Posts made by zanetheinsane

@innocentbystander:

I don’t know, I don’t think I would ever risk Taranto.  I didn’t mind the term “grow a pair” because it is the perfect phrase, I just don’t have a pair.  I have no balls for that raid.  If you win decisively, you gain a little bit, if you win “par” (you lose most but kill the battleship) your carrier is dead on Germany 2 and your planes (if Germany didn’t kill them with the carrier) are stranded in Africa or wherever and now you are chasing Italy.  If you roll bad, the game is…. over.
Cheers

Taranto isn’t about “winning” the battle. It’s about mutual destruction and playing the econ game. As the UK you go into that fight knowing that none of your naval units are coming back no matter how well you roll, but you do have a very good chance of saving the planes. It’s the fact that Italy only makes that 10 econ, there is no way for them to gain back what they have lost, especially that battleship. One of the biggest things (assuming you attack Italy’s boats at Malta, which you always should), is that you are leaving Italy with 1 transport instead of 3. Losing that mobility is what hurts Italy the most, because they are forced to buy another transport which is almost all of their buy that round. If you do not attack UK1, Italy will pull their transports into their navy and you lose that chance to sink their transport. I consider it a bonus if Italy scrambles since there is a good chance they lose all of their planes as well, another thing they cannot afford to buy back.

The amount of time it would take Italy to recover any sort of naval units is right around the time America can start send subs into the med.

I got my butt kicked as Japan the first few times I played, and it was horrible. If you take two new players of equal but very low skill just learning the game, the person playing America has a very decisive advantage over the person playing Japan. America has a lot of built in safety nets. You are the aggressor, you have a ton of money to throw at the problem, and you have very focused objectives such as “build a big ass army/navy and go stomp on something”. When you are just learning to play the game, that kind of macro-thinking can easily win and we as a group thought things like “how can you possibly beat America”

Learning to play Japan means learning tactics like moving Japan’s production out of Japan, always building the IJN (even if it’s just a submarine), investing in facilities early, keeping your fleet in counterattack range of vital targets at all times, maintaining the DEI, cutting off India/China without having to waste resources conquering them, how to utilize Japan’s massive air force effectively, and so on and so on.

Now when we play America and you realize all of the faults of America, it can feel hopeless going up against a Japan that’s making 70+ IPC, no Chinese left, and India making like 7 IPC a turn with a bombed out factory and no navy. Then it’s just you and tiny little Anzac against an opponent that can build defenses to anything you build two turns before you can even get it there and you have Britain and Russia begging you spend money you don’t have on the other side of the world.

I think it’s just the natural curve of the game.

@Deaths:

That’s just it, I did not fall for a 2 front war.
I wanted to crush France in 1 rd of die rolling, which I did accomplish, I only suffered 4 casualties.
I bought the BB rd 1 so Ge would have 2 just like UK.

……

The problem was US rushed Japan on rd 5  took Korea trashed IJN Fleet and its own but unloaded like 8 tranny in Korea. IJN could do nothing to Kick them off mainland therefore provided US with landing zone for US bombers.  Nxt turn US leveled IJN IC

Your first problem: The best way for Germany to have as many battleships as the UK is to blow up all of the UK’s battleships.

Secondly, no offense to whoever played Japan, but if Japan was routed by round 5 they made some very serious mistakes. The US can’t even buy enough boats to match the IJN and get them to Japan in that time unless your Japan player did not have a very solid strategy.

Japan has enough resources to make itself a monster. Even if the US attempts to dump all of their resources into the Pacific, Japan can easily go into a defensive and hold them off.

In my opinion Japan is the hardest country for any new player to play in Global because the entire balance of the war hinges on being able to both demand America’s full attention and then defend against it as well. One mistake with the IJN can easily mean losing the entire game.

The plane does have a legal landing spot: the carrier that it came from. Just because the carrier doesn’t survive doesn’t make it any less of a legal move.

@Spendo02:

Much of that assertion is based on play testing of the Allies moving to defend Hawaii in the first round.

Obviously that changes if you withdraw because the only trade would be the starting fleet off Hawaii, which easily translates to a strong consolidated navy off of Western US.

