Dainichi Sekai Taisen v3.0

Description

After victory in the Sino-Japanese war of 1895, Japan was forced by the European Powers to return most of her conquered territories and then was subject to discriminating immigration laws in the U.S. and an unequal quota of warships in naval treaties in spite of fighting on the side of the Allies in World War One. For half a century, Japan has worked relentlessly to improve her infrastructure and armed forces in the quest for international recognition and respect, something no Asian power has been able to claim.

Reckless modernization and expansion however has come at a price and by 1937, Japan is on the verge of economic collapse unless the resources of China and South-east Asia can be secured. Can you serve the Emperor and your people by taking control of 32 objective cities? For a list of the objective cities, use the Find City window under the Kingdom pull-down menu. The scenario ends in August 1945 with the dropping of the atomic bomb if you do not achieve your objectives.

Discussion

Dainichi Sekai Taisen, which means Second World War in Japanese, is one of the last scenarios authored by Kobayashi and was released in May 2005. (trivia: Kobayashi is from Singapore and is not Japanese)

In some ways the scenario was atypical of the Kobayashi series. It was a single-player scenario with heavily scripted AI events and used fairline style graphics for the first time. Even so it did feature a heavy emphasis on research which covered the unique military, economic and scientific developments as Japan emerged as a maritime power. To properly depict the problems facing the Japanese Empire at the time, the Japan tribe is not able to build infantry units but instead must rely on a few event-created infantry. To mimic Japan's constrained industrial capability, the Japan tribe must rely on event-created raw materials in the rest of Asia which must be shipped back to Japan for use. To represent Japanese advatages such as the Long Lance Torpedo and disadvantages such as the Allied Oil Embargo, wonders and their obselescence were used.

One nice feature of DST is its browser compatible guide which covers in detail the background and history of Japan's military exploits from about 1900 to 1945. This is broken down into four sections, Asia's Own Naval Power, the Pacification of China, Preparation for All Out War and Defence of the Empire. The guide also describes the units prevalent during each period.

DST was upgraded in July 2005 to version 2, which involved various improvements to the AI forces, a higher level of difficulty for the Japanese and fixes for bugs and inaccuracies pointed out by players of the earlier version. In version 3 Kobayashi did away with negotiations and added a generator for transports pre-loaded with marines, to properly simulate the Allied island hopping counter-offensive of 1944.

Screenshots

Downloads

Scenario Files: Media:DST3g.zip

Sound Files: Media:DST2s.zip

the S-League Forum Thread http://www.apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=136651 associated with the development of DST.

the S-League Forum Thread associated with version 2.0.