Posts made by a44bigdog

Gamerman gets it.

So many times I hear people stating that X unit that cost Y IPCs will never do Y damage to the enemy therefore it is useless, btw the bombers for SBRs that you were posting about generally fall in this category. My point is that this is not a ledger sheet. I don’t care if a unit does it’s value in IPC damage as long as it achieves the strategic purpose that I purchased it for.

As far as your question about 2 CAs vs 3 DDs that depends on the situation. If I need pure fodder the DDs are the obvious choice. If I need either shore bombardment or some more offense with a fleet then the 2 CAs are the better choice. As Gamerman said, it is all situational.

And if you ever want to play me start playing in the League as that is where I play. I may not be the best player on this site but I have no problems putting my money where my mouth is so to speak. I deal with Axis and Allies from the viewpoint of years of gaming experience, not from the theoretical viewpoint.

I probably should have added an update when I bumped the thread. I now attack SZ2 instead of Egypt and transport some troops from France to Libya on Germany’1 First turn. This puts the German Mediterranean transport with the Italian Navy to keep it safe and sets up a solid take of Egypt on round 2. I still carry out the rest of this as I described. I Fortify France on round 1 and understand that I will have to retreat some on the Eastern Front until I can get troops from Germany there.

As far as Norway and Finland are concerned short of buying ships on round 1 with Germany there is little Germany can do about them. Do not worry about it, Germany can make money elsewhere.

If Italy is being ignored use them in the Southern part of the Eastern Front and Germany in the north, Also if it has not already happened use Italy or Japan to take Africa away from England to keep their income low.

Ahh someone from the accounting school of Axis and Allies

Axis & Allies is not an accounting game.

Let that sink in a moment.

It does not always necessarily matter that a unit take out its IPC value to be of worth. Especially if you can replace the losses easier than your opponent.

With whittling away at Axis stacks in France or especially Germany those loses MUST be replaced to stave off invasions. Under the damage rules of Anniversary unlike in earlier editions damage can be ignored. If Germany has enough units to deter allied invasions, and maintain against Russia while Japan takes out Moscow it can sit there with 20 damage if it so pleases. Also with the UK’s limited funds if she has been buying a bomber every round there is not going to be much left over for invasions or a fleet to even carry out such.

MY point is that CAs are not a bad investment for England. They will need something to flesh out their fleet, and as Darth and some others have pointed out, CAs can be used to bombard with while DDs are just going to sit there as potential fodder against an air attack.

LOL Japan shouldn’t spend too much.

Oh boy that is a good one. Considering from round two they are ahead of the US in IPCs in most games as Darth said above Japan can buy whatever they want. And for Pacific action I like Battleships and Carriers above cruisers. The carriers and fighters project the power and once a proper mass of battleships is achieved they can strafe opposing navies to death due to the healing ability. Plus it can be amusing starting an invasion with 6 or 7 bombardments at 4.  :-D And before the comments come that was in a League game that I won.  :-P

Cruisers can be good for the UK, as far as the invasion strafes I think MrMalachiCrunch is missing the numbers. When you are wearing down a heavy stacked territory it is not using just 1 Cruiser to bombard with, done properly it should be using about 4 or more. It is very hard for Germany to keep replacing those losses in France or Germany depending where the strafe is taking place. As far as the bombers and that math, the bombers are subject to AA fire. There is no guarantee of that 12 IPCs doing 17.5 in damage, that 1 out of 6 can very well come the first AA roll.

The problem mostly arises online when using ABattlemap. This has “snap to” feature that “stacks” units of the same class within a territory or seazone. The solution as has been stated is to put the carriers and fighters in question on the boundary line of the seazone and this will counteract the “snap to” feature. All that said it should be stated where the fighters are landing in the typed outline of the move, just as it should be stated when they are physically placed when using the actual board and pieces in face to face play.

Hopefully that clears everything up for newer players here as far as the reasons for stating where the fighters are to land and the solution when using one of the available online tools.

Although I have started using Abattlemap for face to face play as well, it makes it so much harder for the cat to reek havoc. There is just something about wargames that cats can not resist!

Let me see if I can illustrate this and help gamerman out.

The UK has 1 destroyer, 2 carriers, and 2 fighters in seazone 8. There are 2 German subs in seazone 7. On the US turn 2 US fighters join the UK fleet in seazone 7. On the UK’s turn the destroyer two carriers and two fighters attack seazone 7 (yeah I know why bring the CVs but bear with me).  Both German subs hit on defense. At this point it is necessary to know where both US fighters are. If they are on a single carrier the other can be taken as a casualty and the UK fighters can land in England. However, if the fighters are split on the carriers 1 US and 1 UK, 1 of the US fighters will be cargo and will go down with the carrier.

