Dainichi Sekai Taisen version 3 Ideas

[kobayashi]

I was pretty satisfied with version 2.0 until the troop carrier generator gave me some impetus to release new version. That led to a removal of the negotiations and that led to the inability to bribe away sneak attacks and Agricola's idea of asymmetrical diplomatic relationships. Thought I'd start up a thread to thrash things some other ideas to perfect the scenario.

Guadalcanal
version 2.0 never gave the proper emphasis to this campaign and I think I'll be renaming the Blood Bank (reduced unhappiness for overseas troops for democracy) to Henderson Airfiled and putting it pre-built on Guadalcanal. The island itself is going to be be enlarged to two tiles. This is partially due to the irritating habit of the AI of sometimes building the Blood Bank in Manila where it is bound to be lost.

The problem with this of course is that Henderson wasn't built until after the war started and it was in fact built by the Japanese. There doesn't seem to be any way of simulating this, so the Henderson wonder is only a compromise solution.

Also gonna squeeze in Lae in North Eat New Guinea

China
Agricola brought up the problem of the Chinese being wiped out early. I'll be putting a super strong army reserve unit in Chung King, the final stronghold of the KMT, until the Burma Road tech is granted when the Pacific war starts, at which time the tech will make the army reserve unit obsolete. As discussed in the disappearing seige towers thread, the AI will thereafter disband the unit. Also, the Flying Tiger units will be trigered by European units being destroyed as opposed to US units, bringing them into the picture earlier, in 1940. Fort Bayard will be given to the Europeans so the Japs can't use it as a staging base for taking over IndoChina.

Kongo Class BattleCruiser
I'm thinking of increasing their move by one so it'll be one more than the other battleships. As compensation for their low defense. As I have recently read, their key virtue was the ability to keep up with fast carriers.

Betty G4M Bomber
This will be shifted further back in the tech tree so It'll only be available in 1941 or so.

Indonesia
The island of Java was pretty insipid industrially and I'll be adding a dockyard to the naval base at Surabaya and a telephone exchange to Batavia, plus improving the surrounding terrain somewhat. Also adding a port, Oosthaven (now Panjang) to Summatra.

British Pacific Territories
New Zealand was pretty lame too and ignored by the British AI. A cruiser and a few destroyers as part of their auxillary fleet should help. Hong Kong on the other hand will be toned down as it tends to build torpedo bombers and fly them all over the place.

Chindits
Did someone mention these suicide units were not doing enough damage?

[kobayashi]

Hawaii
The second city in the island chain will be shifted to Hilo so there will be a US presence on both ends of the island chain. (the original second city served as a troop ship island which is no longer needed)

Burma
Had a check with the maps and burma was way too big. Mandalay will be renamed Imphal while Prome will be renamed Mandalay - which remains an event triggering city.

Hainan Island
Came across articles stating that Hainan island was the Japanese naval staging base for the Indochina landings. Its not even on the map currently so I will be adding it.

[kobayashi]

George or Frank, Which is better as the late Jap fighter?

[fairline]

The Ki-84 frank was probably the best performer and was produced in some numbers (3514 built according to my big book o' planes; third in the list of most numerous Japanese fighters after the Zero and Ki-43). The George was a naval fighter only and only 1500 or so were made. It was also an excellent plane, but I think the Frank was rated higher. I'd go with the Frank.

[GhostOfDisco]

Any chances of a "Strike North" option, where you free Siberia from Stalin's rule rather than spread oppression to China and the East Indies? ;D

Also, I've made something of a personal graphics update for the scenario, and thus would mention that there are a lot of better graphics for the units you have out there (though, so far as I can tell, not all of them - but still many). Think of giving the thing a graphics update? (I've got a good MGE-ized version of the Yamato you might like. )

[curtsibling]

I would go for some 'what-if' routes too, if the MGE events will allow it...!

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by GhostOfDisco
Any chances of a "Strike North" option, where you free Siberia from Stalin's rule rather than spread oppression to China and the East Indies? ;D

Also, I've made something of a personal graphics update for the scenario, and thus would mention that there are a lot of better graphics for the units you have out there (though, so far as I can tell, not all of them - but still many). Think of giving the thing a graphics update? (I've got a good MGE-ized version of the Yamato you might like. )

Strike North - Agricola (who else?) tried that in version 1 and wiped out the Reds early so I had the Soviets strengthed in version 2. Its still possible but there are no objective cities there as I'm trying to steer events towards the historical reality - that Japan needed the resources in SE Asia or would face economic collapse.

