Posts made by APolaris

In this topic I think it’s pointless to talk about how hard any capital is to capture. In theory, all should be impossible in a game less than 50 rounds if players used all their money on buying infantry for their capitals every round, because of the sheer fact that no one country can get more units to another capital in less than 2-3 turns from their own (exception: UK to Germany). In that amount of time the player could stack many more infantry than the person could get to his/her capital on time. So we can’t talk about how hard any capital is to take because in theory all of them should be impossible.

Therefore I think we need to talk about what the guy asking the question asked: who racks up the most IPCs and capital kills. In this aspect I find Germany to be the deadliest since they can wage war against Russian territories on land, can get all of their builds to make attacks without ships, and generally reach a much higher production rate than Russia does. But that is obviously far from meaning Germany will beat Russia every time. I just think they kill the most units in the majority of games by my experience.

Always destroy all British and American ships you can with Germany, and only if you desperately want to hit Karelia this turn should it be an exception - and then, only if there’s a chance you’ll keep at least enough land units to hold the territory anyway or you’ll be better off hitting ships anyway. The way I do it: If the French sub survives have hit hit the US transport so it can’t attack Africa or Europe this turn. French fighter always hits the British transport off Canada’s coast (I do this even is the Russian transport goes to back it up, on rare occasions I may include the fighter from Finland-Norway). One fighter against the Med. battleship since I use the battleship and transport to hit Africa or Caucasus depending on the board position, and the odds are good enough for me to take that kind of risk (you will take down the battleship in more than half of all combats, and even though it often costs the fighter it’s better than losing a battleship or the only transport that gives access to Africa, Caucasus and Middle East in my opinion. Remaining fighters should I think join the bomber and, if it somehow survived the Russian turn, the sub in the Baltic Sea.
The transport in the baltic sea I view as flexible in the rare event that, like the sub, it survives the Russian turn. If you can attack Karelia it might be useful to transport 2 infantry with it. Otherwise I’d use it as “Cannon Fodder” agains the Royal Navy just to save planes; the more planes you keep the more you can kill ships again or use them in land attacks, and it would just get killed by the British planes anyway so it’s not useful past the first turn.
If all of this happens it does more than take down ships - it allows you to attack Karelia more easily. Why is that? Because if Britain and the US both cannot attack France you might as well throw all of your land units first turn into Eastern Europe, since Western needs no defense until the next turn. As always you can take the tanks from WE and move them to EE, but more importantly, you can move all infantry from Germany and, if any remain, Italy, to EE instead of having to move them to WE and WE is still easily possible to defend the next turn. I even go so far as to attack the British navy turn 2 or even 3, if I have planes left and they build one up, simply because, even though I’m trading planes for transports, I’m doing more: I’m keeping Britain from doing anything at all to Europe, thereby forcing Russia into a land war with Germany. They should lose this if Japan does its job right. And ALWAYS keep the bomber until last unit. Why? Because if it lands in WE it can hit American transports being built, bomb UK or Russian factories, or be used in European and African attacks in addition to helping with hitting the Royal Navy a second time… forcing the US to reconsider before using a simple build transports/infantry strategy in EUSA.

Since I don’t drive my usual game is me and my dad. But I did once play an interesting A&A Europe game (I’m not too fond of the Europe one, I prefer the original vastly) between myself, my father, his friend Jack and Jack’s young son Tommy. Jack and my father are easily the two most skilled so dad took Germany and Jack took Russia (originally I drew the lot to play Russia but I dislike it strongly in A&A: E), while I played the UK and we gave Tommy the USA. The result was a certainly unique game with play by advanced players (my father and Jack), an intermediate player (myself), and a player just learning the game (Tommy). This made a very interesting game except that Tommy got bored because he didn’t get to do an awful lot for the first 2 turns. My point being that more players spread out over various levels can make good games - and a few poor but rather entertaining ones too. Once I played with myself as the Axis, my father as the US, some kid from our scout troop as the UK and a kid with A.D.D. as Russia (he volunteered for the spot…) So yeah, I ended up winning in 2 turns but the point is we had a really fun game! Afterwards we played again with the scouting kid (who was also just learning the game) as the U.S. and my father as the other allies, and me as the Axis, and the game ended up balanced but still fun for all 3 of us (my father and I for our usual rivalry and the scout for a learning experience for a game he grew to love). So yeah, I say not only is more players better, but so is varying skill levels… ideally I think the most entertaining game experience overall would be having an advanced and an intermediate player play the axis, and a beginner and otherwise intermediate to advanced players playing the allies. Teaching is part of what makes this game fun sometimes, and so is seeing what new idea someone comes up with next!

