Nice - that’s the first dumbass kiddie-post I’ve seen in this forum - until now I thought we were all mature. I’m hoping Yanny can delete crap like this?
Thanks for your intelligent contribution to the discussion.
“A clever military leader will succeed in many cases in choosing defensive positions of such an offensive nature from the strategic point of view that the enemy is compelled to attack us in them.” - Moltke
[ This Message was edited by: Ansbach on 2002-05-30 14:09 ]
Ok, below is an example of working from Eastern Canada, which is a much more efficient way to transport troops - I put it in quotes so that it is easier to read the whole thing. This is only meant to show the overall strategy, not be a specific turn-for-turn build, so for simplicity’s sake I have made two assumptions:
1.) Everything is being dropped of in a friendly Ireland, just to show total numbers. In reality, the troops would either be going to Norway, Western Europe, or Algeria based on the specific tactical situation of each turn.
2.) Japan is not going to inturrupt this supply chain. Of couse a good Japanese player will, but covering those responses is a completely different topic. Suffice it to say that the US should deal with the Japanese interference with as little disruption to the strategy below as possible.
1. USA (36 IPCs)
Buy 12 Infantry.
Move Armor to Eastern Canada
US Transport - 2 Infantry to Ireland
Remaining IPCs: 0
Income: 34 IPCs
Total Troops in Ireland: 2 Infantry
Total Troops in Eastern Canada: 1 Armor
Total Troops in Eastern US: 12 Infantry
North Sea: 1 Transport
US East Coast: nothing2. USA (34 IPCs)
Buy: 2 Transports, 6 infantry
Move 12 infantry from Eastern US to Eastern Canada
North Sea Transport - 1 Armor to Ireland
Remaining IPCs: 0
Income: 32 IPCs
Total Troops in Ireland: 2 Infantry, 1 Armor
Total Troops in Eastern Canada: 12 Infantry
Total Troops in Eastern US: 6 Infantry
North Sea: 1 Transport
US East Coast: 2 Transports3. USA (32 IPCs)
Buy: 1 Transport, 8 Infantry
NS Transport - 2 Infantry from Eastern Canada to Ireland
US Transports - 4 Infantry from Eastern US to Ireland
Move 2 Infantry from Eastern US to Eastern Canada
Remaining IPCs: 0
Income: 32 IPCs
Total Troops in Ireland: 8 Infantry, 1 Armor
Total Troops in Eastern Canada: 12 Infantry
Total Troops in Eastern US: 8 Infantry
North Sea: 3 Transports
US East Coast: 1 Transport4. USA (32 IPCs)
Buy: 1 Transport, 8 Infantry
NS Transports - 6 Infantry from Eastern Canada to Ireland
US Transport - 2 Infantry from Eastern US to Ireland
Move 6 Infantry to Eastern Canada
Remaining IPCs: 0
Income: 32 IPCs
Total Troops in Ireland: 16 Infantry, 1 Armor
Total Troops in Eastern Canada: 12 Infantry
Total Troops in Eastern US: 8 Infantry
North Sea: 4 Transports
US East Coast: 1 Transport5. USA (32 IPCs)
Buy: 10 infantry
NS Transports - 8 Infantry from Eastern Canada to Ireland
US Transport – 2 Infantry from Eastern US to Ireland
Move 6 Infantry to Eastern Canada
Remaining IPCs: 2
Income: 32 IPCs
Total Troops in Ireland: 26 Infantry, 1 Armor
Total Troops in Eastern Canada: 10 Infantry
Total Troops in Eastern US: 10 Infantry
North Sea: 5 Transports
US East Coast: nothing6. USA (34 IPCs)
Buy: 10 infantry
Transport 10 Infantry from Eastern Canada to Ireland
Move 10 Infantry to Eastern Canada
Remaining IPCs: 4
Income: 32 IPCs
Total Troops in Ireland: 36 Infantry, 1 Armor
Total Troops in Eastern Canada: 10 Infantry
Total Troops in Eastern US: 10 Infantry
North Sea: 5 Transports
US East Coast: nothingRepeat Turn 6
Now, this isn’t perfect but you get the idea. Ignore the tactical specifics of each turn and think of this as a generic template, then change the strategy to that of your own - hitting Algeria on US2 and Western Europe on US4 with big waves. You can shuffle around the transport buys and get different numbers of troops over to the Western Theater on different turns.