This is point that gamerman is trying to make when a country has open carriers and their is an opportunity (I like to do it anyway) for friendly fighters to land on those carriers they need to declare exactly where the fighters are landing, is it on 1 carrier or split with 1 fighter on each carrier. To not do so at this point allows the player with multinational forces to “move” units when they are not actually moving.

I like the idea that a poster said his face to face group was using. Each country gets a “diced” card. Once per game, either on offense or defense, a country can play their “diced” card. This makes the battle be re-rolled and those results, no matter the outcome, stand.

Bardoly I would be fine with that and expanding it to allow OOB techs and the official optional rules. I look at the League as a place to play competitively against competent opponents, if the games are not all the same with me that is fine. I would also argue since we allow bids the games are not the same across the board anyway.

I guess I have been fortunate enough to play with more experienced online opponents and under the conditions gamerman has outlined they have always specified which carriers the fighters were landing on.

No Gargantua has a point. Japan can receive some crap dice in China and China can quickly become a problem. It takes more units to deal with and just keeps growing. Yes this is a rare circumstance but it does happen.

I have liberated China in several games and hung out for a few turns to the point where Japan was never going to be able to deal with the resurgent China allowing me to move my forces that liberated China off to bigger and better things.

Bump

Some sound advice from Gargantua and here is a bit more.

1. Get Abattlemap from this thread:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=12873.0
This will allow you to view games here and even play games here. I will give you a word of warning there are some very good players on this site, so do not be discourage if you decide to try your hand here and get trounced. You will learn from the experince.

2. This is a game I played with Darth Maximus. He is a good player here and was experimenting with something so the game does not quite progress as you have described but it illustrates several things such as the use of German bombers, building multiple ICs with Japan and a very aggressive opening with Japan as far as the options for J2. Since he was testing something there is a good deal of discussion between us and others watching the game.
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=16748.0

3. I find not loosing the battle for the Pacific is pretty important in AA50. Note that I said not loosing, this does not mean you have to build ships and win control of the Pacific from the US, just that you do not want to loose. This also applies to the US. On this point is where I will give some different advice from Gargantua. If you know your opponent is going to fight in the Pacific by something cheap naval wise every round such as a destroyer. Japan starts with a lead in ships and it can be maintained. If the US starts spending all of its money in the Pacific by just enough units that your navy does not get outclassed. Japan wants to be focusing on taking out Russia. I like to have ICs in Manchuria, Kiangsu, French Indochina, and India. All of these will be producing ground units for Asia and depending on the game Africa with the Indian and French Indochina ICs. Sometimes I even build an IC in Burma. This frees up Japan’s navy from having to protect transports for sending units to Asia and allows it and the transports that were sending units to the mainland from Japan to deal with the US in the Pacific, whether it is retaking captured islands or taking Islands to cancel the US Pacific NO.

4. Italy is a minor power and as such can really only do one thing well. Decide what this is and stick with it. Italy’s choices are, contest Africa, defend France for Germany, or pressure Russia/open the door for German tank attacks. Decide which of these you want/need Italy to do and stick with that. Italy does not have the money or resources in most games to pursue more than one of these.

5.  If you are used to Revised some things have changed. Bombers are now a quite good investment, especially for Germany. They can hit Russia, threaten Allied fleets and conduct bombing raids. This last I do not like risking German bombers on unless the UK’s income is down in the 20s at that point I feel the risk of losing a German bomber is worth the economic damage to a weak UK. Also in Revised it was considered best to set up 4 transports servicing Japan before building ICs on the mainland. That is no longer the case. Japan can also afford to send transports to far flung places like Madagascar and just purchase more that will be where Japan needs them.

I see you mentioning defending Scandinavia, forget about it. The only concern with Scandinavia should be the fighter and bomber that landed in Norway on round one after sinking the UK battleship in seazone 2. Keep some German fighters and bombers in France for the threat to Allied navies and defense. Do not get behind on the buildup of units in France. France is easier to defend than retake. While this will allow Russia to make some initial counter strokes, that is OK since Japan should be building pressure on Russia.

Lastly I have an old thread that has my thoughts on G1 and they have not really changed so I will find it and bump it for you.

