Germany Taking India - Go for Pacific Win?

@AlphaAeffchen:

@ Kreuzfeld. You are totally right but the problem is if i do this buys for UK they can do nothing for many rounds in Europe. Italy gets very strong in the med. The USA have to fight Japan. The allies in Europe  are getting a problem because UK is isolatet because of only inf buy and USA has to Focus on Japan (but you are right i have to do this buy for UK).

In the scenario I made, US will only have to buy 2 bombers on US 1 (in most scenarios) and move 3 of the US planes to canada. They are capable of going towards Japan if Germany don’t buy the TTs in G2.

If germany doen’t buy 3 TTs on G1 (and save their money instead), I am doing taronto, and buy 6 inf and 1 ftr and lose no time in the Med. If they do buy 7 art on G1, I am buying a mIC in egypt and 5 inf in UK.

The only “loosing investments” UK has is : 3 inf instead of ftr on UK1, no taronto on UK 1 (I think 3 useless german transports might be too steep a price for germany to pay for this result).

The other losing investment is the canadian airbase and a few allied TTs on UK2/US2, however, they are more than offsett by the 9 german TTs that has to be bought to force me to do it.

The advantage I get for this plan is that no german should try for the sealion after US1, then that is just a lost game if they buy the 9 TTs. This means that I can (if I want to) send everything US builds against japan, including US turn 1 build. I am still taking Persia on UK1, so I can build the mIC on UK2 and shut down the middle east as fast as possible. My favourite way of playing the UK is to have 1 mIC in each of iran, iraq and egypt, and to use them to buy volumes of inf and mechs for a giant uk landarmy that can reach where i want them

I still think the game is favouring the axis, all I was commenting on was that in a J1, it is so much cheaper for the allied to prevent the sealion, so it will never happen.

I pretty much always leave the Med to Italy. Even if Germany takes S. France, it usually only uses the IC there for making infantry to protect the Atlantic coast, or maybe a couple of subs to help Italy clear out the Med right at first.
Maybe one of those German infantry will go down, catch a ride on an Italian transport and land in Egypt for that German NO there, but this only happens if Italy is doing very well down there and that usually only happens if the Germans are successful at Sealion so UK is pretty much out of the European theater. Also, the US is usually busy in the Pacific and not doing much in the Atlantic.
So, the Germans getting the “Land Unit in Egypt” NO is fairly rare.
So in our games, Germany has little to no involvement in the Med.  They are either busy attacking England or going after Russia. Either of those takes too much financial commitment.

I see a few problems here, depending on when Japan declares war.
J1 DOW: Japan will sink the SZ35 ships and take the Philippines before you can do this.
J2 DOW: While the US ships are probably safe in SZ54, Japanese naval presence will be such that you can’t safely move to SZ42.
J3 DOW: in this case, Japan will probably sink the US ships in SZ42 and may well take Java.

With a later DOW (US3, because there’s no reason to postpone it), it could theoretically work if Japan has already taken FIC. But with no early Japanese DOW, Japan probably won’t do that because it would lose the 10 IPC NO. So in that scenario, Japan would need to take FIC on J4. That implies the presence of at least one Japanese unit in FIC, which would have to be defeated by the single US infantry you’ve brought.
Even if Japan had already captured FIC earlier and then vacated it (not very likely, because it’s a popular spot for Japan to build and IC of its own), they could easily kick the US and the British out again. Though if I were aware of your plan as Japan, I would happily wait until the US kindly built that IC for me to capture……  :-D

Ah,
But the coast was not yet taken from me J3 or J4 ;-). It never completely was. If you do the math, it looks like this:

26 + 10NO’s (outer perimeter + Hawai) + 1 (Hawai) + 20 (DEI) + 2 (Phil) + 8 (China) + 9 (SE Asia) + 4 (some Russian territories) = 80 max!

Later on I lost a LOT of ground in Russia + Asia, so from turn 5 the income went down quickly… I made a start invading Australian territories and contested some SE Asian territories back and forth and my guess is that by that time the Japanese income was indeed more between 55 - 65 IPCs a turn.
Compared to the 80 - 95 IPCs Japan can collect when going all in against Asia, Russia and Middle East this is peanuts, but the latter strategy puts the Axis in a time/tempo disadvantage (IMHO ;-)).

BTW, I have to correct myself. Repeating J1 & J2 in my head today I came to the conclusion I got some numbers wrong in my lazy guesswork some days ago ;-). I’ll correct them in my previous posts.