Also, you still don’t have to transport troops every turn if you just want to hit with a giant wave, but working from Eastern Canada will give you the option - which you currently don’t have. Plus you will be able to follow up a big landing with more reinforcements the next turn instead of just sending them back to the US East Coast.
–---------------------------------------
The short version of all this is that if you get your troops to Eastern Canada and deploy from there, you can hit somewhere every turn.
Also, for those of you who are unfamiliar with the Infantry Push on Germany strategy, UK can follow a similar strategy with smaller amounts of infantry and transports. Tag along with the US troops, and send everything along the following route: Norway -> Karelia -> Eastern Europe -> Germany. Unless you are playing with rules to help out the Axis like bidding, you can win 90% of your games this way. It will take a while if Germany is smart and builds mostly infantry, but if they buy too many tanks or send too much to Africa they will fall like a house of cards.
“A clever military leader will succeed in many cases in choosing defensive positions of such an offensive nature from the strategic point of view that the enemy is compelled to attack us in them.” - Moltke
[ This Message was edited by: Ansbach on 2002-05-30 15:33 ]
Constructive criticism: The theory behind the strategy is sound, but the execution is extrememly inefficient. You basically aren’t doing anything with the US on Turns 1,3, and 5!
Another slow turn of building up, but what do you expect from a country half an ocean away from the battlefront? "
Doesn’t that go against the very heart of your ATB strategy - doing as much as possible in as little time as possible?
This goes back to the initial conversation I was having with TM about the inefficient US play she was playing against - by delaying one turn and using Eastern Canada as your staging ground instead, you will be bringing troops to the Front each and every turn. Every turn you send transports back to the US East Coast is a wasted turn by the most powerful country in the game.
Instead of focusing on some of the specific tactical problems above, let’s zoom out and look at the overall strategy:
Basically, you are transporting 20 Infantry and 1 Armor to the Western Front in 5 Turns. At the end of turn 5 you have 8 transports in Eastern US ready to transport 16 infantry. That means on Turn 6 you will have transported 16 more, then, on Turn 7 you will have to go back to Eastern US and deliver more on Turn 8. Delivering troops every other turn, just like TM was talking about.
You can and should be delivering troops with the US on EVERY TURN, either to Norway, Western Europe, or Algeria. Buy Turn 5, it will be at least 10 infantry a turn.
Turns 1-7, you are basically transporting the following: 2,8,0,14,0,16,0
When you could deliver: 2,4,6,8,10,10,10,12 etc
Give me some time to work it out on paper and I will post it for you.
“A clever military leader will succeed in many cases in choosing defensive positions of such an offensive nature from the strategic point of view that the enemy is compelled to attack us in them.” - Moltke
[ This Message was edited by: Ansbach on 2002-05-30 13:41 ]
A South African IC is one of the better options for Japan, to make use of their extra navy while diverting as little forces as possible from the push on Russia. Yanny can correct me if he’s talking about something else, but you can swing around South America very early and tie up the US in the Atlantic for a few turns with a pretty large navy operating out of South Africa. I believe he’s saying your strategy is overly susceptible to it.
Word of warning about those essays - they are a double-edged sword:
Many would say that the infantry transport strategy is what ‘ruins’ Axis and Allies to a certain extent, because once you know it well the game is no longer balanced. You have to start introducing house rules to make it fair for the Axis again! It’s almost like a secret that you don’t want to learn…
It also makes for a long, less exciting game after the first few times you use it. All the other strategies you see on these forums and this website are either strategies from inexperienced players, or “fun” strategies from players who are bored with the standard infantry transport strategy - that’s why so many of them don’t work.
