Early Barbarossa

I might have said this before, but most allied players might not be using the best strategies.  They typically take the allies at too low of a bid.  And then they win by either extremely good luck or they are playing a newer player who can’t take and hold the two key non-capital points on the map by round 4 or 5.  I’ve won probably 90%+ of my games as axis lately by a simple strategy:  use an odds calc to determine the ipc value gained by destroying allied units +2 *(times) territory value gained by these attacks + national objectives gained by axis + national objectives lost by allies.  If a player does this math for the first two rounds, they will have a very strong opening strat as axis.

north or northwest persia

What Japan does in the north really depends on what Russia does.
If they pile up all 18 infantry on Amur, then do like Wittmann said, pound them good and quick. Except for the 6 guys in Mongolia, that basically opens up all the Russian far east territories for Japan to walk into over the next few rounds. Almost like free IPCs for Japan.
If Russia withdraws all troops to head for Moscow, which I have seen happen, that leaves you free to use most of those troops in Manchuria and Korea in China or other places you might need extra troops. Just leave a few there on the border. Then after 3 rounds or so, when the Russians are too far west to hinder you, walk some troops up and start taking Soviet territories. Of course, you will have to deal with the 6 Mongolian/Russian troops but that shouldn’t be too difficult.
If Russia only withdraws some of the far eastern troops, like say he leaves 6-9 infantry in Amur and heads the rest toward Moscow, that usually means he wants to guard his eastern territories but isn’t looking to be aggressive toward Japan unless a blatant opportunity comes up (like Japan withdrawing all troops from Korea or Manchuria and leaving them totally open). In that case, as Japan, I would simply leave the troops there on Manchuria and Korea and consider that area a “non-combat zone”, meaning there is simply no fighting going on there. You could possibly take a couple of the troops to use elsewhere, but you don’t want to weaken youself too much or Russia might take advantage. Yeah, it sucks leaving so many guys just sitting there, but you have to keep Russia honest. Plus, at least you start with those guys and any new stuff can go to your campaigns elsewhere.

@soulfein:

-middle east fac(s)
-convoy raiding sz97 till ita turns into china in 41 v3
-trying to hold india to fly air to moscow and/or helping egy after moscow s fallen
-looking to normandy drops only after japs caged n usa can stack some transports in sz91

Bam…that’s it.  Most games are going that direction.  Rome and Cairo are the kickbacks before Moscow goes down.  From there it gets even- very long slow grind.

The battle is won in the Med/Africa/MidEast region period.  It gets very tactical and dicey here, which is why I think the game is even, Allied advantaged as the game gets longer, past 10 rounds.

the thing is, not everyone has their sea lion strategy down yet as some people still defend UK/try to maintain a naval instead of taking UK then abandoning it to race Moscow, before UK is liberated and USA becomes a threat to europe.

When I play it is easy to crush UK then turn around drive the russians out of the balkans back to moscow before france/italy/germany is seriously threatened. Once Russia is done, the game is super over.

There are two problems about sea lion.

I don’t mind UK getting conquered. Just if UK gets liberated… it should recover faster. The complex being nerfed to 3 combined with the crappy income generated… is really rough. I find that you can pack UK men on USA boats and drop them off the next turn is better than UK buying their own naval… you actually get more boots on the ground per turn much quicker. Or you can use UK’s 3 production a turn to buy naval pieces for USA or if germany is buying lots of air perhaps UK will buy naval pieces to protect USA naval (so usa can focus on dropping big payloads instead of carriers) and place a few men in africa to ship around (assuming you still have the transport down there).

So with both allied and axis strategies not being fully developed by a majority of the community… the game balance itself is skewed.

Allies have always been harder to play as they require more planning in order to maximize the amount of men you drop per turn into europe or plan ahead and move pieces to wise places in the pacific.
~
Also countering barborossa has a few school of thoughts. 1) archangel shuffle defense 2) france first 3) shutting down italy.

I do feel that cutting the germans out of Norway/Sweden/Finland is good start for UK. no point trading men with germany before taking that out that production.

@Alsch91:

If you’re not going for Sealion, what good does SBRing London do?
What would UK build there?
Ships get placed in SZ 106, far away from German air + subs, and land forces that are sent against Italy are placed in either Saf or maybe an IC in the middle east.

UK might place planes in London, but that’s once in a while.
If I were UK and Germany was keen on bombing me but not on Sealion, I’d just let him do it and lose planes to AA.

It prevents UK from building up a fleet off of its own coast, forces them to repair damage if they want to use their naval base/airbase (especially key when it comes to scrambling), or IC’s. This, coupled with subs raiding convoys, will drag Britain down to nothing but what they can put up in Africa/the Mideast.

@Young:

Take and hold half of China
Take and hold Calcutta
Take, hold and liberate Dutch Islands
…… That should make Japan successful enough.

Japan in a nutshell. Perfect summary.

@Jeremus:

In my case UK liberating egypt would be a blessing from the gods because there is no way japan cant retake it afterward on turn 8. Japan will land 10 units on turn 8 anywhere on the east coast of africa. If egypt is in uk’s hands, both south africa and egypt will be japanese.

I acknowledge the threat of america landing anywhere is big, but to achieve that they will need to build a fleet in the baltic sea strong enough to repell both the luftwaffe and the 6 japanese planes wich will be in europe on turn 7. This will take time and money. They can’t enter their already built fleet since they can’t hold denmark.

By the sound of it, Axis have indeed won the game to an extent that a Norway IC won’t change much anymore (Russia and India fallen and not much US presence in the Pacific?)

The only thing that scares me is if they decide to go in ussr with a lot of tank/mech. This will force me to put a lot of forces in leningrad, but then again the japanese planes can be used for the purpose of keeping leningrad.

Sending land units from Norway is what i would do as well (long term thinking), while moving the Atlantic fleet South to the Med to help out the UK and keep Italy small (if UK can grab Denmark the US fleet could enter the Baltic Sea, but… that might become their grave as well.
Also keep in mind that the USA fleet might follow the Nordic sea route and land somewhere from SZ127