Has anyone bought a cruiser yet?

@BJCard:

12 pics for a battleship is same as 4 Infantry or 3 artillery…  land units few powers can live without.  Who is buying lots of battleships?  How’s that western front going?

Maybe I missed it but I thought the thread was about the point of buying a cruiser when Battleships were only 3 IPC more for a free hit and stronger att/def. I think he’s talking about buying when Naval units are necessary.

It was in response to someone saying they’d rather one battleship instead of 2 submarines;

Germany cannot hope to delay the UK for more than 1 or 2 turns; does Germany benefit from buying fleet?  Or would it be better to buy all land with an odd submarine?

I would DEFINITELY trade cruisers’ extra movement for shore bombardment, any day!

I was tempted to buy cruisers with Germany to get them around the British quicker to disrupt the American shipping lanes.

I kind of treated cruisers like destroyers in Global 40. I would use them as blockers. I bought one cruiser as Germany and placed it in the SZ off of Kiel to keep the UK fleet from going in and sinking my transports by Berlin. Earlier in the game, a UK cruiser kept German ships from attacking UK/French transports before they got some protection.
Aside from that, I tend to agree. Why not go an extra 3 IPCs and get a battleship.
Also don’t understand why cruisers can’t bombard. Doesn’t make sense to me. The extra movement did come in handy a couple of times though.

In our current first game, Germany hit the starting British navy hard, and some small naval purchases by the Austrians and Ottomans in the med forced France to send most of it’s navy to the med to cover the Indian and Italian navies there. With the UK covering Italy in SZ17 you really have to worry about Ottoman cruisers and their ability to get down to SZ27. Austrian naval purchases have kept the allied med fleet performing containment duty in SZ17.

German cruisers are sitting in SZ11 behind the safety of the Kiel and Berlin minefields (and some German battleships and subs) preventing UK from sending transports to Karelia because their longer range allows them snake around behind without UK leaving a cruiser to block in SZ5 (which will of course have to happen).

UK has been trying to balance rebuilding their navy with fighting off a very offensive-minded set of Ottomans in India. The German navy has absolutely save the Ottoman Empire since the UK has had to devote 70+% of it’s resources into London. France has been down to building a cruiser a turn out of Marseilles because they can’t spare the IPCs from the fight on the land but they need something a little bigger than submarines to deter a sizable Austrian navy.

Of course it’s turn 4 now, and unless Germany wants to continue to try to match UK’s naval buys (which they can’t keep up with now) it looks like in another turn the UK will be able to drop the hammer on Germany’s fleet or at least neutralize them. The US looks to be itching to get into the fight in the med, which will help tremendously, so the Central Powers have been going heavy on land buys.

While battleships have definitely been the favorite buy, sometimes a cruiser is worth it just that one more infantry worth of IPCs into the fight. The threat of a long range cruiser strike can lock down ships and when you need block you don’t really want to throw away a battleship for it.

@BJCard:

It was in response to someone saying they’d rather one battleship instead of 2 submarines;

Germany cannot hope to delay the UK for more than 1 or 2 turns; does Germany benefit from buying fleet?  Or would it be better to buy all land with an odd submarine?

Why waste on a submarine?
Unlike previous A&A games subs do not get a ‘first strike’ and when attacked they dont submerge untill AFTER the enemy fires. So if anything is a waste it is an odd sub buy that will just instant die to whatever fleet the allies do have.

Buying 2 subs over 1 battleship it absurd. 2 subs cost the same and both should average 4 hits out of every 6 rolls. But it takes 2 hits to sink the battleship which can repair for free and the battleship can shore bombard.

My next game i am going to play with battleships costing 14 IPC instead of 12 and give cruisers shore bombardment hitting on a 2 or less.
this should balance out the fleet a little

I think paying a token amount to repair a Battleship would be a good idea in any A&A game.

@wittmann:

I think paying a token amount to repair a Battleship would be a good idea in any A&A game.

Agreed.  Many times extensive repairs would almost cost the same as it would to build a new ship…  You need supplies, metal (copper, iron, steel), rare earths, manpower, etc.  Not to mention taking up a drydock that otherwise could be used to build a new ship.