Agree 100%. Here and on all the other board games we both share a love for. I skip past other posts to see what you think cuz you're very fair & informative. Don't sell yourself short scarypharaoh. You helped me tremendously as well. These posts are great. Not one freemium crybaby. Rather people who love true board games & can get past little imperfections & fall in love with all that's great about a game.
I should thank you for all your kind words. Your encouragements is the main motivation to type on. About the question on air-to-ship damages, here is the developer's response:
Developer's Forum A lot of communication to and from the developer can be found here. No registration required: http://cbfg.xooit.org/index.php So I can stop quoting the communications back and forth. BTW, I am waiting for 1.1.1 before writing the Midway AAR And if you are interested in the history leading to the South Pacific battles, please let me know, or I just write something about the hardware and weapons. Edit: Stop the press! After a couple minutes, I check and the version 1.1.1 is live.
Adding historical information only adds to my enjoyment, so if you do post some I'll defiantly read it. Thanks again.
Okay, boring stuff in... First big disclaimer, I am not formally educated in the subject of history, not even a scholar. My post here are taken from the internet and my vague memory. The stuff presented here may be not be even historically accurate, so please bear with me. Since the Japanese started all these mess, let start with them. The reason why the Japanese had been so expansionist is a subject to many debates which I am going to avoid. But most Chinese will tell you that the Japanese never stop wanting a piece of China (and in secret they love the Japanese adult video actresses, trust me on this). After the end of WW1, Japan emerged as the victory side and she always wanted the German colonial interest in Asia, which was largely suppressed and ignored by the Western powers at the time. Westernized Japan, well before WW1, had proven herself no less than the Western powers from a series of military conflicts, and many Japanese thought they were looked down upon by the West and the feeling of unjust was wide spread. Worse, the number of military treaties organized by US and UK in the 1920s, in a hope to slow down the arm races among powers, were viewed by the Japanese leaders as a form of suppression of the rise Japanese as a world major power. Many historian agree that a more immediate trigger was the collapse of Wall Street leading to the Great Depression, destroying the export market to US which Japan relied heavily on, so Japan turned to look for other places to "open up" economics "opportunities", which at that time, China. China had been in chaos since the fall the emperor since early 1910s and with China Nationalist army close to complete the reunification in the early 1930s. Japan feared the nationalism is China and the solution was by military means, when the 1930s, the military faction seized the real power in the Japanese government. The full-scale war with China finally started in year 1937. Better equipped, better trained, better organized, the Japanese army seemed out-match easily against the Chinese Nationalist army. The capital Nanjing soon fell along with most major cities in north eastern China as well as the coastal cities like Shanghai. However, the resistant of the Chinese were stiff and the Chinese government was determined to fight back. War dragged on and it was said the strategic resources (oil, rubber, metal) began to run scarce for the Japanese, forcing them to start another war in order to win the war with China. Some Japanese leaders looked north. The venture of Japanese army into Mongolia and Soviet Russia during 1938 and 1939, ended up with disastrous result to the Japanese (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Khasan and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Khalkhin_Gol), the southward strategy became favored by the Japanese leaders so they planned to invade Indochina which were rich in the resources they needed. But they had a major problem: these areas were held by Western powers mainly the British and the Americans, who stayed more or less neutral since the war with China started. But as the war escalated, even the Americans felt uneasy with the Japanese expansion. US government placed embargo on exporting strategic materials, especially oil, to Japan and planned to freeze Japanese assets in US. Some said this was the last straw. Many Japanese leaders felt that the war with the American would be inevitable, among them, Isoroku Yamamoto, who was a military delegate to US in his earlier years, was said to have deep understandings of American industrial strength. Even though US was the 11th military power at that time, Yamamoto believed that once US entered the war, with her industrial might, a prolong war with her would eventually doom Japan. So he suggested a fast, hard-hitting attack on the US, which now we know it is the Pearl Harbor.
