South African Launch

The German Kriegsmarine purchase and Sea-Lion threat has to be executed with Egypt/Gib/Middle East and S. Africa money  in Mind.

Japan must wait till J3… for this scenario to work…

Given a good UK defense for a Kriegsmarine buy… then the next target should be Gib for Germany.

If Italian Navy is left untouched on UK1 (except Malta), then on I1 navies combine and take Greece.  Sacrifice 1 TR if Gib is empty… and take Gib
Save $10, collect $21  the $5 bonus almost pays for 2nd TR… (S.Fr + Greece+ Kenya - all S.African forces in Kenya… all N. African forces in Tobruk… do not venture into Alexandria)

G2 -  Land 3 FTRS in Tobruk. Clear English Channel… Non-combat navy to Gib … make sure to keep 1 Tank on TR (unload in Gib)

I2 - with 24, buy CV+2TR … N.Afro-Italians forces go to Alexandria, S. Afro-Italian force to Sudan…
G3- Attack USSR as usual… German Navy to S.France with a 1 TR (Keep Mech+Inf)  build… Bring SBRs to Alexandria

I3 - Unload everything on Egypt… (3 TR loads+ Alex+ Sudan) and take it if possible…
G4 - Reinforce Egypt…make it expensive for Allies to take it back… the original TR + TR buy puts 4 units on Egypt…and the Axis navy by a 1-2 punch can push through the Red Sea and take  S. Africa… or Middle East …and lots of UK money, very quickly… Tank+Mech are deadly on their own with a TaC+SBR… not to mention 2 other TRs that can unload 1 Inf each…

Say is on G5, Madagascar, S. Africa, Tanganyika, Sudan, fall to Germany… or Iraq! and I5 reinforces Iraq… , the bonuses start piling up…

If this is done efficiently, and Egypt falls to Italians…then the Middle-East is in play… If Egypt falls to Germany…then hold Egypt as far as possible… and rush back to block Gibralter.

But this does 5 things…
A) Both Italy and Germany get the $5 bonus a turn (even without the Med)
B) Force UK to build in South Africa… hence less money to help the US fleet, and no money to help USSR
C) Force India to send help West… making its fall all the more easier…
D) Force US to send part of its fleet to take Egypt… making Berlin safer
E) Although Moscow is safer… economically speaking, if India falls on J5/6… and Middle East /S. Africa fall on G5-I5… then Axis will be in a very strong position

Tirano -

Given that you eliminate Ethiopia… and you build that navy off Egypt…
If 2 of 3 Italian navys are left intact to join…
and the Germany Navy swings around …
The Egyptian navy will either have to sit in the Red Sea… or be obliterated.

This strategy will hold the Mediterranean quite effectively. However, you will lose the game if Germany and Japan are played properly.

@Tirano:

Now many will probably be saying that you should grab a fighter over an IC, however I do not think 1 fighter will change Germany’s mind on whether to do Sea Lion or not.� Now to those who say an IC in Egypt is a gift to Italy, I understand your reasoning, but with this strategy it is not.�

The fighter is better in London because it can go other places faster if necessary without need for an Atlantic navy to get it there. In short, it is more flexible than building infantry in London, and if your sea zone 106 transport survived you can bring in two additional ground units from Canada with no issue. If you want to move infantry, you have to have a transport to move them and to have a transport you have to be able to protect it, which means you must build additional fleet or pin your air force to London (cutting down your mobility) if the Luftwaffe is in West Germany, Holland, or Normandy.

So yeah, build the fighter.

@Tirano:

• SZ91 Cruiser, Gib Fighter, Malta Fighter -> SZ96 (Gib Fighter land on SZ98 Carrier in NonCombat, Maltese Fighter land in Cairo)

• Alexandria units ->Cairo.