I think keeping the US capitol ships in SZ12 may be better with US transports operating out of SZ12 and SZ7 with the UK in SZ7. Yes the UK would have to move down to SZ7 after taking Scandinavia but that should not be a problem. By doing this the US maintains the threat of an invasion on Italy and if forces are needed in Africa the US can just not shuck from Algeria to NW. Europe.

One thing I have found that a German navy does axis_roll is that it tends to keep the UK at home defending for a couple of rounds and it allows quick reinforcement of Karelia. Granted all of my experience so far is in AA50-42 which is a vastly different animal from AA50-41. Occupying the Allies attention for the first few rounds may let the other Axis powers get up and running to take care of Russia.

I really think more experimentation is needed with German Naval builds before they are simply dismissed out of hand.

Good Idea Gargantua, and this has been one of my complaints for a while, too many people just threw their hands up over Allied strategy development early on and stated looking at fixes instead of strategies.

I am not that good of a KGF guy I will admit that. One possible problem I see with this is that the initial US units in the Pacific are not enough to contend with Japan. If Japan is ignored the Allies capturing Germany may not be enough, I have seen that happen. With that said maybe the US should commit some forces to the Pacific to keep Japan honest.

Also what is happening with Africa with this concentration on NW. Europe. Yes I see you calling for a US take down of the Italians but what about Japan? I would assume a smart Japanese player would start nibbling at Africa due to a US Pacific presence that would preclude an easy “Polar Express” approach that would tie up US units bound for Europe.

Please note that I am not trashing this strategy as I really hate when people do that here and rarely share strategies because it seems all you get in response is  “that will never work blah, blah, blah”. It is amusing that people will buts their butts here to denigrate any strategy presented no matter how sound it may be but will never offer any helpful criticisms or suggestions. I was merely pointing out some issues that may need to be addressed.

As far as the IPC questions, with Japan holding Kwangtung, Burma, Borneo, E. Indies and Australia the UK is at 30 IPCs without any NOs figured in. I think it would be safe to figure that the UK would probably be somewhere in the 30s under this strat. What they gain in Scandinavia would probably be offset with additional losses in SW. Asia or Africa. The NOs could also very so I would figure anywhere between 30 and 40. The US is simple without loosing their Pacific NO they will should have Algeria and Libya this gives the US 50 IPCs a turn. If they loose the Pacific NO they also will most likely loose Hawaii so that would be 44 IPCs. I think most of us here would agree that the UK can do quite well with around 30 or more to spend a turn and the income for US is about normal or slightly higher depending on what they may get in Europe (NW, Europe for 2 for example).

Good Thread G. We need to think about what the Allies CAN do in AA50 and quit focusing on what the Axis can do.

I would concur with what maxo said. Last year I had 3 games of AA50-41 and 3 games of AAR against the same opponent and they counted in their respective leagues.

The key to me with the UK is to write off India for the start of the game. There is more money in Africa and an IC in India merely ties down the British. I have found by sending the UK in force across Africa I can confront Japan in Persia with a significant force when the time comes.

I know it is supposedly game over when Germany takes Russia. I have found with the strategy that I use it is not necessarily the case. Japan has been occupied fighting the US and after a few rounds the UK. Italy is not getting NOs so it tends to be irrelevant. What tends to happen is that when Germany does take down Russia it has lost enough units that a stalemate starts to develop. The US has Japan under containment and can start sending forces to Europe to tip the balance in the stalemate.

My Allied play is a slow and methodical approach and I think that this is best used by either side in AA50. In Revised the Allies had the advantage in a long game. Inf AA50 that advantage can go either way and I find the side that has set itself up to play the long game benefits more than the side that tries to do things quick.

China seems to go one of two extremes. Either it is all but eliminated on J1, which means it is doomed by J2 or 3, or it grows and keeps growing. I have had more than one game where I have liberated China and those free infantry added up quickly to something Japan (or even Germany sitting in Moscow) was NOT going to be able to contend with.

I will agree with axis_roll about the importance of sinking the UK ships in SZ12. I also agree that using them against the Italian navy can leave a very bad taste in the UK player’s mouth if it does not go well and it is not a strong attack by the dice odds anyway. If the SZ12 units are not sank that, with SZ9 gives the UK 1 TN 2 DD 1 CA as a core to add units to on UK 1. The UK can purchase 3 INF 1 CV and 1 BB on round 1, which is now a significant fleet that can be added to with just TNs and some DDs as needs require.

Why not just move the troops to East Canada and drop them with US transports protected by the UK fleet?