Forgot about the bid part. I would probably still counter you as england with 3 inf and a fighter, which ought to do the trick. I usually don’t mind feeding india to the japanese.
Posts made by aaFiendish
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RE: German attack on Karelia
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RE: German attack on Karelia
It’s a fine enough way to wittle down the russians, sure, but japan still isn’t going to roll in until at least turn 5, when the other allies are kicking it around drinking vodka. Germany at the end of this is going to be where it normally is, begging japan to save it.
The most glaring oversight is egypt. Round 1 you are counterattacked by england, no more africa for you. What did you attack egypt with, by the way? I assume no fighters, because they wouldn’t be able to reach western europe where you wish to stack them all. If you are attacking with one inf and 1 armor, you only have a 50% shot at taking it to begin with. At the end of round 1 you have 11 inf, 3 armor in eastern europe. There’s a few options russia can do in round 2, here are two.
- If it is feeling a little giggly, it can attack eastern europe with everything, likely taking with 11 infantry, 3 armor. They get smacked around in the counterattack, and you take back with about 2 inf, 4 armor. Then next round they attack with 8 inf + 1 arm + 2 fighters, which you counter again, and on and on. The RUwould probably at least throw an inf + fighter into ukraine, or try for it with caucus infantry and one karelia infantry in the 2nd round. The third round norway is taken from you by allies rejoicing in a distracted german airforce.
- A more conservative approach. Attack norway with 3 armor, 1 fighter, 3 inf (or more since the germans are being pussycats), likely taking with 1 inf. Attack ukraine with 2 inf and a fighter. This leaves karelia with 23 inf at the end of round 2.
Lets go with the conservative approach. In round 3 germany attacks ukraine with everything, and smites it good. It takes with 9 inf, 3 armor.
Russia strafes ukraine with a bunch of inf, armor, planes, retreating with about 18 and leaving an armor or two lying around. If germany wants, they can push into the caucus, at which point russia salivates over exposed armor, really salivates. At the end of R3, Russia has at LEAST 26 inf, 4 armor, 4 fighters. They also have any extra inf from norway. At this point, germany has a 80% chance of blowing its wad, 20% chance of taking karelia. If they attack with everything and lose, the game is lost to them. If all you want is a 20% chance though, go for it. Even if you win, the UK will be in a position to counterattack this round, and probably even the US. I assume you ignored their build in the uk seas in G2? If not you will have killed a few fighters, bringing your chances down to almost nill on karelia.
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RE: German attack on Karelia
Wow, I’m glad the forum warned me a new message had been posted. Exactly what I was going to say ncswitch, thank you.
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RE: Bidding procedure:
Probably one of the most frequent bids though, for power africa, is most inf to africa, and 1 or 2 to manchuria. Generally I believe it is decided between the axis where the IPCs are spent, not just by germany. Anyone can implement the rules however they want though.
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RE: Stupid newb question
I think what he means is can he do an “amphibious assault” without using bombardment from battleships. The answer is yes, I believe.
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RE: Bidding levels for Power Africa
@ncscswitch:
That would be the reason I would put the 2 INF in Algeria: to make sure that the US did not land in Africa in US1.
I think that DM meant that for the US a landing was not that great, in that it is a weak play by the US, sacrifical for little gain.
Do you really go to syria with your battleship and transport? I’ve always liked the move, but never had the balls to actually do it. Your chances of winning (and I mean winning with the transport being alive) hover somewhere around 55%. You are giving the axis a 45% chance of trading a piece that is guaranteed to die for little cost for not only the transport, which may be damaged anyhow, but the two inf on board. You would effectively be bidding 6 IPCs less 45% of the time. Not very good odds to me.
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RE: The 5 Territory J1 Seizure
Well, you are ignoring my points about the allies still reinforcing quite readily even with your german saccing of their navy, but I’ll let it slide. :evil:
The 5 territory seizure is a pipe dream if I ever saw one. The first point is that he takes Yakut. As you stated, it doesn’t take into account the Yakut stack. I think I can say pretty readily that if Russia does not stack Yakut or attack Manchuria I will probably win the game as the axis. I do not see NOT doing one of those things as an option. And UK didn’t do anything either? Who are these people? Lets say that russia doesn’t move at all on round 1, because they are very, very insane. What are the odds on the 5 battles? I will split up the airforce starting from the first battle until I bring the odds for each individual battle above 50%, or I may leave them off if I need to raise two odds as high as possible. That is, if raising a battle to 50% means another battle is at 5%, but if I split them they are both at 30% I will do the latter. The only air you can use though is manchuria, japan and FIC though, the others are out of reach.
