Try your strategies out in the league

@marshmallow-of-war Nice! Sometimes unexpected things develop in this game. Good for the French! They deserve some credit, every once in a while.

Very interesting. I’d agree that Japan usually wants at least one factory in China no later than turn 3, even if you’re primarily playing a naval game. It’s rare to see a board where you’d want zero factories, although I believe it is a possibility. You can use up your limited 10 production slots pretty easily when you’re building serious naval units. Even if you’re pulling in 80 IPCs a turn, that can usefully go to something like 1 BB, 1 CV, 1 DD, 1 SS, 2 trans, 2 inf, 1 art, 1 tnk.

The USA sub build is a special case, because subs are optimized for killing your navy, but subs are bad at protecting American transports. If the USA builds more than 3 subs in the first 2 turns, then you do want to build Japanese factories, because, as you say, the subs make it too difficult for Japan to protect its fleet, and the subs also make it easier for Japan to nuke any transports that the USA tries to bring west to take over your factories. The USA is rich, but it can’t afford to build a huge sub stack and a huge carrier stack and a huge stack of loaded transports all in the first few turns, even if it ignores Europe altogether.

@calvinhobbesliker:

@simon33:

Hmm, interesting analysis. Germany has to really stretch to pull in the 24 inf too.

If a G1 buy of 3mech 3arm where done, it seems to be negative.

What happens when the more usual move of a I2+G3 DOW is done? If the Germans don’t buy fast movers G1, that is what I expect anyway.

Interesting. I had no idea that 6 tanks could potentially make East Poland not stackable…and if Germany buys mechs/tanks G1 in anticipation to bolster it, that prevents them from buying more ships for Sealion.

This is the build that helped us win our first game at YG’s tournament as the allies, and almost always my build with Russia.

Follow up round two with FULL mechanized.  Your force can hold/delay leningrad unless the germans are heavily organized and determined to take it.  Usually this can buy you an extra round or two depending on what the germans are doing, whilst you evacuate your infantry.

@Requester45:

I’m assuming that nobody has payed any attention to anything I’ve outlined in this strategy. I don’t know how much more I can say on the strategy. I might make another shorter video showing a push through the North. If someone could describe their German strategy going through the North I’ll gladly post a video on it.

The northern route better permits the German forces to stack all together on G4 at Belarus or Russia loses tons of Blockers which in turn causes other issues. Not to mention a forward base to produce units from. Whereas the southern route, you might not get to produce German units in Ukraine on G4 because there would have been a huge Russian stack in Bryansk ready to counter the small battles that occur for key objectives. In a PBEM game, my opponent stopped my northern route (yes it can be done). However, he did it at the expense of losing Moscow. Unfortunately for me, my Japan game is sucking and I’ll probably end up losing in the long run.

The money in the south are places like Rostov / Caucaus / Stalingrad…ect. Your chances of getting to those places faster is better through the northern route against experienced allied players. The southern is a choke point at w. Ukraine. The northern route offers Belarus and Smolensk as places for an Italian can opener to let the German stack and planes land. If your playing experiences is limited to face-to-face games than you’ve only played with a smaller finite amount of players.

If you’re whole “Red Tide” is based upon a Sea Lion game, well, that’s a scenario that rarely occurs. Russia can easily gobble up lots of NOs for a while until Germany stabilizes the front.

With that in mind sz109 might be the best staging point for Royal Navy if the RAF is strong, they can scramble up to 6 fighters there.  Never considered that before.

J3/J4 dow is only if you are industrial bombing russia with japan. Allies have to take as much ground as possible, because russia will fall come G5 or G6, afterwhich usa/uk have to put enough to defend london and egypt.

Japan’s best window is J1 if he wants to attempt a pacific victory.

As allies, there are only a handful of strategies. You can race pacific against europe and go full KJF. You can prepare a massive d day landing off gibraltar, basically build up to take italy / liberate france (you pretty much sit there till your one big attack is good to go). Or you can attempt to turtle up russia/calcutta.

A J3/J4 dow pretty much makes KJF the best bet for allies.

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.

@strategic:

I like the strategy but what are the logistics?

Try this and see how it goes:

G1:  Build five subs.  Use two subs to take out  the British destroyer by Canada.  Use three subs to take out the destroyer by the UK.  Ignore the battleship and cruiser by Scotland.  Use your airforce to take out the rest of the British fleet that you can reach.  The point is to sacrifice your airforce to keep your navy alive.  You may even use your bomber with the three subs and take it as a hit if the destroyer hits you back.  Then noncombat your battleship and cruiser into SZ 109 with your three subs.  Place your new subs in SZ 112.  This gives you 10 subs (if both of them by Canada survived), 1 battleship and 1 cruiser.  The UK can most likely destroy any one  of your fleets but there is no way they can destroy the other two.  SZ 109 is more important to them since they got to take out that fleet in order to prevent you from convoy raiding 8 IPCs.  The side benefit of them taking out your fleet in SZ 109 is that the Italian navy will not be destroyed and they can then quickly secure the med and earn their national objective.  If UK attacks the Italians anyway then no problem since you now are convoy raiding them for 11 IPCs (assuming that both of your subs off Canada survived).

J1:  Do not make any attacks that would get the USA involved in the war.  Since the USA gets to declare war on you at the end of turn 3 and get their income bonus on that turn, you will be attacking the UK/ANZAC/USA on turn 3.  Of course, you can still attack the Soviets with your infantry and massive airforce.  Just make sure that airforce is in position by turn 3 to take out the DEI, Malaya, Hong Kong, the Phillipines and the British fleet (if they are still in the area) on turn 3.

I1:  Either secure the med on turn 1 if your fleet survived or start rebuilding if it didn’t.  You may have to save your money for one turn in order to build more naval units on turn 2.  Also, take out as many friendly neutrals that you can as well as Southern France and Greece.  Once all enemy destroyers are gone then you can build subs without fear of being attacked.

G2:  Build 10 subs.  By the end of turn 3, you want to have around 25 subs.

Remember, you goal isn’t so much to take out territories right away but to deny UK /ANZAC/USA IPCs by convoy raiding them.  After the first 4 or 5 turns, you have to spend some money buying infantry to protect yourself from the Soviets.

I haven’t tried this, but it seems like it would be possible for Germany to take out the West Indies on turn 3 while Japan takes out Brazil, also on turn 3.  All three of the Axis would have to coordinate this to pull it off.  Then, on turn 4, Germany builds an airbase while some of the Japanese airforce lands on West Indies, allowing them to scramble if the USA attacks back.  Perhaps Japan should also build a minor IC on Brazil to help dominate the Atlantic