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My game reached 01/01/43 today. I play the Allies vs the AI. The game is really fun so far.

- Japan tried to conquer midway, noumea, pago and pm in force till now.

A) Midway:
Landed one brigade with cv escort. Left after unloading. My garrsion was enouth to defend the island and kill off the bde. Seems like the AI forgot loading supplies.

B) PM:
Good attack by the ai. Multible units landed by sea or entered pm by land. At start the AI had cv cover (2 cv 2cvl). The run into my 5 carriers at this time (with corsairs bug). Both cv fleets lost theire offensive planes without damaging any carriers. I replenished by carriers at sydney and returned with two divs for pm. Sadly the ai has not replenished its airwings in about 2 weeks gametime. So the second round was easily won by my carriers. Japan bettys were deadly. They killed the Saratoga while covering the landing of my ground troops.

C) Noumea:
One div landet in Koumac without air or further ground support. My garrison was more then able to kill this unit off.

D) Pago:
The invasion convoy run into my retreating carriers and was totaly annilated (1 div on ship)

E) Suva (November 42)
I was quite surprised to a Landing with about 500 ap in Miri. Needed to rush troops from Noumea and Suva to kill them off. Every transport was sunk by surface forces, because there was no cv support.

- CV Raids

There were serveral ai cv raids behind the lines by the ai. Both east of Pear Harbour and south-west of Colombo.

- Ground assault on India

The Ai tries till now the conquer Imphal and Akyab. Several divs strong invasions at both lokations. I was able to hold the line und push them back. In dez 42 another div entered impal. The AI also tried to sneak behind my forces in Akyab and land in Cox.

Bug maybe: The ai resents its forces to akyap and Impal every time i rout them out until their total destruction (15k lost after the first retreat).

- Offensives from me on Port Blair Canton Isl. and Baker.

A) Canton Isl.:
Was very early. The AI had not much there. Never tried to get it back (ealry 42).

B) Baker
An disaster for me. Landed the whole second Marine div. The AI had only 80ap troops there. No heavy guns. I bombared from air and sea. My troops landed and the initial atoll shock attack killed off half of my marines Oo. I had to retreat. I do not know what happend.

C) Port Blair

I suppressed Rangoon with heavy Bombers from Akyap. Lightings provided long range cover. From colombo my invasion convoy (1 usmdiv, 1 brit div (950 ap) got on the way. Every british warship on cover. I had only 1 cv left. The hermes was damaged from a cb raid before and every other carrier had to be withdrawn. The landing was perfect. Only one bb got a torpedo from some bettys. Needed 3 days to conquer the isle. The AI intersepted the landing with a large surface tf including 2 bbs. My screen tf could defend the transports. I lost one bb in the process. Many damaged ships on both sides. No further losses. I am now try to bockade the shipping to Burma.


The Marshals will be my next target. Possible Bug with an upgrade of the BB Colorado. It got 20 sys dmg and 200 days in yard because of the latest upgrade. Seems a bit exessive for me.

The ai guards everything very well. I checked today the japnese side and every isle is well defended.

Very good game! Thx alot! (sorry for my bad english)

I managed to beat back the Japanese landing attempts in my game at Kourmmoc, Luganville, Canton Island and Noumea. But otherwise, my game seems to be progressing as yours in terms of what the AI has done. Only thing the japanese haven't tried yet is a plunge at Midway, Suva and Pago Pago...perhaps because their carriers have been decimated now.

I noticed the "bug" about the Japanese division attacking Chittagong too. I massacred the division that tried to take Chittagong, but after the japanese unit was forced to retreat it kept "coming back for more." It didn't stop attacking until it actually eliminated itself...which seemed to take a month. It would move into Chittagong and then immediately vacate it...sustaining losses in the process. The Allies didn't even have to attack it to force it to retreat, which was weird. I didn't notice this happening at Imphal, perhaps because I surrounded the Japanese units and eliminated them all at once.

I'll keep your disaster in mind about Baker Island. It's one of my next operations.

B) Baker
An disaster for me. Landed the whole second Marine div. The AI had only 80ap troops there. No heavy guns. I bombared from air and sea. My troops landed and the initial atoll shock attack killed off half of my marines Oo. I had to retreat. I do not know what happend.

Just a guess, but were your Marines fully prepped for Baker?

Makes a HUGE difference...

Just a guess, but were your Marines fully prepped for Baker?

What's "fully prepped"? Good moral , no fataige, amphibious TF. What more can you do, brief them?

