• Spending 20 ipcs a turn to be able to build a unit is pretty bad, but here is a thought. Instead of spending say 20 out of your 30(as an example) and thus getting 10 IPCs of spending, you could fall back from the front a bit and not build units that turn. On the next turn you should have 60 ipc, and you spend 20 and have 40 left. If you build twice in a row you will have spent (using the above numbers) 60 ipcs and gotten 20 ipcs of units, this way you spend 60 ipcs and get 40 ipcs worth of units.

    Just a thought.


  • Ever considered Germany and Italy doing the bomber tag team on England? The Allies are not the only powers that can buy bombers.


  • @cond1024:

    There is no easy way to combat all out SBR on Germany, but if Britian is only buying bomers, then they aren’t buying navy or troops.  What I like to do with on G1 is build an AC to protect the baltic felt, then on each german turn I buy 1-2 naval ships usally subs, destroyers and transports.  By turn 3 or 4 I have a nice little navy to defend germany with from UK along with 2-3 transports which can threaten London, or I use them as a bridge to get infantry to Russia and Karelia quicker.

    With UK and/or USA operating a massive SBR campaign from the UK I don’t see how this can work. All they have to do is spend one turn sending their entire bomber force (and fighters, which will be in range) to sink every non-sub sea unit you have. It’s just not possible for Germany to maintain a non-sub fleet if UK/USA are using lots of bombers out of the UK. The new transport rule of 0 defense and can’t be taken as casualties pretty much means ships are dead vs bombers.

  • '22 '19 '18

    @P-Unit:

    With UK and/or USA operating a massive SBR campaign from the UK I don’t see how this can work. All they have to do is spend one turn sending their entire bomber force (and fighters, which will be in range) to sink every non-sub sea unit you have. It’s just not possible for Germany to maintain a non-sub fleet if UK/USA are using lots of bombers out of the UK. The new transport rule of 0 defense and can’t be taken as casualties pretty much means ships are dead vs bombers.

    That is true, if UK sends bombers after the navy they will sink it, but Germany will take 2-3 bombers and also tie up the bombers for a whole turn.  This gives extra time for Germany to produce more units and time for Italy and Japan to take over UK lands reducing UK income and making it more difficult for UK to replace destroyed bombers.


  • @cond1024:

    That is true, if UK sends bombers after the navy they will sink it, but Germany will take 2-3 bombers and also tie up the bombers for a whole turn.  This gives extra time for Germany to produce more units and time for Italy and Japan to take over UK lands reducing UK income and making it more difficult for UK to replace destroyed bombers.

    Germany time to replace the units they already wasted in the water? Think they call that sunk cost …


  • Yes, strategic bombing is always one of the most annoying and effective strategies in the game.  How to counter?  No perfect way.  But this may help:

    1)  It takes a few turns for UK to build up a bombing squad and you can see it coming.  So as Germany, build as many infantry and tank units as possible in your first few turns.  Then when the bombing begins, build an airforce to support all your ground units.  Since air units are more expensive, you won’t have to “recover” your IC as much.  Pretty soon, you will have a bombing squad to do it right back to him (and have all those pretty Russian territories).

    2)  Shouldn’t you have taken a Russian factory by now to help create units?  Also, maybe build an additional factory deeper in Russia and out of range of UK bombers.

    3)  As far as a counter attack, one of the annoying things about A&A is that naval units are not much of a match for bombers.  So once UK builds a big bombing squad, you can kiss any hope of building a fleet goodbye.  So the only other “counter” is to have Japan and Italy really pick up the slack on ground units while Germany is crippled (and building a massive airforce).

    Let me know if you’ve tried these and if they’ve worked or not.

    Now for outside of the box suggestions, here are some house rules we always liked:

    1. Fighters get a round of defense after an SBR.  Now this really sways the balance back toward fighters, so to re-balance it, we allowed fighter escorts with the SBR.  So if you brought enough escorts, your fighters (attack 3) would fight their fighters (defend 4) for one round (assuming you brought enough).  This made it interesting and realistic with “fighter support”.  Plus, I don’t recall Allied bombers having a free reign over Germany (or vice versa) when they had a fighter presence.  After all, wasn’t it the effectiveness UK’s fighters that stopped the German bombing (or at least a major contributing factor)?

    2. To aid the Navy, we simply made everything MUCH cheaper – mimicking the land unit costs of tanks and infantry for naval units.  In our experience, a navy was fairly worthless since there were no IPCs to be had in the water.  A navy is expensive.  So, without the reduced cost, A&A always ended up being a struggle over the main continent of Europe/Asia/Africa.  Whoever owned that won the game, plain and simple.

    3. A final thought, we changed bombers to only attack ground units with their “4’s”.  Once all ground units were eliminated, if their were only fighters left, they had to attack them with their “1’s”.

    Good luck!

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    First off, speaking from experience, -20 IPC from Germany hardly makes a difference when they are earning 50+ (almost 60) with NOs and land.  That leaves them with 30+ for units, a significant number.

    Italy is a bit more hurt, but still, earning 20+ they can stomach 12 IPC damage if they have too.

    As for escorts and defense, I like how AARe does it.  Jet Fighters get to roll like AA Guns against bombers and LRA get to escort bombers negating each Jet/AA Gun on a one to one basis.


  • Are you making 50+ with germany and the game isn’t already an obvious axis win?

    With japan making 60ish, a 50+ germany would be a moot point I think since the game is already decided. This is more for like turn 2-3 when your income isn’t as high. Germany starts out with 30 something if I recall correctly.


  • we dont play with NO. Perhaps we should. Germany makes only 31-35 the most, because the allies end up taking Norway and Finland. That’s -5 right there. The Russian lands arent worth much except for Caucasus.


  • I did take Karelia over and kept it throughout the game. He bombed that factory too…He had so many Bombers he didnt know what to do with them. I think Bombers are way too cheap…

    I also took Caucasus over, but Russia was threatening a counter attack so i pulled my tanks off…I hand no infantry to protect my tanks all game. only about 8 inf and 20 tanks, with 5 ftrs. Russia had 16 tanks, but at least 20 inf.

  • '18 '17 '16 '11 Moderator

    Kendric:

    Germany 50+ and Japan at least 50+ maybe 60+ is barely by round 3.

    rpv:

    I routinely take Egypt and Karelia on Germany 1 (sometimes Italy needs to finish off Egypt.)  Trade off is that England starts with at least some boats in the water, but the benefit is that Finland, Norway and Karelia are mine that’s 7 IPC in land and 5 IPC in NOs for a total of +12 IPC.

    Germany also gets +5 IPC for having itself and land close to it and another +5 IPC for taking some easy Russian lands that are hard for Russia to reclaim.

    Not including Europe, that means Germany’s already at 22 IPC (including Europe it’s a lot more.)


  • Ok I see, I misunderstood your original post. I thought you meant 50 IPCs without NOs 60 with, you meant 50-60 with NO’s

    Thanks for the clarification.

    Im so hungry to play more, just need to find the time.

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