15L axis-dominion (axis) vs Adam512 (allies +22) - Game 2

[Adam514]

@axis-dominion:

Not so sure your focus should be Berlin at this point…it’ll be interesting to see if u can save Hawaii from its impending doom.  :evil:

I’m not worried, there must be something I’m missing I guess.

[axis-dominion]

Well clearly one of us is missing something lol

But anyway, the plan is to stack Marshall Islands, nab midway for a landing platform, and have a huge German anti-blocker ready.

@Adam514:

@axis-dominion:

Not so sure your focus should be Berlin at this point…it’ll be interesting to see if u can save Hawaii from its impending doom.  :evil:

I’m not worried, there must be something I’m missing I guess.

[Adam514]

@axis-dominion:

Well clearly one of us is missing something lol

But anyway, the plan is to stack Marshall Islands, nab midway for a landing platform, and have a huge German anti-blocker ready.

@Adam514:

@axis-dominion:

Not so sure your focus should be Berlin at this point…it’ll be interesting to see if u can save Hawaii from its impending doom.  :evil:

I’m not worried, there must be something I’m missing I guess.

And have enough air to take Hawaii? I’m sure it’s dicey enough for my taste.

[axis-dominion]

Well, I was in a hurry so it’s possible I missed something, but aside from maybe u sacrificing your navy, I calc’ed it at 100% easily

[Adam514]

Oh well good game! I can block but I can only stall for a bit, and Europe side isn’t going nearly well enough to make it worth continuing. Very well played! It’s been a while since I’ve learned this much from a game, it was enlightening. It was pretty close for a while, and the dice were pretty even too except for the Java disaster. Nice Axis teamwork  :wink:

[axis-dominion]

good game! that was so intense lol, so much so that i’m going to need to take like a week off and get back on track with my life, especially my exercise and soccer training.

i really enjoyed this game. your allies is so damn tough, i have to say. that was an interesting opening with all of those US tps swarming europe so early on. really had me curling up, but building up my airforce helped keep your invasion options limited–of course at the cost of a weaker eastern front against moscow. speaking of moscow, good god i think that’s the biggest russian stack i’ve ever seen!  :lol:

very interesting fronts all over the place…the african skirmishes were fun, but i definitely blew that one when i neglected to protect my conquests, particularly s.africa. definitely a significant blunder. i guess another minor mistake for me was allowing you to decimate that retreating bel force, but by then the impact was too small to matter.

i guess even tho my german navy wasn’t doing anything active at all, it served the important purpose of forcing you to build an even larger navy and keeping it pinned down there in 112. your achilles heel was london, so having raced back around from the med to save london by locking me inside, i knew it wouldn’t be an easy decision for you to let me out again. you had to make a choice as to where to really focus and stack with the UK, and i think you wisely chose to emphasize africa and the middle east, to stem the axis aggression in those regions.

honestly, i think this one could’ve been yours if a) you didn’t lose that massive chinese stack and b) you didn’t make several turns of aggressive US builds in norway and finland, which really allowed japan to dwarf the allies in the pac. when i saw all those bombers you built, and then especially when i saw that buy of 6 tacs, i said to myself, “ok, he is totally not respecting my japan” lol…so i really had to change that, and fast.

also, you bled a lot in java, which didn’t help. just plain bad luck.

there was a massive tuv vs ipc tradeoff going on for a while, but i think in the end, the axis tuv gain over the allies came out on top. japan’s income did dip for a bit, but bounced right back up after a few turns, and stayed there for good.

i also learned some good lessons, especially on how to be so damn aggressive with america in the pac…stacking java like that and lunging for tokyo…good stuff!

curious to hear what specific things you learned from this game. also curious to get feedback on what you thought i could improve on. i sometimes feel i’m not aggressive enough as the axis.

