@Bobby:
I’ve read quite a few strategies for German victory on this website, and I am grateful to all the posters. I have one burning question: what should Germany buy on the first turn? Some say, “Nothing but tanks!” Some say “Infantry and artillery!” What’s the best way to initiate this march on Moscow?
Certainly you need to keep bringing in fresh infantry, mindful that it takes two full moves after placement to get them across the Russian frontier.
I feel strongly about Axis air power. Nothing helps eat up Sov ground forces – and Sov’s got plenty – like Axis Ftrs & Bmrs, wielded in concert with your usual land-based arsenal. Also Ftrs & Bmrs help Axis stay flexible & effective in defensive maneuvers. Of course, you’ve only got enough IPCs to buy one or two per turn, esp. when you consider how much infantry & armor you’ll need to take – and hold – Sov territories & ultimately Moscow.
Like that fellow, DARKSTAR, says, “combined mixed forces” are key. You need the armor, you need the inf & rtl, you need air. Reflect on where – and when – you will need concentrations of infantry to shield advances and hold off counterattacks. You need plenty, and they move slower than any other units.
@Anonymous:
Now I won’t tell at least yet all my beginning moves which work for the germans. But most effective I have found is making with the early 12ipc transport to danish strait. 1 turn destroy the british and american fleets and after that negate their convoys to delay them as long as possible. Why the transport? Because you will make fleet to danish strait to have straight transport route to leningrad + you will get support fire if the soviets defend it from your destroyers…after the fall of leningrad the soviet situation doesn’t look good, because the german fleet reinforces it fast.
Destroyers? What destroyers? Wow! Even if you do beef up your northern navy with destroyers, I find it mind-numbing that the Allies wouldn’t go all-out to sink everything and deny Axis the use of naval power & transport in the Baltic. If German shipping can form a fast shuttle to the front in Leningrad, then this doubles the trouble Sov is in.
Anyway, your points are all interesting and well-considered. Countermoves are the Allies’ stock in trade – and the game hinges on how soon and how decisively the Allies can take the initiative, wheras in the beginning they are largely restricted to reacting. Axis power & position starts out at the apex.
@Anonymous:
Now I won’t tell at least yet all my beginning moves which work for the germans. But most effective I have found is making with the early 12ipc transport to danish strait. 1 turn destroy the british and american fleets and after that negate their convoys to delay them as long as possible. Why the transport? Because you will make fleet to danish strait to have straight transport route to leningrad + you will get support fire if the soviets defend it from your destroyers…after the fall of leningrad the soviet situation doesn’t look good, because the german fleet reinforces it fast.
Destroyers? What destroyers? Wow! Even if you do beef up your northern navy with destroyers, I find it mind-numbing that the Allies wouldn’t go all-out to sink everything and deny Axis the use of naval power & transport in the Baltic. If German shipping can form a fast shuttle to the front in Leningrad, then this doubles the trouble Sov is in.
Anyway, your points are all interesting and well-considered. Countermoves are the Allies’ stock in trade – and the game hinges on how soon and how decisively the Allies can take the initiative, wheras in the beginning they are largely restricted to reacting. Axis power & position starts out at the apex.
ZimZaxZeo that was me who wrote that before I signed in. :D
And that was in the beginning, but that buying navy for the germans is pretty surprising effect and makes the soviets lose additional fighters planes. Because the allies do try to destroy the fleet straight away and so sacrificing valuable planes…
The point in building that is that in the first turn the only way the allies can destroy the german fleet is by attacking with air planes, and attacking 2-3 destroyers + transports is to lose all planes.
Haven’t tried that tactic for a long time, but strangely it was annoyinly effective delaying the allies for a long time, because they had to be vary of the fleet there or use all their efforts to destroy it and so giving the germans easy time to concentrate to russia.
