Up and Down and All Around.
Use a battle Calc before committing to big fights. You can find one on this site at http://calc.axisandallies.org/
That being said, I’ve been burned tons of times by AAO’s RNG. I lost a 98% chance to win battle for Moscow the other day, having to retreat after the defenders basically got 100% of their units to hit me.
@Dimitri Taking the Solomon Islands prevents Fighters flying into the SZ from 3 spaces away from being able to land unless they bring a Carrier with them, which in-turn gives you the opportunity to counterattack with Submarines, dooming the FTRs.
That being said, what I typically do after B1 is have the US fleet move to Solomon Islands (if able) and after that have the UK fleet shadow the US one, as you said.
@Dimitri LHTR (“Gencon” as AAO calls it) is still a mess balance-wise. The entire game comes down to how the R1 attack on Germany goes, especially when you’re playing with no bid like AAO forces you to.
How the “heck” do you lose 9 INF attacking West Russia R1?
To respond to your points:
To be fair, I prefer stacking Galacia over hitting Poland AH1. I only brought up the possibility of hitting Poland as a hypothetical.
I don’t particularly care about winning in Serbia round 1. I only even attack Serbia at all because the rules of the game force you to. The rules of 1914 allow you to choose whether or not to press combat each turn, so you can simply have the Austrians not attack the Serbians each turn, which allows you to potentially roll 3s with your stack there instead of 2s (assuming the Entente presses combat).
That being said, I think I was a bit off in assuming the Serbia guys would be capable of hitting Romania round 2. You’d probably need to split the Galacia mega-stack to hit both Romania and Ukraine, depending on what Russia does.
You can most definitely contest Romania and Ukraine AH2 if you’re committing 100% of Germany’s buys towards Russia. Yes the battles won’t go in your favor initially (and you may have to spend some turns not pressing combat in Ukraine), but your objective in a Kill-Russia-First style of strategy should be to hit Russia on multiple fronts and force them to lose more troops each turn than they can feasibly replace. Starting fights in Poland (with Germany), Ukraine and Romania should be enough to accomplish this goal.
Side-Note: Your 10 INF/4 ART swings for 36 (8@3 + 6@2) and has a 60% chance to wipe the Romania stack in one round of combat. Those are pretty good odds, but it’s not exactly consistent, especially considering that a big chunk of your strategy hinges on having the Romania stack available to march on into Ukraine AH2.
On the topic of fighting/holding off Italy, I prefer killing Italy first as Austria over killing Russia first, but that’s beyond the scope of this conversation. However, because Italy goes after Austria, you can send some of your turn 1 buy into Trieste Round 2 to slow down Italy if you’d rather send 100% of the Vienna guys East.
I don’t have much more to add, really. If I were Russia playing against this I would just shuffle all of my units into Ukraine R1 and hope that France/Italy/UK can do something productive in other theaters.
@Dimitri It’s better for the bigger size and unit/strategy variety, but the balance is awful, even compared to Classic. IMO, the Axis-Favored games are more unbearable to play than the Allied-Favored ones because you’re basically stuck in a situation where you’re going to win/lose in 4 turns no matter what you do. At least in the Allied-Favored games it usually tends to take a long time before the Allies can actually kill you, which gives both players a lot more time to make mistakes that can swing things one way or the other.
@Green-Vandago I mean you can only do so much as Allies on this map with no-bid in the first place. Axis are overwhelmingly favored, even with the LHTR setup. Ignoring Japan’s strength, Germany has an absolutely massive edge over the USSR to the point where just the USSR needs a massive thread (this one) of people trying to brainstorm ways just to survive past turn 5. It’s telling that this nation-specific thread is the only one stickied whereas in the G40 board both the Axis and the Allies have their own strategy threads stickied.
Side-Note: I don’t like the SZ37 gambit as UK (in AAO) because you’re turning the entire game into a coin toss, but if you have like 6-8 bid to work with give UK an extra SUB/DD and it makes the attack more worthwhile. Playing this game in-person is a different animal than playing AAO.
EDIT: Elaborated on my point a bit.
Those are pretty common gripes with this version in-general. To be fair, if the Allies under-perform in those battles (especially the SZ37 fight, if UK goes for it) the Axis are basically guaranteed a free win. Just yesterday I lost a bit too much on the Ukraine fight (took everything that could reach, only the 2 FTRs survived) and that giant loss of units through no fault of my own basically assured my loss by round 5.
My take is that you shouldn’t get too up-in-arms over getting your ranking up. Just set achievable goals and strive for them. It’s just a videogame-based-on-a-board-game, and said board game wasn’t really ever intended to be played hyper-competitively, at least I don’t think it was, anyway (doesn’t stop me and others from doing it anyway, though).
Your best bet is to just hold out hope that Beamdog starts adding other maps down the line. 42SE (the map AAO uses currently) is one of the most poorly balanced maps in the series, and lacks the charm that other poorly balanced maps have (G40 has its sheer size/scale + interesting political scenarios + tons of playable countries, AA50 has Italy/China, NOs and better overall balance, Classic has the allure of being “the original”, etc.). Beamdog is apparently open to the idea, but is struggling with getting the rights/licenses, since Larry Harris no longer has any affiliation with Wizards of the Coast (the people who own the rights to A&A).
@Green-Vandago I guess that just depends on who you fight against. I never 100% abandon the Pacific as USA specifically because of how dangerous Japan gets when they don’t have to spend any money on an actual combat fleet.
Same boat as you, more or less. My path to victory as Axis is usually Leningrad/India/Moscow though. Whenever I go after Honolulu my opponent always seems to just start blowing 100% of the USA’s money on fleet to prevent it.
To answer your question, if the Allies can’t do a 100% KGF before Japan has the time to build up an 8 Transport (for a 4 transport land-bridge between Japan -> Burma), then something’s gone horribly wrong IMO. As an estimate, it would take at least 5-6 turns for Japan to build up a transport fleet that large while also spending IPCs on defending the Pacific from any US attempts at poking around with its starting fleet. 5-6 turns should be more than enough time, on paper, for the Allies to at least kill Germany’s navy + clear out Africa + have the Germans holed up in Germany/Italy/France. At that point, the India stack can retreat, since VCs are no longer an issue, and the Russians can spend all of their money trying to hold Caucasus/Persia while the US/UK try to finish off Germany and win on VCs.