@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
I’ve never seen a game of E&W stagnate.
Like I said, there’s generally some nibbling around the edges, but for the majority of the game, the territory that NATO controls is essentially stable by the end of the 1st Soviet turn; the USSR creeps ahead in territory by taking neutrals.
I guess while we’re talking about neutrals, maybe it’s time to question whether paying that tax is worth it, as the USSR. For every infantry that you lose taking Finland (for example) you need to hold the territory for 2 rounds, just to break even. Sure, a 2-IPC territory will pay itself off sooner, but in a game only lasting 8 rounds (and invading neutrals only really starts on the 2nd and 3rd rounds), we might need to rethink whether the juice is worth the squeeze. The other thing is that Scandinavia in particular is so far out of position for offensive units, particularly if the biggest area of concern is holding off Kamchatka.
@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
Most TripleA players will know what board TUV is. After a stock opener as the Soviets the TUV is usually 102 IPC in favor of NATO with land/air alone
You have a point, but you’re also completely discounting the fact that NATO can only really act at 1/3rd efficiency with those units. If we have the “fruity pebbles” situation in France, the USSR typically can’t outmatch NATO’s defense, but likewise even all 3 NATO powers acting in concert can’t evict the Soviets out of West Germany, either.
(In an Axis & Allies game where each side is split between 2-3 factions, this dynamic is more balanced out. Come to think of it, this might be why the Pacific 1940 game is so tilted towards Japan, because their opponents are split into China/UK/ANZAC/US whereas the Japanese are just one unitary behemoth.)
I mentioned it earlier in the thread that the total infantry of both sides is relatively even after the Soviet opener, meaning it’s only the rd1 purchases keeping NATO ahead; after that, there’s a big drop-off for WE from their starting income. (In fact, one of the house rules I had proposed back in the day is that their rd1 income should reflect only the territories they start their turn with, but that’s another conversation.)
Off the top of my head, (after S1) typically the US has 5 fighters, UK has 3, and WE has 2 – compared to 7 for the USSR.
For tanks, it’s in the same ballpark; USSR has 12 (+3 heavies) vs. 5 for the US (one that’s stranded on Okinawa, of all places), 4 for the UK (scattered across the globe), and 2 for WE.
If there’s one obvious place where NATO is ahead, it’s bombers (5 to 1) but again, outside of naval combat I find myself mainly using them for paratrooper transport; granted, SBR can really sting the Soviets, but a bomber lost to AA basically isn’t getting replaced – so that stings pretty hard, too. I should also add that the US is essentially always at risk of losing one bomber to deliver a nuke, because ballistic missiles have such a limited range – and if you try to fire a nuke from anywhere in Europe (to get closer to the juicier Soviet targets) you’re risking a costly detonation, even if you did ship over an AA gun to do it without risking a bomber.
(Another point worth mentioning is that the ballistic missile tech works like a tonic for the USSR, because all of their coastal ICs/AA guns are basically exactly where you would want to launch a nuke from, if you’re gunning for NATO’s ships – meaning they effectively don’t require bombers for their nukes once they get the tech, unlike the US.)
So even if NATO is ahead by 102 on TUV, if 60 of that is just bombers, and another 34 of that are WE’s tanks+fighters…? I’m not sure there’s as wide a gulf as the numbers would seem to demonstrate. We’re both on record as saying that total infantry / infantry production is something we pay close attention to in E&W – I think that metric might be more telling than TUV in this game. Case in point, the USSR can be behind by ~100 in TUV and probably still be competitive, but if they’re below NATO in infantry production, their goose is cooked.
As our current game hopefully illustrates, I think there’s a case to be made that NATO needs to focus on building their logistics up in order to get all that TUV to where it actually needs to be; if this means building transports ahead of spies, that also opens a window for the USSR. Generally I think the randomness of tech and spying make for a bad balancing mechanic, but it’s not nothing at least.
I think it’s safe to say that both sides are on timers of their own. The USSR needs to come up with ways to disrupt the naval situation ASAP (as well as throughout the game) while patching up their defense enough to at least counterattack (if not repel) any/all likely invasions.
NATO on the other hand needs to make landfall before the USSR can spin up their nuke production. If the NATO fleet is bombed, the remaining transports are sitting ducks; if there isn’t another nuke in the pipeline, then sure, they can just keep on keeping on for a while – but my sense is it’s better to preserve those units by redirecting them out of range, rather than just feed them into the wood-chipper and replace them afterwards.
This is why I point to a Philippines IC as a way to keep some flow of US units into Asia if/when nukes make the Kamchatka route unsustainable. But this sort of begs the question of “if NATO loses the naval game, do they just lose? or is their 2nd-best strategy still a viable option?” Having tried non-Kamchatka strategies as the US, I’m inclined to think that the shortest/fastest supply chains for NATO are the only ones that work – so if the USSR develops a hard counter to that, then NATO just can’t win. The followup question then becomes, is 6-8 rounds enough time for the USSR to leverage nukes and defeat the navy? I think shy of them shooting way under on their opener, it should be doable.