The Axis Advantage is Bigger Than You Think.

I had an unusual game where the Axis captured Egypt early. The Americans focused heavily on the European operations and the Allies were steadily making progress on that side of the map. I built up the Japanese air force and sent it on a suicide attack into Moscow around turn 8. Stripping off 15 infantry Allied units in Moscow can change a battle from a 95% chance of losing into a 95% chance of winning when the Germans get their turn. It also means that Germany will keep their air force intact, allowing them to reclaim any European victory cities if necessary.

The best part of this strategy is that the extra Japanese planes can hold the Allies at bay for several turns, forcing India to cower and Anzac + USA to be more conservative with their fleets. All of the planes can raid Moscow from a base in Sichuan, meaning that only one turn is required to setup the pivot from Pacific to Europe.

Of course the Russian AA’s shot down half of my Japanese raiders and the German tanks had their turrets pointed backwards, leading to an abrupt and unhappy end to a genius strategy.

Yeah, the issue is that I would like Ethopia in USSR hands, it is one that is avoidable, like I said, I have seen a USSR marker on it but I wasn’t playing this game so I didn’t see how it came. However, I usually have no problem getting to Somalia, and the northern African territories can be confusing because in my case, UK had Italy on a stalemate front line not pressing so Italy had no reason to assume what I was doing until of course he saw me bring my mech. into Africa.

Thanks for the welcome Variance!

You are guessing correctly ^.^:
If the UK (in our group) sees that Germany is going ‘full bore’ (I guess that means throwing everything at Moscow to defeat it G6 or G7), then it starts channeling its fighters from wherever it must build them (Britain, Canada, South Africa and India) into Russia and finally into Moscow. All this happens Either via the northern route or via Persia/Africa (building a key AB here and/or there).
  UK is OK to sacrifice its ships in the med. to keep every plane alive, annihilate the Italian Navy first and to prevent any new axis ships to appear there.
Subsequently the aircraft help to destroy the Italian presence in Africa (from set-up plus maybe 1 turn of reinforcements) and then the aircraft flies into the Middle east, ready to go into Russia whilst trying not to disrupt Russia’s NO of having Archangelsk-route. But the UK fighters in russia are more important than the Russian NO if the threat is high enough.

This is why our UK is always strong while at the same time being able to be in Russia with their FTRs on time, giving Germany (statistically) no chance on Moscow, not even if it goes full bore. If it doesnt go in full bore than all those UK FTR can go elsewhere as a very flexible force. For example, fly into the areas in Europe that the US captures, stay in the med, fly to India to recapture Calcutta or prevent it from being taken… you name it).

So perhaps we don’t play Germany as optimally as possible ;-).
The best I have ever come up with myself is hitting Moscow with around 230 attack factors G6 (buying 4 STR G5, 4 TAC/STR G4, ARM+MECH G3&G2, ART+INF G1) while Russia alone I believe cannot have more than around 195 defense factors, their AAA still excluded. Combined with the UK FTR however, this can easily be too much over the 230 German attack factors. This combined with sufficiently enough more allied units, a full bore axis attack on Moscow is in our group a statistical fail.

Anyway, a quick calculation shows me that an all STR German build can reach to approx. 200 Attack factors and has way less defense factors so my guess is it will fail to deliver the message to Moscow.

I am looking for Axis strategies to counter the allied dominance (in my eyes) but Perhaps I should then move on to another thread or start one myself  8-).

I will definately look into the tripleA program if I have the time, thanks!

The US would usually not care if japan goes directly for north america since the US can drop a large load of units in west US and/or central.  Japan losing the DEI is easily worth the allies losing alaska n western canada.

Yes BILL, Mistakes were maid.  :P

in some cases, there aren’t those “extra” destroyers to spare… Like going from a naval base you build in Hainan, to Calcutta…

@MarkVIIIMarc:

If you have the AA guns around do you have the white complexes from one of the old games?

I use the complexes & AA Guns from old games. I much prefer that over the silly little squares that are so hard to pick up.

@LHoffman:

@spectre_04:

What is this new reduced Japan aircraft setup I keep hearing about???

I am pretty sure it just involves removing 6 planes from a number of different territories.

Actually, Japan loses 8 planes and a transport, while the Allies lose 7 planes and a transport(which would’ve been killed anyway in a J1 attack)