marcuswatney
Posts: 279
Joined: 2/28/2006 Status: offline
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My feeling is that expanding the scale brings with it an obligation to improve accuracy. Or looked at another way, errors which can be forgiven in WiF FE because those Pacific maps were drawn with a broad brush, and with a child's blobs for islands, aren't really excusable given the naturalistic look and superb detail achieved with MWiF. It's a well-documented area, and, for me at any rate, seeing the Territory of (North East) New Guinea not recognised as a functioning entity does make me wince. Since considerable care has been taken to properly delineate obscure groups of islands such as the Marquesas, shouldn't we take at least the same care with territories that are actually in the front-line? My feeling is that creating the Territory to include the northeast coast of New Guinea, Admiralty Islands, New Britain, New Ireland and Bougainville is a neutral change. Correct me if I am wrong, but my reasoning is: 1. The capture of Rabaul itself is not affected ... and ultimately that's the only hex which is truly important. 2. With the old division, the capture of Rabaul led to the control of the four other unimportant hexes of New Britain. With the new Territory, a Japanese ground unit will just have to expend some movement factors to pick these up and achieve the same result. 3. With the old division, control of Port Moresby, Lae and Wewak was necessary to gain overall control of 'Papua', so in practice the Japanese had to just pick up hexes by moving through them. With the new Territory, control of Rabaul, Lae and Wewak gives them overall control of everything north of the Bismarck Range (and nothing south of it). 4. Yes, it requires more effort for the Japanese to capture Rabaul, Lae and Wewak to get a 'result'. But the reward is greater ... automatic capture of northeast New Guinea, Admiralty Islands, New Ireland, New Britain and Bougainville without having to launch spurious invasions to pick up perimeter hexes. 5. And the point is that there is no obligation on the Japanese player to deviate from established practice (grab Rabaul, and pick up Lae later). He can still do that if he wants. But he also now has the alternative of picking up some real estate to hold as a defensive perimeter by taking the trouble to capture just three hexes. With the new configuration, I think the standard strategy will be to take only Rabaul in the 'red wave', and in some other impulse (as needs dictate) invade Wewak and subsequently march overland to Lae. With Rabaul, Wewak and Lae controlled, the Japanese player can then deploy air units around a defensive perimeter as may be needed. I don't think that is a huge change.
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