Units, Mechanics, etc.

Getting back to the main topic of the thread, I’ve played a couple of games recently (in TripleA) and I’d say my opinion of the unit types has solidified even more.

For context, I want to lay out the general tactics I tend to use, as the western Allies:

• Try to preserve French units as much as possible; move French units from UK to Morocco ASAP
• Land US tanks+infantry in Morocco; use additional transports to then ship those infantry further into Europe, while driving those tanks towards the Caucasus
• Utilize the purchase of harbors in Norway, Greece, and/or Persia to extend allied lines of supply
• Use the factory in South Africa to shuttle troops towards Novosibirsk

That all being said, here are my opinions on the various unit types:

Artillery: I don’t see a ton of use for this unit. I think the issue lies in the split between countries that are land powers vs. sea powers. If you’re the USSR, artillery are an attractive option because you have a low income, you need some offense, but also you just need as many pieces as possible. If you’re the US or UK, tanks do all of the above, but also are more useful to put on a transport, and move better once they’re on land – and you have the budget for it, too. Hypothetically, if you were to remove artillery from the game, and increase the USSR’s income to compensate (i.e. encourage them to buy more tanks) I think they’d just opt for bigger hordes of infantry. Limitations on the amount of units that factories can produce might play into it a bit, but otherwise IPM logic would win out, I assume.

Mech. Inf.: Germany feels like they’re in the ‘mushy middle’ of needing fast-movers (for the southern front, in particular) but not really having the economy to go all-tank in that regard (the way I typically would, w/r/t fast-movers for the US or UK). OTOH, Germany has the problem of also being a land power that needs as many units on the board as possible. I get the sense that a well-executed Italian strategy will give Germany a bit more time/space to breathe, so that’s something I’ll have to get some more experience with. I think with my strategies involving resupplying the USSR via South Africa, I could probably pivot to 1 inf+1 mech instead of 2 inf…? But on the whole, I don’t really see a use case for this unit, beyond Germany and possibly the USSR (or Italy, using some leap-frog maneuvering to do can-openers.) Generally I feel like Italy is a country that needs to focus on infantry and aircraft, more than anything else.

Tanks: My overall impression is that an artillery is “a tank without the mobility” and a mech. inf. is “a tank without the offense” – if you can afford tanks, they’re always the better option than either of those other units. This is why (as I’ve said in discussion elsewhere) I’d prefer to see the artillery and mech. inf. units/roles merged into one; some countries need the offense, some need the movement, and those that can’t afford tanks need a cheaper option for whichever niche they’re looking to fill. In short, I don’t think there’s enough design space for the 4 types of land units.

Aircraft: I’ve toyed with mixing tac. bombers into my carrier fleets; they’re nice to have, but I don’t think they’re an overall necessary addition to the game. I’ve generally reverted to purely fighters as my carrier aircraft. I think bombers are really strong, particularly for the allies in softening up Germany; the +2 bombing damage as well as the US/UK ability to just stockpile planes over time is really deadly. I almost feel like the US economic boost via National Objectives needs to taper off after a few rounds. I think the bombing mechanic overall is a little undercooked; the harbor in Gibraltar is probably the only thing worth bombing, other than factories. This fuels part of the weakness of tac. bombers, at least in the European theatre; I could see this tactic being potentially stronger in the Pacific.

Cruisers: They are obsolete. A fighter is basically always a better purchase, both for naval defense and shore “bombardment.” Destroyers are weaker defensively, but not relative to the cost, and they’re better for ASW as well as just general cannon fodder. For the same cost, I’d argue a bomber is way better, offensively. I’d even argue a battleship might be a better purchase, if you can use it to soak hits while also managing to keep it repaired.
I’ve said it earlier in the thread, but I think to make cruisers viable, you’d need to rebalance them through reducing the cost significantly and/or making shore bombardment be insta-kill. I honestly think there isn’t enough “design space” in the game for two classes of middleweight surface ships. Maybe if they were merged into a single unit, but interacted with other ships differently; for example, maybe pairing them with a battleship would upgrade their shore bombardment to a 4, while pairing them with a carrier would provide the ASW mechanics of a destroyer, or pairing them with a sub would grant them sneak attack.