• South African Inf ->Transport (From Bid), SZ71 fleet ->SZ81

• SZ98 Fleet -> SZ81

• Quebec Inf+Tank -> Transport, SZ106 Fleet ->SZ119 (Do this during whichever phase you need depending on if a German sub is there)

  So you are planning to build up a Mediterranean fleet. Awesome. But you are leaving part of it to die in sea zone 96 while you build in sea zone 81. Why waste the units by letting Italy destroy them in detail instead of massing your fleet in sea zone 81 and moving back into the Med on UK2?

  Also, I didn’t see any reference to you deploying a blocker to sea zone 99. That means Italy can do a joint amphibious/overland assault on Egypt proper, which you have barely reinforced, on I1 with two infantry, three tanks, one mech, a strategic bomber, two cruisers, and a battleship. Italy has a 50% chance of winning this battle, trapping your sea zone 81 fleet outside the Med until UK3 at least (longer if the Luftwaffe lands there on G2, to be reinforced by slower forces from Tobruk and an Italian build in Egypt on I2. 50% of the time in this scenario, you have lost the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East. That’s pretty much game…

  @Tirano:

  • If Japan does NOT do J1 DoW: 1 Transport 3 Inf

  With this strategy UK Pac helps UK Europe as much as possible when not pressured so the Transport and Inf are to send towards your fleet in SZ81 if Japan did not do DoW, if they did you are turtling up.

  This is a huge gift for Japan! You sending four ground units and two transports (one of which was built instead of two more ground units!) west to Africa. Now Japan can come light for Calcutta, or come normal heavy and then destroy your Middle East presence after it crushes India with a LOT of force remaining…

  @Tirano:

  Pacific Combat and NonCombat
  A lot of this depends on what Japan did but a few things here do not change regardless(I will list only those), but you are 100% defense so do not move units into china, retreat retreat retreat. Defend Calcutta.

  • Inf+Art load on SZ39 transport, SZ39 Fleet ->SZ76 amphibious assault Ethiopa (Plus Anglo Sudan Forces)

  This is a 76% battle for you. If you lose (one time out of four you will), you have weakened India and not gained anything in the process. Sure, you killed a couple of Italian units. You would do better to have taken Persia with those forces and retreated the Anglo-Egypt Sudan forces into Egypt proper. You have 0% chance of losing, make one more IPC out of it (two more IPCs 25% of the time), gain two free infantry (another six IPCs), set yourself up to take Iraq on UK2 (another two IPCs), and secured Persia as a landing zone for planes that you might later send to Moscow or India.

  Even when this battle works, you can’t stop the Italians from taking a UK territory on I1. The infantry in Italian Somaliland can take something, or the tank from Tobruk can blitz in/out of Alexandria, or Italy can move into Alexandria in force and reinforce amphibiously, to be further reinforced by the Luftwaffe landing there on G2 after sinking any remaining Allied ships in the Med. In short, killing Ethiopia does you little good for a lot of risk.

  @Tirano:

  • SZ37 Battleship (if alive) ->SZ39

  Why sea zone 39 instead of 79? The position of the battleship on UK2 would be the same, but parking it in 39 might allow a J2 attack to kill it.

  @Tirano:

  UK2 On…
  At the start of UK2 it should all be self explanatory, you are building a Rome Invasion Force right outside of Cairo, You should be building Transports in South Africa and land units+warships in Cairo (build a carrier for round 2) this is your new Normandy, sure its obvious what you are doing after round 1 but you are already a true threat.� You should have a fleet that looks like this in SZ 81 at end of UK2.
  4 Trans
  3 Destroyer
  2 Cruiser
  3 Carriers loaded (last one gets loaded from UK2 purchase of carrier in Cairo with the Egypt and India fighter landing on it)
  1 Battleship (possibly)

  You are assuming that neither Italy nor Germany kills the sea zone 96 fleet before UK2. That is a hefty assumption if the Axis is being properly run. Even if that does happen, you still have a sizable fleet though – the Med will be yours!

  It takes you a minimum of three turns to get Egypt-built fighters to Moscow and four turns to get London-built fighters to Moscow. If you don’t start sending them early, you won’t have enough for Russia to hold off a well-planned attack on Moscow. Germany will come out of the Moscow battle with a stack of thirty tanks plus surviving mechs, which will descend on the Middle East like locusts. But at least you’ll have a pretty fleet in the Med to pick up the survivors from Egypt. You might even take and hold Rome for a while.