@Adam514:

Oh well good game! I can block but I can only stall for a bit, and Europe side isn’t going nearly well enough to make it worth continuing. Very well played! It’s been a while since I’ve learned this much from a game, it was enlightening. It was pretty close for a while, and the dice were pretty even too except for the Java disaster. Nice Axis teamwork  :wink:

[Adam514]

Haha yeah it was intense, our games tend to follow that trend  :wink:, and sorry if I created upheaval in your life!  :lol:

Yeah I enjoyed it too, and thanks I do my best  :-). You did the right thing in building up air and ground and limiting my options. Once a global player realizes that it’s the Allies that are on a time schedule to slow down the Axis’ advance and that the US don’t have nearly enough income to actually scare the Axis is when they jump up in terms of skill. Here, you relied on a relatively free Japan to expand rapidly while turtling and biding your time with Germany, knowing that there’s no way the US can keep up that much troop production in the Atlantic for too long and that they’ll have to deal with Japan pretty soon. I’m curious though, which opening did you have more difficulty playing against, this one in which I went hard after Germany in the beginning or last game which was one big navy buy in the Pacific and then a switch to mass Atlantic?
Indeed Moscow was a very tough nut, you have the Italians for allowing Germany to drive right up to the gates of Moscow and get that money south. Moscow would be even bigger if I hadn’t been so lucky in Libya with UK, Japan being a nuisance and taking the Italian African territories back and your very effective strat bombing.

Yeah that was a mistake on your part, you could have stayed there for a while longer, maybe indefinitely if you invested heavily into Africa., but certainly longer with minimal investment. Belarus wasn’t a big deal at that point indeed, but if Germany was on the ropes it could have been messy killing those units for not much.

Your German navy was probably worth almost every IPC spent into it lol, it looks like it surprised both of us. I thought I would win when you refused my offer to allow the loading of your troops, but lo and behold! What I did later (too much) and what I should have done earlier was make the dual threat on Novgorod and your fleet with constant air purchases. That really used up a lot of German money in carriers. Indeed, UK was weak from the skirmishes with Japan in Africa and couldn’t support the US much, and when they regained control you had a German Persia with Japanese land units and air reinforcing. That was very cost efficient, since it kept both India and Caucasus safe with just one stack. Its only drawback was that it couldn’t put pressure on anything really, UK had Iraq locked down fairly easily.

Yeah like I said before the expected winner according to me kept oscillating, it was truly a great game! Losing the Chinese stack was part of the reason why I did something drastic in Scandinavia, since if things continued along this path you would end up with all the Russian Eastern territories and you would be outproducing me by 20 or so IPCs, which is a very slow but sure loss. Japan always dwarfed the Allies, they had like 50 air haha.

Yeah Java was brutal, unexpected and a game changer. I consider it even, since I got a crucial Italy take with US in our last game which was higher than average and that played big part in my eventual win.

I was outproducing you by 10-25 for most of the game, but units concentrated in a small number of nations is a lot more effective than being spread out over multiple nations, not to mention the massive and perfect can openers at your disposal.

I was being as aggressive as I could be with the US, and surprisingly I managed to stack my fleet sometimes despite your can openers, though that was often pretty expensive. Thanks  :-).

What I think you could improve on is being a bit more aggressive in the Pacific with Japan if US is not giving you attention. Also less factories, but I guess it seems that we disagree on that (you might have bought one less factory with Japan this game  :lol:. For Germany, you are perfectly cautious with them considering what the US was coming in with. You could push earlier in the Middle-East with your fast even at the expense of letting Russia back into Bryansk, since that shouldn’t be permanent and the threat of your fast coming back up blocks Russia from making any drastic moves. You then get the Middle-East earlier while UK is still weak there, and even get the factory that is potentially in Persia. Also, you could build more fast with Germany. If you had more fast, your threat projection would be immense, and even Iraq and Norway could have been in danger, not to mention there would be no way for the Allies to stack Novgorod.
What do you think I could improve on? What mistakes/sub-optimal moves do you think I made apart from the ones already said?

