1941 troop setup at the begining of the game?

@cheezhead1252 Good luck, and have fun!

…oh, and congratulations! :-D

@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.

I got the game last month and am playing my first game slowly with my GF. We are really enjoying the battle between Germany and Russia. I landed jet power on my first turn with Germany and so I have abandoned building any navy and have focused on using fighters to stop and naval presence in the Atlantic. Forcing the US or UK to have carriers or lots of warships to escort transports across. Also I have found the game to be quite balanced….our match is really up in the air right now. I had my first Barbarossa push and Russia was able to hold me off because I tried to push too far too fast, and they now pushed me out and I’m having to rebuild my eastern European front to push again. Japan is having a field day but my GF built an Indian factory and is churning out three UK tanks/infantry every turn which is slowing me down.

I really feel that the game is 50/50 at this point, because Japan is almost able to start pushing into Russia from the East, Germany is now having to deal with UK/US incursions from the West and Italy is still trying to push the UK out of Africa and take that money from them.

Really exciting for us both right now!

But to answer your questions, the dynamics do feel slanted to a KGF, it only takes a turn to transport units from US to Africa, while it is at least two turns to get troops into the fight from the US on the pacific coast. Plus Germany is a total of 13 spaces from all three allies capitals while Japan is wayyyy farther. It is just less time consuming to take Germany first…which allows less time for buildup for defense by the Germans.

@taamvan Can you say a bit more about what Japan is doing in your games? It’s true that with a well-executed KGF Germany will be contained to the core territories of France, NW Europe, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania – but that’s still worth $30 a turn and it takes the Allies a very long time to build and load enough transports to crack it.

Meanwhile, a pure KGF usually leaves Japan free to take India, then the Caucasuses, then Moscow – the Allies can certainly rush a few fighters to Moscow, but sending even one ruins the only practical Russian national objective, and if you build too many then you never get enough Allied ground troops to crack the German turtle – fighters in Moscow can’t reach to support an attack on France.

In my experience, without a bid and with NOs on, the Japanese attack on Moscow is much faster than the American attack on Paris, let alone Berlin. How does the Pacific play out in your games?

@smoke

Not a bad strategy, but as I said, it’s of the most importance that because all it really takes is for the British to act as some sort of annoyance to Japan atleast and hold the Money Islands or liberate the Philipines for America. Like I said the Culcutta crush doesn’t necassarilly mean the end of the game for me as Japan, but more over that the Americans will have to do KJF, which is what I normally do anyway since Japan can’t outbuild me as America for squat.

The basic idea is to start at the Solomon islands, and then slowly work your way West.

And of all else, all the U.K really have to do is instead of building a factory on India to just build a factory on Australia. While it’s not much to say where they build 2 units a turn, it’s still an industrial safe haven for the British to reevaluate, prepare for inevitable takeback of the Japanese controlled territories and win the game at the end of the day. Because granted, it’s really difficult to stop the Japanese from taking India on turn 2. This has been a serious pain I’ve had with axis and allies 1941 setup which is why I pay more attention to the 42’ setup as it’s much more balanced.

@Subotai:

It’s an interesting concept. Other alliances would be tempting to play in revised, if not AA50 was released.

We did that in classic, I don’t remember if Germany + Russia worked for a good game, but Germany + US was pretty even, almost like the original teams.

US and Japan in AA50 is much too weak.
Also, NOs can’t be used when changing alliances, b/c the NOs are specifically built around the original alliances, while any territory with an ipc value can be captured, NOs are different.
I’ve already been thinking about other setups in AA50, I haven’t tried any other than the original teams yet, but Germany and Italy + Russia would probably work fine. I don’t think any other teams can work, except if Italy is an enemy of Germany, Germany will then capture Italy rnd1, this will slow down Germany, but Germany will then be stronger from rnd2 than if Italy is on the same team as Germany.
Maybe Germany and US could work in AA50, also original teams could work with the exception of Italy is teamed up with allies.
A team change that is interesting to try out is: Germany owns all of Italy and Italian units, not only to play different setups, but also to determine if it is an advantage for axis to “split” Germany, I think axis are stronger if Germany got the possessions of Italy including the Italian units. I also think if we just removed all of Italy and Germany had to capture Italy and eventually build in the Mediterranean, Germany would be stronger than in the original AA50.

I have been tempted to experiment to see if Italy is advantageous as its own seperate entity.  I am inclined to agree with you that an “uber Germany” is probably preferable for the Axis.  The only reason why I have any doubt though, is the nasty nasty potential for a double hit on Russia (and sometimes even a triple hit).  It really does seem that if Italy has a decent presence in the Russian theater, Russia can only defend against two fronts after about t2 and can no longer leave a 1 man inf defense.  That alone can tip the favour to the Axis.

I rolled 3 1’s on Germany’s fighters in the G1 Karelia attack once.  Nobody’s dared try it since.

yes correct. When you DL just change the name of the file.