Hello and welcome to my playthrough of Slitherine's/The Artistocrats' Order of Battle: World War II U.S. Pacific campaign.
If you have been following along we've just completed the Boot Camp tutorial campaign as a linked prelude and are now about to begin "Pearl Harbor", the first mission of the U.S. Pacific campaign.
This is my first blog and I'm still learning how to use the platform and how to edit the images in Gimp. I'm a bit more knowledgeable and a bit more confident than when I started the tutorial but I'm still learning.
My primary motivation is to offer a counterpoint to TheEdmon's opinion as expressed in his playthrough on Youtube (link: The last video on the playthrough). I hope my effort also has merit in and of itself in showcasing the game and this campaign.
I'm playing at the highest difficulty setting (Fleet Admiral), as he did.
I'm not playing blind like he did but I'll try to the best of my ability to emphasize the hints and clues that the designers put forward in the mission briefings and which I feel that he ignored, glossed over and/or discarded.
That is my attempt at "offline map staring", which is a staple of some/most of his playthroughs and which was sorely lacking in this instance.
I'm also simulating an iron-man run of this campaign, as he did. As iron-man is most definitely not supported by the game I will publish my first successful play of each mission, hopefully my first run at this difficulty setting.
I have known about Order of Battle since shortly after it was launched in 2015. IIRC I was introduced to it by Paradogs Gamer and/or Night Phoenix on Youtube. I have played the Boot Camp campaign a number of times in the intervening years but I only played and completed the U.S. Pacific campaign once (in April/May 2023) at the "normal" Captain difficulty setting. I have not played any other campaign but I have dabbled at some of the showcase first missions available for free.
I'm most definitely not presenting an optimized walkthrough of this campaign nor am I offering a detrimental comparison to TheEdmon's tactical decisions. This is not a review of his playthrough and should not be seen as such. I wish he had played in a different manner but that is his prerogative. What I object to is the tone and content of his opinion which I feel is insufficiently supported.
As it has been well over a year since I started working towards this playthrough, Slitherine released Version 10 in July, 2023 (Figure 1). At that time I had already played "Fleet Command" but not yet finished editing the screenshots and I was worried about a possible negative impact that would require starting again from scratch.
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| Figure 1 - Launch screen |
The Campaign selection screen (Figure 2) and you may notice that the U.S. Marines and Burma Road campaigns have been added to my portfolio. Haven't even launched them yet, I'm concentrating on this playthrough.
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| Figure 2 - Campaign selection screen |
Onto the campaign itself and the first mission, Pearl Harbor (Figure 3). I really have to stop cramming so much information into a single image. The backdrop Campaign map is a thing of beauty and should be displayed in all its glory.
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| Figure 3 - Briefing |
Top left corner, we're asked if we want to import a Core. Answering in the affirmative the list of available core files appears in a dedicated pop-up. The insert is very heavily edited/condensed and the three files are: the blog run core (Difficulty 5 Game 1), a test run for unspent specialization points carryover and my original run at normal difficulty (Boot Camp GOG). There's also a "Tutorial Message" regarding "Core Force Importing". That will be the only tutorial message during this mission but it is a demonstration of how tutorial messages are not restricted to the tutorial campaign.
Along the right-hand edge are the various briefing messages. At the top is the Campaign Map teaser that appears at the bottom edge of the screen, in the center is the Campaign Event pop-up window and at the bottom is a condensed version of the three briefing messages (all the text is there, I just removed a lot of blank space). The only significant piece of information in all of this is that we're facing enemy (not OPFOR anymore) air units ("... fighters and bombers...").
Bottom center is a self-explanatory difficulty setting and slightly above is the pop-up introducing the bonus "Australian Commandos" rewarding the purchase of the "Burma Road" campaign.
Somewhat forlornly in the center of the image is the main character, the button for the "Pearl Harbor" mission. At this point I would like to stress the significance of the red arrow shooting out of the Japanese flag. That is the clue for initiative, who acts first every turn. The Japanese will have it in this mission.
Finally on the bottom left corner the Deployment Phase Turn Overview pop-up window with a few inserts. What do we learn from this? The mission will last 15 turns, there's no way to actually lose it, we start with $30 and will earn $5 per turn but there's no CPs allowance for new units.
The (non-mission critical) secondary objectives are what makes this mission interesting:
a) five 37mm AA Guns can be activated, two of which will be Core units (one with organic transport, a Studebaker truck) and will play a role further along the campaign (once again the designers grant us units that might be overlooked);
b) five fighters can be activated, one of which (a P40 Warhawk) will be a Core unit (the designers don't give us money that we might spend unwisely, they give us expensive units);
c) a promise of less capable enemy air units in future mission(s) if we manage to shoot down five enemies;
d) a promise of an auxiliary battleship in future mission(s) if at least one of three present survive.
I have stated above that I have not played any other campaign and only a few introductory missions. This mission is the exception that validates that rule. TheEdmon also states in the introduction to this mission that he's well acquainted with it.
Prompted by the authoritative way TheEdmon presented and played this mission in his playthrough I played it at the highest difficulty setting over a dozen times before I even bought the game.
He has a couple of insightful takes: at least at first it is best to leverage the support fire abilities of the U.S. fighters to chip away at the Japanese (JP) aircraft without incurring losses; the survival of any U.S. battleship is a matter of RNG.
This being said:
a) the AA units can be activated consistently (turns 2, 4, 5, 13 and 14);
b) the fighters slightly less so (turns 2, 4, 5 and 10) because one (the Ford Island one) requires naval transport and should wait until it is safe-ish to do so;
c) shooting down five JP aircraft is quite achievable in the fifteen turns allotted unless the player does something incredibly stupidly;
d) barring some extreme bad luck in the first three to five turns when the defensive units are few and far between it is possible to skew the odds in favor of at least one battleship surviving.
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Comments on this post are disabled. That's just for ease of management. They will be enabled in the last post for each mission.