My friends who no longer play standard A&A have a saying: “I’ve already played that game” - in other words, it’s the same game every time.
All that having been said, I don’t want to sound too cynical - you will have a blast for a long time just developing the transport strategy, and the longevity comes from optional rules, playing A&AE or A&AP, or playing around with sub-par strategies trying to get them to work. :smile:
The reason we are all saying that you will have a Japanese fleet is because it is common knowledge that counter-attacking the Japanese fleet on US1 is a bad move. In most games the US can’t even consider counter-striking the Japanese fleet unless there was some kind of freak outcome from the first battle where all the dice went their way, otherwise it is suicide. And that’s not even considering two-hit battleships…
I forgot to add the most important step, although I suppose it is obvious:
Look at the defender and figure out what you would need to make the battle 60/40, compare that against what you actually have, and then don’t attack unless you are ahead in one of the two catagories (assuming you want better than a 60% chance of winning the battle).
If you are ahead in one and behind in the other, it is much better to be ahead in Infantry (say, twice as much infantry) and behind in attacking tanks or planes. When it is the other way around, i.e. you have more attacking pieces but only equal numbers of infantry, then the attack is much riskier because of random luck, even though the odds are the same - the battle can swing against you much easier in one bad round.
Which brings up…
THE GOLDEN RULE OF AXIS AND ALLIES ODDS
The more dice you roll in a battle, the less luck will be a factor!
“A clever military leader will succeed in many cases in choosing defensive positions of such an offensive nature from the strategic point of view that the enemy is compelled to attack us in them.” - Moltke
[ This Message was edited by: Ansbach on 2002-05-28 13:23 ]
Here’s a quick and easy way to evaluate land battles:
IF
The non-infantry units are equal (i.e. attacking tanks = defending fighters)
AND
The attacker has roughly 1.5 times as much infantry as the defender
THEN
The outcome is approximately 60/40 in favor of the attacker.
If you want to add an additional step to make the process more accurate, then do the following:
Classify the battle as small, medium or large based on how many units there are per side, then adjust probability accordingly per the table below:
Small Battle [less than 10] = outcome is roughly 50/50.
Medium Battle [10 to 30] = outcome is roughly 60/40
Large Battle [30+] = outcome is roughly 70/30
This might sound a little complicated written out, but it is actually very quick and simple to do in your head. Obviously this is not perfect but it’s certainly accurate enough to use during the heat of a game.
[ This Message was edited by: Ansbach on 2002-05-28 13:17 ]
You don’t even have to worry about an IC in Australia - ignore it at first, then on J3 just divert your fleet and troops from Burma for one turn and you can flush all of the UKs efforts down the toilet in one move, without skipping a beat on J1 and J2!
On Japan 3 you can hit Australia with 8-10 infantry, 2 Battleships, 1 AC, 2 fighters, 1 bomber, maybe a sub, up to 3 extra fighters if you really wanted to (say if UK did something crazy like spent UK2 and UK3 buying 4 fighters). Honestly, an IC in Australia is the least bang for your buck IC you can buy.
If you really want to be agressive, you can hit them on J2 with the same force as above except for 4 infantry instead of 8-10.
Personally, though, I think kicking them out of Australia that early may be a bad move. It’s probably smarter to just ignore the factory and harass/blockade any navy UK tries to build - the more time and money the UK wastes in Australia, the better it is for the Axis!
Ok TG, I know an IC in Australia is fun, and I’m not trying to be too harsh on you, but two things:
1.) Please play Devil’s Advocate for one minute and tell us how you would take back Australia with Japan - you will quickly see how easy it is, and that an Australia IC is a minor distraction that falls quickly.
2.) Do you realize that you are trying to tell us that the most isolated country on the board, farthest from the action, is one of the best places to put an IC???
“A clever military leader will succeed in many cases in choosing defensive positions of such an offensive nature from the strategic point of view that the enemy is compelled to attack us in them.” - Moltke
[ This Message was edited by: Ansbach on 2002-05-28 14:25 ]
Please tell me you guys are joking about an IC in Australia!!! That has got to be the worst place for an IC in the game!
