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Charles2222 -> RE: Ok so where to start? (5/22/2006 10:04:27 AM)
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The main thing to remember is that the first turn is always the toughest. One of your main friends will be, over time, little niches to use the UI to make things easier in places.
Here is my basic turn as Japan:
1. Start with Tokyo and adjust whatever I want to there. If you're playing the bad guys you won't have to bother with production. I check the ships in port if I'm not already familiar with what is there. I check the land forces and look particularly for units 'not' assigned to that region (that region is home defense) and imagine what I might do with them. I then check the air units and see if I want to train any or send them on some sort of mission. I then decide if I want to expand any base assets such as the airfield or if I want to build forts. I then alter production if I so desire. When checking bases it doesn't matter what order I do the above, only that I do them. In later turns a lot of these checks are unnecessary.
2. Toggle to the next city and do the same thing until you're back to whatever city you started with (Tokyo in this case).
3. Look over all the ground units that "aren't" already in your bases and decide what to do with them. A lot of times I end up only adjusting the ground units that are more immediate to China and Japan, and sometimes forget about the invasion spots, so checking the specific invasion spots might make for a good step '6', just in case you fouled up and didn't truly check all the ground units at this point.
4. Look over the map and find your TF's that "aren't" in one of your bases and decide what to do with them.
5. Find your subs that "aren't" in your bases and decide what to do with them. That's it.
When I spoke of the usefulness of the UI earlier, here's an example. When I get to step 5, since a few of my subs do have float planes, and they're scattered in many cases, I need to know what the weather is like in order to know whether I should have them out doing their thing. Well, you would first hit the weather icon (has a cloud on it) and then you will see the general weather situation. It so happens that the general area where I have my floating subs are usually exposed to the same weather. I have one closer to mainland USA, 7-8 further west between PH and mainland, and also another screen east of Midway. When I exit the weather screen I then go to one of those areas and hit the '3' key and that way I know for sure the forecasted weather. If that entire area is bad, then I recall those planes.
The easy way to do that would be to hit the 'navy air' icon (whatever it's called) and then narrow the list down to the float planes, then I can recall them all at once. I'm not sure you can get them all to do the opposite, should you want to launch them all again, but this gives you an idea of how useful the interface can be as opposed to constantly launching and recalling them. So that's:
1. Hit navy air icon 2. Hit the 'all' option (in order to take the entire display away) 3. Hit the 'FP' option 4. Hit the recall option for all of them (it's not called recall, but you get my drift).
BTW, if you fancy playing Japan at any time, one of the first things I do after checking the overall weather map is to shut ALL planes down in two fell strokes (assuming it's bad weather). This frees me up to know that all of my a/c isn't flying and thereby unless a base and the targets I want to hit aren't favorable weather I don't have to recall them all the time individually. You do this by the following:
1. Hit the army air icon (whatever it's called) 2. Hit the recall option. 3. Exit that menu and hit the navy air icon and do the same.
Your entire air forces are officially grounded, no matter if they're on a ship as a mere float plane or a future attacking bomber group. I can't tell you how much trouble this one thing alone has saved me. I used to poke around ports and see if they had any ships likely to carry float planes and then recall them, for example. When the weather is better you often won't use this option, as most of the planes you will want to fly will be doing so from the previous turn, only you will be checking them when going through your bases just to make sure they weren't too badly shot up. Actually recalling all aircraft might be the best first step to take, even before going through the bases on the mostly bad weather turns. Doing this with the allies in going to be a little more problematic I would imagine, because their regions aren't quite as centralized, but I would still do it that way more than likely if I were playing them.
Even using the method above, and being very familiar with it, the first turn for a more complicated Japan can take me a huge amount of time, maybe 8 hours or more. I just save the game where I left off, let's say I was still messing with the bases and type the name Saigon and I'll know what city to take up with next. For the other turns I usually take from between 30-60 minutes a turn, with very rainy turns taking maybe only 15 minutes.
This may not be the best system, but at least it's a system, and that was my major obstacle in playing this game was to find a system. Naturally there will be times when you depart somewhat from your system, to have a look elsewhere to help make a decison, but the best thing to do is to save the game at that point, especially in the base checking portion, because I can't tell you how many times I was in something easy to remember, like Saigon, then I look over enemy-held Singapore, then decide I don't want to do anything there that turn (like make an invasion fleet) and then I get back and forget which base I was last at. Saviing the game with the base name will help you remember (though in my case that happens fairly infrequently).
Probably the most difficult tedious thing to master is your air force, and if you have quite a lot of bad weather, settiing them down and then sending them back out in the little packets where there may be good weather, this will save you a ton of time. For my part anyway, I'm not too concerned what the weather is regarding moving ships, and in many cases not too worried about my ground forces in that weather either.
I hope this at least gives you some ideas.
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