This mission went much better than I anticipated.
Going in I was worried about the Japanese AI aggressiveness and its employment of artillery. Less so about tanks because my Anti-Air units are dual-mode and can double as Anti-Tank if/when necessary.
When artillery shells start raining on a unit its efficiency drops quickly enough that combat just generates unsustainable losses and particularly at this difficulty level the Japanese are the only ones that can shrug off that kind of damage.
Either by design or by dint of river fording delays the Japanese artillery didn't play a significant role, the other units weren't as aggressive as I feared and at least at first proved quite manageable.
The JP air units also didn't seem to have a consistent plan and mostly flew all over the place. Once the auxiliary mountain artillery appeared on Turn 10 the G3M Rikko beelined towards it leaving the other units unmolested. That was helpful because strategic bombers are flying artillery units.
The JP tanks were manageable until the point in Turn 14 when four new Chi-Ha appeared. The two on the East flank were either too far or foiled by Bunker B4. The two on the West flank just couldn't be stopped with the forces at hand. Luckily they were too late to take any Secondary VPs although the ZoC of my defensive line must also have had a role in it.
It is said that the best defense is a good offense. Operative qualifier is "good". You need to have the right units and the right terrain.
Attacking without at least air parity and the means to negate enemy artillery is suicidal. There's also Murphy's laws of combat (Google it, they've been hilarious for over thirty years), the very first one being "if the enemy is in range, so are you" and the thirteenth "If your attack is going well, you have walked into an ambush".
In OoB this means that one should try to attack the enemy when it is in poorly defensive terrain while doing so from decent defensive terrain because the enemy will likely counterattack and cause at least as much if not more damage to you as you did to it.
The U.S. and Philippino Armies in this scenario don't have the resources to go on the offensive.
Yes, prior knowledge helps. This (and the next) mission are the primary reason why I groomed three Engineer units during the tutorial. I hadn't planned on purchasing "Burma Road" and having No. 1 IC available. Blowing up bridges is mentioned in one of the random "loading screen tips" but you as the player have to mull on it. I was lucky to have Mr. Abernethy do it for me.
A blind player that heeded the advice in the briefing and studied the map carefully might be skilled enough to come to the same conclusions as me. An over-confident one might just scrape through a major victory (i.e. both secondaries) with a much depleted force.
IIRC when I played this mission in "normal" difficulty I had three Engineers, 14th "Punaluu" Bty retained its transport and I deployed one 105mm M2A1 howitzer. That meant I had two fewer regular Infantry units and I think the Porac/Floridablanca position crumbled fast in the last two turns because of it. I was somehow still able to get both Secondary Objectives.
This concludes my report on "War Plan Orange Three", the second mission of the U.S. Pacific campaign for Order of Battle: World War II. Thank you for your time and hope you'll join me on the next one.
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