Now my opening moves concentrate to the sole best unit in the game. Infranty blocks. Starting in the early turns heavily in infranty you tie the difference with the soviets fast in infranty. Why soviet is hard to defeat is because it can take a lot of hits with it’s massed infranty so that your attack is effective coming strongly with infranty is the way to go…
it is not right that the only way to destroy the german navy is the airplane.
how are you destroying the subs? and what do you do when germny just builds subs? then your strategy is fuc… up. there is one nice strategy
defeat germany. the west allies build two terms just ships. after the german nvy was kicked out of the west atlanti the USA make a smal invasion of africa with about two tanks which is usually possible. if the british got defeated in africa before the greman invasion the USA need
four tanks to hold it´s position in africa and to move to the east of africa.
that can happen in the first three turns. what are the british doing in this time? they destroy the rest of the germany navy. after that they build bombers and fly bombing raids as long as possible. they have to do that as long as the USA is fighting in africa. after that than the west allies try to invade at two different places in europe. what are the soviets doing between that time. they build infantry and try to counter strike each attack the germans did. if that is not always possible they have to move back and leave one infantry in the country they leave that germany can´t blitz through the country. when russia is doing that they get new units.
that is my plan for the allies how to defeat germany.
Whyee of course the allies should make ships, transports and destroyers are their only building in the first couple of turns…
The point is that on turn 1, the german navy can be only destroyed by massing planes against them and it should be done, because it makes the german player lose his 40ipc for nothing useful, losing his navy for nothing. What do the british need their planes? they have usually only couple of options helping taking german lands/subs, or giving them to russia…
ok if u want to win try this. do whatever damage u can to german u boats, buy nothing but destroyers, and planes, and do the patriotic war. but as you fly your bombers from US or GB, make an attack on a sub. i usually get about 5 bombers, and 6 allied fighters into russia to become russian, add the bomber it starts with and 2 fighters and u got a damn good airforce
russia should be buying most infantry and some arty, get the odd tank once in a while too.
use the planes to annihilate the afrika corps, then fly to stalingrad and keep doing strategic bombing, unless making amajor offensive, in which case support your troops. dont let your troops get in range of armor AND infantry, you should be able to win.
I just played A&A Europe for the first time. Here’s my take on the game afterward. I don’t think the game is unbalanced toward Germany. I think the Allies do need to be a bit more creative in how the go about defeating the Germans. First I think in this game unlike the original the Battle of The Atlantic will actually have some bearing on the other parts of the game. Second the allies need to send as much equipment to Russia as quickly as possible which is what I was trying to do, unfortunately for me a major convoy got smashed by the German air force and this seriously hampered my attempts to help the Russians build up their army. Third as well as sending ground units to Russia you have to send them bombers and fighters to support their own attacks with. As Russia build infantry and artillery…their cheap and you can amass a decent force pretty quickly. You have to pick and chose your battles, deciding when to attack and when to fortify. (I tend to be a bit more aggressive.)What doomed me in my first game was the attack on that convoy and one key battle for Belorussia where my opponent got some seriously lucky rollls. Against a convoy of four U.S. transports and two British (totalling eight infantry units and two armored units) as well as two British DD’s he sent a bomber and a fighter…and destroyed every single stinking ship! He didn’t even lose a plane! In Belorussia he had ten armored units defending against my forces and on his first defense roll scored seven hits. I think that this strategy would work eventually as i get better at this particular game and I don’t have such rancid luck.
Wow, I have never heard of such luck to that extent!
