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I'm new to WitP and have just started my first full campaign game, playing as the Allies against the AI. I'm posting my progress and some thoughts here. Currently I've played through to 21 February, 1942, so it's still very early.


General Outlook
I figure as the Allies I will get beaten up soundly the first half of 1942. I chose a line in the sand that goes from Timor to Port Moresby, the lower Solomons, and up to Wake (but around the Gilberts and Marshalls). I’ve spent most of the first two months establishing supply chains: West Coast – Pearl Harbor – Suva/Noumea and Karachi – Perth.

Early Going
The PH attack didn’t go too badly. I have sent the moderately damaged ships to the West Coast, where some have already been repaired. The Japanese assaulted Wake but it held so I have reinforced it and am making something of a forward island fortress out of it.

Philippines
In the PI I crashed all the infantry back on Manila and Bataan. Infantry on other islands were basically left to die on the vine. I would have liked to have moved the air assets somewhere but I don’t know how you would do that. You can’t transfer them to other bases as it is too far, and you can’t send AK’s up to get them as the ships just get hammered by Japanese LBA. Clark fell quickly, but Bataan held out until Feb 20 and Manila is still fighting. I evacuated the US HQ unit via sub transport per recommendations I saw on this site, but I’m not sure what use they’ll be later. We shall see.

Malaya
Similar to the PI I ran the British down to Singapore to hole up and fight there. This worked for a while, with Singapore holding until early February. I pulled naval assets out quickly, sending them to Timor (more on that below).

DEI
I decided that I’d try to hold Timor as part of my “line in the sand,” so I pulled a number of Dutch units back there, both infantry and air. There is a strong naval presence now based out of Lautern, including Repulse, Prince of Wales, Indomitable, and a handful of other British ships. The Repulse and PoW had a brief encounter with the KB off of Batavia, escaping to tell about it and putting a couple of shells into the Zuikaku.

South Pacific
Suva and Noumea are my major bases here, with the plan being to funnel supplies and fuel through them to the appropriate spots. I went ahead and put infantry onto some of the Solomons – Guadalcanal is pretty heavily garrisoned now and troops just now landed on Tulagi. Dealing with Japanese land-based air coming down from Rabaul is proving to be troublesome, though. I’ve got fighters en route from PH to station on Guadalcanal but it remains to be seen how effective they’ll be.

The Japanese sub presence in the Coral Sea is also a problem. The ASW effectiveness of my DD’s is awful and I’m losing destroyers daily without inflicting much damage. The MSW’s and PG’s are even more useless in this role. I’ve got land- and carrier-based air doing ASW patrols, and they do score some hits, so I’m hoping that’s at least keeping the subs down.

Central Pacific
Given the success at Wake I pushed out to Marcus Island. This was almost certainly a mistake as I don’t see how I’ll be able to keep an airbase supplied there without losing an unacceptable amount of shipping to land-based air flying out from the home islands. But there’s a US flag flying.

General
I’m still figuring out how to play as well as figuring out a viable strategy. I’ll do idiot things like find that I’ve forgotten to set a TF’s home port properly and find it steaming back to Manila or Singapore to get blasted by Japanese air. Strategically I suspect I’m being a bit too aggressive as the Allies early on but we’ll see. There are some resources that I am having trouble figuring out how to use: Australian Infantry that costs more political points than I have to transfer out of the Australia Command; the slow US battleships that survived the PH attack and the equally slow British BB’s that show up (Royal Sovereign, et al); the low-endurance MSW’s; where to best put HQ units. And I'm clueless in China.

I have no idea what to do about the strong Japanese land-based air except to just stay out of range. Ditto the KB, which is a freaking Death Star.

- Jeff

Against the AI you should fair OK. 

Zeros are tough to deal with until their bonus is erased and the pilot exp level drops due to losses.

Sounds like a pretty good start to things.

So far so good I guess. Planning and patience are clearly big time virtues in this game. I find that I have to make a lot of notes to keep my thoughts in order. It takes a loooong time to get things from the US or Karachi to the South Pacific or Oz and I tend to lose track of the original intent unless I note it on the side. I also tend to want to make things happen, which is probably a bad idea for the Allies early on. But it's fun. And my Pacific geography is getting better all the time [:)]

- Jeff

I find you can be relatively aggressive against the computer as an Allied human player. A real, good Japanese player will knock your dick in the dirt for the first year; easy. I played against the computer one time for about six months and finally wondered what happened to the KB. I looked at the computer player and they were all sitting at Kwajalien out of fuel.

So I've progressed to late April, 1942. Some good things happening, some not so good...

The Good

Solomons -- Guadalcanal is a significant stronghold now, with a strong infantry presence and large airfield. Tulagi is also garrisoned. I just invaded Shortlands and will reinforce if the invasion force holds on.

Marcus Island -- My earlier plan was to withdraw from this outpost but it was clearly annoying the AI as the Japanese so I've hung on and will try to reinforce. This did lead to a naval battle in the area, though (see "Bad" below).

Wake -- Wake is a major fortress.

DEI -- Lautern is standing as a Dutch holdout in the DEI. Several TF's are basing out of here. The Japanese have not mounted a strong effort to clear out Timor but I hope to make them pay when they do. Aru Island is serving as a nice sub base with a couple of tenders (I did this mostly just for grins).

The Bad

By trying to reinforce Marcus Island I drew the attention of at least one IJN carrier group. This scuffled with the Saratoga TF, sinking Saratoga. I inflicted a few bomb hits on BB's but did no damage to the CV.

ASW continues to be horribly ineffective. Enterprise and Salt Lake City both got torpedoed in the Coral Sea. Enterprise will be OK but SLC is limping toward Brisbane and the outcome is in doubt.

I've got RAF bombers doing night bombing runs on Japanese-occupied Rangoon but I think they've scored about 3 hits in a month of bombing.

The Ugly

I didn't properly understand the British withdrawal rules and got dinged around 1000 political points in March. That sucked.

I'm still just pushing to see how far I can go before really bad things happen. I've decided that I'll let any and all mistakes stand and resist the temptation to roll back to an earlier saved turn. It might be wiser to simply run supply for a few months and wait for reinforcements to arrive but that just seems boring.

- Jeff

I find this an interesting read. I will be starting a campaign game (3 days/turn) vs my human opponent of UCV (presently in first game of both). We played SPI War in the Pacific for a years worth of Saturdays in 1985 prior to computer assists (Allied bookkeeping nightmare; 4 hour prep for a 5 minute turn in 1944). I like the one suggestion of keeping a journal to record plan for units.

Just to close this up...I finished the campaign with a decisive Allied victory in October, 1944. In the end the Japanese navy had ceased to exist and my CV's were reduced to attacking barges. Victory came with the fall of Tokyo.

The most fun seemed to be 1943...the Allies have enough resources to do things at this point but not enough to do everything, so you have to make choices and plan carefully. Prior to that there's a lot of hide and seek with the powerful Japanese navy and you're pretty limited as far as offensive options. By 1944 there are so many toys for the Allies to play with that you just overwhelm the Japanese. At least with the AI as the opponent.

Learned a lot about playing the game, though, and it was fun.

- Jeff