@kyle47
If you remember, I said how I was going to play a game where the Allies were the Hard AI and the Japanese and the Italians were the Fast AI. Due to the Fast AI’s incompetence (especially regarding Japan, what is in my opinion the most difficult nation to play), I had to carry the whole Axis as Germany by myself, and the first time I tried I failed.
Using your strategy, I was able to achieve great success.
Everything went as planned. I was able to continuously push at the Soviets starting from turn 2, and even though the Soviets captured Finland and Norway, they lost 15 units available to defend Moscow (they were hanging around Scandinavia), and in the end just increased the income I would take when sacking Moscow.
I had two army groups, Army Group North and Army Group Center. A smaller formation in the south was tasked with securing the southern flank, protecting Romania and pushing forward once the Soviets retreated from those areas.
Army Group North moved into the Baltic States, and Army Group Center moved into Eastern Poland at the opening of Barbarossa.
Calculating my troops could sustain it (the huge Soviet stack in Leningrad moved northward to attack Finland as previously mentioned), Army Group North moved into Belarus and Army Group Center into Western Ukraine on turn 3, and consolidated into Bryansk on turn 4.
The Soviets scraped together as many units as they could into Moscow but they couldn’t stop my army (now reinforced with those 10 tanks I bought on turn 2 along with all the tank forces I had at the start of the game that wer still alive), and I sacked Moscow, all my tanks still intact, on turn 5.
This was critical for an Axis win, because, as expected, Japan and Italy were completely ineffective (Japan never got close to fully capturing China, not even by turn 10), and the siphoning of Western Allied resources to deal with Germany allowed Japan to stay in the game as a thorn in the Allies’ side until the end.
The Allies put up a fierce response, ferociously fighting in the Middle East and in the landings against Europe, but were eventually broken by German armies.
Shout out to Italy, who, while totally useless in Africa, did a good job helping me protect Western Europe.
The remainder of the game after the fall of Moscow for Germany consisted of two main operations:
Mopping up operations in the remaining Soviet territories and pushing down southward into the Middle East to get Egypt and the final victory city and retaking Scandinavia from a weak Soviet army.
Breaking up the Allied attacks on Western Europe.
A huge boon came when the Allies declared war on the strict neutrals, and attacks on them tied up 10-20 units.
The Japanese just did whatever at this point, it didn’t really matter.
Long story short, Egypt was captured. I was actually ready to conduct a Sealion for next turn in case Egypt didn’t fall.
The game file (sorry it’s 2.6 prerelease, you’ll have to download it):
2023-9-24-World-War-II-Global-1940-2nd-Edition.tsvg
So yeah, great G2 strategy. I might adopt this as my default move if I’m doing a J1.