Well, I tried my strategy out twice this weekend. In general, it works but it takes longer to put the Axis away, as is to be expected I guess. Needless to say, the German player didn’t have too much fun in either game. The one thing that was readily apparent is that you can build up a force of bombers fairly easily - you don’t even come close to losing a bomber a turn until you have 5 or six of them, and even then there were many times when I hit Germany with 6+ bombers and wouldn’t lose a single one. There is more of a luck factor in constant bombing, but with the high numbers of planes and attacks it’s not nearly as much as you think. Of course theoretically you could have some kind of freak round where you lost 4 or 5 bombers in one attack, but that’s A&A for you - no different then a freak round that tips a large battle in the opposite direction.
As for the IC in South Africa - the first time I pushed the troops towards Japan through Persia once Africa was wrapped up. That was basically too slow, although the troops could pack a lot of punch with those bombers backing them up. I never tried it though, I stuck to my plan of bombing Germany every turn no matter what.
The second time I quit using the IC after Africa was taken back and just saved the extra IPCs to buy extra bombers - that probably worked better, as I was buying two bombers every three rounds.
Basically, the strongest part of this strategy is that Germany is totally under your thumb after about the sixth turn. What happens is that Germany is never an offensive threat, but since you only have America shipping troops to Karelia, it takes longer to knock Germany out, which means that Japan threatens Russia more, so you have to divert American troops to Russia, which delays Germany’s fall even longer. However, Germany was never a danger - the delay was just a logistical one, so the real danger was Japan. After Germany has lost Eastern Europe, they basically never build another troop because they always have about 0 IPCs. I was even able to start turning the bombers against Japan in the end of the second game. The next game I am going to turn the UK bombers on the Japanese factories sooner - I think that will be even more effective. The first six always hit Germany and any remainder hit Japan.
A few notes from a psychological perspective: 1.) The German player almost literally doesn’t get to play, so it’s not much fun for them. You think being ganged up on 3 to 1 is no fun, try not getting to buy any new troops. This is a game, and I felt a little bad about that. 2.) It wasn’t that hard to force myself to buy a bomber every turn, even after a couple of bad losses (lost 2 bombers 3 turns in a row one game). 3.) The worst thing about this strategy is fighting the temptation to use the bombers somewhere else every once in a while, especially against Japan. I just had to keep asking myself, “Is that better than knocking 6-8 infantry out of Germany?”
If I were grading this strategy I would give it about a 5 on a scale of 1-10, but I think I can bring it up to about a 7 with some tweaking.
I am also going to try a spinoff strategy, where I plan on switching the bombers to hit Japan as soon as they build a mainland factory. For that strategy I will not be buying an IC in Africa - instead I will use all excess money to send troops to Norway. It will probably be a disaster though. :smile:
…a moved topic about “the Greatest” WWI and WWII pilots…
I only rememember two Richthofen quotes, and not word for word - one was something about the key thing in war is to be aggressive and the air is no exeception, and the other was something about how “serious and dark” the war in the air was, and how it was not at all glamorous.
An interesting fact abour Richthofen that it not that well known - he is always refered to as the “greatest pilot of WWI”, but he was actually not that great of a pilot, even by his own admission - he just had the most kills. He received some criticism by some of the more ‘chivalrous’ German pilots, and as you can tell from that quote above, he thought the whole “Knights of the Air” stuff was a bunch of crap. He credited common sense and not his piloting ability with most of his kills - he only attacked from situations where he and his squadron had the advantage with numbers, altitude, and/or suprise, and his planes (the Albatross D3 and the Fokker DR1 triplane) were significantly better than the Allied planes at the time. One (obviously envious) german pilot, when hearing him called the Hawk of Germany or something like that, said something about him “not being a Hawk, but more like a Buzzard” or something like that. He was a big-time hunter before the war and it was his hunting mentality that helped him rack up so many kills.
Although that does kind of shatter the ‘typical’ view of the Red Baron, to me rather than being a knock on the guy, it just shows his intelligence!