Submarines/Destroyers: I’d be interested to see if there are any viable Axis strategies around leaning heavily into submarines… For the allies, while I think the slight cost saving/attack boost of a few subs over a few destroyers can help with wiping out the Italians, overall the destroyers are going to have more staying power, since they’re better for the main purpose of defending transports from enemy planes. Once you’ve got command of the seas, you’ll find yourself wishing that you had some ships that could bombard, and not just all destroyers – since they’re just defensive and not pro-active, at that point. (Now I’m finding myself wondering if there might be a case for Battleships over destroyers, as the US – particularly in a strategy involving additional harbors being built by the Allies. I might try and test this out, in the future.) You of course need transports, but overall I don’t think your naval purchases need to consist of anything other than destroyers, carriers, and fighters.

Other general musings:

1. The convoy zone to the east of Italy is such a huge detriment. I really like the idea of a constant Italian shuck-shuck into Syria, but once the Allied navy is in the Mediterranean, the Italians are basically forced to turtle up their ships to protect their coastline. In general, I find the convoy zones to be very arbitrary and “gamey” – Like, there aren’t any convoy zones adjacent to West Germany, or Berlin? Or the English Channel? Seriously?

2. I wonder if there’s any value to investing in a Baltic fleet, as Germany. Thus far, I’ve tended to send infantry towards Novgorod and mech. inf. towards Rostov, as the Germans; would speeding up the northern route with transports add any lethality to their strategy?

3. It seems like the Italians need to go into the middle east to get any meaningful sort of economy going (i.e. via National Objectives); the catch-22 is that it’d be expensive to get the necessary navy built up, to support that. Is it something they have to gamble on early, and hope they can parlay that into successes elsewhere later on? Are they better off just stalling the allies, while focusing on supporting Germany on land vs. the USSR? Do they have the economy to really make any difference, with that strategy?

4. Is it worth it for the Axis to declare war on the neutrals? I feel like taking out Turkey is too big of a hill to climb, but does that route make it easier to attack the USSR, or the middle east? Would it be viable to park the Italian fleet in the Black Sea and cause havoc that way? I see the Ai do it a lot, but is it worth it for the US to gobble up South America in this situation? Is opening up Spain just too much of a weakness for the Axis to even consider it?

5. Places like Saudi Arabia, Spain, and French West Africa all seem like interesting spots to put harbors. In practical terms though, the existing infrastructure tends to make those options fairly moot, and I rarely see the Axis take sub-Saharan Africa. It’s actually a shorter route on land from West Africa to get to the middle east and USSR, than by going through North Africa – but the lack of a harbor effectively makes this shipping lane twice the distance from the US, compared to just landing in Morocco.

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:

if America is focusing more on delivering troops to Europe directly via transports (rather than your strategy of moving through North Africa to the Eastern Front), artillery could still be valuable to provide more cost-effective firepower, since Western Europe is so dense that 2-space-movers aren’t very useful.

My general ethos as the US is to dump everything in Morocco; after that, any tanks drive towards the middle east, while any infantry then hop onto a 2nd set of transports, either landing in Greece or further up the Atlantic coast. I’m using carrier aircraft for the bulk of my offense as the US, rather than tanks (in fact I recently did a test of just spamming out carriers and fighters with no destroyers.)

The sweet spot for the “floating bridge” seems to be 4 transport loads, and I skew more towards 8 inf for that; due to using more transports to ship infantry farther, my deviations from 8 inf tend to be 2 arm+6 inf or 4 arm+4 inf, rather than mixing in odd numbers – but it really comes down to what else I’m buying, as I tend to “spend it all” most of the time.

I’ve had a couple games recently where the Axis declared war on the neutrals. Where this really causes problems for the US is that it extends the reach of Axis aircraft in France, to be able to hit the SZ west of Gibraltar; otherwise, you can usually get away with leaving transports there undefended. That being said, I’m generally of the opinion that any SZs where you’re keeping transports need at least 2 destroyers, 1 carrier, and 2 fighters.

As I’ve mentioned, I’ve recently experimented with using battleships or carriers in place of destroyers. I’d say both have their merits, although once you make landfall and have someplace to park your planes, you don’t really need more than 2ish carriers per SZ that you’re defending. It seems like you can essentially do something where you churn out fighters and leapfrog them towards the front line.

