@ShadowHAwk:
You quickly learn not to do Str bombing once you lose both japans strat bombers on their first run against india vs the AA gun :)
It is a risk reward thing that once you get unlucky a few times with it you are hesistant to use again.
I normaly dont Strat bomb if i can use the bomber more productive. In support of an attack it will kill 1 or 2 inf which is 6 damage with 0 risk, against a factory it will do 5.5 damage on average with a 14% risk of total loss.
But it really depends on the player, some by their nature cannot win with the axis unless they change their way of thinking. Others cannot win with the allies because they cannot react to whats happening on the board and can only follow standard strategies.
How to save russia is basicaly how to best use the income ( 40) of UK europe against germany to do maximum damage. And how to make sure that Russia keeps enough income.
You have to hurt germany every step and place you can, drop those 2 inf on norway if you can. Sure they take it back but it will cost them 2 inf that are not going towards russia.
The axis sometimes trade planes for inf just to capture a country or gain a strategic advantage, so should the allies sometimes throw away a transport or destroyer to hamper the axis.
Russia cannot win a straight up fight against germany alone, So dont make it a straight up fight, It might even be beneficial to use your northern troops to take scandinavia to allow UK planes to fly into russia that way. Is the expense of 14 units worth the difference of 26 ipcs a turn?
I think it is nearly always worth it to march into Scandinavia as Russia. You take Finland R4 and Norway R5. But you are out of 12-14 units that would normally help defend Moscow, that could be a loss of 28 hit points. However in turn 4 (at the latest) your gain would be 7 IPC (2 + 2 + 3) and from turn 5 it would be 21 IPC (2 +2 +3 +3 +3 +3 +5). By turn 6 that is a gain of 49 IPC that costs Germany 12 mech or 4 strat bombers.
Unless of course Germany buys fleet to try retake Norway, but any investment in that would mean less land units versus Russia.
And if I have a spare bomber or two in London then I will strat bomb the hell out of Western Germany. Forcing huge damage to a factory can be game changing.
I don’t think I have any “I will never…” principles guiding my gaming strategy in AAG40. Allies main problem remains Pacific.