i think of this game as being very historic. The germans are more likely to win, but if they get hampered by bad luck(like they really did; weather etc.) or by exceptional coordination by the allies, then they are doomed. I think a very good strategy for the Soviets is to hold germnay to the baltic states/east poland/rumania line as long as you can by counterattacking, while you build up a big force in moscow and then move it down into turkestan. when the germans finally break through this line w/ enough inf. + tanks to keep you from counterattacking, you just wait until they move into bellorussia(in order to take moscow the next turn) and counterattack w/ the force you have been building up + at least 4 fighters and 3 bombers and 2or3or4 of the tanks you had in the beggining of the game. this might work, like it did in the game i just played, but it will only work under the right circumstances 1. you have killed most of germany’s cannon fodder to protect their tanks (inf) in your counter attacks, and 2. you have secured your northern flank w/ the forces from karelia and archangel + maybe a tank from siberia. it is very important to have 1 inf. in stalingrad, caucasus, and russia so if they can’t blitz thru them and you can counter attack what they have in there w/ some of your turkestan force. maybe it only worked in that one game that i just played, but it seemed like a good strategy to me
buy 8 infantry and consolidate troops to the zone between leningrad and moscow (largest troop concentration possible to assemble on turn 1) then purchase 2 fighters as UK and 3 fighters as USA send all fighters to russia on the appropriate turn. COntinue to purchase infantry as soviets and and the end of each soviet turn, exchange the allied fighters for soviet planes. These will be your defense and and your eventual counterattack force. at some point you will be able to move on belorussia with these troops. Germany will have a tough time defeating all of the infantry protected fighters. (on turn three you’ll have 8 fighters and 3 bombers if all goes well in addition to a sizeable infantry force). The threat of an insanely strong russian counter attack will prevent germany from straying from the eastern front (toward africa or worse). Good Luck.
there’s only one problem. in my games, germany ALWAYS takes leningrad on turn3, to stop russia from landing planes there. there is almost no way the russians can stop germany from taking it on turn 3, so that only allows you to get the 2 fighters from england in and then back out in time before germany takes it. the fighters HAVE to be in the space where they landed for a full turn, so anything that gets there after allied turn 1 will be killed there on turn 3. in my games, russia usually has 4 fighters and 3 bombers by the end of the game, the 2 english ones, the 1 from malta(after clearing up africa you fly it to iran and then to moscow, but this is usually just about at the end of the gane, turn 5 or 6) and the 2 allied bombers.
In my most recent game as Germany the Russians held me off for a very long time; I did win eventually. The strategy, which I had come up with, that my opponent used was to defend Belo/Len/Ukr and build tanks first 2 turns. Also he gave all 12ipcs to Russians–for more tanks. At the end of turn 2 russia had 17 tanks and some allied planes.
Here’s what happens when we play: Germany saves its $12, then buys 16 infantry and 1 artillery. Next turn, those units all remain in Germany, and as many artillery as possible are purchased. It is imperative that Germany have as close as possible to equal numbers of infantry and artillery to reliably pound through Allied defenses. I can’t emphasize this enough: HALF INFANTRY, HALF ARTILLERY IN THE STACK. THIS IS THE ONLY WAY TO EFFECTIVELY MAXIMIZE YOUR GERMAN RESOURCES. Purchase all armor for the next few turns after that while moving the stack toward Moscow one turn at a time. Deal with the Middle East as best you can by transporting units from Southern Europe and amphibiously assaulting Malta with 2 ships, 1 artillery, and 1 armor for a pretty much free kill of a British fighter, but most of the time Russia will fall before the income shift from the Middle East can make much difference.
This is a tough strategy for the Allies to defeat, but it can be done. This is how: THE UK MUST BUILD ALL FIGHTERS, AND THE US MUST BUILD MOSTLY FIGHTERS AND MAYBE TWO BOMBERS. THESE MUST BE GIVEN TO THE USSR THROUGH THE PATRIOTIC WAR RULE. Enough rolls at 4 in the Russian counterstack will hold off the Germans. Any attempt to transport infantry over from the US or UK will be too late. All allied planes preexisting at the beginning of the game must also be flown to the USSR ASAP. Russia must also build at least one artillery per turn because it is Russia that will take Germany in the end, as all US and UK production will have been spent defending the Soviets with planes (and therefore also helping with offense as these planes can eventually also be used on the offensive.) The Soviets must keep all their infantry in one place so they never lose a non-naval unit other than infantry. The same applies to the German stack. That’s the beauty of the stack: you never lose anything other than infantry.
if the allies don’t start building transports then germany has no pressure on the fatherland and can build a 10 turn stack if he wants. Transports are needed even if you never invade france so that germany stops building men and builds tanks. at that point you know how many turns it is to moscow, and you can transport into leningrad, convert, and be ready for the belocounter
sorry for runons I hope this helps
