Axis and Allies Europe 1940 - Strategies

For Germany, I like to build Industrial Complexes along the Russian border (in order to keep the distribution of infantry steady) and keep building them when you progress into Russia.

Also having two fronts (Leningrad and Stalingrad), makes Russia split up their defensive capabilities, where it would rather focus.

Russia’s advantage is it’s sheer size and defensive investments, you can take those away with the above imho…

building ICs as germany, imho, is waste of money. you need +2 turns from building, setting in and using the units there. meanwhile you can build upt o a third more units, fast units if needed, to achieve the same.

but back to topic: strategies…there are some, but this map is bigger than other versions of a&a, so there is more flexibility in moving, buying etc. this sais, i can give only hints, but no real strategy - this you have to make up with yourself. :)

as germany: do not invest heavily in navy etc. build mostly mechs and tanks the first three turns, an occassional sub. thats all. in turn four decide: offense or defence. if offence once more mech an tanks. if defence infantry, one or two artillery, fighters. keep buying this the subsequent rounds.

as russia: standard buy with 28 ipc is 6 infantry, one artillery and one tank. if germany won´t buy fast units keep buing this. if it will then let the tanks go, build infantry instead.
see that you unit will never get seperated, seek for an option to unite them in one space, moscow finally. keep this option viable. anything else can be derived from this. even keeping or leaving valuable places as leningrad etc.

as britain: keep italy at bay first til the US can replace you there. remaining IPCs should be used for an unbeatable landing-force for france, step by step built, of course.

as italy: keep the med, keep egypt. don´t care about french northern africa etc. only destroy navies/forces you really safely can destroy. act massed if possible.

as USA: go italy first via gibraltar. help getting cairo back, saving an important victory city from axis´ control. get to rome during or after this. then go to france.

did this help?

As germany don’t get pulled into the grand illusion of SeaLion. An english attack, almost always leads to defeat. ONLY if you can take England turn 2 with little casualties (or if england built no land units on the isle) than i would suggest it. My strategy would be: Turn one: take france, move men to the eastern front. Turn two: Attack russia heading for Leningrad/ and Stalingrad. Stalingrad needs to be a smaller force, because of the vastly smaller force/garrison. This is my proposed philosophy on germany’s best option for victory. Input is appreciated.

@Endeer:

As germany don’t get pulled into the grand illusion of SeaLion. An english attack, almost always leads to defeat. ONLY if you can take England turn 2 with little casualties (or if england built no land units on the isle) than i would suggest it. My strategy would be: Turn one: take france, move men to the eastern front. Turn two: Attack russia heading for Leningrad/ and Stalingrad. Stalingrad needs to be a smaller force, because of the vastly smaller force/garrison. This is my proposed philosophy on germany’s best option for victory. Input is appreciated.

But if you never go for the Sealion, wouldn’t most every game become the same and just a matter of the dice?

The game is too lopsided, in my opinion it is nearly impossible too win with a sea-lion attack. Sea-Lion will not give you the Victory-Cities that you need to win without a good America player being able to take a VC. And once America gets its foothold, its unstoppable. The uniqueness in the game comes with the strategies the Axis powers use to capture the Russian VC’s on the 5-6 turn time table that is in use. This makes the Axis player a high planning, skill, and luck position on both parts, Italy and Germany.

Still, it pays off for Germany to at least fake a Sealion. This forces UK to buy INF in London (which means less/no units in South Africa, which helps Italy). Even if it is clear Germany won’t do it, UK cannot ignore it.

Sure, London isn’t a VC the Axis can hold forever, but taking UK’s loot and stalling the USA (who has to go and liberate the Brits) seems worthwile. Also no London means no extra units in Africa.

personally as UK i don’t liek losing my capital.

(i’m talking OOB, dunno about Alpha)

I was talking about OOB too. I also agree that a fake sea-lion is great, what i’m saying is that the attack on england is not worth it. The extra turns it takes to achieve victory over the British Isles the Russians will have a great enough force to repel the germans for a very long string of rounds. This allows even a half competent America player to become and overwhelming force. The loot gained from England would also be useless. Say you take england on a completely optimal third turn. And have forces that are waiting to invade russia turn 4. This gives America 3 turns at the least (moscow being two blitzes away from The german boarder. In three turns the Americans can have cairo, and have forces in Stalingrad. Now this situation may be an even show of force, But these assumptions are based on the fact that russia is completely empty. on a normal turn of events the Americans and Russians can completely control russian territory and begin to move into german occupied territory around turn 6-7. The fake sea-lion however ruins the English offensive power, as well as giving an amphibious assault on leningrad. Such an assault would cripple the russians forces and give the Germans a great opportunity to attack russia’s jugular: Moscow. This also splits their forces in two.