Also, as I’m sure many of you know, there was a similar situation with all of the top aces of WWII like Hartmann and the other German pilots - although they were certainly good pilots, they are quite a bit overrated - they all fought in the Eastern Front against VASTLY inferior Russian planes and had a ton of “easy” kills - like shooting fish in a barrel - as opposed to the pilots in the Western Front and Pacific where every kill was hard-fought and well earned.
The Eastern Front pilots had about three times as many kills as the pilots in the Western Front - I think Hartmann had around 350 and the highest Western Front pilot had 100?
Something like that.
[ This Message was edited by: Ansbach on 2002-05-26 10:26 ]
Chris - yeah, Patton is probably the best source of kick-a$$ quotes there is! He ruled!
Guess I should have guessed the Red Baron first, eh?
TG, I moved this thread to the Gen Dis board since it’s off topic.
[ This Message was edited by: Ansbach on 2002-05-26 10:19 ]
Good question… I hadn’t thought about it.
Well, it won’t be 9 for very long because you will lose India and North Africa at first, probably Australia soon, etc. I will also want to buy a tank every once in a while, but I guess if I can save up enough or if Africa is secure I will try to buy 2 bombers every chance I get, probably about every third turn or so? Or, maybe start buying subs or something in South Africa to harass Japan? Fighters in England to send to Russia?
The smartest thing to do would probably be to use the remaining IPCs to send small amounts of Infantry to Norway/Karelia to bolster the US troops, but I am trying to have a little fun with this and still make it viable at the same time.
I should probably try to take full advantage of the South African factory - what’s the best way to harass Japan from a South African IC? Island hop, sub attacks, or push troops through the middle east towards India?
“A clever military leader will succeed in many cases in choosing defensive positions of such an offensive nature from the strategic point of view that the enemy is compelled to attack us in them.” - Moltke
[ This Message was edited by: Ansbach on 2002-05-24 09:02 ]
I had an idea last night for a slightly crazy, somewhat abstract UK strategy that combines two questionable tactics:
Strategic Bombing Runs and a South African Factory.
The basic idea is to constantly bomb Germany and secure Africa. The UK will buy a bomber every turn, strategic bomb Germany every turn, and use the leftover IPCs to buy troops for Africa.
UK1 - Buy a Bomber and Factory. Retreat Indian Forces to South Africa and Canadian Tank to West Africa (vs German Inf).
UK2 - Buy a Bomber and two troops for South Africa, save the rest.
UK3+ - (Repeat)
Obviously this is not the best strategy for the UK, but theoretically it should work. If it gives the Allies a 50%+ chance of winning I’ll be happy. You have to believe SBRs are a good idea, and it will take a lot of discipline to stick to the game plan - it will be very tempting to give up the strategy the first time you lose 2+ bombers to AA fire!
It does free up the US from worrying about Africa so they can - and will have to - concentrate 95% of their effort on getting tons of infantry to Europe ASAP - there won’t be time to screw around.
I am going to try it tonight - we’ll see what happens. Any thoughts?
On the topic of sigs… TG - I noticed the end of yours is mispelled:
“…crate that truly…”
:wink:
Who is that quote from, by the way? I’ve never heard it, I just knew that crates=WW1 planes…
[ This Message was edited by: Ansbach on 2002-05-24 07:29 ]
“No Bastard ever won a war by dying for his country; he won it by making the other poor dumb Bastard die for his country.”
If you are playing against other new players, then the Axis can certainly win. The game really isn’t unbalanced until you get the advanced level of the game.
In addition to the Russia Restricted rule, I highly recommend playing with another common variant as well: the 84 IPC victory rule for the Axis, but no IPC victory is allowed for the Allies. This keeps the Allies from being too stagnant/passive and playing ‘infantry buildup’.
An important clarification: I’m not talking about sending only 4 infantry - this is an additional 4 infantry… make your stand in Novo and you can keep Yakut and Sinkang as dead zones for an extra turn, possibly two if the Japan player’s not top-notch.