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:

(though not the UK-if you’re doing “Middle Earth”, where you dump a bunch of minor industrial complexes in the Middle East and Egypt and mass produce ground units and march them up to the Soviet Union, they’ll be cash-strapped enough to need artillery, and the Middle East to the Eastern Front isn’t terribly far)

I should mention here that as a general observation, I don’t build a ton of infrastructure. I’ve used the “Middle Earth” tactic of putting a factory in Persia, and it’s… fine? But as you point out, the investment cost is pretty high. What I generally do is either rotate 2 transports between South Africa and Egypt, or 3 transports in rotation to supply Eastern Persia en route to Novosibirsk. I also tend to produce a tank (in addition to whatever I’m shipping) in South Africa and drive that northward, on basically any turn that I’m not putting down a transport there.

I’ve mostly always shipped 2 infantry using this route, although I’ve recently experimented with 1 inf + 1 arm – cost doesn’t seem to be an issue, when you’re not buying multiple factories. But I still think I prefer using 2 inf.

I think a factory in Greece is handy once you get there, and it can work for either the US or the UK. A harbor in Persia works if you’re pot-committed to that tactic, but I find using the 3rd transport instead (in addition to being cheaper) gives you that flexibility to pivot towards the Med.

Other than that, I find a harbor in Norway is useful if you’re wanting to pressure Western Germany and Denmark, or resupply the USSR via the northern route (although I find this to be pretty slow-going, unless/until you slap down a factory in Finland – which gets into the issue of the USSR wanting to have those territories more than letting the other Allies take them…)

A harbor in Greece is handy because it covers multiple sea zones:
one set of transports in SZ92 swaps places with another set, either in SZ97 or SZ99, paired with additional sets of transports ferrying between the US east coast and SZ91
So in 3 turns, you can get from the US to Yugoslavia, Albania, Greece, or Syria. IMO it really comes down to whether you want the US and UK to focus on this route, or on the Atlantic, or to split their focuses.

Early on, I attempted the more traditional/“Classic” tactic, of having the US march their guys up to Canada, and then ship to SZ109 to land in the UK; this might be useful to defend against a Sea Lion threat, but it takes just as long as going to Morocco/Gibraltar first, with the latter having the added benefit of putting units actually into front line action, instead of… being in Canada. This is why I’m of the opinion that the harbor in Gibraltar is possibly the only worthwhile bombing target (other than factories) although I’m also starting to come around on bombing coastal airfields, in particular Southern Italy.

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:

Your view of mechanized infantry is mostly correct. I do think Germany isn’t as hard-pressed as you think and can afford them (and they’re an absolute must if you’re preparing a giant assault on Moscow on a specific turn).

I don’t have a lot of Axis games under my belt, but Germany feels really cash-poor, all the time. Like, maybe it’s a case of me needing to figure out how to attack every territory on my borders on the first turn to get my income up…? I find myself putting out roughly 13 units a turn (off the top of my head) and it feels like nowhere near enough to take a meaningful shot at Moscow before turn 7 or 8 – never mind having anything in reserve to fend off landings in/around France. (And I’m not even talking expensive units, just a mix of inf and mechs.) Because realistically, the USSR should be able to still crank out something like 9 inf per round, even into the first round where they’re at war – and possibly longer. That’s a pretty steep hill for Germany to climb, particularly since they’re getting comparatively no help from N.O.'s compared to the USSR, once the war kicks off.

The strain seems to be that you have to pressure the north, just to not lose Finland and Norway… But realistically, the German N.O.'s seem to be pushing you towards Volgograd/Caucasus and the middle east. I’m not sure if most allied players wait for Archangel to fall before they start sending supplies to the USSR, but I think this is actually designed/intended to dissuade the Germans from taking the northern route. Maybe it’s the case that you just have to bomb Novgorod into submission, rather than trying to attack it directly?

It does seem to me like Germany could afford to pull back even as far as leaving Poland empty, as long as they’re still sending waves through Slovakia-Hungary into Eastern Poland. If most of your production is being placed into Germany every turn, it basically makes Poland a deadzone for the USSR to even attempt taking. Again, it would depend on coming up with an answer for how to defend Norway and Finland, while maintaining a steady drive towards the southern front.