That is why I posed the question regarding what would be an Allied response to a J1 DOW that stages in SZ6 and paves the way to sack Honolulu on J2 as I was not sure if that would be an experienced US player’s response….

…My standard play has been to defend Hawaii at all costs which included Anzac’s involvement (to see what the board looks like) while purchasing US1 SS and Bombers.  I never considered the US option to give it up and consolidate - which appears to be a better and stronger play…

We have a few regular and experienced players and now that we have played Global enough times America’s response to Japan positioning it’s fleet in range of Hawaii is always to just run away and let them have it.

Bringing back the Pacific fleet is always the stronger move because if Japan keeps sending fleet to Hawaii then it’s going the wrong way. Not being in striking distance of DEI and India means that the UK will start slowly building a non-trivial fleet of ships and will be making 30+ IPCs.

Meanwhile America is out pretty much nothing but a few IPCs and can just casually build boats and watch. The second Japan leaves they just retake Hawaii with almost no effort.

I’ve always considered one of Japan’s strengths is having their defending fleet off the coast of China or the Carolines. Being 1-2 turns away from America means that you are always in a position to respond to the US’s naval buys because they can’t get them to the front lines as fast as you can just dump navy off of China or Japan.

By trying to defend at Hawaii you have to build first, because if you wait for the US to buy and try to respond, anything the US purchases can simply hit your Hawaii fleet while you’re trying to build out of Japan. This means that even though you’re “setting the pace” with your buys, the US can simply lay back and decide how much to just dump into naval builds / transport / Atlantic and calculate exactly how much they need to purchase to wreck your fleet. It also means your fleet is directly within range of all of America’s bomber buys and the US can hit the sea zone with any number of planes if they wanted to land in Midway, Wake, or Johnston.

I love the idea of taking Hawaii but doing it early is just strategic suicide for Japan as the US really has nothing to lose by dumping a ridiculous all Pacific naval on round 2 and 3. Japan, however, is trying to manage China, UK, ANZAC, and Russia on the other side of the ocean and can’t just dump 60 IPCs worth of boats down every turn.

@JamesAleman:

Once you back Russia into its capital, around turn 5 you will want to produce all mech infantry, this typically gives you the ability to seize Moscow turns 9-10. Remember to grab Volgorad and Caucasus while you wait for Moscow to fall. Germany’s income should be in the 60’s-80’s before you know it.

A friend and I have been running a “cooperative” strategy session using the “all bombers” strategy and the biggest problem is that because of the weak G1 naval purchase with no credible threat of Sealion the UK decided on a UK1 Iraq, pulling the India transport over instead of going for DEI with it. Turn two and three saw minor factories in Iraq and Persia. The extra Indians in Iraq thus went to Africa turn 2 and along with a couple of trucks they easily eradicated the Italians in Africa. Now Germany has to contend with a large number of UK tanks and trucks as well as planes all over southern Russia but thanks to the large amount of bombers, Russian is pretty much damage-capped on all their factories every round.

Italy got slammed hard by Taranto round 1 and despite Germany cleaning up the med with planes and reinforcing Tobruk as well as gifting Italy a few territories to keep them in the 20s all game, they are now facing naval eradication by the US/UK and are going into full-on turtle mode.

Japan is doing their thing, having completely eliminated China and despite a disastrous failed first attempt at the Philippines (second try was a charm, the first try was a very risky hit) they are trouncing the US navy, have two production facilities on mainland China, and although they haven’t taken India, it is certainly closed for business (I think after three rounds of saving they still just barely had enough money for a single purchase). Japan decided to start the Russia party early so they’ve eaten up a massive chunk of the northern Russian territories. Anzac is being a plucky thorn in Japan’s ass though, setting up Java with an airbase and four planes. Japan has been spread too thin to do anything about this but now that Japan is rising fast it is demanding immediate attention now.

Japanese reinforcements into Russia are going to contend with UK fast-movers with their huge assortment of planes. The game easily belongs to anyone at this time and it looks like the bloodbath between Germany+Italy+Japan and UK+Russia that will take place in the Russian heartland will probably decide the fate of the game.

I have actually found quite the opposite. The majority of hits are happening on ‘3’ in a lot of these fights.

Because of the slow movement of assaulting troops, the defender has plenty of time to build a large defensive stack, of which the aggressor will be sure to meet with a large amount as well.