  You are sacrificing any hope of Moscow standing against a G6/G7 attack and instead putting a threat on Rome.

  @Tirano:

  You should also have 2 more transports new coming out of South Africa and Possibly more from India if Japan still has not done DoW at this point.

  Wait, you are going to have India build ANOTHER transport (two more ground units gone, plus whatever the transport takes away!) and strip it of some air force? I see no way you can challenge Japan in Calcutta at all this way even if the US is going KJF (unless you have Mr Magoo running Japan).

  @Tirano:

  This also works really well if America is going KGF because you can focus Rome while they either liberate Leningrad and Scandinavia or open a front in France.

  If the US is going KGF and you run the UK this way, at least you’ll get to go home early for dinner following the Pacific victory. There is ZERO hope of India making any kind of dent in Japan, which will leave it more than enough manpower to go and kill ANZAC fast before the US can get there.

  Marsh

@Marshmallow:

This is a 76% battle for you. If you lose (one time out of four you will), you have weakened India and not gained anything in the process. Sure, you killed a couple of Italian units. You would do better to have taken Persia with those forces and retreated the Anglo-Egypt Sudan forces into Egypt proper. You have 0% chance of losing, make one more IPC out of it (two more IPCs 25% of the time), gain two free infantry (another six IPCs), set yourself up to take Iraq on UK2 (another two IPCs), and secured Persia as a landing zone for planes that you might later send to Moscow or India.

My mistake – I did not include the support shot for the cruiser from sea zone 39 in my calculation. This is an 85% battle for you. You win basically four times out of five.

Marsh

@MeinHerr:

Tirano -

Given that you eliminate Ethiopia… and you build that navy off Egypt…
If 2 of 3 Italian navys are left intact to join…
and the Germany Navy swings around …
The Egyptian navy will either have to sit in the Red Sea… or be obliterated.

respectfully disagree. Assuming that Italy does not take Egypt on I1 (50% chance of success!) and loses no naval units on I1, Italy will be able to muster:

• one battleship

• two cruisers

• one destroyer

• one submarine

• two planes

• one strategic bomber

If the fleet in sea zone 96 dies on G2 (it should IMO), the UK have in the Med on UK2:

• two carriers

• three fighters

• one tactical bomber

• two cruisers

• two destroyer

That is a 8% attack for Italy. Better to roll the dice with the attack on Egypt on I1! The chance is slightly higher (22%) if Italy built a third fighter on I1.

Marsh

@Marshmallow:

@MeinHerr:

Tirano -

Given that you eliminate Ethiopia… and you build that navy off Egypt…
If 2 of 3 Italian navys are left intact to join…
and the Germany Navy swings around …
The Egyptian navy will either have to sit in the Red Sea… or be obliterated.

respectfully disagree. Assuming that Italy does not take Egypt on I1 (50% chance of success!) and loses no naval units on I1, Italy will be able to muster:

• one battleship

• two cruisers

• one destroyer

• one submarine

• two planes

• one strategic bomber

If the fleet in sea zone 96 dies on G2 (it should IMO), the UK have in the Med on UK2:

• two carriers

• three fighters

• one tactical bomber

• two cruisers

• two destroyer

That is a 8% attack for Italy. Better to roll the dice with the attack on Egypt on I1! The chance is slightly higher (22%) if Italy built a third fighter on I1.

Marsh

Well, it does not have to be just Italy that kills this fleet.

Italy would drop off 2 T and 2 I onto Alexandria (via Greece waters)… to join the rest of the Tobruk forces.

Italy would throw everything at this UK fleet… and withdraw after a round… esp… if there are a couple of wounded CVs… and Luftwaffe should be able to mop up the survivors.

