Conquest of the Pacific (2000)

Overview

Conquest of the Pacific is just that, a naval contest between unit rich, production poor Japan and unit poor, production rich America. The game does not include Asia. It is strictly a series of naval and island hopping maneuvering and battles fought in the Pacific. We always wanted to play with the boats more in A&A, but we also wanted to win. The boats and planes are so expensive that no one can really afford to wage much sea war after the first turn or two in A&A. Enter Conquest of the Pacific. Both sides face daunting tasks. Japan has a huge fleet, but has a lot of islands it needs to conquer to win, and ends up being so far away from its supply lines that it usually can't defend everything while still being able to challenge the growing American fleet. America starts the war far from a state of readiness, but its huge economic advantage helps make up for it. The front is close to the US, so supply lines are short, but the Japanese fleet is usually much larger if it can consolidate. This makes for some interesting cat and mouse maneuvering and epic sea battles.

Planes take a large role in Conquest of the Pacific as they are able to:

1. land and take off from islands without it costing a movement point because the island and the sea zone(s) surrounding/adjacent to the island are considered the same zone.

2. project their defensive power one sea zone away from their island base zone during the opponent's combat phase.

3. defensively scramble to attack anything entering their zones of projected power during the opponent's turn on the combat movement and non-combat movement phases.

4. escort other units to protect them from defensive scramblers.

Battleships and Destroyers may bombard every round during an invasion, or once per turn without a land invasion. Battleships and Carriers take two hits to kill and can be repaired at several ports on the map. And, be on the lookout for the Japanese SuperBattleship, the Yamato. It attacks, defends, and bombards at a 5 and takes 3 hits to kill, ouch! It really is fun to get to play with all the expensive pieces!