kennonlightfoot -> Lightfoot (Allies) vs stjeand (Axis) 3.1 (no stjeand) (8/6/2021 8:56:15 PM)
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Time to take a look at the newest version, update 3.1, from the Allied point of view. There have bee a lot of changes and fixes in updates 3.0 and 3.1, so it is time to see how they affect game play. And, if India and Australia are still vulnerable to being overrun. Also, whether the Allies can keep their Convoy system in operation. The first turn is typical so I won't show screenshots unless I see something new. On my screenshots I will try to be consistent with color highlighting. Generally, green lines will be movements, red lines will be attacks, yellow I use for retreats. Secondary attacks will be orange. Blue for secondary movements (usually after a path is cleared it will show the follow up unit moves. As expected on the first turn the Japanese run wild. Batavia is taken on the first turn so version 3 changes didn't give the DEI capital much better defense than before. Some test I ran found that the odds were around 6:1 so there is a chance of failure but I only saw it happen once. Philippines The strengthening of the units in the Philippines make it unlikely the Japanese can take it on turn 1. As expected, they landed on Aparria and Legaspi. Combined with blockade on the Manila and the other port, the Allies are cut off from supply. The navy didn't fair well. Both the Houston and Skip Jack are sunk. Only the Pike gets to fight another day. Pearl Harbor got off with just two battleships sunk, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma, and on bottomed. In the Solomons the usual. Landing at Rabaul kills the defender but doesn't have enough movement to capture the port. Landing on New Guinea results in Lae being taken and the Japanese moving down to Port Moresby. Air attacks on Singapore send the Repulse to the bottom but the Pr. of Wales is going to escape. The Japanese also make landings in Borneo to tkae the oil there. China action is typical. The Japanese start their drive on Changsha. I dissolve the Flying Tigers to save the cost of keeping it functional. Burma The Japanese move isn't what I usually see. Rather than heading for the Salween river they move more into the Malaya area. I am not sure what their objective is so I move to block the rive crossing and shift other Indian units toward Burma but near the coast just in case this move is aimed at using landings to bypass defenses. Screenshot below. S. Pacific The Japanese move to blockade a number of single landing islands (only takes one ship to blockade). I am going to test using US subs to break these blockades so I send on to Canton Is. Australia There just aren't enough units to defend all the ports so I am only defending from Rock Hampton south. The main hope for Australia is that with only 1 VP hex it isn't worth the effort to take it. Production Since the UK doesn't get a transport until 3/21 and the US not until 3/1, my builds are oriented toward things that can be quickly made available to the front line troops without transportation. So you will see a lot of AA, Trucks, Oilers, and such in the builds. The UK lack infantry to send to India so their builds will include those. The US will be building subs as well when they have free shipyards since there is no delay for getting them deployed. To do this I limit the amount going to upgrades until I have a few of the must haves done. For the UK this will be brief since they need to rebuild their ship damage quickly too. Upgrades are set to 100 for UK and 200 of US. Canada is set to 0 so all its production can go to making Oilers and AA guns for the UK and India. The minor countries and Allies like China are set to maximum to reinforcements. India will briefly have to limit reinforcements because it needs PP to make their division active. Convoys Here I am going to try to maximize the amount of production points I can get to India, UK, Australia and New Zealand. In the case of Australia and New Zealand all supply will come from the US but it having only 43 Merchants, they make a split of 30 to Australia and 10 to New Zealand with one oil each. The UK sends all it allocated production for export to India but this is only 16 on the first turn. That leaves most of the UK's 105 Merchants unused so I take advantage of the fact that there merchants will transport PP sent to the UK from the US. So the US allocates 50 PP plus 2 Oil to go to the UK. Escorts are set to 12 in each route, India and S. Pacific. All others are shut down. The Convoy war is a major worry. I have come up with lots of ways for the Japanese to kill Merchants using surface ships but no good counter until I have Naval Air to help. But I may not have any Merchants by then. [image]local://upfiles/22005/9C6C6B6883F14B1A81F9DECD90C67C89.jpg[/image]
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