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:.