Yakut (3 inf and 1 ftr from man): 72%
SFE (2 inf, bb, 1 ftr from japan): 61%
China (2 inf from kwangtung, 1bmb): 30%
Sinkiang (2 inf from fic, 1 ftr): 81%
India (2 inf via tranny, bb): 4%No wonder india and china were hairy! Adding up your total odds, that is…248%. 5 battles to distribute that, and you have 100% on 2 battles and 50% on one battle. So ON average he should win at MOST 3 of the battles, and 3 is just as likely as two. Further, even when you win battles you have so few ground forces that you are likely to win with just airpower. You won’t be able to actually take the land until J3.
It seems like a very silly move, but it would show poor allied play as well. I believe that it could succeed, but UK could also land in Germany on UK1 and win too.
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RE: KUF Strategy (sort of)
Bravo sir.
Japan is the most frightening country on the board. If only she weren’t outnumbered.
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RE: SE Asia IC?
I will not buy an I.C. until later into the game, and prefer the transport strategy until then. Late in the game I am not worried about being safe, and the allies can dent my ~50 IPCs all they want. Therefore, I can put an I.C. in Manchuria for quickest deployment of forces. However, I may also put one in india, or just one in india. This will give some nice flexibility towards russia and africa.
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RE: Go East Comrade!
I would not advocate sending them east in the first round, but that is because I like to use them to strafe the ukraine. Without that strafe and without defending russian armor in karelia, karelia is actually fairly weak in the first round. I don’t like to bet on germany not being insane, sometimes they are.
However, starting round 2 if I can afford to I will start sending an armor or two east. Again if I can afford it, I may start building 1 a round in turns 3 or 4. Sure it would be nice to rip through japanese forces on the coast, but as you analyzed in another post then you are exposed to the japanese navy. A fine strategy is to let japan in a little bit, say to yakut or sinkiang, and then counterattack. Indeed, I find this to be the best russian “defense”. The problem for Japan is that they have to take territory. As they take territory they cannot defend with planes. So when they attack, they are also defending at 2’s. Russia can attack at 3’s and 1’s, losing the 1’s which are more readily replaceable. As russia, you can even just strafe japan and retreat, then move in some more infantry to your leftover tanks making them a solid defensive force. Then the next round attack again. Certainly russia is going to lose to Japan eventually, but countering japan will slow them down a lot. Note that the above is pretty much just a rehash of deadzones.
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RE: Combined Air Offensive; Axis Style
I never said you couldn’t routinely kill the navy in G2. That is why I sometimes wait until UK2 to build as the UK. What planes do you usually have after G1? What planes do you usually have after G2? My estimations put the end of G1 at 4 ftr 1bmb, and the end of G2 at 1 ftr 1 bmb against a 2trans 1ac 2ftr navy. So in UK2 the building can really happen.
In G3 you will have nothing to attack it with, so anything the UK builds that round is safe until the japanese strike. So I’ll be nice and assume that at the end of G3 the german airforce is dead and all of the navy is gone, which seems unlikely and as I previously stated there are more likely to be 3-4 transports in the uk seas at the end of the G3 strike. In UK3 the UK builds 1 AC. US3 the US moves its battleship, and four transports in. UK4 has a build of two transports, moves its fighters to the AC. So that brings fleet down to the most likely result of 1, 2, or 0 transports (23%, 20%, 16%). If the US felt like it they could build an AC in US2 instead of two transports, move it in and have the russian fighters land on it, saving most of the transport fleet.
I think regardless of whether you clean the transport fleet out or not, you are still not making much headway. The problem is that those US transports can drop in a strategically good location of finland/norway regardless of whether you clean them or not. Sure you make the US rebuild them, and they can’t shuck-shuck on the west coast, but Japan really has no offense on the west coast so it’s not an issue. The UK isn’t dropping troops until UK6, but is that really an issue? The US troops have been consistently dropped, and the US can drop a lot of troops in africa in round 5. You might think that’s great because it’s too late, but I don’t think so.
