Empire of the Rising Sun

[Jimmywax]

The bomber that is cut short is the Ki-67 that is next to the G4M Betty.

[curtsibling]

Indeed!

[Patine]

Thanks, Jimmy. I'll try to fix that, though I'm not that good at touch-ups. I'll see what I get.

[Patine]

Alright, I got Chris to quickly touch up the Ki-67 for me. Here's how the unit file now stands.

[Leonidas]

Looking good so far

Just a couple of ideas:

1) I wonder if it would be worth it for the Japanese to have an AA unit? It should be cheap to build. After all, the USA will be attacking with lots of planes over the course of the war...

2) The defenses in the USA should such that a Japanese player would not be able to invade it. Or if he did, he would pay a heavy price. Maybe place mines along the west coast? And have high defensive units in the western cities?

3) The Japanese player perhaps could have a few cheap units: an infantry, an AA, a light tank, and a light arty.

[Patine]

@Leonidas: Actually, I'd already thought of number 2; I have a unit called the 'US Home Guard' who are in main US cities, are hard to kill, but can't move or be built or disbanded. As for number 1, isn't that gun with its barrel pointed up an AA gun? I guess not. Oops! I've been using it as one. My mistake. Could someone please send me a real AA gun (I'm somewhat embarassed). And, as for number 3, there will be a few cheap units available, I think.

[Patine]

Now for some screenshots. Here's the demise of Peking.

[Patine]

And here's another one. A scene from Pearl Harbor.

[Boco]

Good to see you're already alpha testing.

Originally posted by Leonidas
1) I wonder if it would be worth it for the Japanese to have an AA unit? It should be cheap to build. After all, the USA will be attacking with lots of planes over the course of the war...

'sfunny, I was just reading in the latest S&T (227) about Japanese Base Forces (Tokobetsu).

As the war turned against Japan, base forces became heavy in coastal defense artillery and antiaircraft guns while also evolving to support large numbers of navy and army aircraft. In rough terms, therefore, all the base forces the Japanese came to deploy finally amounted to the equivalent of about 12 full army divisions, at least in raw manpower and numbers of artillery...John Whitman

In a nutshell, the dozen SNLF (2 of which were para-capable) deployed in 12/41 were eventually destroyed or cannibalized to form the Tokobetsu.

In Civ terms, these units could serve as advanced bases. Just give them AEGIS and Carrier flags along with mf1.

[typhoon]

Units update:

- Jimmy's Ki-67 and Curt's Avenger added.

- fairline's M3 Stuart added.

- Zero is now green. (To those who disagree- do an image search and tell me how many white Zeroes you see compared to the number of green Zeroes. ) Fact is later in the war (as this scen is meant to simulate), from July 1943 onward the IJN started to paint their Zeroes green, simply because even in island fighting the white Zeroes stood out like a sore thumb. If you want to be a stickler for history, why don't you dispute the fact that Japanese aircraft rarely put a white outline on the Hinomaru (Rising Sun) whilst in combat- it made the already too visible insignia stand out even more.

It's also a matter of asthetic choice; Jimmy's green Zero is better than pretty much anything else we have.

- Kikka is now darker to match the other Japanese aircraft.

@ Patine

Hope this version is up to scratch. Anything you want changed, feel free to do so.

[Case]

...not that I'm obsessed or anything

Originally posted by Boco
'sfunny, I was just reading in the latest S&T (227) about Japanese Base Forces (Tokobetsu).

In a nutshell, the dozen SNLF (2 of which were para-capable) deployed in 12/41 were eventually destroyed or cannibalized to form the Tokobetsu.

Urgh, speaking as a war gamer, I hate 'Japanese Naval Base Units' - it's very rare to find any details on their composition other than a rough estimate of the number of personnel in them (which range from 10,000 to a few hundred). The key rule, however, is that it's most unwise to try and generalise about their size and overall capabilities.

Typically they contained a few companies of ex-SNLF infantry, a grab-bag of artillery of various calibres* and hundreds of unemployed sailors and dock-workers equipped with small arms. These were the Naval Base Units most commonly encountered by the Allies, and the only time they had trouble dealing with them was during the battle for Manilla in 1945 (which was probably more to do with the US troops being unprepared for urban warfare than anything else - the USMC also struggled with urban warfare on Saipan, the British found clearing Mandalay a real chore and the Australians didn't know quite what to do with the pockets of civilisation they came across in Borneo).

However, some of the Naval Base units (and especially the ones at Rabaul**) were armed to the teeth and were very tough fighting units. The Allies avoided these units like the plague and would literally go hundreds of kilometres to avoid them - and this is when they underestimated the size of these units (the Japanese forces at Rabaul turned out to be three times as large as estimated - before the end of the war the Australian Army was 'containing' a large corps size unit with a single brigade!).

So, to cut a very long story short, the Japanese Naval Base Forces were large and well armed, but generally sucked as a result of a lack of training, ad-hoc organisation and supply shortages. The only thing in their favour is that the Japanese Army Air Force ground units were even worse.


* This artillery was generally of two different calibres - guns too small to be of any use (ie, dodgy 20mm AA guns) and guns too big to be of any use (ie, large naval guns shiped from Singapore without adequete fire control or ammunition). They did normally have a lot of AA guns though, which made up for a lot - at least until the ammunition ran out or the Americans called in a battleship.

** Not that these units were any the less wierd - quite the opposite in fact as they contained their own tunnel engineers, obscure amphibious tanks and sub-units which manufactured gunpowder substitute out of bat dung.

[curtsibling]

It's looking good!

One tiny quibble, I would move the B-24 down a little bit to
match the orientation of the other heavies. As the current
position will clash with the energy bar...

[curtsibling]

An also, if you want, I can add some WW2 ToT cities for this one -
I can update your city file if you post up a zip of the current one.

I just hate to see skyscrapers in 1940s China!

[Patine]

@Typhoon: Thanks for the touch-up to the units.bmp! I really appreciate it. There's now just a few touch-ups I need to finish. BTW, do you (or anyone else, for that matter) have a good 88mm AA gun for ToT; like I said, I used the wrong gun on my file.

@Case: I ultimately agree with you on this one. I had considered briefly including SNLF, but it probably, given your information, wouldn't add much to the scen.

@Curtsibling: Here's the cities.bmp.

[Leonidas]

Originally posted by Patine
@Leonidas: Actually, I'd already thought of number 2; I have a unit called the 'US Home Guard' who are in main US cities, are hard to kill, but can't move or be built or disbanded. As for number 1, isn't that gun with its barrel pointed up an AA gun? I guess not. Oops! I've been using it as one. My mistake. Could someone please send me a real AA gun (I'm somewhat embarassed). And, as for number 3, there will be a few cheap units available, I think.

It's all looking very good so far

As for the AA unit:

The Japanese had many dual purpose guns for both AA and artillery.

Is there a way in ToT to have a single gun unit be used as both an AA gun and for arty?