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Canoerebel -> RE: The Good The Bad & The Indifferent (2/22/2017 7:46:49 PM)
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One reason I feel sanguine about the pace of the game is that we've reached a point where it's possible to judge who was right in evaluating things, especially in the darks days of the Sumatra debacle.
At that time, some readers (probably mostly followers of John's AAR) contended that Sumatra was a crippling blow to the Allied war effort. I contended that no matter what happened, the Allies were in great shape. I made that claim just before we took the two-year sabbatical in September 2013. The claim was met with howls of derision from certain folks.
I was right. Mostly that's because I knew my opponent. Sumatra wasn't guaranteed to turn out so well, but it did. And I was confident that would be the case.
I wouldn't have been as confident if I hadn't known my opponent or if I was playing an opponent who had a record of tough defense in depth. Sumatra could've been - and probably should've been - a debacle. But John got distracted by the vortex and turned Sumatra into an affair that paid off handsomely for the Allies. (At the same time, Sumatra was very nearly a victory by itself - more fighters or perhaps another 200k supply would've made the difference - as it was, the Allies held out for eight months.)
Some ardent John supports made some pretty rough comments during the course of the game. I recall one, in particular, as the Marshalls campaign was winding down. I had just shifted everything from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific, managed the very successful Aleutians campaign and was doing very well in the Marshalls campaign. Both of those involved the loss of next to no ships. But, one day, Japanese aircraft sank CA Portland. A reader of John's AAR showed up in mine for the first and only time and wrote, "You seem to be off your game."
I was like, "What? Everything's going incredibly well. Where are you coming from."
Readers of John's AAR are privy to his successes and his vision of things, so they get a skewed understanding of the game.
John plays incredibly aggressively and hard. He gets away with that in '41 and '42 when he has overwhelming numbers. But he's burning the candle at both ends, expending precious resources far, far faster than he can afford to do so. His navy, in this game, is the prime example. He used it so often and so hard that it evaporated. Had one or the other of us walked away from the game in June '43, he wouldn't have paid for his style of play. But by '44 he's bankrupt and it's apparent to everyone. You can't play at a non-sustainable rate if you're in for the long haul.
The game isn't over. I can and will continue to make mistakes. Luck will become fickle. John gets lots of sexy aircraft. His fighters are already tough on my 4EB. So there's a great deal of game to be played yet.
But the Allies are indeed in the desired position to prosecute the war efficiently as we reach the summer of '44.
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