Japan can’t even be landing tanks in asia until round 3, which it needs greatly because it has no offensive firepower. Unfortunately that is 1 transport a tank, which is quite slow. South africa isn’t really taken out until G4 assuming no intervention. The german airforce was worth 16 pips. To reproduce that you need lets say 5 tanks, which is 25 IPCs. In G1 you blitz through as you usually do. I don’t know if this is you blitzing to congo (which i would counter) or not. Lets assume the UK does not counters though and you blitz to congo, so you get 3 IPCs. The next round you take egypt, so that’s 3 + 2 ipcs, plus the 3 from last round and you are up to 8. In G3 you get italian east and kenya, so that’s 7 + 8 from earier, 15. In G4 you get about enough to replace that force. Obviously you have been building them in piecemeal, but you don’t fully replace your attacking force with units that can move until G6 (collect g4, build g5). Not to mention that Germany WITH those planes is not enough to take karelia with the US dumping in troops anyhow.
Another important part to this is ukraine. Without your planes you cannot sucessfully trade ukraine as germany. Do you decide to trade it or not? If you do not, then russia gets a free infantry every round. This is probably the wisest move germany can make. Otherwise they have to trade it with 3 inf or 1 inf 1 arm to have a good chance of success. The economics dig into the african IPCs, as the extra infantry (or two if trading) parity between russia/germany each round is quite important.
I realize I am missing all the fine tuning you can do, but that is sort of how a debate works. Point, counterpoint. I am not going to come up with point’s for you until I have thoroughly proved mine.
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RE: Combined Air Offensive; Axis Style
Another interesting idea.
I do not think it is going to work out though. Lets say the UK buys its carrier and 2 trans in round 2. The US places its fighters there and 3 trans in round 2 as well. In G3 germany hits it with 4 fighters and a bomber. The most likely result is that the allies retain 1 transport and their fleet. The next most likely is 2 transports, then 0 transports (23%, 19%, 18%). Going with the most likely as I always do for examples, that leaves the UK with 1 AC and 1 transport. At this point there are 6 troops on the ground in finland/norway, all US. That’s not really the bad part though.
The bad part (and note that I don’t usually strongly advocate pearl, but in your strategy it would be very beneficial to do so) is that you cannot hit pearl. You lack the airforce to do so, and you lack the navy because you need to go hard into asia if you are not going to be using your airforce on offense. In UK3 the UK builds lets say two more transports, and the US rolls in with 3 to 4 transports that unload in finland. The US ALSO rolls in with a carrier, fighter, sub, transport, and battleship. You can barely even dent that force with Japan.
So what is the net result of this strategy? You killed 2 transports the UK was going to use to load troops in UK3. So in round 4, the net is that all of your airforce is dead, and you stopped there from being 4 troops in europe. All of your airforce is dead. You do not interrupt U.S. supply lines because they drop off troops before you can kill them. Without your airforce you will have a harder time solidifying in africa, and it will take you until about round 3/round 4 to be raking it in. However, at that point you have no airforce, a nice tradeoff for the allies. If Japan isn’t moving to take out the remaining navy, then the allies can plan on hitting africa after your airforce goes away on round 3. If germany does not take out the allied navy, then the allies can move the navy to algeria anyhow on round 3. The UK could also just neglect to buy a carrier at all waiting for the US to show up, and do other interesting strategies which I will leave as an excercise for the user.
Lets take your strategy against a very typical UK opening. It builds one carrier, 1 transport. The US flies its planes in as well as one transport. Germany attacks and brings their air force down to 1 fighter and 1 bomber, eliminating resistance. The next round they build 1 carrier and 1 transport, and the US lands 1 fighter from hawaii and moves in its 3 transports built on round 1. Indeed, the UK can just taunt you and build 3 transports, and likely survive with 4 transports (3 built + 3 from US). Assuming you continue your kamikaze mission of destroying the navy, the end of round 3 has the UK seas with 4 us transports (built last round + hawaii), 3 uk transports, 1 carrier, 1 fighter, 1 sub, 1 battleship. If you sacc japan against that you will kill off all but 2 transports probably, and that is assuming the UK is not landing 1 of its fighters on the AC. The UK would because it has little to fear from germany taking karelia, without its planes and all. So as above, lets take stock of the situation at the end of round 4 and what you have accomplished.