The smaller skirmish fights are absolutely a total crapshoot most times but when you start to get megastacks of 50-70 infantry the battle results really start to gravitate toward the average results almost every time, with variations if about ±5 at most. Rolling 60 dice? You should expect 25-35 hits almost every time.

This is the part of the game where I think overarching strategy and planning are what are going to determine the outcome of the game. You know the enemy is going to inflict X amount of casualties, how to maneuver, prepare, and deal with it and the probable worst-case battle scenarios.

I mean if the other guy defends with 30 troops and gets 25 hits, that can and will happen if you play Axis & Allies enough, but it won’t happen often enough to influence the result of every game. If one aberrant fight decides the entire game for you then either A) Your strategy shouldn’t have hinged on the luck of the dice if one battle decided the fate of the world, B) You were in a position of desperation anyway and had to bet it all on black (you always bet on black, I’m told) or C) It just wasn’t meant to be that day (this is like failing to take France as Germany in Global 1940 that 1% of the time).

There is a reason people play low-luck games, but I feel like that certainly takes some of the mystery out of the game. Part of the “skill” in Axis & Allies isn’t how lucky you are at rolling dice, it’s how you cope with the bad luck when it happens.

Here are some considerations I will add to the list.

I think it would reasonable to add one submarine to Austria’s starting navy, representing the German submarines that were sent to AH by rail. Even if historically they were German-operated it fits the flow of the game better to just add them to AH’s units and is not a big stretch. This makes Austria’s starting navy very unattractive to hit early and allows their submarine to sneak out of Italy’s coastline (braving the minefield of course) and sail under Allied boats if France or Britain try to send unescorted transports into SZ16 (a common occurrence currently).

I would also like to see at least one Ottoman infantry unit added to Trans-Jordan and/or Syrian Desert. This makes the Russian Mesopotamia-slam combined with the UK Trans-Jordan/Arabia attack somewhat more survivable. As it is now there is almost no reason I can think of not to make those attacks, or at least not make the UK one.

It is true that the AH army is very large, but AH cannot afford to send a large chunk of that without risking letting Italy out of the box. We made that mistake on our first game. Italy doesn’t make a lot of money but they start with a good amount of units and can crank out a 5-chip per turn to drop on their stack unless you hit them hard and trap them early.

Italy being in Trieste and Tyrolia can end up being a game-ender.

@Tyberius:

I guess what I find most puzzling is the relatively puny size of the Russian Army.  The Central Powers have a huge concentration of inf and art right on russia’s doorstep.

It is very deceptive. Russia has the strength that all of their starting units can easily mobilize in one territory: the Ukraine. The Russian “super stack” round one is immensely intimidating at the start of the game and the Central Powers have to walk on eggshells in the Russian territories, planning each move carefully.

If you slip up on a single move or attack as the central powers, Russia can bring the hammer down and wipe out your forces on one side. Germany and Austria have to work together. You don’t beat Russia in this game by force, you beat them by outmaneuvering them and forcing the Russian revolution. In all of our games when the Russian revolution happens Russia still has an overwhelming mass of troops left in one spot. The trick is that you have to make it so that Russia can’t risk splitting up so many troops to attack everywhere or else they leave Moscow too weak to defend and Germany or Austria will simply conquer Russia.

Instead of a brute smash it’s more of a cat and mouse. Russia will still be making 15-17 IPCs even toward the end and can still pump out troops all the way to the end. With their starting units and a few rounds of buildup the Central Powers are easily looking at fighting against a 60+ infantry stack and a decent amount of artillery.

Much like in AA40 Global, if Russia could defeat Germany by itself the game would pretty much be over before it started. However, if Russia does prevail I highly advise calling the game over at that point, because Russia will become a beast and France will become unstoppable.

@xxstefanx:

Still a slight disadvantage numerically BUT US cannot make itself felt on the battlefields for at least 6 rounds!

But when it does it bring everything all at once, so you have to count that the US will most likely build 6 transports for 36 IPCs so it will be be able to leverage all of its other available IPCs just like any other Allied country would. Even though the US isn’t at war, you should still count it’s IPC cost in the allied total.

