I’ve been trying some alternate bid patterns to see how they work, so this is a collection of notes from that, not super organized.
All the games used certain basic rules: I’m playing against myself, I ensure there aren’t any major mistakes: if it turns out I made a mistake/left an opening, then I edit different moves as if they had been done at the time so there isn’t a vulnerability. I accept the result of die rolls, so good/bad luck affecting a side can still happen.
GAME 1
My first try worked passably but not great was a russia focused bid, as part of a europe focused game plan. The plan was to try to force Norway capture by Russia, bid had 3 russian artillery in Karelia and neighbors, with 3 mech inf in the locations 2 distant from there. Other bid parts were scotland fighter dd 91 and phillippines inf. net bid 45ish. On Russia 1 Karelia is stacked so that a germany attack has poor expected tuv, this does take a lot of stuff, so it means yunnan isn’t well defended. Typical J1 Dow. America also went heavy europe, with the first turn buy being 4 bombers, then a fighter/bomber mix turn 2, before shifting back to Japan. A key part of the build plan is that the large american air force makes it hard for germany to ever do a sealion, the heavy american bombing, which can hit Germany proper, significantly reduces German offensive power, and the ability for Brit and US air based in finland or norway to shift and defend moscow if needed based on where germany puts its air.
Britain gathered like a gibistian, but didn’t buy an aifield to defend it. Italy and Germany chose not to try wiping the fleet, it’d be potentially doable, but dicey, and cost a lot of german air.
It took russia until 6 to force norway, its pretty hard to force norway, though it might’ve been doable earlier looking through the save, but it takes movin geven more of the russian mobile forces up there, it’s hard to do when germany can stack its air there and transport over 2 inf a turn, plus italian fighters can fly in too. Part of the threat comes from the possiblity of hitting with russia then following up with allied nations. even just holding finland for awhile plus getting to bomb with US degraded germany a fair bit. Germany was however able to get novg, cauc, and volg objectives in good time, so even with the loss of the norway objective, and russia getting +6 from holdin those two, the situation wasn’t great. I never actually finished the game, turn 9 is when I stopped, the income was still pretty even and the game looked to be stalling out, a few gains were made in some spots, counterbalanced by others, so it definitely seemed like the stallout would continue.
One alternate plan i’d considered, and that may’ve had merit, is to abandon the plan at Round 2, with russia withdrawing its forces back into its land, doing so it could probably have kept germany out of novgorod for longer and held bryansk for awhile longer. It might wrok out similarly net value wise, with russia having less income, but denying germany its NOs a lot as well via blocking or deadzoning. It also means the German inf up in Norway have a long path before they can apply any pressure, being unable to reach moscow until turn 8,
That Japan was given free reign for some time ofc hurt, though not as bad as I feared, perhaps there’s better Jap strats for when they’re given free reign for a couple of turns. Still they ended up in a position with slightly better income than US, but ofc needing to spend a few inf a turn to deal with china and others; they were able to hold a more advanced position, holding carolines, and threatening anzac. Anzac had shifted fairly early on to almost pure inf production, which kept them safe enough that Japan couldn’t take them out, but also meant anzac provided no pressure on Japan. India fell predictably, though perhaps later than it should’ve. Japan was a bit more focused on holding a solid position against the US and pushing them away from the ability to harass at all compared to a rapid india push plan. After all a uk pac with only 6 income is very easy to just block in.
Overall the game accomplished its gameplan, but the gameplan didn’t seem any better than existing options, and probably a touch worse. Still, there’s more to explore and there’s potential.
GAME 2 (A and B)
Also net bid 45ish, this one was focused on trying to rapidly kill Japan, it ultimately failed to win in both cases, while it did kill Japan, it wasn’t enough faster than normal compared to other plans and didn’t seem that effective. This one also featured two branches, as I had to decide how to scramble vs Germany doing heavy sea attacks due ot the light allied bids in Europe, hitting szs 110 and 111. Bid had 3 russian artillery in Amur and neighbors to help threaten Japan, Russian fighter to help yunnan, yunnan inf, phillipine inf, subs in 91/98, and an artilley in AE sudan; now that I think about it, it isn’t quite as heavily Japan as I’d thought. The theory of the russian artillery is that it would significantly increase the amount of Jap units pinned north, as while stopping a pure inf force doesn’t take too many units, stopping 18 inf + 3 art takes quite a bit more. The main problem is that Japan can still defend it fairly well, in particular stacking Korea enough that Korea can’t be taken, plus an airfield in FIC or Kwangsi (which are so generally helpful for Japan) means that they can deadzone Manchuria and cover everythin sufficiently well; not that they did that in both games, som eof that is hindsight learning. In one game Russia got to take Korea (wasn’t able to give it to the US), and Japan shifted forces northward to clear that out, while they did clear it out, it took so many forces to do so (factoring in allied air helping defend it at times) that it left Japan too vulnerable in the south, it’d have been better to just keep the defense near the islands. At any rate, Germany still won that game as it got to take Russia down in good order and then shift to a mass take on Egypt.
The heavy german fleet assault on rd1 made me realize that even though it may be slightly better on defensive tuv results to scramble, there’s some serious countereffects to such, in particular the loss of those planes may leave you low enough that you become sealion vulnerable, and that it may prevent a taranto raid (either by not having enough fighters, or by making it unsafe to send fighters down to the taranto raid without leaving uk exposed to sealion. It made me wonder about those side effects and how worthwhile it may be for germany to hit heavy even against a scotland fighter bid, I’ll assess that in time perhaps.
I can provide the saves if people want, not sure how many care to actually look deeply through them ofc, and there’s lots of edits at scattered points when I noticed problems.
OTHER
Some general comments on bid thoughts and other play patterns:
