Map for 1941 axis strategy

@cheezhead1252 Good luck, and have fun!

…oh, and congratulations! :-D

You’ll find that the best approach to the Allies is a slow burn. The Axis start off with way more stuff than you, and the 41 scenario just takes that divide to the extreme. It’s best to stay back and slowly accumulate advantage before making your big push. In most cases, defense is stronger than offense in A&A (i.e. INF attack at 1, but defend at 2, and FTRs attack at 3, but defend at 4), so try to use that to your advantage when possible.

One more note for USA. Rather than go straight for Japan’s jugular, try parking the fleet in the SZ that contains the “Solomon Islands” Territory. It’s a nice territory to camp out in with your fleet, as it:

Puts you within 2-moves of Australia, New Guinea, Borneo, Dutch East Indies, and Philippines, the Pacific territories that are either worth a lot of money, are part of NOs, or both.

Keeps you within 2-moves of West US, your spawn point for new units, so new reinforcements will always be on the way and you always have a safe point to retreat to if Japan is too strong for you.

Keeps you more than 2-moves away from SZ63 (Japan’s spawn point for new units), so Japan will never be able to send a large amount of units your way without first spending a turn moving their units towards you (and thus, giving you a hint that Japan is planning on attacking you).

Just food for thought. Of course, Japan has ways to play around you basing your fleet in the Solomon Islands, but that mini-game of fleet positioning is part of the fun of A&A’s Pacific Theater.

@xlome_00 Sea Lion is one of those attacks where the threat is mightier than the execution. If you buy a carrier for the Baltic Fleet on G1, that’s a reasonable purchase anyway to protect your supply lines to Norway/Finland/Leningrad/Baltics. If you move the German Med transport to the central Med, it is protected by the Italian fleet and can reinforce Libya, which is a reasonable move anyway. If you then bring the Italian fleet to take Gibraltar and retake Morocco, that helps score your NOs, so that’s a normal attack. So all of these preparatory moves can be done with minimal cost to the standard Axis war effort.

But then the American bomber cannot sink the German transport without landing in either Egypt (where it will die on a G2 Egypt attack) or Caucasus (where it spoils the Russian NO.)

If they leave your Med transport alive, you move it to Western Med on G2 where Italian fleet protects it again, build a second transport in Baltic on G2 plus an extra plane, and now you are threatening UK with 3 inf, 3 tank, 1 CA, 4 ftr, 1 bmr on a hypothetical G3 sea lion.

UK can of course defend against this, but they will have to build a fat infantry stack in London instead of factories, ships, or air power. This could cost them the Atlantic fleet or at least force them to retreat it back to Canada; if they built a factory in Africa / India, they might lose it because they cannot afford to build units there on a critical turn. Meanwhile those infantry in London will just sit there inefficiently for several turns because there are not enough transports to ship them anywhere, and not enough warships to protect the Atlantic fleet in a forward position.

Your second Baltic transport is reasonably useful for shipping inf/art to Leningrad, and the extra fighter can of course be used for trading on the eastern front, defending France, etc. as usual.

So you never actually attack London in an AA50 game – you just quietly threaten to attack it, thereby forcing the Allies to waste much more money on defense than you spent on creating the threat.

@mobius1:

You know, maybe you’re right. My countering Japan strategy is mostly a throwback to the old version. But now it may be a better choice to have Russia go all out against Germany, since I think I have a good chance of pulling it off.

There have been many times that I could have secured Poland if I had enough tanks…

Put some allied (UK/USA) fighters with that stack of forward Russian troops and you should be able to safely get to/hold Eastern Poland.  That territory is a key piece in the theatre of war.  Whoever controls that (Germany/allies) can effectively dead zone 6 territories that it borders.  Also, those allied fighters are not out of play based in EPL.  In conjunction with the a/c strategy that Argothair posted for an allied navy, the ftrs can even hit france.

@USS:

I would like to add that I haven’t played without National Objectives so maybe my advice means nothing. The US benefits from NOs a lot, so maybe that will help the Allies?

Actually, the allies lose their National Objectives quickly, whilst the Axis attain (and keep)  theirs.  This makes playing with National Objectives more advantages to the axis.

Overall, no NOs means IPC income is less for all involved.  Units are more valuable, especially reusable ones (like planes and transports).  Once the allies make this initial investment(s) in these type of units and does not lose them, the can have a fighting chance in the game.

thanks  for agreeing

I think I would have made China its own just to eliminate confusion with any nearby US forces sizing up an upcoming battle if nothing else.

LT