I have to add there is one exception to the rule about not being able to do this… when you’re playing against those phenomenally stupid computer opponents from the cd. Just now for fun I decided to see just how badly they would lose against that idea, and, without techs, ended up capturing the UK on turn two with Germany, and the US on turn 3… with Germany. Without fighting a single unit except a transport, in the US’s case. I think when they released the cd game, they INTENDED for you to be able to beat it with minimal effort or something… I’ve noticed it practically lets you take Russia by turn 2 or 3 with Germany and lets you practically take Germany on turn 2 or 3 with pretty much whoever you want. I wonder if a version with computer opponents as strong as the people we’re used to playing could be made? Nah, they’d probably not do that because of the lack of popular demand. People don’t like their games to be challenging enough these days… sigh

@UKcommander:

I’ve seen it done on the first move, but the second move is probably a more likely scenario. Against a good UK player, it’s probably really hard. However, I don’t believe it’s impossible.

I find the “first move” thing pretty doubtful against any but the dumbest of Allied players. Only one transport can even theoretically reach the UK, so as long as Russia takes it out with his plane (which should always be done in my opinion) Germany has nothing to make a direct assault with. Even if you are playing RR however, you need to kill the British fleet before attacking. With RR you can hit with 2 subs and as many planes as you need; I think the ideal attack on first round would be the fighters from Ukraine, EE and Germany (since none of these can reach UK anyway) plus the two subs against the UK/Russian fleet (Russian players on RR do generally move their sub & transport to either North Sea or Canada at least, right?) and then hit the mainland with 2 infantry (a tank gives too few hit-taking capability), the bomber from Germany and the fighters from WE and Finland. That’s 5 units, all of the amount that even have potential to reach the UK: two 1’s, two 3’s and a 4. But to take UK the 3’s and 4’s must take the hits first. This is against three 2’s, two 4’s and a 1, not to mention AA shots (3 1’s in the early play. Not only does the UK have better hitting rate all around, it would take 6 hits to finish them while it would take only 5 to kill Germany’s troops.

Doubtful about an outcome? Consider a case with dead-average rolling: Ger 2 Inf 2 Ftr 1 Bmb UK 2 Inf 1 Arm 1 Bmb 2 Ftr. On average Germany should hit twice taking off the infantry and the UK should hit 2 or 3 times finishing at minimum the German fighters, so even if he hits only twice the UK is left with two inf and a bmb, against an arm, bmb and 2 ftr. Pressing the attack (AA retreat is impossible) Ger hits maybe once while UK will hit once or twice leaving Ger with only inf against the UK’s planes, a probably impossible situation. Using bids I suppose the buying transports thing is impossible, but personally I’ve always found the whole bids thing kind of cheap. Besides, the question was to take UK in original A&A rules, not to take UK in a game with bids. Playing with RR is help enough for Germany to at least get some kind of advantage.

I don’t know about that, MuthaRussia… even if Germany can get heavy bombers, they need a way to get at least one surviving land unit in on the attack. Now if you mean using heavy bombers to wipe out the British units on a turn, then to start building sea units once the UK has no planes left, that’s all well… but you still have to consider whether the US or Russia would have planes in a safer territory like Karelia. If so, Germany has no chance to build any transports and can’t land an infantry or tank unit, without which a territory cannot be captured. This would also require the Germans to spend money on both bombers and transports. Can they really afford to do so while locked in constant battle with Russia and defending against the US simultaneously? I doubt it.