(Continue with the boring background stuff) Yamamoto believed that, by taking out the US Pacific Fleet, even with the American industrial stength, it would take quie some time before the US Navy recovered enough to challenge Japan. Japan, in the meantime, could use this gap to capture and seize Indochina and he western Pacific, or may even Australia and India, and with time to strengthen her defense on these new terroritories before US could retaliate. After the attack on the Pearl Harbour, Japan invaded terroritories held by British and US : Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Philipines, Indonesia, Burma, Pacific islands like Guam, Marshall Islands, steam rolled all the way to Papua New Guneia. Japan military leaders placed special emphasis on the string of islands in the South Paciic, they builit a number of bases on these islands, strengthen them with aircrafts, garrison of troops and some with harbours for fleet.. Not only they acted as the spring board to the invasion of Ausralia, these bases would also be the first line of defense and drew the Amercian to them. if you check out the map of the Pacific, you will notice the northern part of the ocean is dotted with small islands, hard to defend and support in case of US counterattack and the vast distance beween Japan and US mainland serves as natural deterrance some how. But these long chain of islands in the south, from Philipines, Indonesia, and all the way to Tulga in the east, these bases could support each other and when the eventual US attack arrived, the Japanese miliary leaders hoped it would take very long time and effort for the Amerian to take each one of these bases out, just like a WW1 trentch network at sea. Tulga was one of the last strongholds in the network according to plan, but after the Battle of Coral Sea, and the establishment of the Henderson Field, the Japanese plan failed. The Japanese commanders felt that the American established a "beachhead" in their line of defense and the American had to be driven out, which led to a series of battles in the area.
Tips for beginners (I know that longish "history" is kinda boring and kicks people away. And if anyone complaining this blog has become my personal blog, I will stop　head back and enjoy the game) If you are new to wargaming or even have zero idea about this part of history, I am writing down and help you to enjoy and hopefully win the game. First, I would strongly recommend you run the tutorial first. Go back and repeat if you do not understand the rules and the play sequences. When you feel ready for the real deal, I strong suggest you play the followings in the order of Bismark Sea Midway Guadalcanal The order listed in the scenario screen is in the order of date. I strongly suggest this order since: Bismark Sea: manage base air ops, practice both air to land and air to sea combat, and search ops. Very hard to draw in the end, let alone losing Midway: though terrible unbalanced for US, you learn carrier ops, fleet ops and base ops with oil limit. Guadalcanal: learn to use "strategic reserve", air cover, convoy protection and surface actions. The scale is the much manageable than other scenarios of the same map. When you first launch the scenario to play, make sure you read the Historical Notes which gives you some idea about the situation, the force you have and objectives of both sides. Then, since the game is about scoring, read the scoring card for the scenario which also gives you idea where to get the most score and prevent the Japanese from scoring. Takes your time and go through all the bases, air assets, ships available to you and familiar with the map. The heart of the game is air ops, and there are 3 types of ops you can choose from CAP combat air patrol, use fighters to protect the base/ship from enemy air attacks. If you are not sure which plane is a fighter, drag the counter into the CAP box. You cannot assign the plane which is not of fighter type as CAP in this game. Search: your eyes high up in the air. It is important for you to actively know what is going on around and look for the enemy important ships (most of the time, CV) first before the enemy finds yours is the key of winning the game Strike/Transfer: this is where your "best defense" starts or you move your air assets from one place to another to replenish, so that refocus your center of attention as planes have limited range Note that planes need to be filled up with gas or may be mount bombs before they can do their things. This process takes time, so you need to plan ahead and note any incoming air raids. Please note that for planes on CV, if you have more than one unit arming when the enemy is commencing their air attack runs, your CV takes extra penalty, which is very bad for health Here is the start, and here is a few things to note also: 1. Sending bombers to enemy without fighters by their side is usually a very bad idea 2. CV does not like ship-to-ship combat. The AI like to engage your CV with their more powerful surface fleet 3. It is okay to for your fleet to run away from danger and return later. But running away from air strikes is almost impossible 4. Timing enemy attacks gives you advantage, but it is not easy to master and you need to gather a lot of info and coordinate your attack 5. It is never a good idea to have your fleet, especially one with CV, staying too close (3 hexes or fewer) to your base, which is frequently visited by enemy bombers during daylight. 6. Do not rely too much on the free seaplane search available, because it never covers sufficiently. More eyes up there give better chance of finding the enemy sooner 7. Play slowly, take time and think before you make your move. If you press the advance button but forget to do one important step like prep an air strike. You may regret it later 8. Luck is quite a dominate factor in the game. I guess very few people win in the first play of any scenario. By repeat playing a scenario, it not only gives you the idea what the enemy has, it also show what it can do. 9. I usually prefer 1 wave of attack, especially those launched from a land base. It takes longer time to prep, but the chance of getting better results are higher. Enjoy!
History is not boring, (If you want to know the future, study the past) and of course with historical wargames reading about the actual events all helps with immersion, comparison of tactics etc. I've read all your above posts, plus have bought a book about Guadalcanal. Good work with the beginner tips too. Bismark Sea is an easy win, which is the intention, and the best I've done at Midway is a draw so far. I really should send more fighters with bombing missions. Keeping them as carrier CAP doesn't seem all that effective anyway.
CB4G is a game full of give-and-take decisions with a strong favor of luck/randomness. You want to keep your CV safe by putting up 10+ CAP, but a couple of bombers luckily slip though and sink your only CV making your day(that just happened in the Guadalcanal game played). Or you send a good number of escorts, but all your invaluable torpedo bombers are shot down by heavy AAA, which you can do nothing about it....... The main point of the guide is, even if you lose your CV or fail an attack or lose an encounter. Don't feel too bad, fight on cause this game is a bit random. The next game day, you may happen to find its only CV just lies 2 hexes from your main base, for no particular reason. Now you call your hoard of airmen hungry for revenge rushing to their bombers... You may never know when things turn around. Even the AI ways to doing things is rather so. Once it can be so bold to rush its BB fleet into Henderson port and lays waste to all the planes grounded there, In the next game,　instead the same BB TF chases down my convoy without knowing that it has already merged with my main surface fleet with more guns than its. Surface engagement results in 1 BB sunk and other in major fire. The Midway AAR is still W.I.P. Hope to finish it before Wed and may it help you with your games.
Tried Coral Sea and Santa Cruz over the weekend. One word: despair... I don't know but if the real world was like the game, given the Japanese air power during that time period, I can't see any reason why Japan could not have won the war. She had more air resources to locate your CV before you locate hers and then struck you with over 20 dive and torpedo bombers with escorts will terminate your CV with ease, even if you have 10 units of CAP... So, one more tips for you: hid your CV until Day 3 as much as possible. If you happen to find the enemy CV and nothing happens in the next 20-40 minutes, send out your strike team in one single wave. Even if you just manage to sink 1 or 2 CVL and get your CV away, you probably again more points than losing control on a port... Good luck, commander.
A very rough AAR for Battle of Midway can be found here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/11TaAnvo6NuGmuHsozCVouMUmxVuEybv5yfWJvpztm5E/edit?usp=sharing I want to do the Guadalcanal ARR also, but I am going to leave time for a week and a half with family on Wednesday so I am afraid the little project has to wait.
I'm having another shot at Midway with the help of your document. Hoping to do better than a draw this time.
Thanks guys. (Frankly, I am a little disappointed nobody spots the not-so-subtle reference to Star Wars series ) Edit: while looking for the Flat Top rule book online (shame, thrown it all away when I was small), I stumble across the Designer Notes, Historical Commentary and the history behind the battles in Solomon Seas (spoiler alert!) It gives you some insight behind the wave attack mechanism (very similar to CB4G) and answer questions like "why in the world was the Japanese super BB missing from all the actions during that period?" http://grognard.com/info/FlatTopDesignersNotes.pdf http://grognard.com/info/FlatTopHistorical.pdf https://web.archive.org/web/20010717045345/http://www.facstaff.bucknell.edu/boeke/hobbies/flattop/solhist.htm
Rough AAR for Guadalcanal is up. Warning: contains spoilers! https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sW93wi6igVh9H3ruhcbJTUd3W4c8MUu63e276I412uc/edit?usp=sharing
I have no idea what to try next, cause the rest are much more hard core than the first three. May be I try Coral Sea and see what happens. I may post an ARR in which I lose.
Version 1.2 is out. New the search has been improved so that you can adjust the directions and the distance of your searches. Expect an updated review "soon".