BTW, on I1 , should UK take all Alexandria forces and Sudan forces into Egypt… then Italy has a very very low chance of taking Cairo… 22% sounds rather optimistic…

@Tirano:

“So you are planning to build up a Mediterranean fleet. Awesome. But you are leaving part of it to die in sea zone 96 while you build in sea zone 81. Why waste the units by letting Italy destroy them in detail instead of massing your fleet in sea zone 81 and moving back into the Med on UK2?”
This “fleet” in SZ96 is a cruiser, thats is all, and it came from SZ91 IF it survived German Atlantic assault, this cruiser is not intended to live, I would be skeptical if it did, it is simply to help take out the Italian Destroyer and Transport.

Yeah, that was a misread on my part, but I think it was due to your statement that the Gibraltar fighter lands on the sea zone 98 carrier. Either the carrier is staying in sea zone 98 so that the fighter can land (dumb), the carrier is moving to sea zone 96 so that the fighter can land (also dumb), or that fighter is not landing on that carrier. Did you mean the Malta fighter continues to sea zone 81 to land on the sea zone 98 carrier? No, that can’t be, because as you pointed out I totally missed that bit about the Malta fighter landing in Egypt. I guess the Gibraltar fighter is landing in Malta?

@Tirano:

Now as for this, "This is a 76% battle for you. If you lose (one time out of four you will), you have weakened India and not gained anything in the process. Sure, you killed a couple of Italian units. You would do better to have taken Persia with those forces and retreated the Anglo-Egypt Sudan forces into Egypt proper. You have 0% chance of losing, make one more IPC out of it (two more IPCs 25% of the time), gain two free infantry (another six IPCs), set yourself up to take Iraq on UK2 (another two IPCs), and secured Persia as a landing zone for planes that you might later send to Moscow or India.

My mistake – I did not include the support shot for the cruiser from sea zone 39 in my calculation. This is an 85% battle for you. You win basically four times out of five."

You say you win 4 out of 5 as if that is terrible odds for the Allies? Would you not do an odd with 85% success any other time?  very reasonable.  But even so it is actually 98% seeing as you can bring the Tactical bomber from the carrier in SZ98 which increases your odds to 98% as I said. (to be fair I forgot to mention that)

The tactical bomber does increase the odds considerably. But you are still forgoing a positional advantage in the Middle East and leaving free IPCs on the table. So, while the odds of the battle might be good, I still would not do the attack because…

by not blocking sea zone 99 you are giving Italy a chance to take Syria and then move into Iraq unopposed. It could be that you are intending to hit Iraq with your tank, mech, and a bunch of aircraft on UK2, but suppose Italy takes both Syria and Trans-Jordan on I1? Italy now gets Iraq for free on I2 (four free IPCs) and then on I3 the Italian tank blitzes into Caucasus to give Germany an NO (now up to 12 free IPCs for Italy and 5 more for Germany). That is 17 IPCs you’ve given to the Axis over two turns because you did not take Persia on UK1 and did not deploy a blocker to sea zone 99.

Furthermore, you are locked out of the Med on UK2 so all you can hit the Italian navy with is your precious aircraft. The Italian fleet is safe, which means the Italian transports are safe. The Italians are coming! The Italians are coming!

@Tirano:

“Also, I didn’t see any reference to you deploying a blocker to sea zone 99. That means Italy can do a joint amphibious/overland assault on Egypt proper, which you have barely reinforced, on I1 with two infantry, three tanks, one mech, a strategic bomber, two cruisers, and a battleship. Italy has a 50% chance of winning this battle, trapping your sea zone 81 fleet outside the Med until UK3 at least (longer if the Luftwaffe lands there on G2, to be reinforced by slower forces from Tobruk and an Italian build in Egypt on I2. 50% of the time in this scenario, you have lost the Mediterranean, Africa and the Middle East. That’s pretty much game…”

So Perhaps you did not account for all of my Egyptian forces ?  Because surely you realize I will have 2 Inf from Anzac, 2 Inf from South Africa,  Infantry 1 Artillery 1 Tank from Alexandria and then of course my original Egyptian forces which are 2 Infantry 1 Mechanized Infantry 1 Artillery AND the fighter from Malta that lands there.  That brings the total to:  7 Inf 2 Art 1 Mech 1 Tank and 1 Fighter.  Now match that up against your very Impressive “two infantry, three tanks, one mech, a strategic bomber, two cruisers, and a battleship.”  You will find that the UK has a 97% chance of winning that fight, which is a risk I can afford.   So that negates the need for a SZ99 blocker, or the risk of the Luftwaffe coming down.

