Super Stack or Stupid Stack?

@JDOW

May I ask how that plays out? Has that meant Italy gets Cairo early while UK pressures Germany?

Pretty much all Japan can do against a concerted effort - keep em distracted and hope Germany can win.

@hcp:

Zhukov, might I ask that, under such FIC/Hainan naval base case, are there conditions that you would still consider stacking Yunnan using the remaining troops (ANZAC, Russia, Chinese, … and potential the 4 UK mech)?  I wish to see if there are other ways to delay the J5 India fall (by land).

This depends on many factors, including what Japan and USA are doing (is USA going KJF?, did Japan move all their land units south or are they keeping some units up north to face Siberians?, are the Japanese stacked at Human or Kweichow?).  Generally speaking, it’s more important to defend India.  But if you can defend India and still stack Yunnan, it might be worth it.  You don’t need 50/50 odds, in many cases, especially in kjf, it’s still worth stacking Yunnan if Japan attacking Yunnan will result in a net negative tuv exchange.  But note that if you take this risk (inviting a high-risk Japanese attack) you can’t assume these fighters on Yunnan will be available to you later to defend Moscow.

It seems to me that if Japan wants India bad enough it’s usually possible for them to take it on J5, but that comes at a cost if Japan needs to spend resources on naval and air bases and neglect securing the crucial money islands to do so.

You have your choice of a PhD or a headache.  Take the headache.

@Cow:

Tell you what if 5 inf central, 1 armor egypt, 1 sub sz 98, 1 inf new guinea, 1 bomber archangel is not to your liking…

Then you can have allies at 18 ipc 1 unit per territory.

So you can choose either one of the above two conditions  8-). By ‘central’ Cow means Central USA.

@Cow:
Looks like you’ve got enough challenges now ;-).

Haha Cyanight I like your new avatar. Squirrels in Lightsaber-fight :-).
Damn I cannot check if I got that right (avatars disappear while typing). Let’s just add the famous IIRC!

About the breakdown,
Yeah I love ‘breakdowns’ (as long as they are not ‘nervous’). They speed up the game because otherwise you may be busy entering units in a Battle Calculator a lot of times and that will take time.

The complete breakdown as I wrote it in my list of quick reminders:
Moscow SURVIVES ASSAULT (with ~18 units) IF allies have >7 units more than GER, and DF(RU/UK) >= AF(GE).

If allies have no more than 8DF < AF(GER): all RAF(UK) should survive the assault (6 to 12 aircraft).

If allies have no more than 14DF < AF(GER): the borderline. (LL system) both sides end the assault with 0 units.

In case you wonder what this all means:
DF = Defense Factors, the total sum of defense values of all defending units.
AF = You guessed right ;-).

Note that all my reminders and breakdowns are based on the LL-calculator. I find that a good system to base a strategy on, because rolling dice will only produce as much hits as in LL if you are rolling above average. As this works for both sides, over time (on average) the LL-calculator gets it right.
I, for one, will play on and not attack Moscow with my big German stack if the LL-calculator tells me Russia will win that battle with ~18 units. Would you attack? Or play on and try to squeeze russian production untill the odds are more in favor of your German attackers?
And where would the turning point be. For me I will only attack a place such as Moscow if the calculator tells me I will win with the number of units I want to win with (which may vary).

@oztea:

Dooming moscow is not a gamebreaker in this edition
It opens the possibility of getting france back in the game, if the Allies can push past normandy

At 17 if it controls all but FIC, it is a power that is near Russia’s IPC stockpile when it fell.

This is interesting, trade Russia for France (at some point). The axis strengthen would be way out of range unless most of it was lost in the battle for Moscow (make them pay). The US swoops in to destroy Italy and you now have 3 allies all in western Europe (knocking at Germany’s front door), instead of two coming from the west, and Russia in the east. If Italy does fall the 3 allied powers will have back to back turns (ooch).

In my experience so far a good Russian player playing conservatively can make Moscow close to impossible to take.   The way Russian territories are set up allows them to fall back and shadow any approaching German army until the Russians have reinforced their stack to the point where it can turn around and chase out or destroy the invaders.  There’s no real downside to this vs standing and fighting as you’re only giving up 1-2 ipc provinces as you fall back and you’re continuing to preserve and grow your Russian stack at a rate faster than the Germans can hope to reinforce theirs (assuming, of course, that GB and the US are putting any sort of pressure on the other side of Europe).  I’ve pretty much given up going for it and instead have resolved to find some way to take Leningrad and Stalingrad.  I’ll admit that Germany and Italy, given free reign to attack Russia can eventually bring them down if they focus all their strength on it but how are they doing this while preventing or counter-attacking allied landings?  There’s just not enough IPC’s available for them to effectively do both.