In our game we calculate how many troops the US can theoretically under optimal circumstances (no CP warship interference and optimal transport load/buy) and on what turns they can land them reliably. Then we calculate the US’s “IPC per turn” contribution to the allied war effort.

When you look at it this way, with the normal movement ruleset the US’s actual contributions to the allied effort of very minimal.

Yeah I wasn’t angry, but I wanted to stress that beginning with tanks is a pretty major game-changer.

The argument that “UK could buy them” doesn’t really work, because if Germany is doing their job and putting pressure on the UK, most of the UK’s money is going toward boats, helping France, helping Russia, or a combination of all three. A UK2 all-naval buy is very common. I prefer 2 BB and then 2 Inf for India but a lot of people do 2BB/1SS or 2BB/1TT.

For rounds 1-4, the UK needs to attain stability; they cannot focus on offense in the middle east. They have to secure sea dominance and gobble up African IPCs. At most you might see 2 or 3 units being put in India for defense unless the Ottomans ramp up the offensive. Since the UK will most likely only be defending Mesopotamia and holding the line around Trans-Jordan, tanks would be a very poor buy given their defense value.

The turning point of the game is around rounds 5-6 when France is successfully holding the line against Germany due to massive IPC gains elsewhere and Russia has already fallen. The UK will have likely eliminated the Germans from Africa and is now up to 33-40 IPC/turn depending on how UK/France split up Africa. They are then free to start up the Indian war machine.

If I could buy tanks as the Ottomans from turn 1 I would let the Turks take Bulgaria (of course!) and Romania/Serbia and just hit India hard. As Germany I would do Russia as normal and try to stalemate France while building up enough navy that the UK couldn’t possibly split their 30 IPCs between both parts of the world that early in the game. It would be too early for the US to really do anything to help and you could even send any excess Austrians down from Russia to help out.

@Fee:

Incidentally, we forgot that we weren’t supposed to buy tanks until turn 4 - I wonder if that made a difference.

Wow that is a massively huge mistake. Austria starts with an army that can overwhelm Italy. Without tanks however, an all-out attack on Rome from turn one fizzles out around turn 4-5 if you aren’t careful because Italy starts with enough units to hold out but doesn’t make enough to fight back Austria’s reinforcements. Turn one you could buy five tanks and wreck Italy’s world since they can only realistically produce 4-5 units a turn. Congratulations, your first round buy just negated the defensive purchasing power of Italy for every turn in the game.

The same with the Ottoman empire. They may only start the game with 16 IPCs, but if you give them Bulgaria and Romania they hold a remarkable advantage over the UK early.

The Ottoman empire starts the game with many more units than India, so Britain is well behind in units and has to catch up. The only problem with that is during rounds 1-4 the UK has to recover from having their navy being blown up so spending in India is very limited unless you want Germany to have an unchecked naval advantage.

You could buy 2 tanks on round 1 as the Ottomans and another couple as backup on your second turn. Pull back from Mesopotamia and hold the line and go absolutely crazy all over Africa. Having that early of an advantage would  completely throw off the economy of the Allies as Africa is worth around 15-20 IPCs depending on which direction and how deep you get into it.

The struggle between the UK and the Ottoman Empire is that the Ottomans start with more units in that part of the world and the UK cannot really start cranking out the India machine until around turn 4-5 because Germany is still eating up IPCs in Africa and the German navy is a legitimate threat. With a few tanks rolling over what handful of units you do have there really wouldn’t be enough IPCs to go around to defend against that sort of threat.

@Flashman:

Nah, just plough through Persia.

Use your transports to get an army into Karelia before the Germans reach it.

The other purpose of the three transports is to make sure that the Ottomans don’t take Egypt. We have had some “strategy session” games where we let the Ottoman’s take Romania, Sevestopol, and Albania in order to get big. They had a good defensive front on Mesopotamia thanks to the remainder of the Austrian forces in Russia and had a major supply line toward Egypt, to the extent that France was having to send forces to Egypt and at once point the Ottomans had pushed into Egypt.

That third transport is extra insurance that the Ottomans have nowhere to go.

In every one of our games, if Germany buys Navy the UK can easily match whatever Germany buys and still has plenty left over to buy in India.

