You must not be reading what is said or looking at the board.
W. USA can be bombed from Hawaii with Japan’s bombers. Since Japan’s bombers are now trapped into being Hawaii, they cost the Axis money. I never said it was being bombed from W. Europe.
Russia’s AA Guns are a HUGE liability! And they cost money on top of it! That’s a double whammy.
America’s going to need surface ships to defend the transports. One surface ship is not going to cut it, not against 2 or 3 German bombers. So assuming you have 4 transports 1 destroyer that’s 44 IPC. It’s perfectly feasible to think that Germany could sink 3 of those transports at the cost of 1 bomber quite easily. Remember, they don’t have to sink your surface fleet, just your transports to set you two rounds back. So realistically, the only way to counter this is to have 2 or more destroyers present so you can be safe in your hopes to hit two or more bombers in the first round of combat.
The math is sound. You may not like it. But all of your counters to the Axis bomber strategy cost the allies significantly more than it costs the Axis.
By cost I mean units that are locked into only one function and that function does not work directly towards winning the game, but rather work to maintain the status quo. (Units you have to build or move to certain places that in a normal game you would not have to do.)
German bombers don’t COST in this because they are still fully functioning units in prosecuting the war in Russia in fact, they are a boon to Germany since now Germany can press one more space in without having to move any of her fighters.
Your AA Guns are a direct and very expensive cost to Russia. For one thing, no Russian player is going to build them in a normal game (and probably not in this case either). For another, they are easily captured which results in Russia having to send more IPC in units to liberate them or watch them get walked out of the way of the bombers, neither is a good scenario for Russia.
Top that off with additional costs to America to protect shipping efficiently (which what I mentioned was not attacking them AND SBRing England, it was THREATENING THEM AND SBRing England, there’s a significant difference). America can of course chose NOT to protect the transports, it will just cost them 4 transports a round instead.
Yes, there is a chance that the bombers will get shot down. There’s always a chance. It’s just highly unlikely to happen. Even you realize this when you said you want to have double AA Coverage along all avenues of approach to Moscow. If one AA Gun shot down enough bombers reliably, then you wouldn’t need the second gun!
What you discount is that all of your allied defenses are one shot things. They can’t pull double, triple or even quadruple duty like the Axis attack bombers can.
Axis: Bomb England/America instead of Russia
Axis: Trade longer distance territories allowing fighters to remain in the west longer
Axis: Threaten allied shipping further out in the Atlantic (which when coupled with the few submarines and other ships you have, is significant.)
Axis: Bomb Russia
Uses: 4
Counter 1: Buy a dozen AA Guns and turtle.
Uses: 1
Counter 2: Buy surface warships to defend your transports now in jeopardy.
Uses: 1
Sorry, but all your counter strategies cost as much or more (in most cases at least double) and they lock your units far away where they are not attacking Europe. No matter how you slice that, the advantage is to the Axis. There’s only so many units and so many IPC you can dedicated to protecting yourself. Every IPC you dedicated to protecting something is one less IPC you are dedicating to winning the game.
The cute thing about this move is that the bombers are not used to protect Germany. They are used to threaten all the allies at once and will help Germany win the game no matter which way they are used. Can you say the same for your extra destroyers out in SZ 2 or SZ 8? Can you say the same for the AA Guns that Japan captures every round in Novosibirsk and Kazakh forcing Russia to send out tanks to liberate each round?
Imagine how devastated Russia would be if they had AA Guns in Kazakh and Novosibirsk because Japan foolishly put all three bombers in Sinkiang. Now, Japan takes BOTH AA Guns with an Artillery left in each place. Russia sends out 2 infantry, fighter to each and by some miracle, BOTH fighters are lost to AA Gun shots. What did those guns just cost Russia? What did they cost Japan?
You have to take these things into consideration! You can’t just assume that your AA Guns are going to take out the bombers. For one, it is mathematically incorrect, the odds are significantly on the side of the bombers, not the guns. For another, you have to look at what resources both sides have. Germany and Japan can easily dedicate a couple armor a round to taking your guns because they can count on the law of probability that eventually you will either lose a fighter to the guns trying to liberate them or you will fail to liberate them resulting in the Axis getting the chance to remove it.
PS: Attacking W. USA for 10 IPC a round is not infeasible. It is quite feasible really. 3 Bombers * 3.5 IPC in damage is 10.5 IPC so it is safe to assume you will actually do that much damage.
Coupled with most American players sending everything against Germany and abandoning the Pacific, your bomber bases in Hawaii should be quite safe from attack. (Leave an infantry or two there to discourage America from putting a bomber in W. USA to attack it if you need too.)
And with America losing a third of it’s income each round, those destroyers he has to buy to protect his transports from the German bombers just got significantly more expensive. 27 IPC does not stretch nearly as far as 37 IPC. (Assumes Hawaii is Japanese, China is Japanese and Sinkiang is Japanese, all safe assumptions AFAIK.)
