Control of the Center: Just like in chess, the player who has the most attack power covering the middle of the game board has the overall advantage and the best chances to prevail in the endgame.
Broadly speaking the center is that swath of Russian and British starting territory that separates Germany from Japan overland in Eurasia. Most specifically it refers to the territory of Moscow itself, and the pivot territories immediately surrounding Moscow, especially Caucasus, but also West Russia and Kazakh. These last three territories form a little scalene Triangle of Doom around the Russians, if the Axis manage to break one of those corners and stack it, the Allied position can rapidly collapse. But the center also extends beyond Moscow, and the production choke point of Caucasus, to cover all those territories and sea zones that stand in the way of Axis convergence at the middle of the gameboard.
It radiates out from Moscow, and involves territories like India, and Egypt/Trans (Suez), Persia, Karelia/Arch, Novos, Evenki and Ukraine.
This region of the map is a focal point for turn order exploits, many plays that involve grouping teamed units together, to project an increased attack/defense power over the course of multiple turns.
In the long term, all nations are trying to stack heavy ground in this region, in order to first deadzone and then dominate the rich production/income at the center. And long term, it is the attack/defense power of Infantry and Artillery that is the undisputed king. But in the nearer term, during early rounds, players can use the “movement” advantage of air units and armor to try and tilt the balance in one direction or the other. Here air transits and tank drives are used to back up the movement of inf/art stacks and cover them as they push around and work to get into position.
So long as the Allies are able to maintain a wedge between the two Axis powers, their overall economic strength and turn order advantage (3 turns rather than 2), makes Center control relatively straight forward. But as soon as Axis achieve economic parity, and start chiseling away at the key pivot territories and production pockets around Moscow, the balance in the war could easily start to favor Axis. Everyone is trying to get the pendulum to swing their way.
There are two schools of thought here. Once is to push heavy inf and artillery stacks early, then catch up in later rounds with more mobile units. This is the more conservative style of gameplay, that puts a premium on the gaining the late game advantage with larger ground numbers. Usually you’ll be giving up some territory/income early on, in the hopes of recouping it later, during the mid-game rounds, once those ground forces have moved to the front.
Another school of thought, is to use the mobile units first, to strike forward early, and then hold the line. It can be effective as a way to achieve more income early on and to deny the enemy control of a key production location, or a critical choke point. This is the more radical or risky style of gameplay, where you launch to front early with the heavy hitters (expensive, high TUV units, like tanks or air) and then play catch up with your ground stacks. Here the danger is always of overextending yourself too early, and getting caught up in a defensive logistics quagmire. From the German perspective, this where burst ahead in the opening rounds and then dig. Instead of attacking forward against Moscow, your focus is rather to take a Russian factory and then hold it while you wait for the Japanese to arrive and make up the difference on defense power. From the Allied perspective its usually the choice between setting up a fighter/tank wall to cover the center, or actually launching ground forces and marching them towards the center (which requires transports and pushing over several rounds.)
I think there are merits to either approach, and also ways to do them both in tandem, with hybrid buys over several rounds, or with a different role/purchasing focus for each nation on the team. But ultimately the side who controls the center is the side who has “time” on their side. At the beginning of 1942 it is the Axis who have to face down the ticking of the clock, but if they take Moscow that dynamic essentially reverses. Eurasia becomes like a huge island that Axis can cover with an air shield, and since they no longer have the pressure of convergence with Japan, or cracking Moscow, they are free to redirect their cash for other things… like new naval armadas or bomber wings! Basically, its a huge pain for the Allies to recover the center in the endgame once they lose it to the Axis.
Some Allied players will make the calculation that it is more profitable to take a starting Axis capital, even at the expense of losing Moscow, in order to offset the loss, trade capitals and then carry things into the endgame with the Anglo-Americans alone 2v2. That is the “anything goes” sort of deep endgame, which is harder to pin down, since it often turns on narrow climactic battles and fast paced TUV exchanges. This is the Classic KGF or KJF type game from Allies.
There is a third version of Allied victory strategy though. A ready acronym to describe it is escaping me, but basically it involves the Allies just grinding it out at the Center, on the assumption that as long as the Allies this region, and maintain control of London and Moscow, there is virtually no way for Axis to win regardless of how much money they are making. Red Turtle tactics and the like.
