I’d mention also that in these kinds of situations the Norway factory becomes helpful. Use it to march more troops to Karelia or increase UK air/naval power.

I’m on as Eqqman

What exactly is fixed? As of August 8th, 2020 I’m finding that Transports do not work properly if you need to move before loading units- you will never be able to unload them. There is also an issue with not being able to decide the Transport’s path. I just had a game where I had Transports in SZ 13 off Spain and I wanted to attack France. The game forced me to unload in SZ 14 and not SZ 8 like I needed to have happen. These issues are severely hampering my ability to play the Allies and I may have to switch to Axis until they get fixed.

If there is a bug, I wonder if it might be that whatever twiddles the dice rolls so that a player can’t lose the tutorial battles is not disabled in the main game.

@Brian-Cannon interesting to see a discussion on the factory in Alaska. A lot of players think it’s a bad idea. I’m not 100% sure of this but you can certainly avoid buying it. If you are planning to send units to Siberia long-term then they can just walk up from W US or you can invest in a few more transports and ship them over. I haven’t tried this strategy myself yet in a game against a skilled player but I’m starting to think it may be more viable than the usual USA camp-out at the Solomons. You give up threatening the money islands but are pressuring Manchuria. And if you go south the Japanese at SZ 61 can do a stand-off with Allied forces in India and the Solomons, but if they send anything to attack in the north these units will be out of position to respond to India for 2 turns. This should help the British a lot, especially if they kept any of their starting fleet alive hiding out near Australia. The going north plan also gives immediate relief to Russia and stops the annoyance of Japanese raids on Alaska and Canada.

@Brian-Cannon don’t be -too- scared of fighters. For the 10 IPC cost of the fighter you can buy 2 INF + ART which will defeat the fighter at 98% odds while the fighter has 2% of winning an attack. If you push fodder units while your opponent pushes high-quality units too early you should win. Any player spending all their income on high-end units is disadvantaged against one buying mostly or all fodder.

Honestly if I saw an Allied first-turn purchase like this I would probably immediately assume I would win as the Axis (maybe making me cocky enough to make a mistake, which could happen). The only thing Russia will do with the fighters is trade territory with Germany but they will quickly run out of fodder. Maybe the extra defense will help them hold Moscow a few turns longer- so what? Just take everything else and start doing SBR on Moscow when Russia is down to 8 income.

Something that might make this buy useful for the Allies is if the point of these fighters is to be placed on carriers purchased round 2. It might be a viable strategy to place 4 fighters E USA to have them land on UK carriers dropped in SZ 7 turn 2 but as I understand it A&AO doesn’t correctly implement this rule. In this case these fighters would either have to start a shuck going through Greenland->London or the US would build carriers for SZ 11 so that newly made fighters can get to London in 1 move after being directly produced in SZ 11. With US fighters building up in London the Germans won’t be able to maintain a fleet in the Baltic for long if they are trying, and the US planes can land to defend any territory taken by the UK in Europe on their turn. Keeping behind enough units to recapture territories held by air -might- be enough to save Russia, but what is Japan doing all this time? This sounds like a plan designed for a very fast KGF so India should fall by J3/4. If Japan has been sending units to Yunnan every turn it will be able to take India with a combined attack of land units by sea + walk from Burma and its carrier-based air which will crush any defense of India that is just mostly air. Plus if Japan is willing to sacrifice its transports you can leave its navy in SZ 61 to keep having a standoff with any US forces camped at the Solomons, but even if the whole navy goes in to India you can still counterattack any US invasion of Borneo.

If you’ve decided that you are going to trade a territory with the Germans every turn, then you need to be sure that you always leave an AA gun there as all its hits are guaranteed to be against enemy air. Over time the enemy air force will start to be whittled down, or you may discourage the enemy from bringing it in, giving you more ground troops you can counterattack.

Be warned though that AA guns only move on non-combat, so you have to take this into account when making your attacks.

@Brian-Cannon The Japanese basically need to hang out in SZ 61 with all of their navy and air force. If the starting US forces in SZ 53 are killed J1 then there won’t be any credible US forces at the Solomons until US3. By that point Japan should have enough parked in SZ 61 that it would be suicide for the US to move in. The magic of SZ 61 is that it threatens both India and the money islands and allows you to shuck in troops from Japan right into Yunnan so you can choose to either march for India or Russia from there. The US player is very limited in how fast they can attack since they have to start by replacing expensive capital ships and then moving them into position. Japan mostly just needs to buy fodder. J1’s first buy should probably be enough transports to get 3 total and then subs. J2 buy a carrier. After that you make sure your transports are always full dropping off troops for Japan while buying more naval fodder or an air unit as the need arises. You may have to buy more carriers later on to keep parity with the US but with massed subs on your side 3 carriers total may suffice and it may be more cost-effective to build bombers to base in Yunnan as they can support Japanese pushes for a long time from that area. All purchases of capital ships by the US make them stronger at the cost of slowing down when they can make their big move.

