UK Strategy -"Middle Earth"

[simon33]

One thing that occurs to me today is why not send send 2 transports, 2inf 1mec 1tank to FWA. 1TT tales the 2 inf around the Cape of Good Hope, a plane or two later and attacks Saudia Arabia, obviously with another attack on Spain and UK attacking Turkey. Ties up a minimal number of units and with a Middle Earth strategy, the neutral crush and a neutralise Italy first strategy are pretty advisable. If there is a Vichy activation, an additional transport to FWA with an inf and art are probably advised.

[Argothair]

@simon33 The thing about the neutral crush is that if the Allies can pull it off successfully, then they’ve probably already set themselves up for victory anyway. There’s 6 infantry in Spain, 8 infantry in Turkey, and 2 in Saudi Arabia. The US is limited in the opening in terms of how many loaded transports it can afford to send across the Atlantic, and the UK is limited in the opening in how many units it can build up in the Middle East, even in a Middle Earth strategy. If you’ve overcome these limits and managed to build up both a US force and a UK force each of which can successfully kill off 8 defending neutral infantry, and those forces aren’t urgently needed for defense anywhere, then (a) you probably could and should just successfully kill off 8 defending Axis infantry; there ought to be some target that’s worth taking that’s not so well-defended, and (b) you’re probably doing so well that you will win no matter what you do as long as it’s not insane.

On the US end, one of the challenges is that the coast of Spain is not necessarily a safe place to park your ships – it’s typically in range of German fighters and tac bombers flying out of West Germany; to block this attack, you would need to hold Morocco and Gibraltar strongly enough that Italy can’t take them back on its turn – which is hard to do if the Allied infantry headed for the western Med are all going to Spain. You need to crush Spain’s 6 infantry hard enough that your survivors can resist an Italian/German counterattack from France; you have to take and hold Spain so you can build facilities and land planes there; otherwise you’re just trading territory that’s far enough away from the German core that it’s not really a threat to them.

On the UK end, there’s nowhere reasonable to put a third factory in the opening – you can use your starting factory in South Africa and build a new one in Persia on UK2 after activating Persia on UK1. However, it’s not safe to put a factory in Egypt against a competent Italian player, and it’s not reasonable to attack Iraq any earlier than UK2, because you need time to activate the Persian units and bring them into the fight, as well as time to contain the Italians in east Africa. So the earliest you could build an Iraq factory is UK3, which means you don’t get any new units out of that factory until UK4 – and even then, the British economy is usually too weak to fuel all 3 factories reliably. You might be earning 42 IPCs if you’re doing very well. If you want a reasonable mix of land units, so you can, e.g., put fast movers in Persia and keep them involved in the action despite their relatively long walk to Cairo, then the buy looks something like 4 infantry, 2 artillery, 2 mechs, 1 tank, which costs 34 IPCs. You probably also need to buy at least a destroyer in the Atlantic to cope with German submarines, so that’s the full 42 IPCs. If you get hit with a successful convoy attack or strategic bombing run, or if you’ve lost even one original territory anywhere (e.g. Alexandria, or Gibraltar, or British Somaliland), then you have to make some painful cuts somewhere.

So as the British, you can’t reliably crank out 9 units per turn every turn in the global South – for the first few turns your factories aren’t all online yet, and then even after that sometimes you won’t be able to afford it. Let’s say you manage 7 units per turn. OK, but Italy can typically unload at least 2 transports a turn into north Africa or Syria, so you need 4 units per turn just to counter that…which means you have something like 3 units a turn to build up to a force that can sack the 8 units in Turkey at a profit. And that assumes you’re not diverting units east to save India from Japan, or buying fighters to send north to save Moscow, both of which are often a higher priority than a neutral crush. Maybe you can build up an uncommitted striking force of 12 British units by turn 7 or 8…but most of the time I’d rather use those units to retake Cairo, land in Greece, push into a German-occupied Caucasus, etc.

Yes, it can be annoying to wait until you have enough British transports to support a landing in Greece, but it’s also annoying to gift Germany 2 infantry in Switzerland, 6 infantry in Sweden, and the loss of whatever Allied units take hits in the first round of combat against Spain, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. On average, even a perfect attack that ends in 1 round will cost you about 5 Allied units. So if the Allies are going down 5 units, and the Germans are going up 8 units, that’s a swing of 13 units. In return, the Allies gain 6 IPCs per turn – it will take them 7 turns of collecting that income to build 13 infantry and show a tiny profit, plus another couple of turns for that profit to be converted into units that can be built and transported to the front lines. If the neutral crush happens early – say, round 5 – then you’re not really breaking even until about round 14, by which point the game’s outcome has usually been decided.

It’s not that a neutral crush is never the right answer, I just think it’s rare, and I wouldn’t want to plan ahead for it by making an early investment with the US by making an otherwise-unjustified early move to French West Africa.

Of course, if you want to do a neutral crush because it’s fun, or because it’s surprising, or because you think your opponent won’t know how to defend against it skillfully, have at it! Those are all good reasons to do a neutral crush. I just think it very rarely makes sense in terms of this game’s economy, even assuming Britain is running Middle Earth.

[simon33]

You are playing against a much stronger Italy than I normally am. If everything goes well for me, all its ships are sunk UK2. Here’s what I do:

• bid Malta fighter and sz98 sub
• attack sz97 without the CV but with a fighter and bomber from London. Biggest risk is no enemy hits.
• move CV and sz109 units to sz92
• land 2 british inf or mech inf to Algeria. Optionally add a fighter.
• If Italy does grab Algeria console yourself with at least nabbing a few Luftwaffe
• Sometimes I do indeed buy 5 inf and an Egypt factory UK1. Depends on how likely I think a Sea Lion is.
• Later, use US subs to convoy off Italian income.

Onto your points about how early this can happen. In most Balanced Mod games, there is a J3 DOW. If we assume that, earliest this can be executed is US6. If there is a J1 DOW I would leave this strat in the bag for later in the game anyway and it is still only possible US5 because you really need that second transport for it to work. Looking at a game where I did the neutral crush round 12, I think I could have lined it up for round 7 and would have been much better off for it. Round 6 would have been too early and this is a game with a UK1 Egypt factory.

I don’t know about the neutral crush being a guaranteed win if executed well though. It draws in a lot of US money to Europe and you can’t completely ignore Japan. I lost one neutral crush game this way. Other games where I saw the opportunity to crush the neutrals later I felt like I was late to the party.

The neutral crush is especially valuable when Normandy is left French.

[simon33]

The purpose of the neutral crush isn’t so much to get more allied income but to allow USA to put down an IC on Spain, allow passage of the Turkish strait and to allow overland invasion of the Balkans.

[Argothair]

@simon33 The fighter+sub bid in the Med is interesting; maybe I’ve been putting too much of my bid into the Atlantic. Honestly, it’s been a long time since I’ve played OOB Global; I tend to play either Balanced Mod or Bloodbath Rules when I play at all. If you crush Italy hard enough in the opening then I could see a follow-up neutral crush being effective around turn 7, as you suggest. I think this would be easiest using OOB rules, which give you more flexibility to concentrate Allied assets in the Med.

[simon33]

@Argothair said in UK Strategy -"Middle Earth":

The fighter+sub bid in the Med is interesting

No one else does as of yet. Although I have seen people do the same attack but with 2 fighters from London. Which is highly dangerous. One game I was playing axis and was disappointed to have 2 hits.