Best Feeling in Round 1

If you play NA´s i would encourage you to just do away with super-fortress (USA NA)  Invulnerable SBR bomber is so incrediable unbalanced not even funny.

Now, extra German planes in the mid-game can be a good investment against a balanced, slow KGF if Allies don’t have excess escorts. They already defend where they are almost like 2 more inf (6 IPC), also threaten 1-2 fleets that will need extra escorts, and swap easier on land. Combined with the Japanese fleet coming throught the Med, they can paralyze the Allied moves sandwiched between each of them.
But, that’s not ships, but anti-ship build…

My style is more ‘tight’ than ‘wild’, but I’ve done:
R1: 1art 4tnk (all in Moscow and Caucasus empty, if Ukraine doesn’t fall to keep Caucasus defensible)
G1: 4inf 7art, also 8inf 4art and the usual 9inf 2art 1tnk

Guess more frequent ‘reactive’ buys don’t count, like:
UK1: 5inf 3tnk (when a large landing threatens)
UK1: 3ftr +US1: 2bmb 4inf (when Germans fleet comes out)
J1: 2 factories (when scattered UK ships are hard to beat fast)

I’ve seen fast carriers help in 2 specific situations:

1)  Japan forgets that the Pearl Harbor Carrier and fighters can get to SZ 61 resulting in the loss of all of Japan’s unprotected transports.
2)  America builds one last carrier and two fighters for that assault on SZ 60 (SZ 55 to SZ 60 is 3 spaces.) Or even just buys two fast carriers so the 4 fighters in W. Canada can reach SZ 60.

But how often does that happen?

How much better off would naval warfare in the Pacific be if America had 3 fighters on the flight deck of a carrier, or could recover a bomber on an empty carrier?

@Dr.:

Hey guys, I can’t really figure out how to use my med fleet best. I usually use my bid on 2 units for Libya. Then should i still send my med fleet to Egypt to try a take and hold, or should I buy ekstra fleet for the baltic and then send my med fleet west and unite the fleet on G2?
How do you use your med fleet?
do you buy the carrier or transports for the baltic, if you buy any at all?

Those two first listed options pretty much sums it up.

I don’t ever buy carriers for the Med fleet.  German fighters in Western Europe combined with the Med fleet prevent early Allied naval invasion of the Mediterranean.

Late game, I sometimes buy transports to shuttle additional infantry from S. Europe to Caucasus.

You can try to pressure Caucasus extra early on if you make a couple of German transports at S. Europe.  That is, if Russian fighters land in Moscow on R1, 2-3 Baltic transports is not sufficient threat against UK (since Russian fighters can fly to London).  But if Russian fighters land in Moscow on R1, they’re not in position to attack any German transports produced at Southern Europe.

But if you DO produce transports at S. Europe early, remember that they’re not going to do too much.  Even with transported infantry, it is very hard to match up to the bulked mass of Rusisan infantry/tanks/fighters/some artillery.  It is probably a far safer bet to produce infantry early, march east, then produce transports to unload infantry, and have Jap fighters land in the same territory.

BUT if Russia was very aggressive, or very unlucky, Germany can try to run a tank dash to Moscow game, in which case early transports in the Med are decent.  But this should ONLY be tried if a gigantic proportion of the Russian army is destroyed.  Otherwise, Germany simply overextends itself.

In order to defeat a defending army worth ~150 IPC, you’d need to spend ~200 IPC.  I generally find this to be the case is for larger battles, say minimum of at least 10 defending units.  Of course it varies by players aggressiveness or risk factor or a couple of other things.

This is true b/c it is extremely easy to defend.  As you both point, Infantry are unmatched it that department.

So attackers need to outspend defenders ~4:3 in order to take.  You need more if it is a combined attack, for example a UK-US 1-2, or perhaps less depending on how much you want to take with, or if you have lots of air, tanks can really move 2 spaces, or something else.

I look at it as simply an easy guideline, like usind a LL method to see if I have “avg” shot at taking, not a hard hitting “must play by” rule.  I think of the same thing with the 3:1:1 army.  It’s a nice guideline but rarely do I ever actually have that in games.

As for my army for 150, I’d probably have something like:

26 inf
8 rt
8 arm

Units:  42
Att:  74
Def:  92

Or

23 inf
9 rt
9 arm

Units:  41
Att:  77
Def:  91

@Jennifer:

6 Transports = 48 IPCs + 15 IPCs for Industrial Complex.  Total: 63 IPCs
12 Transports = 96 IPCs.  Total: 96 IPCs

That is not an equivalent comparison.

Norway is only 3 IPC, so it can only produce 3 units.  So 1.5 TRNs worth of units.

US sets up 4x4, requiring 8 TRNs to get 8 divisions to Europe per round.  With a Norway IC, to still get 8 divisions requires 6 TRN plus Norway production (they do get 1 extra unit this way).

But for UK… 3 IPC’s is about 15% of their mid-game income.  And as I said, that means eitehr keeping ARM in the mix for them to TRN, or allows 3 INF to be upgraded to ART, and thus add 6 points to their attack (an extra dead German every round).

US only needs 64 IPC’s of TRN’s to send a full 8 divisions to Europe every round.  And if UK can keep their income to where they can fill their 4 TRNs, that is 16 divisions per turn.  And that is serious trouble for Germany.

There’s a factor no-one considered though. When 3 people play, we usually set it up with 1 axis vs. 2 allies, with each allied player picking a country, and sharing the third. That way coordination is forced, and most importantly: everyone gets 2 turns a round, instead of one player getting three and the other two getting one each.