You have kept 2 infantry out of europe the second round. In round 3, the UK drops its full load because you only killed US troops. In round 5 the UK dropoff is cut by two because you killed 1 of its transports. So the total for both of these is that you delay the arrival of 4 troops in europe and delay an african landing. Your attack on russia is severely weakened, your march across asia stalled, and your airforce is completely dead eliminating flexibility and defensibility of your forces.
It is an intriguing idea, but I think in practice it will fail, miserably.
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RE: PC Software Question
http://triplea.sourceforge.net is great, go “buy” it.
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RE: The Money Grab, revisited
3 - If the RAF didn’t/couldn’t destroy the Ger navy, then that is a big reason for the Axis success. The Combo of the UK and US must kill the Germany trannies.
Seriously. I don’t think anyone here would say the axis CANNOT win with no bids, but it is merely highly improbably. If you take the med battle of 2 ftr + 1 bmb vs. 1 bb + 2trn that is a 70% chance at a win, and a 10% chance at destruction, which I would also consider a win. If the UK also decided to use its fighter from india, which I would consider if that extra tranny was built, that’s a 95% chance of winning and 2% chance of mutual destruction, so 97%. Follow that up with a bomber attack from the US, and the navy should be toast.
When doing battle scenario’s, I always look at the noluck outcome. Then I look at how close the noluck outcome was. My strategy generally centers around what would a good move be in noluck, and what are the negatives if the odds mistreat me? Are they severe? There was a good conversation going before the forum crapped out.
It went something like…If I make a move that has a small chance of success and I win, does that make it a good move or me a good strategist? On the flipside, if I have an overwhelming chance to win and don’t, was it a bad move?
I think you just got lucky in your game, and should be analyzing what is most likely to happen, instead of what did happen. While it is certainly important to realize worst-case scenarios, relying on a gameplan that centers around low percentage wins is not a reliable way to win.
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RE: Openning Germany Move
@ncscswitch:
So Germany can get more IPC’s faster using a “power Africa” move, and they could hold them a round or so longer. BUT, losing ALL of those extra forces in an isolated arena, with no ability to support it, while the Allies can pour forces in PER ROUND at the same level Germany started out with… I think those same 7 INF would be better used in Eastern Europe to take and secure Karelia, or in Ukraine to take Caucuses and threaten Russia directly. Russia is the bigger threat to Germany in early rounds, and every effort should be made to reduce the strength of that threat.
Certainly true nc. Placing into eastern europe is called “Power Europe”, and is a very boring game. Power Africa allows for good strategic flexibility and in my view a much more enjoyable game. Most people will not spot you a full bid if you are going to do power europe, I think.
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RE: Japan's First Move
It is not repeating past mistakes; the last two games that I’ve played as Japan I’ve successfully executed the maneuver, went on to take Moscow (in the second game I took Moscow AND Eastern USA on the same turn - collecting 118 IPCs that round), and NEVER added another offensive ship to my attacking fleet. If I attack the Hawaiian fleet on turn 1 in this manner, you will not sink the Japanese fleet on US1, or even US2 for that matter.
Anyway, I like your thinking, I just believe a few rounds of trying this with actual seasoned gamers will change your perception, however slightly.
I am sorry, but you taking moscow and eastern on the same turn and you playing with actual seasoned gamers is not compatible. Your assertion that attacking pearl will cause the US to be more focused on Japan is also flawed. I have no problems with japan in the pacific, let them come. If you perform weakly in pearl, I’ll attack you, otherwise I’ll just ignore you.
I am not saying that a move on pearl is good, I’ll do it most of the time. But your assumption that it is mandatory and basically has no negative aspects to it I find incorrect. The “vacuum” that you are causing in asia might only be temporary, but temporary is quite good enough. 1 round of playtime for the allies is marvelous. Sure it’s not like you can use most of those in the first round, but you cannot use those fighters in the second round which I think is very beneficial.
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RE: The "Money Grab"
I think the main problem is not the carrier, but the transports. If you have the transports, then you are obviously going to use them. So in round 2 you are going to siphon off 4-6 infantry to africa. That’s 4-6 infantry that cannot be used against russia.
