Why isn't France a Central Power?

@SuperbattleshipYamato You’re on. And no offense taken. I look forward to being handed a solid walloping.

Using artillery as coastal defense/reinforcements en route is a good strategy.  Going for Paris first isn’t. Why? You cannot stop the Russians and the British will be destroying Ottomans.  Austria Hungary will get hit badly as well by combined Italian and Russian forces. Alternatively, the Allies can divert Italian and British units to France to stop you from taking it.

From a simple math min/max perspective which some are intersested in, a naval strat is extremly unwise. Simple plus/minus math will tell you you need to add appr. 81 IPC worth of naval as CP in total accross the board (using the starting naval as ref) to even break even which means if you wanna “controll” something you will need to add more than the competition.
As CP you cant ever get into a building race with the allies as your starting income is so much less, but rather you need to as fast as possible close the incomecap.

Consider sz17. (I will assume the ottoman and russian navy cancel each out). Allies can after turn1 have 2 BS (France+Italy)+3Cruisers(UK+Italy+France which means AH wont be able to break even, even if the go all out navy. After turn2 the allies will have additional 1BS+Crusie (UK) in the zone and again AH wont be able to break even, even if they spent all during 2 turns. After this france plus Italy can with great ease together spend equal to AH for each turn.
So I have to ask how in hell are AH suppose to get controll over sz17?=)

I suppose you can counter and say “the allies dont counter my moves in my games” but then what is the point of argue the value of strats. I can  ask what do you think about my “attack-AH-first-as-Italy strat”, assuming AH dont defend their borders?=)

Reading the rules again, I begin to get a bit fussy about the RR rule. We have always run with that Moscow have to be contested in order to RR to occur. I now realize that perhaps thats wrong and that for example  holding Ukraine, Polen, Belarus and Livonia is enough?
IN our games AH have to put enough units in AH% in order for Russia not to be able to kill them all in R5. However if we have been wrong about RR, the 4-7 remaining Germans from G4 is enough since Russia cant advance untill they have been destroyed… And in that scenario AH can have its entire stack moved from Ukraine to Sevastopol in round 5, very much changing Britians advance.

In the west Germany usually have to tactically retreat in r2-r3. However since all buys from G1 and forward will be moved into the west they wont need to retreat further. And even with Belgium and perhaps an orginal German territory gone they will have an income advantage against France alone and therefore push them back r4 and forward.

Same goes for Italy really. AH will use all its income towards Italy (exept 5 planes in r1-3 = 30 IPC). And by r4-5 AH will push Italy out of Trieste/Tyrole for good.

USA is never a powerhouse. Maybe round 10.

UK is better off investing in India.

Taking out Russia is generally the way to go. If you do go for France. Get AH going to paris with its two closest starting stacks, go through the Italy units. Buy all fighters with Germany. G5 Paris. AH can take a territory for you to allow you to stack up next to paris with all your planes. Then you attack round 5 paris. Send AH in first to suicide. Germany follows it up. The end.

Yeah Russia is a pain in the butt for awhile, but you have to take out a country before round 6 or you lose.
~
USA is not even in this game, lalalalalala dont know what you guys are talking about. The piece of crap country does nothing for the first 6 rounds.

@BJCard:

@GoSanchez6:

I don’t know for sure BJ but I do know that these games are coming out faster than they ever had which leads me to believe they are not playtesting them like they used to.

Fair enough.  It seems as though the 1940 games and Spring 1942 were made and then after a couple years of playtesting by the general public, they put out 2nd editions.

Unfortunately BJcard I think this is what we are going to see from now on out with these games. Get it out there,have the community play it,Maybe come out with a Alpha edition and then make a second edition and make even more money on it.

The British don’t even need to put much in India- they start with significant forces in India and Egypt- not to mention they can activate Arabia.

@Flashman:

Germany did a lot of trade with adjacent neutrals, especially the Netherlands and Sweden, so maybe Germany gets a certain ammount of IPCs from these without having to invade.Â

That will be interesting. It seems like a Norway-Denmark NO-type rule would be good, except supposedly the game was said not to be complex enough for NO’s. Maybe to avoid confusion one of the German seaside territories will have a larger than expected income. I’m not sure if the Unrestricted Submarine Warfare phase will be for more than just Germany, but if it were, then the allies could take out the “convoy” between Scandinavia and Germany.