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@Private:
Elk - when you have a finished Factory section added to the Google doc then let me know whether you want me to edit in the same way ….
I would definitely vote for the ‘Factory-section’ as well as the ‘Control of the Center-section’ as being part of the “Strategy-Guide”.
So why not edit it in… just my thoughts of course…
Happy to do so Panther.
Do you want me to take these sections as drafted here Elk and slot them in with editing?
Shall I also share the resulting work in progress doc with the forum for feedback? I might start a new thread to avoid it getting lost.
Cheers
PP
Yeah sure, sounds good. Might as well keep it all strung together. :-D
Strategic factory spam. Just another quick thought on Industrial Complexes… Especially in the deep endgame, after Moscow falls, 2v2 Anglo-Americans vs Axis, it might be prudent to consider spamming production on all your 2 ipc or greater territories. Doing this before they are contested. In a 4 power match up, when the surviving nations “go monster” like Super G or Super J vs Super USA/UK, a rapid production expansion can sometimes clinch it in a game played to concession where balance of power is still roughly equal. I’ve seen this done by both sides. Usually if Axis control the center, Vologda and Kazakh can support factories, also the halo of factories around sz 16 to get the drop on the med. Also by Japan on the money islands to lock them down.
For Allies usually it is the periphery where this occurs, in Africa or again on the money islands of the south Pacific (if the IJN can’t control them) even out of the way territories like Brazil and E. Canada can lock the Axis off the Atlantic for good, especially if you’re ahead in the naval game. Dropping factories in all secure territories for your side first can put a whole region out of contention and make it harder for the opponent to get in position against you.
It pays to be the side that expands first, provided the facilities can’t be immediately threatened. You could try a move like this at any point, though it becomes more significant after Moscow falls. If you expand production too broadly too early it can be problems for center control, giving up the edge in Russia. Early on I like to expand production only gradually, and only with Japan. Unless Allies make a breakthrough in the south Pacific, or want to try an Africa gamble. But after Moscow falls the money game changes. All surviving nations will usually have more cash to toss around, and the ability to spam infantry or tanks out of spammed factories can help to make the naval transport game less significant, and allow you to control the board just with your air forces and ground alone.
It can also demoralize the enemy to see you doing this all around the board rapidly, placing limits on the potential target areas the enemy can reach “in time” and put those ipcs on lock down for the duration. Just with a modest investment in inf over a couple rounds after the factory is in place. Or as a spawn point for subs/air to control the sea. This can be an effective way to back down and intrasigent opponent when you know you’ll be playing a really long game regardless.
:-D
Happy Memorial day.
epic post and tons of good info there. played 3 games so far and this gave me quite good insight mixed with my past experience in those previous games.
Thanks man! I actually had a lot of fun writing this one, so I’m glad to see its still proving useful.
:-)
Io Saturnalia, and best games to all!
The defensive value of infantry is clear for the cost, but their attack value should not be underestimated either. If you consider that 4 infantry attacking together are at basically the same odds (during a single round of combat) as a bomber, you can see that their attack value for the cost is decent as well. 4 infantry on attack can also be better than a bomber in some cases, because you not only have the same chance statistically to roll a single hit in the first round of combat, but there is a chance you might even roll more than one hit. You get 4 shots after all.
Though I realize this article was written a few years ago, I do question quoted paragraph.
I’m wondering if the author meant to state 6 infantry and not 4 in comparison to its “to hit” odds with bomber.
To get at least a “one” with 4 dice, the probability is 1 - (5/6)^4, no? If this is the case, the probability is: ~52%
On the other hand, the bomber’s chance to hit is 4/6 or ~67%.
Assuming my math is correct as it’s been a long time since I’ve taken a stats/prob course, this is not exactly “basically the same odds”.
On the other hand, with 6 inf, based on my math above, the odds are: 1 - (5/6)^6 = ~67%.
Bear in mind that my calculations are based on “at least one” one whereas the paragraph is based on a single hit. The odds for that is even worse than what I’ve shown (38% I think).
I’m enjoying this article but am very confused about this paragraph. If I’m wrong, please correct me. However, wrong or right, it may be better to modify this paragraph to actually display the odds values instead of implying that they’re basically the same odds.
