Would it be crazy to wait until turn 2 to take France with Germany?

@Latro:

• You still have only one strong army moving into the Soviet Union. Alone it can do nothing and will soon be defeated … where are the follow-up forces?

8-)

The 6 Mechanized a turn is the follow up forces, the reason for turn 1 attack is I believe its a race to get 8 cities before the U.S. can liberate one. 1 German sub in sz125 keeps Russia at 28 or less (if you are inside them) a turn, that equals 8 slow moving units or 7 fast moving pieces to your 6. The difference will be in the surviving German air force.

I thought about 2 subs for France…They can go to Norway and remove 3 IPCs or head to the Mediterranean and remove 4 IPCs from Italy. That could be dealt with or ignored based on the game at hand.

1 French fighter could prove to be a problem if moved to Africa or Syria. Again, I don’t think that will break you. But I would have to reflect on that further.

If France builds and AA, but has no air units in it, then 17 units will remain vs 18 or 28 units if the Germans don’t send in an air force. Odds are building an AA would kill 1 air unit if you did send it in. Thats at the cost of 2 Infantry firing twice or also 1 hit. Hmmm.

The UK land forces could take Belgium for an NO (8 IPC) swing, but I’m not sure if 8 IPCs towards a fleet or land foces would break you either. Would have to test this a few times.

Delaying until round 2 is not without its sacrifices, but my main question is would that speed up the fall of Russia by at least 1 turn or more? I guess I’m wondering if that would give the axis a chance to win or make it harder.

Thank you for the feedback, its helping me think of the pro’s and con’s of this idea.

@Dawsonstorm:

Why mech from Germany and Romania? Wouldn’t you want to be able to build Infantry closer to Russia, and then tanks/mech from West Germany?

Or are you replacing infantry buys with mech buys?

I am thinking I would be replacing Infantry with Mech for the speed, Idea is to see how much faster Russia could fall, if at all. The ability to redirect your stack of units faster than Russia could help unless they also built mech instead of infantry. It seems attacking round 1 gives Russia 2 free units sooner, but I prefer that idea over letting Russia have 2-3 extra productions to prepare for a Round 4 declaration of war. Not sure if this Lightning war would give you the 3 victory cities in Russia any earlier than than normal. A good goal for the capture of Russia would be turn 6 or 7. The U.S.'s first light wave would be turn 5, by turn 7 they could hit your coastline with 13-14 transports. Each round after that could see 5 more transports a turn (9 land units) building up on Gibraltar. The turn you capture city number 8, they would have to strike Rome or Egypt to keep the game going. I favor a quick strike because I think longer term games would favor an allied win.

In regards to the French fleet attacking Italy, Italy goes first and when faced with the UK1 Attack, I generally use the Cruiser and DD against the French units if available, however I usually lose the transport anyway, if you choose to defend instead, its a fair fight. I would be forced to pair this strategy with the Egypt capture on Turn 2 or 3 using German air(depending on whats in France and if UK built a factory) to clear strategy I posted on the Italy broken global forum.

The drawbacks listed in this topic are building up. The question remains: would they be worth it? Does anyone see this as capturing Russia any sooner than a normal, less risky approach? I think we can all agree taking France turn one is otherwise preferred.

@oztea:

Ignore france and it can lump up north italy

You may have missed my earlier statement about landing some or all of the German air units round 1 on N. Italy after fleet clearing duties, plus sending some of the Southern Germany infantry to N. Italy for the round two capture of France.

I believe you would prefer France to attack with its units on round 1, it would make capturing on Round 2 easier in my opinion.

I suppose you could let them take N. Italy so that Germany could capture 20 IPCs instead of 17, however I do not think you want Italy losing a fighter, armor, and the rest of their forces for 4 more German IPCs. I would still just defend it.

Maybe it is sub optimal with this strategy, but Italy can secure Egypt turn 2 without a navy. It requires the German’s to lose 3-4 air units, but they clear Egypt and the Italians capture it.
I would have to see what France produced and what UK did round 1.

Your planes are staged in N. Italy, so either take Trans Jordan or Alexandria to provide a landing site.

Without sending the carrier into the Italian Battleship fight, regardless of odds, our games have shown it to be too risky. Odds are the Italians miss once round one…I’ve yet to see that in 5 games. (The point is, a lucky roll in one round changes that outcome dramatically.)