summary of my latest alternate bid attempts

[zlefin]

I’ve been trying some alternate bid patterns to see how they work, so this is a collection of notes from that, not super organized.

All the games used certain basic rules: I’m playing against myself, I ensure there aren’t any major mistakes: if it turns out I made a mistake/left an opening, then I edit different moves as if they had been done at the time so there isn’t a vulnerability. I accept the result of die rolls, so good/bad luck affecting a side can still happen.

GAME 1
My first try worked passably but not great was a russia focused bid, as part of a europe focused game plan. The plan was to try to force Norway capture by Russia, bid had 3 russian artillery in Karelia and neighbors, with 3 mech inf in the locations 2 distant from there. Other bid parts were scotland fighter dd 91 and phillippines inf. net bid 45ish. On Russia 1 Karelia is stacked so that a germany attack has poor expected tuv, this does take a lot of stuff, so it means yunnan isn’t well defended. Typical J1 Dow. America also went heavy europe, with the first turn buy being 4 bombers, then a fighter/bomber mix turn 2, before shifting back to Japan. A key part of the build plan is that the large american air force makes it hard for germany to ever do a sealion, the heavy american bombing, which can hit Germany proper, significantly reduces German offensive power, and the ability for Brit and US air based in finland or norway to shift and defend moscow if needed based on where germany puts its air.
Britain gathered like a gibistian, but didn’t buy an aifield to defend it. Italy and Germany chose not to try wiping the fleet, it’d be potentially doable, but dicey, and cost a lot of german air.

It took russia until 6 to force norway, its pretty hard to force norway, though it might’ve been doable earlier looking through the save, but it takes movin geven more of the russian mobile forces up there, it’s hard to do when germany can stack its air there and transport over 2 inf a turn, plus italian fighters can fly in too. Part of the threat comes from the possiblity of hitting with russia then following up with allied nations. even just holding finland for awhile plus getting to bomb with US degraded germany a fair bit. Germany was however able to get novg, cauc, and volg objectives in good time, so even with the loss of the norway objective, and russia getting +6 from holdin those two, the situation wasn’t great. I never actually finished the game, turn 9 is when I stopped, the income was still pretty even and the game looked to be stalling out, a few gains were made in some spots, counterbalanced by others, so it definitely seemed like the stallout would continue.

One alternate plan i’d considered, and that may’ve had merit, is to abandon the plan at Round 2, with russia withdrawing its forces back into its land, doing so it could probably have kept germany out of novgorod for longer and held bryansk for awhile longer. It might wrok out similarly net value wise, with russia having less income, but denying germany its NOs a lot as well via blocking or deadzoning. It also means the German inf up in Norway have a long path before they can apply any pressure, being unable to reach moscow until turn 8,

That Japan was given free reign for some time ofc hurt, though not as bad as I feared, perhaps there’s better Jap strats for when they’re given free reign for a couple of turns. Still they ended up in a position with slightly better income than US, but ofc needing to spend a few inf a turn to deal with china and others; they were able to hold a more advanced position, holding carolines, and threatening anzac. Anzac had shifted fairly early on to almost pure inf production, which kept them safe enough that Japan couldn’t take them out, but also meant anzac provided no pressure on Japan. India fell predictably, though perhaps later than it should’ve. Japan was a bit more focused on holding a solid position against the US and pushing them away from the ability to harass at all compared to a rapid india push plan. After all a uk pac with only 6 income is very easy to just block in.

Overall the game accomplished its gameplan, but the gameplan didn’t seem any better than existing options, and probably a touch worse. Still, there’s more to explore and there’s potential.

GAME 2 (A and B)
Also net bid 45ish, this one was focused on trying to rapidly kill Japan, it ultimately failed to win in both cases, while it did kill Japan, it wasn’t enough faster than normal compared to other plans and didn’t seem that effective. This one also featured two branches, as I had to decide how to scramble vs Germany doing heavy sea attacks due ot the light allied bids in Europe, hitting szs 110 and 111. Bid had 3 russian artillery in Amur and neighbors to help threaten Japan, Russian fighter to help yunnan, yunnan inf, phillipine inf, subs in 91/98, and an artilley in AE sudan; now that I think about it, it isn’t quite as heavily Japan as I’d thought. The theory of the russian artillery is that it would significantly increase the amount of Jap units pinned north, as while stopping a pure inf force doesn’t take too many units, stopping 18 inf + 3 art takes quite a bit more. The main problem is that Japan can still defend it fairly well, in particular stacking Korea enough that Korea can’t be taken, plus an airfield in FIC or Kwangsi (which are so generally helpful for Japan) means that they can deadzone Manchuria and cover everythin sufficiently well; not that they did that in both games, som eof that is hindsight learning. In one game Russia got to take Korea (wasn’t able to give it to the US), and Japan shifted forces northward to clear that out, while they did clear it out, it took so many forces to do so (factoring in allied air helping defend it at times) that it left Japan too vulnerable in the south, it’d have been better to just keep the defense near the islands. At any rate, Germany still won that game as it got to take Russia down in good order and then shift to a mass take on Egypt.