Russia could also take an alternate course than the one I mentioned. Actually they could take this course, and then switch to the other one. If they strafe ukraine (and take baltic), and then return to karelia, lets say that on average karelia will have 12 inf, 3arm, 2 ftr. Against a potential attack of 6 inf, 5 arm, 5 ftr, 1 bmb. Strong enough to keep germany’s shot at karelia under 50%, which is good enough for me. The 4 inf from moscow move to caucus. Those 4 inf will equal 1 turn of germany’s builds once they get to africa, and will at least bottle germany up so that they can’t go for asia.
What do you do the first round as germany, do you go after AES? I assume not since you are bridging troops and using your fighters to take care of the navy. In UK1 the UK has 4 inf + 1arm + 1ftr stacked. As germany you would have to land your fighters to be able to deal with this and with the UK navy if they are building one. Next round you deal with the UK and take them out by bringing in your inf from southern europe. You aren’t really raking in the IPCs that will make up for your loss of them in the east until round 4.
As an allied response, I don’t know I’d have to play against it I think. My best guess would be bombers, lots of them. First round 2 bombers for the UK and the US. UK2 will either allow them to use their force in africa to attack substantially, clear your navy (3 4’s vs. 1 4 + 2 1’s), or strategic bomb. If they clear the navy they could land in syria which would then be backed up by russian forces. The US can use its 1st bomber in US2 similarly to mop up, and then the bombing raids begin negating germany’s gained land.
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RE: The "Money Grab"
I would say that one of the biggest mistakes people make is overestimating germany’s ability to attack karelia. Another is to underestimate russia’s ability to attack. Stacking karelia and moving the inf from Even and the armor from SFE happens pretty frequently on first round russia. As germany, once you commit to the carrier/transport, you are quite committed. Why? Because you cannot have troops in eastern by round 3.
In the first round if you buy carrier, transport, and 2 inf. You consolidate into eastern europe and leave western with 2 inf and a fighter. Next round russia moves its armor and infantry into karelia, and hits the caucus if they feel like it with an inf and 2 fighters. They could go into finland/norway, but if I saw germany building their navy, I would strike at their weak point. That is, not-navy.
Germany then builds a fighter, transport, and 4 more inf, and boats over their 2 inf from the first turn. Africa is looking pretty nice. At the end of the 2nd turn Germany has about 9 inf, 8 armor, and 4 ftrs (less if UK built navy the first round and you hit it). Russia has about 29 inf, 4 armor, and 2 fighters. Eastern europe will then be taken with substantial force, killing most of germany’s offense. Calling Germany’s counterattack weak would be the overstatement of the year. Not to mention that russia may very well build 4 armor and an inf on their third turn. This poses a threat to berlin in G3 of about 10 inf, 8 arm, and 2 fighters. At this point there is nothing they can do, the game is over. You could recover from your G1 build by retreating to berlin in G2 and building inf, so you have more like 19 inf, 8 armor, 4 fighters, aagun. Unfortunately, you have just conceded eastern europe to a dead zone and given up on ukraine. Russia could always go hard into it and give you a roughly 50/50 chance of taking it back on the counterattack. If you don’t take it back that first round you have problems because you must defend germany as well as southern europe. Not to mention that allied fighters land sealing up your slimmer of hope for a counterattack. Russia is then up 6 IPCs, 3 really because ukraine is usually traded. However, eastern europe is not traded so germany is -6 because they probably cannot trade eastern if they do not retake it in G3. Africa helps make up for this loss, but unfortunately you are handing IPCs to the one country you don’t want to. The allies don’t even need to get involved until this round to help russia out if japan is out skinny dipping. That leaves the US transports free to suicide into africa, stalling your IPC gains.
I think you could do the above as an interesting play, though I am not saying there are holes in it from either side and moves you could do to swing the odds more either way. Overall though I think it makes russia too strong. However, to play it the way you suggested would be suicide I think. When you commit to that first round build, you are committing to at best trading eastern throughout the game. If you do not do the above suggested move on G2 or something similar, I see no way besides amazing dice that you could win the game.
Never ignore the russians. They’ll hand you a bottle of stoli and before you know it it’s all over.
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RE: US 1 Purchases
You assume that people would read the info if it was there :)