Meanwhile, because Germany is buying navy, France can easily match Germany’s ground forces because they have absolutely no need to buy navy with the UK footing that bill. The UK isn’t in danger of ever losing London so they can pretty much focus on neutralizing the CP navy.

If AH buys navy as well then France might have to start throwing out a BB or CA from Marseilles before the US arrives, but then Italy and Russia are outproducing ground troops.

On the same note, this is why France usually activates Albania, because Italy can then control the new Albanian troops on their turn and either attack with them or move them off via transport.

@Texas:

How would France have 25+ a turn when they turtled up in Paris and allowed the Germans to take all their European territory.  The math isn’t adding up for me.  Wouldn’t they just have Paris, Portugal, and some territories in Africa?  I would think 15-18 would be the max they would have at that point.

In our games France usually has Spain, Portugal, Spanish Morocco, Togoland, Kamerun, and sometimes Southwest Africa. That is +10. They also have +6 IPCs worth of territories in Africa. (We’re assuming by around turn 4-5 that the Germans in Africa have been neutralized). So even if they just has Paris, France would make about 21-22 IPCs a turn.

That was the conclusion we came up with. The 2 subs versus 1 cruiser has the potential to be good (and the games where it works it was great) but the opportunity for disaster is so great that our CP players would rather risk the minefields and leave no UK boat to chance.

I always take some Canadians with me to drop off in Egypt to further lock that down.

Once your three transports get into position outside of India you can transport 6 units a turn directly into Mesopotamia. That is… traumatic to the Ottoman empire.

In our new games I’ve been using the strategy of sending the Canadian transport down to India if Germany’s subs either miss or they send their subs against the main UK fleet. If you thought having 2 invincible transports was tough to deal with, try three.

For my next game as the CP I have considered letting the Ottomans take Romania and then setting aside 6 IPCs as Austria to continually send 2 infantry a turn toward Trans-Jordan. They would arrive by around turn 6 which would hopefully give the Ottomans an increasing defensive wall against Egypt which might let the Ottoman’s shift their focus more toward India.

@Texas:

I have never seen France top 30 per turn, much less 40.  With the pick ups you mentioned above adds up to 33, where are the other 7+?

I haven’t seen the British being that successful in the Middle East either.  If they are spending that much in India, how are they fending off Germany?  What are the Ottomans typically doing to get overrun like that?

Spain, Portugal, Spanish Morocco, Togoland, Kamerun are +9 and are all but guaranteed. More often than not you can send French forces to pick up SW Africa and Angola for another +2. Now France is making +11 for around 35 IPCs. If at any point France ever picks up any German border territory like Alsace or takes back Belgium they can easily get close or over.

All the UK needs to do is buy 1 plane for India to get air superiority. If the Ottomans buy 1 then just buy a second one. The Ottomans barely make enough money to produce infantry, much less planes. Once the UK can buy a handful of tanks in India, those tanks can pretty much negate the impact of every turn worth of Ottoman units. Ottoman supply lines are much longer than India’s.

French border territories in Europe are only worth about 2 IPCs. France can easily scoop up Portugal, Spanish Morocco, and using their Portugal transports they can claim Togoland and Kamerun in Africa. Even with Germany knocking down their European IPCs they still make about the same IPC as they start the game with. We’ve been doing an F2 Spain hit with air superiority and the round 1 Portugal units and it has been very successful. You can afford to pull back units from Paris to set this up and the additional 4 IPC makes it very difficult for Germany to make a dent in France’s IPCs. They make almost 40 IPCs a turn some rounds.

Britain gets an income boost because they end up easily taking Persia, Afghanistan, Mesopotamia, Trans-Jordan, and more times Arabia. They have no real fear of losing Egypt at that point and their transports in India are invulnerable because of the Suez canal.

@Baron:

@zanetheinsane:

I would hate to imagine a Germany that bought 10 transports and did Sealion and now you’re facing a fleet of transports that are all rolling on defense. :roll:

That’s mean 5 hit to sink them all and you got all preemptive strike.
5 Fgts can probably do the job…

I was thinking more along the lines of a traditional Sealion buy. You know, the one where German has other boats as well.

The territory was deemed redundant and made inaccessible in second edition. You can still just blitz through British Colombia just fine.