@goldenbearflyer:
1. Territories in west worth more IPCs.
Oh, I did read the rest, but you could have stopped at 1. The game really does come down to control of IPCs. Until I actually pull off an Axix victory for myself (no really, I’m TOLD it can be done!), any plan for Germany that doesn’t involve taking IPCs from Russia early and often just doesn’t make sense to me mathematically. Conversely, it makes sense to me to have Russia focus on Germany, yet play smart and opportunistically against Japan. However, if the Allied consensus were to use KJF, then strategies like reinforcing Bury do make sense to me.
I’ll just add a refinement to that - the game comes down to this: who has the bigger force. IMHO three ingredients play into this:
- Controlling / trading territory
- Killing enemy units
- Not getting your own units killed
- Positioning your units where they exert influence.
Really they all play into each other - if you can’t keep the other guy from killing your units, you won’t be able to hold territory, etc… But I focus on not getting units killed. Why’s that?
Because the # of units you can build is pretty fixed. Okay, if you hold one extra territory, you can build one more Inf maybe. There is way more flexibility though in how many units you kill and how many you lose.
Suppose you capture that extra territory so that you can build that extra Inf. But, you lost 1 Inf taking that territory, had to leave another one there, where it will get killed on the re-take, plus you pulled some fighters off another battle that allowed the defender to keep fighting back one more round, maybe costing you a 1-2 extra Inf there too, and possibly leaving that other territory more vulnerable to counterattack as well. Now your opponent has choices, which is even worse.
So what I look for at the end of a turn is how many IPCs did I kill, and how many did I lose, or leave where they will get killed. Dead units can’t help you.
Almost as bad as a dead unit is an inactive unit. If you put your units where they may not get killed, but also don’t threaten to kill anything else, you may as well not have built them in the first place.
Russia 1
But, back on topic - thanks for the thoughts on Russia 1, NPB. WRus/Belo pretty much is what I’ve come to conclude as well, Although I think you could forego Belo and just make WRus stronger and take with fewer losses. Here’s my thoughts:
- You can expect to lose 2 Inf in taking Belo, to kill 3 Inf and capture a 2 IPC territory. That’s a 5 IPC gain but you will lose the Inf and territory right away.
- 3 extra Inf can really make WRus / Cau a lot safer against an aggressive German player
- 2 Extra Fighters and 3 Extra Inf into WRus means that it will probably be taken and held with 7 Inf 1 Art 4 Arm rather than 3 Inf 1 Art 4 Arm. In short, you probably lose 1 extra inf, so that’s a 3 IPC loss that also offsets the Belo gain. It’s also much less fodder, and may force you to abandon Cau in order to protect your tanks from being wiped out. (That’s the experience I had last time)
I like the 2/2/2 build or the 3/3 build - If Russia wants to make advances, it has to do it early before Germany has time to bring its superior production to the front. Once you’ve set the front, then you can take advantage of your 3 extra inf defending rather than attacking. I do like the extra ftr too, but it’s too pricey I think.
Maybe I like the 3/3 build - 12 on offence and 15 on defence. the 2/2/2 build does - let’s see - 14 and 14. I guess that’s a bit better offensively, but you lose some mobility and some skew. But for an early push into Ukraine, 2/2/2 is prolly best.
Let’s see - If you don’t take Belo, Russia has prolly 7/1/4 in WRus, plus in Cau:
3 Inf from start
2 Inf from Kazak
2 Inf 2 Art built
Plus 2 ftrs, and 2 tanks in Moscow
Available to attack Ukraine:
14 Inf 3 Art 6 Arm 2 Ftrs
Germany can stack Ukr w/:
9 Inf 8 Arm (assuming 1 Inf stays in Belo) and 1-3 Ftrs?
It depends on the fighters, but that gives Russia decent odds at taking Ukraine, although even with this there won’t be much Inf left
Let’s see - if you take Belo, then:
Attacking force (assuming Cau was left alone)
10 Inf 3 Art 6 Arm 2 Ftrs
Defending: Germany will have 5 fewer Inf (-3 from belo, plus assuming 2 sent from EE to Belo for re-take instead - this may be enough for Germany to consider Ukraine a dead zone) 4 Inf 8 Arm and 1-3 Ftrs
Okay, that’s actually a little better. If Germany leaves 2 Ftrs, you’ll prolly take w/ 6 Arm -no fodder, not great, but you will have killed 8 Tanks and 2 Ftrs. If no Ftrs are left though you’ll take w/ 2 Inf 3 Art 6 Arm, considerably better.
All right, so the Belo attack is helpful in preparing to take Ukraine.