While playing just my second game of Europe 1940, I noticed Italy could really boost Axis control over the Atlantic by taking Normandy, rather than letting Germany sweep it up along with the rest of France. With a naval base and IC in Normandy, Italy can deploy ships directly into the Atlantic, defending the coast for Germany and so saving it a fair chunk of change on planes and ships to defend their coasts.

Italy seems to make fairly easy gains in the Med. and Africa, but it’s too far removed from the main fronts to assist the Axis cause. The ships they start with can’t reach the Atlantic until T3, and new ships may never make it there once the US starts intercepting them out of Gibraltar.

At least, I’ll try this out to address the problem I ran into: by T3 Italy’s income was nearly par with Russia, but it only helped themselves.

Has anyone else tried this?

Why would anyone - EVER - want to “defend the coast” in Axis and Allies?

I mean that’s a lovely notion and all, but an absolute waste of IPC’s.

I could see enough subs in the atlantic being a real obstacle for the allies, which may give them another turn or two to secure the VCs and obtain victory. On the other hand, if italy has taken the med. and egypt and north africa, than their IPC should be used to assist the eastern front via mech. infantry and tanks coming up from southern europe. They can also (if they have transports) surprise attack the caucuses. The latter situation being very hard to come by. But I would have to agree that atlantic defense may not be a smart thing to invest in for the Italians.

i have to agree to gargantua. it is a waste of ipcs. only exception i would make is w.germany. the reason for that should be clear.
actually, subs are seldom built, mostly as germany one per round at maximum. just for denying the british no-sub-NO.
and, i think, italy´s role is mostly to annoy the brits in the med. maybe one or two fast units via russia paired with one tank behind the german front lines is enough. italy can not afford more this way or it will go down.
faking sealion, imho, is a big waste, too. build mech instead! ;)

I dont know, If a germany player takes out the English navy on turn one, than each sub will cost the the english 9 IPC before the americans can enter and the subs must be positioned for a counter attack. So a few subs would be profitable in and off themselves, but that isnt the problem. The real question is weather the germans can afford to suck the english dry, in my opinion the only way to effectively use subs is in masses which together can take the american navy and buy time. But this leaves the russian front without reinforcements. Opinions?

@Endeer:

I dont know, If a germany player takes out the English navy on turn one, than each sub will cost the the english 9 IPC before the americans can enter and the subs must be positioned for a counter attack. So a few subs would be profitable in and off themselves, but that isnt the problem. The real question is weather the germans can afford to suck the english dry, in my opinion the only way to effectively use subs is in masses which together can take the american navy and buy time. But this leaves the russian front without reinforcements. Opinions?

It will force the USA to spend more on fleet to get those wolfpacks, but finally that is not a bad thing, USA can afford it, and in a way the Axis are bringing the war (hence, their IPC’s) closer to them, which is profitable since the main weakness of USA is distance.
As Allies (and as Russia especially) i would prefer 10 subs in the Atlantic, compared to 10 tanks by the gates of Moskou, because those are  alot harder to handle.

Edit: maybe the UK might not agree :)

I completely agree. If you recall the 10 subs into range of the us fleet they can sneak attack and really do some damage. And with these subs they can take away IPC from england. In my opinion they cost less initial damage to germany than to the allies IPC pool.

So you mean you completely _dis_agree? :)

@Endeer:

I completely agree. If you recall the 10 subs into range of the us fleet they can sneak attack and really do some damage. And with these subs they can take away IPC from england. In my opinion they cost less initial damage to germany than to the allies IPC pool.

They do damage to the UK, for sure.

But a US fleet needs to be strong enough: with enough subs (fodder and future convoy raiders), of course a few destroyers (if you’re gonna face 10 subs), and some heavier fleet (at least 1BB and 2 filled AC’s, preferably something more …), enough so that the damage of the 1st round (about … 3-4 hits on average?) of a sub attack can mostly be absorbed. And with enough defence to wipe out the German subs in  1 or 2 rounds.
And strong enough to go hunt thém down as well: airforce for the hitting, destroyer for allowing the airforce to see the subs and subs for obvious reasons).

After getting that job done, every unit of this fleet is still perfectly useful (and - unless they got into a crazy chase to the south pole - closeby Europe)

“The US fleet must be strong enough” that is exactly what I’m saying. If the US has to build extra warships than it will greatly decrease the strength of their assaulting force. This can force the allies to wait a turn in order to get more troops to the beaches that are their targets thus giving more time to the axis to control and hold their 8 Victory cities.

if i play axis i would bank subs 5 per SZ up against all borders of the usa so there fleet would have to wiat to get to all of the axis countries therefore making it harder because of my preparing time and set up naval bases your subs have 3 spaces to move to annoy your enemy