linking of the dates of various attacks to great battles during the Crusades in the 12th and 13th Century tell us? Why does he call us infidels? Sure it is a word which has become hackneyed through being thrown around left right and centre buth within the population groups he is trying to recruit from/motivate by those messages to self-organise into little cells what does that word conjure up? I'm sure most of us don't know because we don't know the tales these kids have heard about the infidel crusaders defiling Jerusalem or the slaughter of the prisoners are Acre during the 14th Century etc etc etc. So when we hear those messages I think we miss a lot of the subtext and cultural reverberation which acts on people subconsciously and motivates them to respond within those cultures. That's an aside though and I know that in various little rooms governments have people at work who DO know all those ramifications working on counters. I'm not sure there's enough or that they are sufficiently effective though, which is a pity.



Also every person is a mix of who they wish to be, who they think they are and who they actually behave as. Most of us strive to live up the ideal we aspire to and come varyingly close to doing so, in our own minds. How we actually behave though can be radically different than how we view ourselves. For such people confronting them with how they actually are vs how they believe they are can be so shocking and destructive to their psyche and cause such painful cognitive dissonance that they kill themselves. I know of a few people/cases where individuals were told something which was obvious to their therapist at a time when they themselves hadn't journeyed far along their particular journey of self-discovery to find such a disclosure acceptable and went off and killed themselves.

In one very sad case a few years ago I know of someone who bemoaned why he always sabotaged relationships with his girlfriends only to be told that it was obviously because he was gay. The poor fellow wasn't prepared to hear that at that point in his therapy and got very upset, stormed out, reflected on it a bit and had hung himself within 6 hrs. That's just one extreme example but in my daily job I see time and time again that people actually have self-images which are radically different from how they actually are and one has to very carefully judge whether it would be beneficial to slowly get them to see that difference and, perhaps, close the gap between self-image and real behaviour.

Why is the above so important? Well;, it is important in and of itself but it is also important because as someone very smart once said,

we see things not as they are but as we are

If you lie to yourself about how you are then not only will you not see things as they really are but you won't even see them through the prism of how you think yourself to be ( which you could correct for ) but, instead, you'll see them through the prism of how you really are which, bring unaware of how you really are, you can't properly correct for. In the end your own distorted self-image leads you to view objective reality ( we can argue later if there really is such a thing ) in a manner so distorted that even a base level of self awareness ( which allows you to correct for how you feel yourself to be ) won't correct for the distortion.

That is why people who have lied to themselves about basic personality assets so often fall apart in survival situations. Those situations introduce dissonance which causes the construct to shatter, reveal the true self and the cognitive dissonance between the believed construct and the true self overwhelms the person.

If you look through history and read the bios of failed commanders who achieved victory for much of their life but then balked at a particularly important battle you'll often find some of these underlying issues therein. I nominate the co-consul who was in charge on the day of Cannae but not the one in charge the day before, Crassus prior to Carrhae, Ney, Goering and, my personal favourite, Darius. As a command study though you can't beat a study of the Roman side at Cannae. If you haven't read about it before you need to. It is pretty hilarious in a "Oh God, oh God, I can see a disaster coming and so can some of them but they're powerless to stop it" Greek tragedy kind of way.




Now, as to good or bad commanders or players...
Is someone who fails because cognitive dissonance ( either internal or external ) overwhelms them a poor player? No, I think they are just overwhelmed from a cognitive viewpoint and I don't think that that means it is possible to label them as "good" or "bad". They are just overwhelmed and their inappropriate decisions aren't a function of "poor" play but rather of their being overwhelmed.

So, here's a question for you all... How does the constraining of thought by the words chosen apply to discussions in-game and on the forum?

Bonus points to anyone who links in with 1984 and/or the recent expansion of Xinhua as a means of controlling not only dissent but the form dissent takes - its actually quite a brilliant and machiavellian policy really. Cold-blooded and ruthless but effective.

You need a turn in your inbox, dont you?

ORIGINAL: Cannonfodder

You need a turn in your inbox, dont you?

No no. this is even more interesting. Sadly my ability to express myself in English is limited so I cant add much here.

It is part of the game. Everytime I hit a TF and do some damage, my opponent (allies) replies with: I hate losing ships, but there is more where those came from... implying he has a never ending stock of everything...

