Attacking America

@Sherman

Just to nail this part down, I went ahead and pulled the exact stats for Egypt actually being captured by the Germans with an extra British infantry added in and its 35%:

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You have to convert one tank to a fighter and select “Retreat when only air left”. This will ensure the calculator leaves one of the tanks alive along with the bomber resulting in an Egypt capture.

And if it helps, I have lost as the Allies even after holding Egypt on G1 (I’ve also won games after losing it on G1 but in that case, I feel experience won the day). And after reading your second post, I will say that when I make balance recommendations in the videos, they are very conservative relative to what I feel is the true game state. In other words, I’d rather the game remain imbalanced than go too far with too much for the weaker side. I might also make that more clear in a future video. Anyway, I hope that helps try to convince your group to adopt that second infantry into either Yunnan or Egypt - or even both for a total of three… or an additional bid of some kind.

with Russia invested in China (IC in Szechwan and raised territory value to 3) and getting the IPCs, pluss the turn order allowing to consolidate, made a KJF more viable. My friend tried it one game but made a couple mistakes with positioning

@the-spaceman Seems like a good start. A few thoughts to throw into the mix:

I would say UK’s naval priorities should be first the Baltic fleet, then any stray transports, then any stray subs. The subs don’t do any convoy damage or anything like that, so they’re really just targets of opportunity; it’s not like you can safely leave British transports unattended anyway because of the German bomber, so the subs aren’t doing that much more harm. The Baltic fleet is top priority because it allows Germans to cheaply conquer Norway/Finland/Karelia, and because it’s too expensive for Germany to sanely replace.

The Australian transport can flee across Argentina to the Atlantic, but I would leave the destroyer behind to block a J2 attack on Australia – I think it does more good slowing down Japan and keeping some of the UK income than it does to get a destroyer added to your Atlantic fleet, like, 3 turns later. For similar reasons, I usually won’t move the starting US Pacific fleet to the Atlantic. If the Allies took unusually heavy naval losses, then maybe it’s worthwhile, but the Pacific fleet is earning you nothing the whole time it’s in transit through the Panama Canal. Having a few starting boats in the Pacific – even just CV, ftr, DD, tran – means that if you ever do need to upgrade the Pacific fleet into a formidable force because Japan is grabbing Alaska and Hawaii or whatever, then you can do so with one turn of purchases. If you can’t quickly reinforce the US Pacific fleet to the point where it can drive away the Japanese navy, then you might be forced to buy 10 infantry for the Western US instead or something similarly expensive and wasteful.

It doesn’t always make sense to build a huge Atlantic fleet at all as the Allies – sometimes you can sink the Italian fleet using primarily air power and subs, and/or build a pair of factories in Egypt, South Africa, India, or Australia. Some games you won’t have enough good safe factory sites, and some games you’ll need a big fleet because, e.g., Germany is heavy on air power (so you need protection for your transports) but short on infantry (so invading France is really attractive). On the other hand, if Germany trades its entire air force to wipe out your boats on G1, builds a factory in France on G1, and then drops 6 infantry there on G2, maybe just let the Atlantic navy go for several turns and rely on factories instead, or have the British build factories and let the Americans reinforce with a fleet into Morocco after they build up.

@leebear I would suggest that if the extra British ships aren’t making a difference then the British player isn’t using them well. If you send the German bomber to Egypt then Britain either keeps both Atlantic transports, or Britain keeps the destroyer and cruiser near Gibraltar.

With two transports, it is nearly impossible for Germany to protect France; Britain can attack turn 1 with 2 inf, 1 art, 1 tank, 2 ftr, 1 bmr, and 1 BB bombard. To protect against that you would have to leave almost the entire German starting army in France, meaning that your front against Russia is in danger of collapse from a Russian counterattack; you can lose your tanks or lose control of the NO for Baltics, East Poland, and Ukraine. If you don’t protect against it, then Britain gets $6 for France plus $5 for the NO, plus the US gets $5, and you can’t land planes there on G2. This sets up a cycle where Brian has enough cash to keep retaking France each turn, which is at least as valuable as the Italian NOs. You can somewhat prevent these problems by having Italy retake France, but that means keeping the Italian forces back from the eastern front, and buying mostly army rather than navy for Italy, which kind of defeats the point of having a strong Italy – you can still lose the Italian fleet in the middlegame.

On the other hand, if you leave Britain with the destroyer and cruiser off Gibraltar and the Egyptian fighter survives, then Brian can attack the Italian fleet immediately on turn 1 with 1 destroyer, 1 cruiser, 1 fighter, and 1 bomber; before Italy has a chance to build a carrier. Britain is mildly favored to win that battle. If you play with any kind of bid, Britain can add a sub to that fleet and become strongly favored to win that battle.

None of this is to say that you shouldn’t attack Egypt on G1…it’s fine if that’s where you like to focus the Axis energy. It’s just that you’re not getting a free lunch, because leaving more than the bare minimum of British ships alive ought to give the Allies plenty of counterbalancing advantages.

@argothair It depends on which battles failed.

Typically, if any battle is going to go sideways, it’s the SZ12 one (DD/CR off of Gibraltar). I don’t mind losing/drawing this one too much, as all does is gives UK an opportunity to either go all-in against the Italian fleet or consolidate their Atlantic Fleet (which Germany really has no means of stopping even if you kill everything).

In the extremely unlikely event that SZ2 or SZ6 (where the actual transports are) go badly, you’re probably in really horrible shape. Only real recourse at that point is to turtle up, by tons of INF, and pray for better luck on Japan’s side of the board.

They the key is having both sides of the map going at same time. This is no way any knock towards any guys games and such.
I know some have time limits to play a country but if you have battle boards on each end of map plus cut back on strategy talking when both players are discussing 1 country which is fine to a certain point then say Germany plays while Japan plays and other side is defending same time.

@taamvan Can you say a bit more about what Japan is doing in your games? It’s true that with a well-executed KGF Germany will be contained to the core territories of France, NW Europe, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania – but that’s still worth $30 a turn and it takes the Allies a very long time to build and load enough transports to crack it.

Meanwhile, a pure KGF usually leaves Japan free to take India, then the Caucasuses, then Moscow – the Allies can certainly rush a few fighters to Moscow, but sending even one ruins the only practical Russian national objective, and if you build too many then you never get enough Allied ground troops to crack the German turtle – fighters in Moscow can’t reach to support an attack on France.

In my experience, without a bid and with NOs on, the Japanese attack on Moscow is much faster than the American attack on Paris, let alone Berlin. How does the Pacific play out in your games?

We also have a different House rule that has proven to be very interesting:

We use the Chinese Setup from 1942 but instead of Suiyuan having 2 Inf, we add an additional Inf in Yunnan (thous having 3 Inf 1 Fig)…

The Japanese player can still opt to got for it with 3 Inf 2 Fig, but it is an evenly and very costly battle.

Having more boots in China also makes the abundance of Japanese transports in 1941 less of a problem since the Japanese player has to send a bit more Infantry to China to counter them.

We found this setup to be way more interesting and also historically accurate because China was a pain in the ass for Japan and it shouldn’t be that easy for Japan to defeat them.