What I learned from this game: there is a much better than expected future in Scandinavia for the Western Allies if they are forced to build into it and reinforce it when either Normandy is stacked/deadzoned and/or there is a threatening German fleet that needs to be kept under check. Also, more US air is a must in Europe, it’s just very hard to find the extra IPCs for some since US is always stretched thin. The Allies need to threaten multiple spots at the same time, and the UK airforce is incredibly vital, as is killing German air (obviously). The Allies need to counter threat projection with their own, weaker of course, threat/stack projection. They also need to give some 80% or so battles in order to weaken the big Axis powers in order for the small ones to matter more (I didn’t get the chance to do it much this game, I tried doing it with China and look what happened  :lol:).

Great game and very well played again! You again went up in the bid amount I would require to play Allies vs you, congrats on the promotion! I’m up for a rematch whenever you feel up to it  :wink:.

[Adam514]

And btw the initial plan was to leave you the Allies for 23, but I just find the challenge of playing the Allies so much fun! Which side do you prefer?

[axis-dominion]

this is great, i really appreciate the feedback! yah for me, the toughest call is always the one where i know i have to temporarily lift the siege at bryansk in order to strengthen my drive south and continue to make more progress against the allies. i just have a hard time with that, as i fear what the russians might do if let out of the cage. i have to work on that for sure.

as for being more aggressive in the pac, i agree, but you made it especially hard as you kept chewing at my islands and flanks, offering up more and more bait, i.e., you kept me so busy in DEI with all your mini sacrifices, it made it hard for me to go on any real offensive in the pac. in addition, i had to keep china in check, continue pushing on the russians in siberia, and i already had offensive ops going on in the middle east and africa. so with all that, i didn’t feel comfortable pushing too hard in the pac, at least until i saw all the heavy building in scandinavia. that’s when i said enough is enough and decided to go full throttle pac VC win. if US invests THAT much against the euro axis at that point in the game, there’s really not much choice but to go for a final solution on the other side.

you really think i bought too many factories with japan this game? for sure the first game i had way too many, but i felt i had just the right ones this game. i resisted the temptation to put another one in manch, and that worked out well. but i felt the one in w.india was very helpful, especially for my african ops and later for just helping G reinforce persia with mechs. maybe malaya was extra? but i find it useful to have one there as well, since i can easily drop 3 guys there if i need to thwart an anz raid that’d give them another bonus. it also comes in handy for an occasional naval buy. so not sure which factory i should not have bought.

as to your question about which of your two strats i had a harder time with, i guess i’d say the first one with the sudden switch from pac to atlantic. it actually did surprise me, and i ended up delaying the JDOW because of it. with that much navy, i didn’t have the threat option with my air as i did in this game. in this game, seeing that much land power coming across so aggressively was a bit scary for me at first, but then i came to the realization that because you had minimal cover for your tps, all i and to do is build more air! that combined with a deadzoned normandy really left you with limited options–and LIMITING options is what the euro axis really need. with all my air, i ended up having to protect the balkans with only a few land units, which put you at a dilemma: if you had tried to go all out into greece, then my air would annihilate your navy. if you instead decided to save your navy but sacrifice your tps, well that’d be quite a heavy price to pay just for a greek landing, which i could easily keep in check. so my plan worked: you never set foot there, and decided to go north instead.

what i feel you could improve on are the following:

1. definitely a more aggressive russian buy when it becomes pretty clear that G is not able to threaten a total take and is instead bogged down defending in the west. i was a lot less worried and it made keeping my siege in tact easier when i saw you kept buying inf almost up to the end of the game. i think maybe switching to art and even some fast would’ve really started causing some problems for me, and made it that much harder for me to pull off what i was able to do in defending multiple fronts simultaneously (novg, volg, and persia).
2. UK needed at least one attacking warship in 112 to be a real threat to berlin (a dd, bb, ca, or even subs). the whole time, since you had just a cv and planes, i wasn’t as worried about a US airstrike on my navy to weaken it sufficiently, followed by a UK ambhib on berlin. my reasoning is this: let’s say you destroyed most of my navy with a US airstrike, but i was left with at least one surface warship. that’s all i’d need to thwart an amphib, no matter how easily you could kill the warship with planes–it wouldn’t matter b/c of my sub! since just a cv and planes alone could not hit the sub, it’d be enough to thwart the assault on berlin. therefore i just needed to ensure that i’d have one surviving surface ship from a US airstrike. it really made defending germany and w.germany significantly easier for me.
3. UK airforce was a serious threat, but i was continually relieved when i saw you buy only land round after round. although that made you so powerful on land, what i think would’ve made a larger impact is if you kept buying maybe one plane per round, or perhaps went crazy on air purchases for a couple rounds…that would’ve made defending my gains much harder, with the greater threat projection on multiple areas. i think this would’ve been feasible once you fully recovered africa and your income went back up.

