@Austria Hungary: Remember, the AI has unlimited range for naval vessels.
@ColonelIronboot: Well i am sorta guessing here, but I think they have about 12 or 14 carriers left now. Thats not bad, considering they had like 24 before the war began. However, it has come at the cost of my veteran carrier groups. Perhaps thats not a bad thing though, since i am now replacing them with brand new, modern carriers.
@Karaiskandar: Well, the road is not open, but it is a bit easier now.
@Ciryandor: That, and the fact that Koga's fleet has 9 carriers, so they always outnumber me in straight up battles. Defending over the command limit seems to help actually, since it gives those Japanese CV's something else to shoot at.
@everyone else: Thanks for your comments!
US marines fight hard to clear the island of Mindanao of Japanese presence. The marines succeed, with the Japanese troops fleeing by small boats to Negros.
in the middle east, the city of Tehran, garrisoned by the Persian Army's best troops, is finally overrun by a massive Russian assault. Whats left of Persia's government quickly surrenders, with Persia now being split between both Russia and the Ottoman Empire.
Due to the US navy's devastating losses to the IJN, the US government switches most military industrial production to the rebuilding of the navy's combat capability. In this effort, American shipyards lay down the keels for a brand new class of supercarriers. These vessels, the first of which will be completed by 1948, will be the most powerful warships in the entire planet, and should finally give the United States the decisive edge it so badly needs at sea.
Three more aircraft carriers come off the production line and enter service. These new carriers are grouped with a large number of brand new escort ships, and sent into the pacific under the command of Admiral Kinkaid.
US marines, exhausted from marching through huge amounts of thick jungles, are halted in their advance by the Japanese garrison at Lae. Clearly, more reinforcements will be needed to finally break through Japanese lines here.
Admiral Kinkaid takes command of most of Halsey's carriers, merging them into his own fleet. His taskforce now heads towards the Philippines, to aid the ground advance there.
He arrives just as the Japanese launch a counter attack in the Philippines, landing thousands of soldiers in southern Luzon as well as Leyte. Kinkaid soon chases away the transports that ferried these troops to the Philippines, as US marines launch a successful counterattack on Leyte island.
The other Japanese landing, at Lamon Bay, is also quickly crushed. Note that these are actually not Japanese troops, but rather a mix of Australasian marines and Manchu mountaineers, commanded by a Manchu general.
Meanwhile, the Ottoman Empire, with the support of troops from Eastern Europe and Russia, finally overruns the Arab state of Oman. This finally finishes the middle east war in complete victory for the Mitteleuropan alliance, which now controls a huge amount of the world's oil reserves.
US forces redeploy from the western half of New Guinea to the front line in the east, greatly increasing their combat power. The marines and mountaineers lead the charge as US forces pound the enemy lines, finally overrunning the Japanese and ANZAC positions and securing the air and naval bases in the area.