Allied Destroyers do not negate the defending SS abilities?

They’re allies with each other and neutral territories are all neutral friendly.  The server still doesn’t recognize that quite right, though.  Sometimes they’ll take, say Saudi Arabia and control the territory, but there’ll still be 2 neutral troops sitting on there, so you have to change those to the controlling countries’.  And despite Finland and Bulgaria being unfriendly neutral, it’ll activate those troops, so you have to delete them and also roll dice to determine how many you’d have also lost in taking it.  By a weird quirk it treats the Allies as Axis, so Japan and Italy get all their bonuses.  Italy’s bonus would be convenient, since he only collects it once and it would go straight to my coffers.  But Japan’s bonus is annoying; he gets 25 bucks he doesn’t deserve each round - practically twice his base income, so that also needs to be routinely corrected.  Occasionally, one of the powers will declare war on each other at the most inopportune time for them to do so, like Russia doing it on Japan with Japanese troops uncontested in 2/3 of its territory.  His income immediately drops to half and all of his and Japan’s troops are distracted for a turn.  When you have control again, reset the diplomacy, return whichever territories to their original owner, and fix each country’s economy, but there’s nothing you can do about their troop movements.  And yes, I’ve been playing on hard, but based on Wild Bill’s experience, I might experiment with fast.

@Dafyd:

I think that any question when we are trying to improve our skills is a good question…especially if we are really trying to learn.  The Hessian and ShadowHAwk are right.  The key to the Pacific are the two power fleets of Japan and the U.S.  The U.S. must go after the Japanese fleets.  Carriers loaded with planes are very important as well as the subs and detroyers.  As a side mission and with the permission of your Soviet ally, land troops in Siberia and help take back Soviet territories from the Japanese if they have begun to starve out the Soviet Far East.  It takes resources from the Japanese and can alter the attention of the Japanese player a turn or two if they are interested in defending Korea or pressuring the Soviets.

Good stuff here.  I’m a fan of 3 part attacks on Japanese fleets.  As an example:

Japan leaves a chunk of its fleet in SZ42 (off Java) for whatever reason.  They’re not worried about an attack because America doesn’t have the fleet off of Queensland to come after them.  What I’ve done in those situations is attack with the American ships, then follow up with India planes and Anzac ships/planes to finish them off. You’ll lose your American ships, some India planes and Anzac ships/planes, but if you wipe out half of the Japanese fleet it’s brutal for Japan because, as dominate as they can be, they can’t afford to lose too many major pieces.  America can lose a mini fleet and replace it; Japan cannot afford to be spending multiple turns rebuilding its fleet.

In the games a played it seemed that Japan could help the European Axis more by getting in positon to have enough victory cities on their side of the map than really pushing towards Russia.  If Japan pushes to Russia then USA is free to keep spending in Europe.  Maybe I will give this a try though with the newer edition of rules.

@AK_Grown:

Have not thought about Brazil though

If memory serves, Anzac is one move from Brazil (from NZ).  I’ve seen it done, it really didn’t change the outcome though.

It’s two moves.  Once in a while I’ve had ANZAC take Brazil, but never with an eye towards having them spend the money outside the Pacific.  It feels like a bad idea to do so if Japan hasn’t been neutralized yet.

You can push for Egypt after taking Russia. It can be difficult.

First of all, i don’t think Germany should upgrade the UK IC (and in Alpha rules it even isn’t allowed).

Aas Germany you should at least make he impression to fight for London (to make USA send alot of troops), and the moment before they’re going to get slaughtered, germans can chose to pull back (if the situation is hopeless), or (if they think they can hurt the attackers) stay and fight for it.

Eevry turn UK doesn’t have London it’s about 20 Allied IPC less per round. That’s not nothing, so every turn you can stretch this is good. Also Italy can benefit a lot from the british downfall.

If you plan a counter attack against liberating americans, leave your troops in London and load up for a counter-counter-strike.

USA should know that if it liberates UK, it has to make sure they keep it for 2 turns at least (since 1st turn UK cannot buy but gets money, and that could be looted by Germany again).

If they do, german’s time in London is over, if they make the mistake of rushing to take back UK (and most players will probabaly fall for it once - i did…), germany can play with them.

I think it’s best for germany to spend abit on it, as it is good to delay Allied actions (winning valuable turns and keeping the Allies weakened - can also be good for Japan by the way), but other targets (Russia!) ought to be their top priority.

In the End, London IS a VC (a means to win the game) and though you can’t count too much on keeping it the whole game, you don’t just give it back! You use it and meanwhile you go for the other VC’s.

I want to start it AND finish it.

The axis have more options, the allies are more reactive.  That’s not to say the axis are not reactive and the allies have no options, just which is their primary role.

Right now, the game is gambit-ish to me.  The Iceland Gambit, the Gibraltar Gambit, the SZ 9 Gambit, the Indian Gambit, the Australian Gambit, the American-Pac Strat Gambit.  That last is a bit less gambit like since it is seen coming a long ways off, it’s just mostly unstopable atm. Alpha 3 will fix that and we should see the American Pac-Strat be required, partially, with a required investment in Europe by America - either not happening should default a win for the Axis. yay