Speaking of which, a lot of players promote massed subs + air for the naval game, and this is a good combination but one that only works for attack, not defense (the same IPC spent on destroyers or subs always has a higher chance to defeat the equivalent number of subs). Luckily this works out for Japan since you want the US to be so desperate to save Russia or India they attack Borneo at bad odds, so you’re almost always going to be guaranteed a first strike. In this light you have to be careful since something the US can do is send in just enough to take Borneo while still leaving their main navy camped at the Solomons. Now you may be forced to send in capital ships to retake Borneo since you can’t send in air power to get the island back without giving them carriers to land on and you may be very weak to counterattack if you did nothing but sub buys. If you don’t fall for this trick then you’re sacrificing transports, but that still works out. If you do a big dump of 6 units on Borneo (only if you’re forced to take it back, mind, not until then) then the US player will not take it back again without either taking time to buy a bunch more transports + ground (ok for you, any navy they don’t buy delays the big showdown) or having to move in their navy so they can use air power to get it (same choice Japan needs to make on retaking it).

Very long-term though (like turn 10+) the UK and US will of course defeat Japan if they refuse to take needless losses since they outnumber Japan in income. So the wiseguy answer to How do you beat KJF? is really win with Germany. Given that it is so easy for Japan to at least tread water in the Pacific even if they can’t expand, Germany should be close to taking out Moscow. If Germany can reliably hold Caucasus then the UK can be forced into doing trades for both Persia and Burma that is not sustainable given the 3 unit production limit, or they have to let Axis units pile up there and let themselves be bottled in. With Japan in SZ 61 and pipe-lining troops into Yunnan every turn it takes a major effort from the UK to keep India in the game- they will be forced to fly in fighters which means their European spending won’t be anything more than an annoyance. Consider making sure the Med transport doesn’t die so that Egypt goes under by turn 2 at the latest and you keep pumping 2 units every turn into Africa to capture it and add more pressure to India. Take Gibraltar so that there is no place for Allied air to land if they try to get air units into the Med to sink your navy. Possibly also start a very slow build-up of men in Morocco so you have a small stack there mid-to late game to discourage the Allies from landing there and taking back North Africa or encourage them to waste a turn cleaning it out. I’ve never tried that personally but it might have a little more value in a pure KJF setup since it might discourage the Allies from switching their strategy or make it far more difficult to pull off if they do switch. Either way make sure that over half your income as Germany goes into infantry every turn and you only add to your supply of tanks and air power very slowly. Based on Russia’s opening moves minimally you would have 9 tanks in Europe which is already a good stack after you consolidate it. I would probably not even buy any tanks at all and just build up the air force which will likely need a few replacements anyway after the G1 naval attacks against the Allies. A stack of German fighters in Caucasus will be able to threaten Moscow and India. Germany has such an income advantage over Russia there is no way they can hold out that long if the Allies literally do nothing in Europe. The most likely players would probably do 2 turns of US buildup unless Japan was so misplayed that they went in immediately. In this kind of a case the US would not have a navy at Borneo until US4 meaning Japan attacks on J5. With 4 turns of buildup I don’t know how Japan wouldn’t devastate any fleet the US could possibly get to Borneo. And after that comes G6, by which point Russia should be doing well just doing exchanges over Archangel and Kazakh. Honestly I think it is so easy for Japan to delay the Allies (notice I said delay, not defeat) KJF seems like an nonviable strategy in this version of A&A between skilled players.

Side note- with Caucasus in German hands, you could also even consider shucking German fighters onto Japanese carriers in SZ 61 to help shore up the defensive power of the Japanese navy, but from what I understand A&AO doesn’t implement this capability which violates the board game rules.

Anyone here still playing this version?

Just finished playing a KJF against the computer in TripleA and lost (any time I can lose to the computer it is always a bit refreshing though). In this particular game, when it came time to abandon W. Russia for Moscow I decided to do it as a strafe and lost too many units, so Moscow went down immediately on the German turn. As I write this I am just realizing I could have adjusted the battle calculator to retreat after the first round so I could have checked if this plan made sense or not.

Leaving out the multiple mistakes I made this time around, I’m still convinced that KJF is feasible… against the computer. Against an equally skilled human I don’t know how you would get anywhere before Russia dies. Most Allied plans regardless of overall strategy seem to think that it is helpful for the UK to build 3x INF for India and 2x FTR for chain movement down to India. This is a $29 expense and the UK starts at $31 income. In my game vs. the AI it sent the Med fleet out into the south Atlantic and let me own Africa until it started sending tanks down from the Caucasus. A real human is likely to take Egypt turn 1 and Trans-Jordan turn 2, with the rest of Africa crumbling by turn 3. The UK will not have $29 available to spend pretty quickly. The Germans can also shave off at least another FTR by threatening Sea Lion if they do the CV purchase G1 and stock FTRs in Norway, which still allows them to clean out W. Russia when ready. If you’re sure that KJF is happening, it also seems like SBR on India by the Japanese would be a more viable counter than normal.

Moving over to the US, let’s say Japan skips the SZ 53 attack. At best you might be able to take Borneo on turn 3. Then on turn 4 you build the IC and possibly eliminate the IJN (we’re talking about the most favorable conditions possible here). Now on turn 5 maybe you have 4 land units making landfall in Asia. Isn’t Russia going to be eliminated by then? Now add a turn if SZ 53 attack happened. Now add a turn if the Japanese used a single destroyer to block the Borneo attack or did anything else to discourage you moving forward from the Solomons, like spending a whole turn buying naval. Now it’s turn 7 before Marines hit China. Isn’t Russia long gone by this point? Especially if Japan also took out India? Seems like you’re looking at minimally turns 8/9 before any ground units could reach Moscow, and then not in any numbers to make a difference. I agree that if Germany takes Moscow and the Allies didn’t take Japan (but took all other Japanese territory) things are still winnable, but the Allies likely must be west of China by then. What am I missing here?