Feltan
Posts: 1160
Joined: 12/5/2006
From: Kansas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DivePac88
quote:
ORIGINAL: Feltan
I would add one huge item on the Allied side. The U.S. (and hence the Allies) had a split command in the Pacific; the Army's Southwest Pacific command run by MacArthur, and Nimitz running the Pacific Command. In the game, the Allied player doesn't have to deal with the politics of a split command, and hence is not required to divert resources to one or the other to placate egos.
The ability to correct this problem, by itself, gives the Allies a decisive advantage -- namely, unity of command. That alone should shorten the war by several months!
Regards,
Feltan
But I think the same could be said for the Japanese side. The Japanese also had a split command structure between their respective Army and Naval General Staff commands. The Army General staff where more concerned with their operational stalemate in China, and a possible upcoming war with a weaken USSR. While the Naval General Staff and the Combined Fleet Command's gaze was firmly fixed in the Pacific and Southern Resource areas.
That both these command Structures were loathe to share resources with each other is well known. So that the unified command structure in AE favors the Allied player just as much as it does the Japanese one.
I generally don't disagree; however, I would suggest that this was a bigger problem for the Allies especially early in the war.
For the Japanese, the inter-service rivaly broke down not only along service lines, but generally geographic as well. It is true there was monumental rivaly with the Japanese command structure, but their navy had their own aircraft and infantry for the Pacific and their Army only really used the navy for transport/logistics. While there was the aforementioned rivaly, operationally it broke down into generally recognizable geographic areas of responsibility until very late in the war -- when it was really too late to matter. During the early phases of the war, I don't think the rivalry materially affected the pace or scope of Japanese gains.
For the Allies, much of the early offensive momentum was diverted and delayed. Switching resource focus between MacArthur and Nimitz and then back again prevented or delayed a more rapid progress (either in the island hopping campaign or in the Cartwheel and subsequent operations). Again, late in the war this didn't make a lot of difference due to the embarassement of resources that were so plentiful; however, in late '42 and '43 the Allies didn't gain much traction -- they kept changing their focus and strategic direction.
In the game, to a very large extent, the Japanese and Allied players can both correct this -- and achieve a unity of command that wasn't present in real life. My point, and in my opinion, this really helps the Allied player more because I believe the disunity of command affected the Allies to a greater extent.
Regards,
Feltan
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RE: Who Won the Actual War? - 
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