ORIGINAL: JohnDillworth

Just a guess, but were your Marines fully prepped for Baker?

What's "fully prepped"? Good moral , no fataige, amphibious TF. What more can you do, brief them?

They have to be set with, in this case, Baker as their target, and their preparation for that target must be at 100%.

So, effectively, you need to plan every atoll invasion 100 days before you actually land there, and make certain that all troops that land have "prepared" for the full 100 days.

Then it helps to keep the time at sea at a minimum, and also to use transport ships where the fatigue and disruption due to being on board ships is minimized. (There is a difference between ships.)

Effectively, your best bet is to never invade atolls, and instead just isolate them and use them for target practice.

As far as I remember, the US actually invaded very few "atolls", as they are defined here in WitPAE.

My two cents...

Well the Marines were prepped about 80% for baker. Maybe I should have waited longer. It seemed also that my second supply convoy did not unload supplies probably. Is it possible that this big marine division on this restricted isle burned all its supply (from invasion tf) before the shock atack? (The Beta patch was not there till then and amphibious tf´s loaded much less supplies then now.

I'n still in January 42. Japanise made unchallenged landing in Koumac (1 division strong). Now division is on way to Noumea and I'm in a hurry to reinforce it. This was a great surprise! Guadalcanal is still unoccupied and AI makes this effort for Noumea. They have 2 carries in the area, making havoc in my supply convoys.

Also Japan has tried to take Canton and Baker islands. In Burma Japan landed a strong force to south of Rangoon.
The speed and range of invasion is amazing. I'm really struggling to slow Japan's advance.

ORIGINAL: Juggalo

B) Baker
An disaster for me. Landed the whole second Marine div. The AI had only 80ap troops there. No heavy guns. I bombared from air and sea. My troops landed and the initial atoll shock attack killed off half of my marines Oo. I had to retreat. I do not know what happend.

Just a guess, but were your Marines fully prepped for Baker?

Makes a HUGE difference...

How about Atoll stacking? A full USMC division has a lot more men than 6000. So it suffers from the stacking penalties. How much that is, I don't know.

You can invade an atoll with more than 6000 men; the AI re-invaded Canton in my first CG with 13,000 men, overwhelming the Marine Defense Battalion I had located there after I took it back from the AI the first time.  You've just got to get the manpower down below the 6000 limit quickly after taking the base, or they'll starve.

The Nips got ashore on Pago Pago in my game (How they got through my search umbrella would be interesting to find out), but I had already reinforced it a little (an arty unit and a couple of seabees), so I had time to get a tank bn and and another arty unit there that had just arrived at Christmas.  I quickly pushed them back into the sea.
 
They seem to really want Dutch Harbor, sending fifteen or twenty lightly escorted xAks that run from my small APD-AVD-DD TF I have there.  I can never seem to get any shots at them.  Come on guys, stay and fight!
 
I have fought them off everywhere that the rest of you have mentioned.  I, too, have seen the constant moving back into Akyab an Imphal, allowing me to kill more of them.  Since it taxes the Nip replacement pools, it's fine with me.  They lose 4,000 to my 100-500 every day or two
 
Overall, the AI makes for a fun game, but I wonder if it's just a little too adventurous, given the strategy the Nips had of establishing a defensive perimeter and holding the Allies back.  It seems they want to put a unit everywhere.  Some, if not most, are just going to end up as self supporting POW camps, if the Allied VP advantage for taking them back are low.  And most of them are.
 

The fun for me was watching the Japanese TF's die on the way to Akyab.  I was able to keep Rangoon by holding Pegu next to it against wave after wave of Japanese assults… once I had moved most of India there I started sweeping south to retake everything including Bangkok.  In the meantime the AI started sending waves of AK’s to Akyab instead of using those troops to stop my advance.  However, since I had eliminated most of the AI’s air cover from the area around Rangoon I just kept running out a  small CA/DD task force to wipe out the unescorted transports.  Once or twice, when a BB showed up I just sent the Brit Carriers in to turn them back.  So far I’ve eliminated at least four attempts to send troops to Akyab.  You’d think they’d learn after at least the second mass sinking…[:)]
 
The odd thing I keep running into though in that area are the AI’s Battleships that seem to make their way to Rangoon and sit there for a turn or two and then leave.  Mind you it’s my port with every last British fighter and bomber nearby unable to sink even one… and then add on top of that that my Brit BB’s can’t move into Rangoon but somehow the AI’s can???