The heavy german fleet assault on rd1 made me realize that even though it may be slightly better on defensive tuv results to scramble, there’s some serious countereffects to such, in particular the loss of those planes may leave you low enough that you become sealion vulnerable, and that it may prevent a taranto raid (either by not having enough fighters, or by making it unsafe to send fighters down to the taranto raid without leaving uk exposed to sealion. It made me wonder about those side effects and how worthwhile it may be for germany to hit heavy even against a scotland fighter bid, I’ll assess that in time perhaps.

I can provide the saves if people want, not sure how many care to actually look deeply through them ofc, and there’s lots of edits at scattered points when I noticed problems.

OTHER
Some general comments on bid thoughts and other play patterns:

1. When facing a typical yunnan stack, which is 5 china inf, 2 ftr 1 tac, it may be worthwhile for Japan to attack it anyways, using its 2 bombers to help; if the dice are only average or worse, retreat after rd 1, but if any better than that continue for as long as its profitable. It’s hard to calculate the net expected tuv for a battle that continues or not based on whether early rounds went well; it’s -2ish for the first round, but a favorable round 1 can shift the net results considerably. The larger question depends on part on whether its worth spending/risking Jap air to take out Russian air.
2. Putting one bid inf in the phillippiness increase the stress on a J1 dow, its not a huge effect, but it does give a very minor failure chance on the battle unless Jap air is spent or more than just 2 air are sent. It also means fewer units available to land on the islands.
3. putting an inf in yunnan can be worthwhile even if you aren’t doing the full yunnan stack for the same reason, Japan has limited forward air rd 1 and it limits their overall attacks and results. In particular if combined with a dd in 37 Japan has a lot of places that need the bombers to get good results and can’t pick them all.
4. A VERY dicey bid - Russian Bombers in Amur, hits sz 20. Has about 41% to take out the Jap transport, overall expected tuv is about 5.5, but some of that is an overpriced cruiser compared to a valuable bid unit/bombers. still, success really hurts a J1 dow
5. bidding an extra uk carrier may let you gibastian quite safely without an airfield, could place at 98, or at 91 (risky but decent odds). I considered using such a bid to then do a taranto raid, but it didn’t look great; while IF germany attacks they lose 6 ish air, and ofc you wiped the taranto italy fleet, it does leave you fairly vulnerable to sealions since you had to send 4 fighters south, and there’s a lot of potential german counters. Taking greece to give your fighters a landing spot can easily be countered by germany just setting up to hit greece with 3 tanks/4 inf.
6. a common problem with my typical kjf strats is that china ends up being functionally dead, sure the allies get the income, but becuase it can’t leave china it doesn’t do anything useful, its too far for it to serve as a raiding base for uk pac raiding captured russian lands, and its pretty easy for europe axis to just ignore china. This is another factor that changes somewhat if you don’t use the games official victory conditions but require total victory, as then at least China could land block the path to southeast asia.

[The Farmer]

@zlefin Interesting test. I think if you look at the league games in the forum I think the Yunnan save bid is 2 fighters Russia and 1 inf in Yunnan. Placement being in Russia and Volgograd. So typically there are 4 aircraft in Yunnan which pretty much makes it unassailable even if you bring the Bombers in from Tokyo. I have been testing bids as well for KGF/KIF strats. I will post them in this thread when I am done testing some of them.

[SirWhiskers]

Our current standard bid is 30 IPC.
– sub in SZ 106 makes it more difficult to take out the transport
– destroyer in SZ 91 to protect cruiser, can block invasion of Gib round 1 or go sub hunting depending on G1 combat results
– fighter in Malta and sub in SZ 98 for Taranto so no fighters from UK required

These additions tend to have immediate impact and create early vulnerability for Italy, which can also draw off some German units.

Unfortunately, it does nothing vis-a-vis Japan, but should allow the US to put some significant builds in the Pacific early before turning to a KGF strategy.