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:

. I’ll also mention though that when I say the UK is “cash-strapped”, I don’t mean because they spent a lot of money on industrial complexes but because having so many complexes incentivizes you to use them to the max

This makes me think of a game I had recently, where the UK got bombed a lot, early on.
Honestly, I just spent a few rounds building up navy in Canada (2 subs and 1 destroyer at a time, after a carrier buy on the 1st round) while keeping my South Africa factory humming along as usual. I often don’t end up building much in the UK until the US has a presence in the war, or at least until the Germans swing all their air power over to the USSR.

Is the Taranto raid still “in fashion” or has the conventional wisdom changed on that? I honestly find it’s better as the UK to conserve your planes and ships in the early game, and then just overwhelm the Italians through weight of numbers.

Edit: (to add)
As the UK, I find that keeping 3 transport loads full around the home island is about the most you can expect to do. Later in the game, you could maybe bump that up to 4, but with your factory output only being 10 (unlike the US having 20) you’re probably not going to put out more than 8 land units, anyway. I tend to like having “space” in my budget for a bomber, here and there – so 6-8 infantry suits me just fine.

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:

Axis #1: The Allies have left their SZ91 fleet exposed if the Neutrals are attacked by Italy, specifically Spain, and that allows the Germans to annihilate a large Allied fleet on the cheap.

This is the circumstance I had experienced in one of my games (sort of/kind of) that I mentioned, where the Axis are basically attacking Spain as part of a broader strategy to disrupt the shuck-shuck into SZ91.

@SuperbattleshipYamato re: Taranto

My general ethos is that I’d rather the British keep their fleet intact, and back them up behind the canal. Even if the Italians take it by land, you can keep them from expanding into the Indian Ocean by sea.

The other side of it is like… I think air power is great, while navies are sort of “the cost of doing business” – so trading my planes to take out your navy is a bad exchange. I’m fine with taking the cheap/easy win of sniping the fleet at Malta, because in the grand scheme of things, I think the transport will cause more damage to me than the battleships and cruisers and whatnot.

I’ve seen some weird things, like 2 subs being sent against the British cruiser at Gibraltar and both subs being sunk. Generally I assume there will be a sub there, and a sub up near Canada; I tend to send the SZ109 fleet to Canada, along with a couple of fighters, and place a new carrier there on rd1. If there’s a damaged battleship (and sub/s) in SZ111, I’m usually inclined to attack it with the fighter from Scotland and/or the UK bomber.

Do German players usually prioritize the UK transports? The Ai always seems to leave those 2 sea zones alone; granted we’re talking subs attacking destroyers, and their planes are out of range (except the strat. bombers, but landing in Belgium would be pretty undesirable…)

To me, it also seems like it stands to reason that the Germans should prioritize hunting destroyers, just because I tend to assume that the great strength of the western allies is their air power; if you have no transports, your battleships and cruisers can’t influence land combat, and if you have no destroyers, your planes can’t target subs – it paints a picture that as “guy who has subs,” the German player should be targeting things a certain way, to play into that. Honestly though, it seems kind of moot, given how relatively short the battle of the Atlantic ends up being.

I’ve run a handful of test games recently where I’m using battleships as my main surface unit, with the US. I think it’s a strat that pays off later/in the long run, when you’re stacking landings over multiple rounds (usually in the Mediterranean.) If your floating bridge consists of 4 transport loads and you can pile on 4+ shore bombardments, it starts to add up. But honestly, on the Atlantic side, I’ve seen a British strategy of just stacking bombers and fighters and strafing down the French coast – the number of casualties inflicted is staggering compared to what the battleships are able to do. Not an unexpected result, but I think to me this just cements the utility of destroyers, in that convoy-escort role.

I’ve found that when I’m too aggressive with pushing the allied fleets east too early, the Germans still tend to kamikaze their planes into my ships – but this actually only serves to speed up their own demise. As long as I’m not losing a huge amount of transports all in one go…? I can afford to lose a loaded carrier and 2-3 surface ships, as long as I take enough of their planes down with me. In these instances (for the cost) I’d rather be defending with the extra shots I’d be getting from buying destroyers, as opposed to the higher attack rating of a battleship.

But I think it’s generally best to be cagey with your allied fleets, and build them up to a point where the Axis can’t afford to attack them. This feeds into why I generally don’t like the idea behind the Taranto raid; I know I can outspend the Italians, so it’s actually in my interest to keep my fleets strong while I do that, rather than do a move that at best amounts to “mutually assured destruction” in my estimation.