Are bombers broken? : Axis bombers lead to allied dismay.

@bongaroo:

They can bomb the captured russian factories as well from moscow.

True, that means it will cost 6 extra IPCs to produce out of them. If you do not have enough units stacked on them, the produced units will get strafed as well.

@Auswanderersland:

/agree.  I am hoping someone helps me with this.  IDK, JJ is currently having his way with allweneedislove.  Allweneedislove is doing better than I the first time I played against this strat, but then he has the advantage of knowing what is coming.  IDK, I advertised for a player to play a game so hopefully someone will pipe up.

Well, I don’t know about having my way. Europe sure looks good, Italy could have had Moscow turn 4, something I have never seen. But it is important for Germany to take it (which they did turn 5). This strategy requires extreme discipline as you have few land units to “waste”. So I am slowly building momentum. Germany’s production exploded this turn and will only rise. Italy was sacrificed  for the common good, but they now stand to profit from an empty Russia. Japan ceded territory to Russia, which is why Germany was able to plunder 30 IPCs, but now Japan will push back into an unreinforced Russia. India may hold for a few more turns, but Japan is trying to keep with Bomber builds when able and this results in a slow growth in land power (with a retraction in IPCs). I will be poised to gather some “burst” IPC’s depending on allied moves. My calculations show major victories if I am able to engage the combined allied fleet in Japan or Caroline over the next two turns, but beyond that we’ll have to see. Keep an eye on India, the allied fleet, and Australia as Japan can shift radically and the German bombers deployed in Asia can open “many” doors.

The biggest struggle with this strategy (if rapid dismantling of Russia is bad) is that you must be selective with targets. The bombers strength is its concentrated firepower and range. If presented with many targets, some must be ignored (as you were probably wondering why I walked past Novgorad and chose not to take it until I plundered Moscow). If you can schedule your “raids” by pacing them out to 1 major destruction of allied units per turn, you should be ok. For example, if the Allies in the Pacific present both a fleet, a Chinese stack, and an Indian stack as bait, turn 6 Japan will have to make a difficult choice. Clearing the India stack assures them the capital, but leaves their fleet exposed to near certain destruction. If discipline fails, you will trade at greater losses. This game has shown, with the bombers, most battles fail to surpass a single round of combat. That means that my opponent is assured of missing with 30 percent of his force any given battle and thus the axis conserve an additional 30 percent of their units to keep their starting stack stable.

Note: This is just one sample game, Andy’s opponent is AWOL (must be waiting to see my game finish), and my opponent chose to focus on the factories which kept Germany’s IPCs low, but surrendered Moscow (this may occur the first time your opponent experiences the bomber strategy). However, if he had built all units in Moscow and retreated, I would have sacked the factories on turn 3 and produced 2 turns before Russia could hope to move out of its capital. Germany’s IPCs would have been about 10 IPCs higher and those 2-3 mech a turn would be on the board moving towards Moscow from Berlin.

Because this sample is so small, I am looking for 1 more game as I can handle 2 games at once. Anyone interested in starting another game to test this strategy publicly?

@Elrood:

@Uncrustable:

Please don’t talk about wrecking naval combat by changing transports back  :-P

Just fix broken AA guns

Broken how? Too good, too bad?  :?

In my opinion, broken bad. If 1 aagun could fire at all air units as originally intended, this bomber strategy would get very expensive as their would be a reason to produce 1 or 2 aaguns a turn and place them at every junction along my march. Currently a single aagun can shoot at only 3 bombers in a mass of 12 or more, that means at best 50 percent of the time Berlin will lose a bomber. Since that aagun can be removed as a casaulty, that aagun won’t fire in any more battles, meaning if Moscow liberated the territory taken, the aagun is already gone. Before the aagun could be captured back and the German’s would again risk more air units taking it back. Since aaguns are also capped at only firing at the total number of air units present, stacking aaguns is pointless. If aaguns could fire without a top cap, then even at 3 per gun, suddenly 10 aaguns rolling 30 dice even against 12 planes would increase the 50 percent chance of losing 1 bomber to a typical loss of 5 bombers and again, you might build 1 aagun a turn or more to defend against this as these lost bombers are taken off before combat and represent 3 hits per round.

As it stands, 10 aaguns are capped at for example 15 rolls if 15 bombers are sent (the typical amount of bombers sent to remove 10 land units from the board)….they will get at best 2.5 bomber hits then they will be removed.
10 aaguns cost 50 IPCs. Instead, 10 troops should be bought, they will get 3.3 hits and save you 20 ipcs. This makes them “broken” as the cheaper infantry is better at killing air units than aaguns which only shoot when land units are attacked as structures have their own “built in”, “original” aaguns that fire at each raiding bomber.

Solutions: Either return to original aaguns which were unlimited fire and not casualties, or remove the cap on firing so that 2 aaguns would get 6 rolls at 1 fighter, making them worth building in an air war. It makes sense that concentrated aaguns would hit more air units then regions without a large density of them. Suddenly 1 troop escorted by 3 aaguns would be a harder target for a couple of planes and a troop.