Regardless, I do see what the author is getting at in explaining that, for the buck, the infantry is a great unit.
Also, I appreciate the work that went in to doing this.
I can only suppose the explanation is that 1+1+1+1 does not equal 4, when you are rolling dice. As you have laid out, the odds are different, and the fact that you have “hit points” makes combat more than just a simple calculation. Sometimes 2 infantry vs 1 infantry seems like “even odds” but having 2 hits means you have an additional chance to roll a 1 on the second round even if your opponent hits the first round, there is not just 1 roll going on, its multiple rounds of rolling and some special rules also come into effect esp. for sea combat so its not a simple arithmetic calculation of the odds
Is there a less wordy version of this and you got various openers?
I am surprised playbooks haven’t been made for the other versions of axis and allies. I could easily do one for each edition. I choose not to because it would kind of ruin the game for newcomers when they hop on the forum and see optimal starting moves for their first few games.
Could, but most people don’t read and what they do read, is hard to apply without experience.
Probably more fun to teach them by beating them up over and over.
Good call kpb66. The bomber inf comparison was probably a little misleading there. Most of these entries were just me riffing on stuff in the middle of the night. So I’d chalk it up to sleep deprivation or maybe my head was been drifting into LL territory unintentionally haha. I think the general point I was trying to make was that, at a similar cost, the force with more hp can sometimes be better than the one with a stronger attack power. Though the numbers there aren’t identical, so it might not be the best example.
Sometimes takes me a while to check up on things these days, so I’d definitely encourage anyone if you see an error, or have a good example or just want to add or simplify some of these explanations, feel free to edit the doc. I think these things always turn out better as collaborative efforts. I was treating the thread as a draft, and hoping that the doc might serve as the final, but should edit both so its not confusing.
For now I just nixed the whole bomber digression in the thread , since it probably distracts from the explanation of attack power anyway, and the importance of HP is touched on in the discussion about art/tanks that follow, so probably won’t be missed. Thanks for the feedback and the heads up.
Also as Cow and others probably noticed, I’m a complete rambler. Even after trimming it down, it’s still pretty wordy haha.
I think a playbook for 42.2 would be killer. Main problem I see is just the painfully large bid, which might make it harder to pin down. But maybe one for the tournament update would be novel? I really haven’t played many games using the latest set up proposed by Larry/Greg
I have!
Will report back after gencon.
I can only suppose the explanation is that 1+1+1+1 does not equal 4, when you are rolling dice. As you have laid out, the odds are different, and the fact that you have “hit points” makes combat more than just a simple calculation. Sometimes 2 infantry vs 1 infantry seems like “even odds” but having 2 hits means you have an additional chance to roll a 1 on the second round even if your opponent hits the first round, there is not just 1 roll going on, its multiple rounds of rolling and some special rules also come into effect esp. for sea combat so its not a simple arithmetic calculation of the odds
It is a mini-case on which I would use the Lanchester’s law with Stack formula, to see the difference:
1 StB: 4/6 is .667 odds* 1 hit = 4/6 or 0.667 or 4 meta-power points
Punch: A4 +1 hit = 5 points
4 Infs @1: 4/6 points is .667 odds* 4 hits = 16/6 or 2.667 or 16 meta-power points
Punch: A4 + 4 hits = 8 points
1 Infs @2: 2/6 is 0.333 odds* 1 hit = 2/6 or 2 meta-power points
Punch: D2 + 1 hit = 3 points
2 Infs @1: 2/6 points is .333 odds* 2 hits = 4/6 or 0.667 or 4 meta-power points
Punch: A2 + 2 hits = 4 points
Now, I know you cannot say that 1 StB is 4 times weaker than 4 Infs or 1 Inf @2 is twice weaker than 2 Infs @1.
I would like to explore this little case, to see if there is much more to discover with Stack formula or even Enigma (Vann) Formula, outside toying with HR units.
Can it provides useful infos (or better than Punch formulas?), since this formula is known as sound and correct from maths POV?
Lanchester’s law is outdated, you’d be better off applying the VANN FORMULA!
Yeah,
but there was a secret derivative formula between Lanchester’s law formula and Vann formula.
But until now, no one break the code. Even Vann hidden it so well, he cannot found it…