I did forget the two infantry from South Africa, and I totally missed the Malta fighter landing note. Mea culpa. Egypt is safe for now.

@Tirano:

Now regarding Calcutta you said that the Pac building transports and shipping Inf to them is great because now “Now Japan can come light for Calcutta, or come normal heavy and then destroy your Middle East presence after it crushes India with a LOT of force remaining…” If it comes light then my med force liberates it 2 Turns later, if they come heavy then I am still safe for a turn in sz81 because they cannot reach in 1 turn even with a naval base.  If they head my way then i pull to SZ98 where now the Italians can hit me, but as you pointed out, they only have a 22% chance of winning. Especially if I have flown UK fighters down to Egypt and built an AB there, which is possibility in later rounds.  And if not then no biggies perhaps the RAF is defending Russia.

The earliest Japan should take India is J4, but J3 might be doable in this scenario if you’re building two transports with India and will have a total of six fewer ground units (it becomes eight fewer on UK3) there as a result. If Japan takes India on J4, you are going to still have your fleet in sea zone 81 or 98 to go to India’s rescue? If not, you are now at three turns to get to India.

You do have a big navy. You could probably fight the IJN in the Indian Ocean if Japan lets you. But if Japan is doing things right, by my rough estimate you would need to bring something on the order of ten loaded transports to recapture and hold India. What does that do for the prospects of Egypt vs the Italians? Keep in mind if your fleet is still in sea zone 81 and you’ve been doing naval builds that a patient Italy by now could have accumlated a large land force to kill Egypt. Obviously the specifics depend on the game.

A couple of other things to consider:

• Just because Japan might come light for India doesn’t meant that it will be lightly defended when you get there.

• If your fleet is parked in sea zone 81 on J4, that means Italy has been collecting a 5 IPC NO for three turns already without any opposition from you. By UK4 we’re up to 32 free IPCs for the Axis over the first three turns (assuming you let Italy take Iraq on I2).

• Exactly when are you going to send help to Russia with India gone and the Middle East in flames? Once Italy takes Persia your fighter route from Egypt to Moscow is gone – anything you land in East Persia will just die.

@Tirano:

And to this “Why sea zone 39 instead of 79? The position of the battleship on UK2 would be the same, but parking it in 39 might allow a J2 attack to kill it.”  The reason is so that it is at a Naval base, so If Japan is for some reason going for an Early Sydney then I can maybe position this BB as a blocker and if Japan is doing a J2 attack on India then I have a blocker.  So that is my reasoning there, although perhaps you are right and I should not put it there.

No argument with this. I like options. However, you could save a destroyer as the blocker and get the BB to the Med if you want it there.

Marsh

@MeinHerr:

BTW, on I1 , should UK take all Alexandria forces and Sudan forces into Egypt… then Italy has a very very low chance of taking Cairo… 22% sounds rather optimistic…

The 22% was for the Italian fleet to take on a UK fleet. That has nothing to do with the battle in Egypt.

Marsh

There is nothing wrong with getting those South African troops to Egypt faster, but frankly they are not needed on I1 for defense. Deploy blockers to 96 and 99 to cover your newly built IC, pull the rest of your fleet back to sea zone 81, pull all troops back to Egypt, and reinforce it with the infantry and AA gun from Malta. Egypt is now impregnable, Italy is contained, and while they will collect their NO for one turn perhaps they will never take Africa or break into the Middle East.

Don’t waste bid on a transport you don’t really need. You can always build them later.

Marsh