really not much more i can pick at, as your game play is quite excellent overall.

by the way, my other motivation for the african campaign was to keep you from building tps in egypt/s.africa and becoming a threat to italy or the balkans. with all that land power amassed, the threats would’ve multiplied had you been able to build tps with some navy to cover…by having a significant japanese naval presence in the region, it pretty much ruled out that option for you. it kept you land-locked and therefore bottlenecked in iraq.

[Adam514]

With a big Italy can opener you can even be in Rostov with your whole stack + fast and have almost as much effect on Russia as if you were in Bryansk, and then you can go to NW Persia in 1 turn and make sure you get the Middle-East without worrying about blockers.

Yeah I did keep Japan as busy as I could, you used a lot of tps up to trade islands with Anzac and that didn’t leave you many tps for launching an offensive, and you used a decent amount in Africa too.

I think so, FIC is always a good fac and West India was good with Iraq in mind, but you barely used the Malaya fac. Sometimes you even had to go out of your way to protect it.

My next step for improving my US play is to keep the Axis guessing on which side US will focus on more, or if they focus on one even. I got Norway after buying UK navy in 110, I was satisfied with what went on in the North.

1. Yup you are right, I should combine an aggressive Russia with a US committed to the Atlantic early. A Smolensk deadzone would have delayed you getting into the South for a while. When you are already in Bryansk though it’s rare that with an aggressive buy Russia will be able to break out, and if they are able to Germany can easily keep them at bay with their fast unfortunately.

2. Indeed, the dds were used to block Japan in the Indian ocean, and UK was pretty poor for a while. Although, even if I had dds your defence was way too big at all points in time though.

3. I tried to fill the factories (Egypt) that I was forced to buy when Japan invaded Africa as well as buy as many troops as possible in UK for Scandinavia. When things stabilized  in Europe I should have a bought some air every turn or every 2 turns.

Thanks and thank you for the feedback!

It would have been too expensive to buy navy and transports at that point in the game, and I wouldn’t have the Egypt fac if not for Japanese aggression in Africa, and I would only consider buying 3 tps directly out of Egypt if ever taking Italy was a possibility. With Japan as strong as it was, it could have easily made me pay for buying navy in Africa.

[axis-dominion]

thank you for the promo!  :-)

i’m definitely down for another, but not until after i take a small break. need to catch up on work and life. i’m down to just one (rather slow-paced) game with Marakanda.

i’m thinking we can go for it sometime within a weeks. i can try allies this time…oh boy!

i’m also due for a rematch with ghost, and rasmustb has been wanting to play me as well. so i’ll probably start one with you and them two around the same time when i get back from my break.

i find myself preferring one for a while, then switching to preferring the other for some time, and so on. these days i’ve been enjoying playing with the axis.

@Adam514:

Great game and very well played again! You again went up in the bid amount I would require to play Allies vs you, congrats on the promotion! I’m up for a rematch whenever you feel up to it  :wink:.

[Adam514]

You also have the Soulblighter one that is pretty slow paced. If you claim it it looks like you’ll go to tier E  :wink:.

Sounds good, I’ll be waiting!

[axis-dominion]

ah yes, good catch. almost forgot about that one. i’ll submit now and see if it finally takes me over to the next tier.

@Adam514:

You also have the Soulblighter one that is pretty slow paced. If you claim it it looks like you’ll go to tier E  :wink:.

Sounds good, I’ll be waiting!