Once used the trick myself: Arnhem hit surface forces (with his carriers) covering Noumea (I was besieging it). He hurt me pretty bad but I made him believe KB was in striking range by mentioning "run forrest run" in my e-mail... KB was at Truk replenishing planes...

All is fair in love and love - or isnt it?

Please stow any complaints about PsyOps. It is valid and, to be honest, if Mike fishes for info I don't see why I should be bound to give him the exact co-ordinates of my CVs etc etc. If he fishes for intel in a game he should expect a little misdirection to be sent his way. Technically though, I'm mostly using correct intel to misdirect him through creating linkages and implications which are incorrect.

I have no complaints to make about the techniques you outlined in that post. For instance, you said you would replace the lost base forces with available reserves, but nowhere did you say you had a mountain of reserves -- you just gave the impression that you did, because you didn't seem to care. Entirely legitimate.

But an Allied player seriously planning on airstrikes on Singapore and counter-invasions in May 1942 (in Scenario 2!) has clearly got the upper hand. Allied fanboy though I am, I can't help but feel a bit sorry for the sons of the Emperor.[:D]

Well 22nd April Djambi reaches Size 3 airfield while KB continues to close VERY carefully on Manado - it is currently only about 3 hexes out.... I have 200 fighters on CAP over Manado and I'm killing about half of the land-based IJNAF Zeroes he sweeps with every day. Over the last 3 turns he's lost about 20+ Zeroes over Manado as I think he is prepping it.

My torpedo-bombers are in place, my dive-bombers are in place, Oosthaven has become a Level 8 airfield today ( for basing my B-17s ) and I've pretty much finished shuffling my torpedo and dive and level bombers around to have each of them operate at the appropriate range. So, Djambi can hold 150 planes, Palembang can hold 350, Lahat can hold 350 and Oosthaven can hold 400. That's a total of 1250 planes. I have too many short-ranged planes but at the very least I can hit with 120 torpedo bombers, about 200 dive-bombers and about 600 or so level bombers. Add in about 200 fighters sweeping from a range of 7 hexes or so and I think that tomorrow I can go. I'm a little concerned that Mike will notice the buildup and begin hitting me. Already he is sending in a few night bombing raids on Palembang again - something he hasn't done in a month or more - so I want to hit him before he decides to pre-empt me.

So, tomorrow or the next day, depending on fatigue I'll hit Singapore. My taskings will be as follows:
1. torpedo and divebombers will be tasked for the ships. All of the divebombers should be at the right ranges to drop 1,000 lb bombs.
2. Most level bombers will be tasked with hitting the airfields. This wll include the Dutch airforce, B-26s, Blenheims, Hudsons, B-25s and about 70 B-17s.
3. Catalinas and other floatplanes will be tasked with making torpedo runs on the shipping from Batavia.

Currently I show 34 enemy ships in the harbour in Singapore and about 300 planes on the airfields there. I'm not that worried about his CAP as I'm sure my fighters can handle that but I'll take heavy losses to his FlAK as my torpedo-bombers and dive-bombers make their attack runs. I have made the calculation that my naval strike capacity can survive being attrited for a month or two without serious damage to my strategic goals in the near future and, as I said, I want to make a symbolic heavy strike which also serves to force him to base his naval forces back in Saigon - far back from where they can interfere with the Malaysian invasion.

On another note: The Malaysian invasion won't go in until I've finished upgrading but the port at Soerabaja got a bit overloaded by all the shipping I sent there so the CAs will only finish upgrading and repairing by the end of the 1st week of May. Which means the invasion won't happen until the 3rd week of May... unless I decide to go now, irrespective of escorts... We'll see how Singapore goes. If it goes well I may just rely on LRCAP operating out of Sabang and a smaller surface escort ( 4 BBs, a couple of CA, a half-dozen CLs and about 20 DDs ).

The Malaysian invasion won't go in until I've finished upgrading but the port at Soerabaja got a bit overloaded by all the shipping I sent there so the CAs will only finish upgrading and repairing by the end of the 1st week of May. Which means the invasion won't happen until the 3rd week of May...

Oh, well, not until the third week of May! I feel so much better for the Japanese.[:D]
Seriously, going forward before you have such goodies as Beauforts and F4F-4's in quantity would be bold in almost any other player. But your post makes it clear you've cast up the numbers. Good hunting!

Nemo121, I have found this AAR to be both interesting and enjoyable. Thank you for taking the time writing it.