Discussing AARE

I’ll go in reverse.

Marines: Honestly, unless your opponent forgets you get to transport marines by submarine for one turn and leaves Japan open, I don’t see the utility of them in the long run, compared to the fraggin AWESOME advantages America can choose from.

Tech Investment: By far THE best NA in Enhanced.  Common!  No more wondering if you get the NA AND you can pass the savings on to friends!  (Who wouldn’t want to pay 12-16 IPC per tech instead of 16-20 for the first attempt???)

Reinforced Carriers:  Nice, helps absorb hits from the German submarines, but as Bean said, not very utilitarian except to hurt Japan afterwards.

Pac Div:  Okay, an infantry is nice.  In in a 10 round game that will be 30 IPC.

Naval Industry:  Very awesome!  Counters Kaitens by giving you the price break, makes it possible to buy loads of fighters to give away to England and Russia, etc.

Mech Infantry:  The way to go if you are doing Africa.  Inf + Arm = Fast run to Caucasus.  Saves you 4-6 transports.

Japan needs a bit of tweaking.  For one, Tech Advantage should be identical to America’s NA.  Why nerf the Japanese one?  They already have the Kaiten and Kamikazee nerfs (lost equipment for possible results.)

Tokyo Express can be a life saver if you are facing a K/SJF.  They function just like transports in NCM and like half a transport in CM, but they can bombard if you have CA and they can fight.

Russian Rail:  Too powerful.  This needs to be scaled back to LHTR restrictions of what zones you can double move your infantry through.

I’d also like to see Africa Corps replaced with naval water tight hatches:  you have to detect the submarines and then you have to roll at one less then your normal attack value to sink them.  (Destroyers would roll at 2 to hit them.)  Might be overly complicated to implement.

Failing that, how about giving Stuka’s their SBR capabilities back?  1d6 / 2.  Then if Germany gets JP, they can use the Jets to replace the SBR damage on England that their submarines arn’t doing because they’re all dead.  (England, of course, will counter with Radar and their own JP to intercept.)

@Bean:

I’m gonna start out with my thoughts on NAs, feel free to discuss I’m probably wrong in a lot of circumstances, but I want to learn. If I take a

Russia’s
1. Russian Winter-  :cry: . What kills it - it is too defensive, and not particularly good at it. AARE appears to have a lot of focus on the many first skirmishes in a scramble for victory cities. Russian Winter is basically saying that you’re waiting for the Axis to come all the way next to Moscow before you can use it, and that usually doesn’t happen as the game is usually determined at some point before that. You may also get no further benefit from it than one extra turn from it, because the Axis can dance around active zones for a turn. A free turn is good don’t get me wrong, but it would seem to come at an awfully late part in the game while the Axis could be dictating it far before then.

Suggestion: Russian Winter can be declared at the beginning of the Russian turn. At least this way you could use it on R1 to boost a Russian Triple attack, or at least it would take away the warning the Axis players get in the current embodiment declared at the end of your turn.

I’ll comment right now only on this one as you are a bit off base.  Russian winter and the turn (or two) that it buys you is HUGE.  Remember most Enhanced games are over by rounds 10-12.  One round delay means 8-10% of the game you can stretch your self a little thin and still be covered.

I’ve also used this very early in the game (After breaking the treaty) against Japan to hold my allied advances so it’s not always a later round NA.

Allowing it to be declared on Russia beginning of the turn to utilize the offensive capabilty is too strong.  It IS a defensive NA, and giving offensive power the next round also defends those territories next turn or those units that move up could be destroyed.

Yes, but it’s value, compared with the ungodly power of Russian Rail, is minute at best.  It’s like telling a kid that if he cleans your garage you’ll give him a cookie when his mommy just bought him 25 boxes of cookies from the girl scouts.

Sure, it’s a cookie, but why go through the work?

Add to that the Allies coming in at Europe with 20+ destroyers (combined of course) and Combined Arms each and there’s no chance you’ll ever NEED to use Russian Winter.  Hell, the only thing I’ve been able to do so far is to build submarines like a mad woman with German to keep the allies from plopping down 2-3 destroyers EACH a round!

@Cmdr:

Yes, but it’s value, compared with the ungodly power of Russian Rail, is minute at best.  It’s like telling a kid that if he cleans your garage you’ll give him a cookie when his mommy just bought him 25 boxes of cookies from the girl scouts.

Sure, it’s a cookie, but why go through the work?

Add to that the Allies coming in at Europe with 20+ destroyers (combined of course) and Combined Arms each and there’s no chance you’ll ever NEED to use Russian Winter.  Hell, the only thing I’ve been able to do so far is to build submarines like a mad woman with German to keep the allies from plopping down 2-3 destroyers EACH a round!

yes Bean is doing this to me right now, and I am formulating the way I can beat him….

It’s a bit of a challenge (and I like that!)

@axis_roll:

@Cmdr:

Yes, but it’s value, compared with the ungodly power of Russian Rail, is minute at best.  It’s like telling a kid that if he cleans your garage you’ll give him a cookie when his mommy just bought him 25 boxes of cookies from the girl scouts.

Sure, it’s a cookie, but why go through the work?

Add to that the Allies coming in at Europe with 20+ destroyers (combined of course) and Combined Arms each and there’s no chance you’ll ever NEED to use Russian Winter.  Hell, the only thing I’ve been able to do so far is to build submarines like a mad woman with German to keep the allies from plopping down 2-3 destroyers EACH a round!

yes Bean is doing this to me right now, and I am formulating the way I can beat him….

