Building ICs in other country's territories

It seems to be a popular view that Japan is wasting its money if it buys a complex before it has maxed out the first one (i.e. is transporting 8 units/turn to the mainland).  However, I am of the opinion that 2 tran 1 IC–this is assuming $1 bid to Japan–is the optimal J1 purchase for getting units to the mainland quickly.  There was an old thread (sorry, I couldn’t find the link on my first search and I’m too lazy to look harder) that had some calculations to this effect, but for the short version, consider:
—If you build 3 tran on J1, you can put 8 units in Asia on your second turn.  However, with 2 tran 1 IC you can get 9 units there: 6 from your three transports, and three more from your complex.  With a 2 IC purchase it’s down to 8 again, one from your transport and 6 from your complexes.  (I’m assuming throughout that the UK killed your transport in SZ 59 so that you only have one to start with.)  So if you’re trying to get as many units to Asia on J2 as you can, 2 tran 1 IC is the way to go. 
—4 tran on J1, using a bid of $2, is also a good way to start fast.  However, in this case your capacity outstrips your income; it will be a couple rounds before you can actually get new units fast enough to keep your transports busy.  The 2 tran 1 IC buy is better optimized at keeping your production/transport capacity matched up with the number of units you can afford to produce.  In particular, a 4 tran J1 purchase enables you to put as many as 10 units into Asia on J2 if you clean out Philippines, East Indies, Okinawa, and Wake, but then you run out of island units and can only make up to 8 new ones in Japan.  So you get a lot of inf on J2 but it’s more of an anomaly, where the 2 tran 1 IC buy gives you a smoother and more continuous startup.
—As far as location, I like FIC the best.  Kwang is farther from Moscow than either Fic or Man, so if you’re trying to put pressure on the Russians quickly you want either Fic or Man.  You can supply plenty of troops to the northern area from Japan itself, so the complex is needed more on the southern end.  Plus it enables you to get to Africa, Caucasus, etc better.
—So far I’ve been assuming KGF.  In KJF you should certainly be a bit more hesitant about getting factories up quickly.  However, I’ve found that a FIC complex, which is always where I build on J1 if I build a factory at all, can be very helpful in KJF.  Ideally when defending against an American fleet you want to defend as far out as possible, e.g. with a fleet in the Caroline or even Solomon islands.  However, if you’re forced to fall back, FIC is a great fallback point.  The key thing about it is that it borders all three of your valuable islands.  If you get in trouble you can fall back to SZ 36 and build more ships there to join your retreating fleet.  Often this will be enough to prevent the Americans from taking any of those expensive islands right away.  If your only factory is in Japan you’re forced to keep your navy farther north to incorporate the new builds, and the Americans have an easier time getting to the southern islands.

LOL, but in the last game, the US was not going to drop 12 divisions into Western on US5… they were still screwing around in the Pacific (and I already have more gains in the Pacific this game than last…)

You are playing MUCH better this game Octo.  I congratulate you on your improvement!  If you had played Germany like you did in our first match, you would be toast now.  Very pleased that you have stepped up and made this game a serious challenge!

I think you’ve got it. Just to clarify, for America to collect income for a Russian territory, America must liberate the territory from an Axis power. If Russia retains control of a territory and Moscow is Axis-held, nobody collects for it until an Axis power takes that territory.

Thanks Craig, I appreciate what you wrote out. Seeing the highlighted parts helped a whole lot. Thanks.

thank you 🙂

@RiceAndChine:

Wouldn’t then tanks be the ultimate choice vs. infantry, because of their range?

Tanks are important, but as the others have said you need plenty of infantry to absorb any losses.

What an IPM approach allows you to do is take territories without a battle.  You leverage your shear numbers (both attack threat potential and defensive numbers) and force your opponent back.  You only need enough offense to prevent your opponent from doing the same to you and in the case of Germany after round 1 you’ll have 4-5 ftrs, 1 bom, and a half dozen tanks or so.  You don’t need any more offense.  You need fodder!
So with IPM you want to start getting as many units on the board as possible and start shifting the deadzones out (moving them closer to Russia).
First you stack EE, then you look to move that stack to Bel.  From here Russia has a choice, defend Kar or flee to Wrus.  They will likely eventually move back to Wrus since that is far more important and the Bel stack can threaten Wrus directly as well.  So now you’ve gained Kar and have successfully deadzoned it since any units that land there can be hit by your EE or Bel stacks.  Wrus is usually a tough nut to crack so your next target is either the shift of your EE stack to Kar or the movement of the Bel stack to Ukr, EE stack to Bel, Ger stack to EE.  Here you threaten Cauc and Wrus.  Again Russia must choose which to defend and thus you’ll gain another deadzone and find you next target (either Cauc or Wrus).

B/c of your tanks movement you can station them in France (for defense) with the least amount of infantry possible to deter attack.  Then as you move your infantry from Ger to EE to Bel to Ukr in 3 turns you can get your armor there in two.  1 turn to EE, 1 turn to ukr (or wrus).  Although you may need to keep them in EE for protection and to help deter an assault on Fra.  As you move your armor out of Fra, you may need to shift more ftrs there for defense.  But their movement still allows trading on the Eastern front.  Typically 2 ftrs in fra, 2 in EE would allow swapping of postions during each attack phase depending on where you need your strong defenders.

On the flip side Russia will be trying to push its way to Bel which will hold Germany progress at EE and then you just wait for the UK/US numbers to add up and push to EE.  The Russian stacks will then go from Cauc/Mos to Wrus to Bel.  So your armor should be stationed in Wrus.  Not only to threaten Germany from advancing but can also reach the backside of Russia to protect against Japan.

The bottom line is it is cheaper to defend, 3 ipcs get you a defensive roll of 2.  In order to “kill” that unit the other side must spend more than 3 ipcs.  Larger scale battles put the ratio at 3:4 or 5 in terms of what the attacker needs to spend.  So it is just cheaper and easier to move defensive stacks forcing your opponent to spend more to try and kill you.  The simple way to look at it is to kill an inf you’d need at least 1 rt to attack.  Even 2 inf plus planes costs 6 ipc.  😉

I must retract my statement about the IC in Alaska.  I did not realize this was the AAR board and assumed we were talking AA50.  Not sure if it would make a difference or not but…… I have done it in AA50 but not in AAR.  Sorry.

I just looked at the Harris rules, and it does say that the land units cannot retreat into a country that only a plane came from.  However, it also says that the planes can retreat, and all land units stay.  To this point, my group has used the avalon hill game rules to the word, just so we don’t have people constantly wanting to change the rules.  The rules affect everyone equally, so who really cares what they are.  However, if the larry harris rules are more specific about the ambigueities of the game rules, then maybe we’ll have to switch.