It is an interesting fact that the airship CV USS Makan patrolled the very area the Jap carriers launched their attack from on December the 7th 1941. If it hadn't been forced to ditch into the sea during a freak storm in 1938, the Japanese would have had to find a way of eliminating or avoiding it and its air patrols. Perhaps even abandoned the idea as being impossible to pull off. History could have been very different.
Space Empirse is a strategic wargame and one of my tactics is to place a large number of my obstelete and older technology warships in large numbers near jump points so that the AI enemy scouts scan them, see that a large armada of warships is waiting, and avoid attacking. The fact that the ships are not really up to scratch isn't detectable, as the AI only counts the hull types and not how the vessels are equiped.
I played the same trick on my teenage son, who was supposed to be an "Ally" in campaign, but can't be trusted as such. Sure enough he'd checked out a jump point, saw a collection of old and obstellete cruisers, destroyers and frigates and so decided to disolve the alliance with an attack. I had a giant armada of 200 state of the art serious warships sat out of scanning range behind a planet in the sector. I eliminated his only ships covering several star systems, including his home system, and took all of them without a fight.
Strangely enough, he wanted to negotiate a new Alliance after that, but with control of his core systems and shipyards, I didn't need him as an ally anymore. Then the computer AI launched an invasion of his remaining territory....
Big Picture strategic games are qiute addictive and involving. History is full of instances where wars have been won or lost by a simple bad call. The Japanese faffing around with aircraft payloads during Midway is one such example.
The thing is, in warfare, bad calls take on a momentum of their own and can't be easily reversed.
You shoud try playing French in any wargame.... terrible command and control structure.... non-existant for 90% of their tanks (no radios) and troops still use runners and pidgeons.
Even the Russians were better than equiped and organised than the French were. Sadly let down by obstellete ammunition and propellants in 1941.
I presume that the Russians in Manchuria are inactive against the Japanese in the game or are they sticking to history??