It’s a bit of a challenge (and I like that!)

Yea, tell me about it!

Best solution I have come up with is to convince him NOT to buy the bloody ships to start with!  The way I did that was to go Wolf Packs +5 Submarines and a Carrier on Germany 1! (2 IPC Bid to Germany, btw.)

@Bean:

What I don’t like though is that it doesn’t generally dictate the pace of the game. The Axis is keenly aware of where it can be used. You are waiting for a mighty force to accumulate at Moscow’s doorstep, and it seems to me at my nooby state of experience that the game is determined long before a massive force arrives at Moscow’s doorstep. And like I’ve read, AARE is less about massive clashes of inf/land forces. R. Winter seems to play to the old style of thought, waiting for a big land clash.

Yes…. and no.  I’ve seen plenty of large battles when Germanys amassed quite a large ground force, usually very tank heavy due to panzerblitz and they come rolling to Ukraine <knock knock=“”>And what’s so wrong with the Allies letting the axis set the pace of the game?  They’re the allies, and most of the time they ARE reacting to the axis.

@Bean:

I’m glad you guys like the destroyer strategy. It’s the first thing that popped in my head looking at AARE. It just seemed to me the old style of shuck shuck to Europe is far too difficult, and I don’t like splitting forces between the 2 Axis nations, and KJF also seems too difficult as well, so I like to “abuse” the infinite economic attack potential of combined arms.

I’m still thinking about my counter.  I have some thoughts…  :)</knock>

@Bean:

I’m glad you guys like the destroyer strategy. It’s the first thing that popped in my head looking at AARE.

Ah, so thats the uber destroyer strategy Jen mentioned.

What were the thoughts (when you first looked at AARe)?

Is it due to the gurantee tech?

Still thinking about the counter to Uber DD strat.

I think this is not an unstoppable strategy.

I don’t think it’s unstoppable either.  That’s why I’m trying the German submarine strategy to counter.  Submarines are cheaper and deadlier. :P  (German submarines can attack at 4 or less, making them, in effect, really cheap, one hit battleships under the water.)

But I don’t know how fiscally sound that strategy is.

Speaking of which, the SAME strategy would work in AAR.  Destroyer Bombard did not change from AAR to AARe, you just got more goodies with the technology.

@Cmdr:

Speaking of which, the SAME strategy would work in AAR.  Destroyer Bombard did not change from AAR to AARe, you just got more goodies with the technology.

In Revised, you don’t get DD’s that cost only $9 (naval advantage) and a free inf (Pac Div) to help protect your back side against Japan.

summarizing, it’s a lot EASIER to implement this in Enhanced.

@Bean:

I don’t think it’s unstoppable either. I just raise the bid to counter it  :mrgreen:

actually I know I would choose a different second Japanese NA if I saw this once again.

You might have caught me having to run a less than efficient Axis strategy since I haven’t seen this version of the DD offshore strat.

I still need to think a bit abot this, looking at a map.  I don’t have access to one right now.

@Bean:

I trust you will find a way. After all, you’re still riding on some hot round 1 dice, which could easily make up for the surprise factor.

True dat… without the dice, I would have to alter what I just did with Germany.

Not that it was ground breaking or game winning, but my point was to agree with you that my hot dice are keeping me in this, as you say, overcoming the surprise factor

Think you should preface that with a lot of German submarines with Wolf Packs and Super Submarines (making them VERY hard to detect and giving them LARGE attack bonuses.)

And if you get Super Subs, they attack on 4.  Wish those bonuses applied to defense though.  Then Wolfpacks would be as broken as Russian Rail.

@Bean:

Also just curious Axis Roll, what do you think is the best method of dealing with a lot of German subs in the waters? Obviously the UK alone will take too long to deal with it, which just about forces the US to put some heavy investment into the Atlantic early on.

You don’t necessarioly need DDs to go after subs.  I’ve always been of the mind set that subs are effective sub killers in Enhanced.
Also, Russia should be pushing hard on those less-than-maximum German ground units.

Radar is certainly a very effective counter to the Wolf pack Germany strategy.

@Bean:

And also, how does one fight effectively on two fronts? I’ve read a lot of things about how AARE is global, but it seems to me that splitting actions as the Allies is just as bad as in AAR, because each Axis power appears to be more able than ever to deal with a half-a** effort. Also I read something about naval action in every AARE game in the Pacific, but it seems detrimental to the US to put anything there unless it plans on winning.

The allies primary early game goal is to keep playing.  They may need to make some costly sacrifices to avoid a quick 10 VC axis grab.  However, the Axis can play a longer game effectively too.  The key for the allies is to recognize the Axis intentions.  Are they goign for a quick game or setting up for a longer one.

There are 6 VCs within ‘easy’ reach for Japan, but Germany really has only 5 that are within ‘easy reach’, Moscow or London are much harder to attain.  These facts alone point out the importance of some sort of allied support in the pacific… wether that’s to HOLD a VC or to take it back (READ USA to the rescue)

Cousin_Joe (Enhanced creator) once gave me some excellent advice about revised that speak to it’s global characteristics.  You focus on a theatre and win that first, winning several theatres will win you the war.  So US could assist in the battle of the atlantic while building enough fleet to hold the IJN at bay, and then return their main focus on the Pacific once UK has built enough navy to control the atlantic.