My favorite turn 1 builds

[barnee]

@Galendae

You know, it’s OK to disagree with someone. You don’t need to insult them in the process.

[SeaYa]

Thanks - this was the critical context:

G2: 10 tanks in Romania
G3: 6 tanks in Romania pay off $20 in damage
G4: start building tanks in Berlin to avoid paying $20 to repair factory

Traded border areas a couple times and then full on retreat to Moscow began leaving single inf to slow Germany down

On G5 Germany has massive stack of tanks and mechs and some infantry with a lot of bombers a couple spaces back with smaller army from Bryansk.

The value of infantry in lieu of bombers, wins out. Changing a battle calc from 30inf, 2 art, 2 tank, 2 fight, 1 tac, 8 bombers to 60 inf, 0 bomber, all else equal, boosts the %win from mid 65 to 97 when going against 5 inf, 15 mech, 20 tanks, no AAA (1st scenario drops to 37% with 2 AAA defending. I think this is why all the pushback. I agree, against a stalled out German attack (the trading border territories you mentioned) the bombers would indeed help manage dead zones for max German inf loss, preserving Soviet territory. However, advanced German players will rarely, if ever, have a stalled out attack, and will not be trading territories on the border for multiple rounds.

[dazedwit]

@SeaYa

On a G1 Germany doesn’t have enough units on border to hold until round 2 or 3 so trading them is pretty much a guarantee every time I believe.

I reset the battle and removed say half the tanks and replaced each with two inf each. This was also a very tight battle but went in Germany favor this time with maybe two tanks left give or take.

That reset taught me the value of German infantry as I always want to buy tanks and bombers when going for Moscow.

Game I’m playing now, Germany did Sea Lion so Russia burst forward and has been collecting $21 in NO’s for a few turns. Germany takes border territories of Berlin but Russia takes them right back and since each battle has a couple SB’s Russia is retaking them with at least 3 infantry.

The taking of territories with extra units left behind like that really alters the war of attrition in Russia’s favor quite a bit.

Germany just did a surprise strike on Leningrad and also took out 3 SB’s. Italy finally in the Balkans so Russia will get kicked out probably by R8.

I’m about to film R6 for my latest strategy series