The rule book and what is said by play testers trump what AAA says.

@Boldfresh:

Here is where we disagree omega.  A full on kgf or kjfWOULD be the way to go in a total war, which is why the vc conditions exist.

I prefer the KJF in a total war because Japan is much easier to contain and render irrelevant with a concerted action from all Powers.

The Germans slowly expand in Russia and they can only gain so much from doing that.

I think that the price for leaving Japan entirely alone with the US (Hawaii and Anzac falling) and the trouble that follows, outweighs the incremental benefit that you get from going all out against Germany from the beginning, as opposed to still spending some in the Pacific to render the starting US forces there a potent force that prevents unreasonable Japan expansion.

I don’t care what you say, oss-ifer, there’s no blood in my alkee-haul system!

SHARED THIS ON LARRY’S SITE ALREADY, JUST WANTED TO SHARE THOUGHTS HERE ALSO:

Ok Larry,

Me and an official playtester of yours here in Michigan (his name is mentioned in the rulebook for Europe 40) played Global with the new setup given with all the aircraft taken away and such. Here was a short summary of what happened:

On the Europe side:

Germany played pretty predictably, sinking most of the UK navy, taking France and the Eastern European pro-allied and pro-axis neutrals with Italy. They continued to build on their air force to keep the UK from building ships right away. Began to stack some ground units as well. Italy expanded into Africa and shored the Middle East slowly controlling the Med.

UK responded by NOT attcking the Italian navy and pulling back the rest of the navy it had left until it could come back to England with a strong navy that included the US. UK took the Pro-allied Brazil and shucked the troops to Africa to help the SAfrican force which slowly pushed the Italians back up to Egypt turning the tide in Africa.

Russia stedily built a force consisting of infantry spiced with some tanks, artillery, tacs and mechs. Stacking behind some dead zones and waiting for the declaration of war.

US spent about 70-80% of its cash in the Pacific since it could not even approach Africa/Europe before a state of war.

Now for the Pacific side:

India with little cash built mostly infantry and stacked. Combined navy near India and activated the Persian troops to bring back and help defend India. In Global, India has a little more help from some extra troops west and a few ships, including one French destroyer to help defend. Also, it can fall back with its stack to West India if needed.

ANZAC naval base is much needed and I am glad it is there- balances nicely.

China was stonger, but does what it normally does and stacks at Yunnan to wait to wear down Japs. China units are really used as a delaying tactic for the India crush.

Japan didn’t see an advantage to the India crush in J1 but felt that the initiative came to them in J2. They didn’t want to wait until J3 because they felt the Allies would have established a long-term defense of India. So with that the Japs declared war on J2 taking back the Dutch East Indies and unleashing the fury. Japan built transports J1 and J2 and built more planes to replace the ones missing from the new setup in J2.

Now even though both Japs and Allies have the same amount of planes removed, Japan can build them faster and move them closer to the action (India). US could also build their planes back but it takes them longer to get them to the battle scene (India). Brit India and ANZAC can’t build much of an airforce because of the typhoon of Jap units coming fast, so India stacks and ANZAC tries to distract and/or try to send some units.

Japan can make the US wait longer to send ships and planes down to ANZAC by using its navy as a shield. I as Allies, I made tactical blunder ruining my chance to meet the Jap onslaught of India from behind through Australia. However, if not for this the setup seems very balanced and gave some options to both sides.

A hot topic question will be “what to do with the Russian inf on the Pacific side??”
It is very frustrating for the Russians, if you attack immediately, Japan will bring the heat to wipe them out with now China and Russia give large concessions to Japan $$$. If you stack and sit. Japan has to garrison Manchu with a small force but continues to spearhead to India. I figure as the Russians, you have to attack with the 18 inf at some point. The hard part is when. Timing is everything in this decision.

With US entering the war at turn 2, the US began to throw a good amount of cash to the European side, mainly because of the blunder in the Pacific- India would not last long now- 2-3 more rounds. I recovered nicely putting pressure on the French coast quickly until I made another tactical error involving Gibraltar- arrggh!!!- new rules and new map takes a little while getting used to.  :-(

Besides these 2 blunders, I thought the Global game was pretty fair and balanced with a slight edge to the Allies. I definitely think the Allies are a little easier to play because that sides is spilt into 6 sub parts (countries) that are easy to prepare while you are waiting for the Axis to finish. The Axis with so many more units in the beginning, take longer and you have to be very efficient both in the short-term and the long-term planning.

Anyway that was are anaylsis so I hope it helps.  :-)