Hello everyone,
even if late, I started playing Europa 40 second edition. With my group we only started one game, completing only the first turn (I play the UK), without using the National Objectives (I think we will use them later). To do a bit of “practice” I played some games on Triple AAA (but there the National Objectives are always active and I don’t think there is a way to “deactivate” them … in fact I will be grateful to anyone who can give me some “tips” in this regard).
I hope this first post of mine can open a discussion on the strategies of Europe 40 and only Europe 40 (I opened a new post because everything I found around was about Global 40, which becomes much more complex: I want to see Europe and Pacific separately first to better understand the maps and strategies before diving into Global)
My first impression (but only as a first impression while it’s hot) is that the Axis is heavily favored (and, I repeat, I think that the National Objectives accentuate this advantage even more).
Germany has a disproportionate military potential in troops and the possibility it has of being able to declare war at will before the turns in which the USSR and the USA will enter the war anyway, puts it, in my opinion, in a position of further advantage. It has many strategic options (Sealion, Barbarossa) that make it not easily contained.
Of course, the AI of Triple AAA did not help me to get a clear idea of the balance of the game: when I played with the UK, the USA spent its time colonizing South America while the Germans took Moscow; when I played with the USA, the Soviets launched suicide attacks while the English colonized Africa and South America while Moscow fell. I will have to play games of Triple AAA using all three Allies, but I should first learn more about the game and its strategy.
I ask all the experts of the game and those who have played several games of Europa 40 to write down their impressions of the game, what are the most effective short and long term strategies with each power and, of course, the initial openings with each power and the related purchases.
Thanks in advance to everyone.
@OlivieroRuggieri said in Europe 40 second edition (not Global 40): opinions, strategies and advice:
To do a bit of “practice” I played some games on Triple AAA (but there the National Objectives are always active and I don’t think there is a way to “deactivate” them … in fact I will be grateful to anyone who can give me some “tips” in this regard).
By the rules of this game National Objectives (NO) are never meant to be optional. So there is no respective game option coded with this map.
In every game, where by the rules NO are meant to be optional, you will find a specific game option to enable/disable NO.
Of course you can always house rule them to be ignored, but you would need to use edit mode to ‘correct’ the PUs
@Panther ok, thanks for the clarification, then we will restart the game with the National Objectives (since they are not optional, like in the Anniversary edition, for example). I hope someone can give some strategic and tactical advice on the game.
The Germans often just walk into Moscow.
I don’t think the Allies have any chance without a bid in E40.
All other strategy is irrelevant if Germany is going to be able to walk into Moscow on G6.
The 60 bid level that many of the better G40 players play at, is almost entirely spent in Europe.
If you’re trying to understand how balanced the game is and potential strategies, I reccommend you use the hard AI on TripleA. It’s not actually that challenging (I don’t consider myself a great player and even I find defeating it pretty easy after a few games) and will actually make logical decisions. Easy AI almost seems to only make the most irrational decisions, so it isn’t a good guide for strategy (as you found out yourself).
I’ll say that a lot of Global 1940’s strategies are very applicable toward Europe. The European and Pacific fronts generally don’t directly affect each other very much, especially at the beginning of the game, and most strategies people list mainly apply to specific theaters (Eastern Front, Mediterrean, etc.), rather than the whole world, and thus still work.
Because of this, I reccommend you looking through the Soviet-Germany-Italy-France-US Europe-UK Europe sections of this collection of Global 1940 strategy essays:
And most of the following article aren’t strategies, but rather principles that apply well to any of the 1940 games (and half of it applies to any main Axis and Allies game):
I don’t want you to mislead players, so I want to add that there is a way to turn off National Objectives on TripleA for Europe and Global 1940 for house rule purposes.
You’ll have to go into the folder “downloadedMaps”, then into the folders for, say, Europe 1940, then the folder “map”, within that the folder “games”, and click on the xml file. Inside you should see the following line of code:
<property name=“National Objectives” value=“true” editable=“false”>
Simply change it to “editable=“true””, then you can activate or deactivate National Objectives for a given game when you want to.
That being said, National Objectives in the 1940 games aren’t optional.
On balance:
I think it’s actually quite hard for the Axis to win. See these 2 threads for more detail:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/41133/how-to-win-as-the-axis
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/40832/units-mechanics-etc?page=1
Additional balance note:
On TripleA I set all sides to the Fast AI to guarantee equal players. As you can see, the Allies clearly won:
