Strategies and input

@ericwool:

Do any of you find it cheap/annoying when an allied player lands on Spain in order to establish a Western front against Germany?  This has been a common tactic of mine, and I had a gamesbyemail player call it cheap just recently.  I haven’t seen that strategy criticized before, so I’m curious if others share the opinion.

As a strategy that move is so common it has a nickname: “Spanish Harlem”. I wouldn’t call it cheap, but I can see being annoyed by it if it kept happening to me.

There’s a few ways to defend against it, but most involve either Germany taking Spain first or stacking tons of troops in France for an immediate counter-attack.

-Midnight_Reaper

You might want to look into the forum a little bit deeper than the first page and read some topics… Some will be very revealing for you. If you still have questions after reading some topics and then post something new or debatable. Not something that is discussed like 1000x times… Even on this page there is a topic on Russia and also there RJClayton describes how a Russian Turn one should look like…

Straving or either taking Ukr is a necissity! for the obvious reasons rjclayton points out! You want to use your planes and sub as well instead of let them doing nothing…

If you are playing without a bid:
Buy 8 inf

Strafe Ukr with everything, idealy Germany is left with one fight, retreat to Kar.
Take Manchuria, you can even bring a fighter from Moscow.
Attack the baltic and the Spain Seazone.

After this the game is pretty much over, because Germany can’t even expand to the east to trade cau with the russians, because Ukr is a deathtrap. EE will be under heavy pressure and WeU will fall in about 3-4 turns.

completely agree.  THough I generally wait to buy ARM.  I usually buy infantry and load up my front line until there is jsut nothing Germany can do , then buy tanks, and just roll over Europe.

I kinda thought the attack on pearl was mandatory, otherwise that fleet will bite you in the ass in the atlantic… Just go the easy way with 3 inf and 2 trannies. I assume You put 1-2 inf on man with your bid. Do the standard stuff, take Chi heavily, go after Pearl, with either everything or min forces. Get your forces from the islands and go after Russia. Build your first IC’s on the mainland in turn 3-4 and you should be fine. Let the Germans violate neutrality in Mongo, so in J2 you have a lot of options to cut of the Russians.

Care to be more specific? Where should the russian player attack? And while it is potentially a valid strategy in no-bid depending on how it is implemented, Russia cannot attack without the allies so what is the point in mentioning them? I mean, I’m glad you came up with a “other strategy”, but why don’t I just list all of the other options you could potentially come up with. Germany - attack or defend, uk - attack or defend, japan - attack or defend, us - attack or defend. Now that I’ve covered all the strategies, maybe we can dig into details a bit?

I meant that each fighter has a 50% chance of a hit. You really only need one, IMO. (sorry, I just plain dont see that transport as a threat. it’s only 1 tank or 2 infantry!) Besides, the UK can take it out later.

And yea, I conceed that you might still loose the sub in spain. So perhaps dumping that tranny on Canada would be better.

I’m still not going all out with Russia as mentioned in post 1. Although, I was thinking about it, and it is a good way to reduce the number of units on the board, dramatically. Perhaps a way to open Finland or E. Euro up for an invasion sooner by the allies? (BTW, unless I can get jap fighters, I don’t like to attack with my eastern russian forces. If I can get jap fighters, I’ll sacrifice 7 infantry and a tank just to get 1 or 2 enemy fighters!)

If it were done that way in history more bloody wars would have occurred very soon after the end of WWII. The USSR would not likely have done well as it would again be squeezed from east and west.

Not to mention all the bloody guerilla wars they would have had to fight in those countries they took over.

as far as i’m concerned, a dedicated strategic bombing campaign by either side is a waste of money insofar as building bombers and then replacing any that happen to get hit. the only time i generally use bombers is when i can’t use them to support any other attacks i might be using. it is worthwhile if you can get in some free shots, e.g if an IC has no AA to protect it, but I don’t generally like to use my bombers like that.