Warfare Principles of Axis & Allies (By AndrewAAGamer)

[AndrewAAGamer]

@Avner Sorry, I missed your post. Actually, I recently retired. I am planning on expanding on this article this year, 2024. :)

[Colonel Mustard]

@AndrewAAGamer New player here, congratulations on retirement! I eagerly look forward to your further insights!

[Avner]

@AndrewAAGamer said in Warfare Principles of Axis & Allies (By AndrewAAGamer):

@Avner Sorry, I missed your post. Actually, I recently retired. I am planning on expanding on this article this year, 2024. :)

Very good

So you will still have to work after retirement

(haha)

[bobisback]

Regarding subs, I was thinking about using them as cannon fodder for my other ships/aircraft. This a good idea or not?

[The Captain]

Hi @bobisback

Depending on which Nation you refer to - Submarine units & German U-Boat units can be used to bring the enemy to his knees.

We have attached a German Strategy Guide (pdf file) for Axis & Allies Global 1940 that might inspire you.

The strategy is called: The Battle Of The Atlantic

Captain

1. Strategy Guide Germany.pdf

[AndrewAAGamer]

@bobisback said in Warfare Principles of Axis & Allies (By AndrewAAGamer):

Regarding subs, I was thinking about using them as cannon fodder for my other ships/aircraft. This a good idea or not?

Absolutely! That is the whole point of subs is to be cannon fodder.

[barnee]

@AndrewAAGamer said in Warfare Principles of Axis & Allies (By AndrewAAGamer):

Absolutely! That is the whole point of subs is to be cannon fodder.

or in the Infantry, you’d be called “Bullet Stoppers” :)

[crockett36]

@bobisback said in Warfare Principles of Axis & Allies (By AndrewAAGamer):

Regarding subs, I was thinking about using them as cannon fodder for my other ships/aircraft. This a good idea or not?

Let me contradict champions at my own peril. I am probably wrong. However, every sub on the board has to be answered by a destroyer IF you do not bunch your subs with the fleet. On the other hand, if you leave them in the fleet AND do not take them first AND they take their destroyers first, every hit has to be put on a ship. At some point you could even submerge and wait to combine with your reserve fleet for a devastating attack on the ships. I call this destroyer wars.

If the margins are right, you can take your own fleet off the map and keep the subs. This is better done as the attacker. And the point in the Pac is to put down the Japanese fleet, not the air force. The point is to make Japan spend money on ships, ships, ships early, early, early. And to threaten Japan with being convoyed to death. That allows for skirmishing because you can’t remove five subs without 5 destroyers. And of course, Japan cannot keep up with the US and Anzac spamming subs AND take over India AND China and beat back the Russians in Manchuria. That’s why KJF is the most effective strategy in G40 se.

[bobisback]

@crockett36 What does KJF mean?

[crockett36]

@bobisback kill Japan first.

[Panther]

I have forked a discussion about France’s role in the game to a separate topic.

It of course might be worth to be discussed but in an own thread, please.

[The Janus]

@AndrewAAGamer said in Warfare Principles of Axis & Allies (By AndrewAAGamer):

FRANCE is, well, ummm… does not really have a role in this game except to die on G1.

The way that 2nd Edition 1940 is structured, I’m inclined to think the role of France is “give the US player something to do, before their actual country joins the war.” ;)
I could see pairing up France with USSR, but France with USA makes the most sense to me.

[SuperbattleshipYamato]

@The-Janus

The Europe 1940 rules do say that the either the US or UK should play France (though in Global, the US is too busy controlling China to get France).

[AndrewAAGamer]

I have added ADDENDUM #1, The Neutrals, to this article. It is embedded at the end of the original postings, just before the questions begin on Page 1.

[vodot]

@AndrewAAGamer pdf updated to v2 here:

Warfare Principles of Axis & Allies with an emphasis on Global 1940 2nd Edition OOB by AndewAAGamer (v2).pdf

[Cornwallis]

@The-Captain what game version is this?

[barnee]

@Cornwallis

Hi
Not sure what you were respondinging to but @The-Captain s mod is here. https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/37535/the-captain-s-global-1940-house-rules-collection
Requires a lot of edit for triplea but it becomes normal after a game or two.

Lots of fun if you wanna give it a roll :)

Edit
Here’s rulebook
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1jI_1JdIC-1KiTihBICJAbtX3GpVYnNgf/view?pli=1

[The Goosh]

Hey, I was pointed to this article from elsewhere and I absolutely love it! All the analysis in here is fascinating and really has helped me up my game. I think the most interesting part to me is the discussion on the value of units versus their actual cost, which is something I always kinda intuited but never really thought about and mathed out liked this.

I wanted to ask where a lot of the numbers for the values of things come from, especially mobility and certain special abilities like bombing runs and bombardments. I ask this because I wanted to do a similar analysis of units on some TripleA maps I like with different unit types that have some stats beyond what Global 1940 units have. In particular, I’m looking at Domination 1914 No Man’s Land, where there are 3 things that I’m having trouble assigning value to:

• More mobile land and air units: As always, the base mobility of a land unit on this map is 1, while the base mobility of an air unit is 3 instead of 4. The really tricky thing is that there are now two tiers of mobility for land and air units. There are land units that can move at 2 and some that can even move at 3, and the same goes for air: some units move at 4 and some at 5. What would be a fair mobility value for a land unit with 3 movement, and would an air unit with only one more mobility than base have a mobility value of 2, or would it have a value of 4 and the mobility value of something with two more movement than base jump to 8? To complicate things further, you can unlock technology that makes certain naval units move at 3, so what would be the value of naval mobility in this case?
• Bombing runs: In this variant, industrial complexes don’t have internal anti-air capabilities, instead you need AA guns to shoot down bombers at the same hit rate. However, unlike on most WWII maps, the vast majority of industrial complexes don’t start on tiles with AA guns, meaning your opponent has to buy them for each factory you could potentially raid. At the same time, there are no bombers like strat bombers that add 2 to whatever they roll on bombing run rolls, and there is no escort/interceptor mechanic for fighters. I tried to do the math on this myself and the best I could get was that the value of 3 for a strat bomber’s SA came from getting an average of 5 raids until it gets shot down, as well as an average on one fighter getting shot down every six raids. This means it should be 5 times an average damage of 5.5 = 27.5 minus 12 and 10 for losing a strat bomber and a fighter = 5.5, divided by 2 because of the fact that instead of taking a territory, where you gain and your opponent loses, only your opponent loses without you gaining = 2.75 rounded up = 3. So in Domination 1914 No Man’s Land, that would mean a strategic bombing SA is worth 5 times an average roll of 3.5 = 17.5 plus one AA gun your opponent has to buy = 22.5 minus 16 (the cost of bombers in this variant) = 6.5 divided by 2 = 3.25 rounded down = 3? Is that how you came up with the value of a strategic bombing run SA, and does that seem fair for the value of it on this map?
• Bombardments: There are suicide units called “gas” that do what are effectively submarine first strikes on land, but then they die immediately. Being charitable, I would compare this more to bombardments (that are even stronger because the units taken as casualties from them don’t get to counter-attack) as they can’t be negated by destroyer-like units. In fact, they’re really even stronger than that because there are special trench units that are cheap and very durable (they’re 2-hit) that normally soak up all the damage of an attack, but casualties from gas can’t be taken to trenches, so your opponent has to kill their actual defensive units first. The problem is that gas costs 4, so because you lose them after their first strike, this SA needs to be worth 4.5 or more innately for it to not be negative value overall, and that seems wrong. Now, this could just be explained by gas being really really bad, but the community consensus is that gas is quite good, so no matter what, the numbers here don’t seem to be adding up.

Thanks for reading through this, I don’t demand that you answer everything and try to solve what the values of these units should be, I mostly was just curious where you got the value numbers initially for Global 1940 units so I could reverse engineer it and apply them to other units. Again, I absolutely love this post, this is probably one of the best articles I’ve seen in all of board gaming as a hobby!

[AndrewAAGamer]

@The-Goosh

Actually, it was a matter of working backwards.

Infantry and Mechanized Infantry are the exact same. Therefore, the extra $1 for Mechanized Infantry had to be for Mobility only and that gave me the cost for one additional movement point for both Mechanized Infantry and Armor.

One thing that I took into consideration was that Infantry had to be the best Buy due to their amazing defensive capability while Armor, while very necessary, was probably the most expensive unit available and had to match its cost exactly. In other words, Armor must be priced just right as people still Buy it but know it is expensive so it is bought in limited quantities.

Knowing that, the next step was to determine Firepower Cost. After examining the numbers, and trying various amounts, it became clear, for Land Units, each Firepower Pip was worth $0.5.

Firepower with Mobility included:

• Infantry $1.5
• Mechanized Infantry $2.5
• Artillery $2.0
• Armor $4.0

Seeing that Armor only needed a Hit Point cost added for completion that gave me $2.0 per Hit Point. Which fit in perfectly with the other units.

Firepower with Mobility and Hit Point included:

• Infantry $3.5
• Mechanized Infantry $4.5
• Artillery $4.0
• Armor $6.0

The only thing left to add was Special Attributes. Artillery adding 1 Pip to infantry was obviously worth $0.5 and that finished things off.

Hope that helps…