Units - can you post the set you are using?

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by curtsibling
I would go for some 'what-if' routes too, if the MGE events will allow it...!

I'm maxed out on the events space. My main what-if right now is pearl harbor. There are other less obvious routes (tried by Agricola, who else?) such as not researching certain branches so that some events never get triggered - in exchange for inferior units.

Seems all the players are already very creative, like Eivind invaded the USA, but if you got any ideas, please let me know.

[AGRICOLA]

@Kobi
Would you please check your e-mail, your PM and my last post on your AI Sneak Attack thread. 2 of the 3 should have a fixed version of the DST file.

[kobayashi]

Bad News

Originally posted by AGRICOLA
@Kobi
Would you please check your e-mail, your PM and my last post on your AI Sneak Attack thread. 2 of the 3 should have a fixed version of the DST file.

By means of using repeating triggers instead of just-once triggers I was able to ensure the Allies entered the war together in early testing.

However as I played a real test game I found to my dismay that there is no way to use your hex-edit solution. To my horror, all my painstakingly pre-positioned strike forces disappeared.....they were teleported back to Japan when the second alliance was cancelled.

Well it was a good idea.

[GhostOfDisco]

Units - can you post the set you are using?

Sure. See below (though it seems, at least from my view, that it is incomplete, and I think I got some units wrong.)

As for the "Strike North" option, I've read that was Zhukov's victory over the Japanese-Manchurian forces at Khalkin Gol in 1939 that convinced the Japanese high command that trying to take the Southern Resource Area (rather than the northern one) was the better option. Just a thought.

[AGRICOLA]

The hexedited game had the following features:

Now, if Japan attacks the US, it is immediately at war both with the UK and the Europeans.
However, if Japan attacks the UK, the US remains allied to Japan and the Europeans remain at peace with Japan.
If Japan attacks the Europeans, neither the UK nor the US shows any reaction.

I wonder what would have happened if Japan had attacked the British and/or the Europeans but left the US alone. Would the US have declared war? Roosevelt would have wanted to but Congress was full of strong isolationist sentiment at the time.

I also wonder if the British would have declared war if the Japanese had attacked Indo China or the East Indies. British forces were stretched thin and North Africa was all that they could handle.

[kobayashi]

Originally posted by GhostOfDisco

As for the "Strike North" option, I've read that was Zhukov's victory over the Japanese-Manchurian forces at Khalkin Gol in 1939 that convinced the Japanese high command that trying to take the Southern Resource Area (rather than the northern one) was the better option. Just a thought.

I don't think there was any oil (or rubber or anything) in that part of Russia so it only made sense to attack south - basically Indonesia. It was all about oil, just like it is now. It made sense to leave Russia alone until the German invasion from the west showed some success but by that time the die was cast. Besidesthe Jap's true power was in its navy and its ambition was to be lord over the Asians.

The Irony of the whole thing is that the triple intervention countries who triggered Jap hostility towards the west were exactly the same ones the Japs did not attack. The Russians got off scot free. The Germans were their allies and the French - well there was a brief war at the Chinese border but that was nothing.

The second irony was that it was the U.S. that opened the Japan Isles to modernization - thanks to Commodore Perry and it was the British which brought industrialization to Japan. The IJN Kongo was built in Britain.

[techumseh]

The US was applying significant pressure on Japan over it's aggression against China. Prior to the Japanese attack it had placed an embargo on exports of oil and steel to Japan, creating an economic crisis. Had Japan attacked either British or Dutch interests in the far east, it's very likely the US would have intervened.

The Phillipines lay directly across the Japanese lines of communication with Dutch East Asia, so the Japanese would have taken an enormous risk if they left them in US hands.

The Japanese had already occupied French Indochina, more or less peacefully, after the fall of France.

[kobayashi]

actually the oil embargo only started after the Japanese moved into Vichy Indochina in 1941. If they were content to continue importing U.S. oil and leave the Burma Road open they might well have kept all their territories up till 1940 and perhaps added China. After all they were continuing to beat the crap out of the Chinese even in 1945.

Once the embargo started, oil stocks would have run out in two years so the Pacific War was inevitable.

There is this really fantastic korean movie

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Lost_Memories

where the Japanese did not participate in WWII and got to keep Korea, Taiwan etc. till the present. A must watch for foreign film buffs.