Attention All Axis and Allies Fans!

Redrum, I didn’t realize you were a Triple-A Developer.  I hope you take no offense.  I didn’t mean to insult your baby.  I appreciate the work you guys have done on Triple-A.  As of late, I have found myself playing the AI more often than I would like (as I cannot get my friends together to play often enough).  I am confident the AI will continue to improve over time.  I guess I should put up or shut up.  I ought to be submitting my bug reports to help you guys tweak the game.

I recently played two games of Spring '42 against my cousin.  On BOTH occasions, I captured UK on G2 and he conceded.  My cousin would be the first to admit that he is a lousy A&A player, but I still took a lot of joy out of silencing his trash talking, even if only for a moment.  It NEVER should have succeeded.  It was entirely due to poor decisions on his part.  Hobbes is absolutely correct.  The UK would have to make GRAVE miscalculations (purchasing and combat), and/or have absolutely horrendous luck with the dice.  Hobbes gave it in a nutshell.  Let me flesh it out a bit for G1 and G2.

Let’s give Germany the MAXIMUM possible force to bring in for a UK invasion on G1 or G2.

G1 assault on UK:  German 1 BOM, 2 FTR, 1 ARM, 1 INF versus UK 2 FTR, 1 ARM, 1 ART, 2 INF, 1 BOM, and the AA.  Germany has 4% chance to win with 1 ARM or better (in order to capture, the standard OOL is changed)

G2 assault on UK:  Let’s assume on R1, Russia went big into WR alone.  Germany has all 6 FTR’s intact.  On G1, Germany bought 1 CV, 3 TT, 1 ARM, and the SZ8 SS sank the SZ10 US fleet (50% chance).  On G2, Germany could bring as much as 1 BOM, 6 FTR, 5 ARM, 5 INF, 1 BB bombardment shot (though the BB would be better used in SZ 9 to interdict/divert the new US1-built fleet hoping to liberate UK on US2.  Let’s keep the BB bombarding UK, however, just to give the best possible odds for the Germans in the invasion of UK. With the sz10 fleet eliminated, the G1 naval purchases are placed in the Baltic rather than the Med.  The UK player has to see the threat of a G2 invasion bearing down on them.  The UK player, not being COMPLETELY inept, decides to shore up UK.  UK purchases 5 INF 3 ARM, the SZ1 TT brought the ECan ARM over to UK.  The BB stays put in SZ2 as Germany’s 3 SS, 1 DD, 1 CV have a 98.5% chance of wiping out the BB without needing to divert any air units from the invasion.  Germany has 1 BOM, 6 FTR, 5 ARM, 5 INF, and the BB bombardment bearing down on UK, who stands with 7 INF, 1 ART, 5 ARM, 3 FTR, 2 BOM (1 FTR 1 BOM from EUS), 1 AA.  Germany’s odds of capturing UK under this optimal condition would still be only 24.5%, and the US would be able to liberate on US2.  If Germany parks the BB in sz9 to interdict/divert the US, a liberation by the US would be impossible, but the German odds of success at UK drop to 19% without having the bombardment.

Clearly, a G1 attempt is suicide.  Assuming the G1 attack succeeded against the SZ10 fleet (50% chance of success) followed by a best case scenario G2 attempt after a G1 build of 1 CV, 3 TT, 1 ARM (19% chance of success while preventing liberation by US).  By compounding the probabilities, your chance of a G2 assault of this sort succeeding is less than 10%.  If Germany is missing a single FTR from their original 6, the odds are cut in half again.

IF you are playing against a lousy UK player, you might have better luck forgoing the naval build on G1 altogether.  Germany can opt to smash the sz2 fleet, and hope the UK will turn around and buy 1 CV, 2 DD (or a similar navy heavy buy) and ignore the Baltic fleet on UK1 (2 big IF’s), allowing Germany to invade UK with 1 BB shot, 2 loaded transports, 6 FTR, and 1 BOM on G2.  83% chance of success without US units on UK.  Long story short, unless you are playing inept opponent(s), a G1 or G2 invasion of UK is a suicide mission.

I think the strategy is there and works well i win more than i loose against good axis players.  Wondering if maybe we could setup a team to test and get the timings down.  Figure out how many fighters Russia needs to survive Japanese and German non stop Blitz on Russia.  Also how many bombers are optimal to avoid purchasing too many.  I am not sure if you can have too many bombers they have dual roles to industrial bomb and to support attacking\landing infantry in Western Europe.  Figure out what turn USA needs to quit buying bombers and switch to Naval.

@MrMalachiCrunch:

I think novice players tend to be a bit more conservative.  Being conservative hurts the axis more than the allies being conservative I think.  With the axis having a better opening setup than the allies, they really need to maximize that before the allies can maximize their initial economic advantage.

A good way to learn is to play a game against yourself, but beyond the first few rounds it tends to lose its potential as a learning tool I would think.   It lets you script out the first few rounds of a strategy and counters but sooner or later the next step of learning is how to take advantage of good dice and how to do damage control with bad dice, basically how to take advantage of opportunities.

I completely agree, and playing against myself is exactly how I learned the most, followed by playing 1-on-1 against really good players online.

I have always seen it like this:if the axis keeps his combined airforce in WEu,the combined allies should be landing through SZ4.If axis has the airforce in EEu,the allies should go in from SZ3-Nor.In both cases the allies can keep both a steady flow to Europe and slowly reinforce the fleet,away from danger,till it can move towards SZ5.

Here are a couple of TripleA saved games:

First one is unfinished and was the most competitive. It’s the end turn 9 and the US just defeated a Japanese force in Persia but the Germans seem about to take the Caucasus.

On the 2nd one the game is finished, victory for the Axis. The UK built an IC on South Africa on UK1, while the US decided to switch to a Pacific strat on US3.

NPNGMeAxis.tsvg
FortressEurope.tsvg

in 1 game, the americans tried to take tokyo twice but failed

@MrMalachiCrunch:

Dan, did the Russian build of a bomber on R1 cause you not to attack Sz2 in G1 for some reason?  If so, was the reason because it could hit Norway and perhaps the german fighter would be lost as you used those troops against Kar in G1 there would have been no defense for the surviving bomber?

No, it wasn’t the bomber build that stopped the attack on z2. For other readers, here’s the situation. R1 build is 4 inf, bomber. Russia takes West Russia with 7 inf, art, tank and takes Ukraine with art, 3 tanks. For the precise move: http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=19028.0
In short, I wanted a Karelia stack on G1. Germany couldn’t afford to defend Norway if I did this. I would be more afraid of surviving German planes on Norway being attacked by the UK’s potential inf, tank, 2 fighters, and bomber. Realistically, if the German planes are naked, the Allies don’t need to commit so much. Also, the German destroyer to z3 could force the UK to peal off a plane from the ground attack. Any time a Russian plane dogfights an Axis plane on fairly even odds is a good day for the Axis. I’d invite that bomber versus fighter battle.