Posts made by ChocolatePancake

@cyanight:

I think the French DD plays a huge role in blocking of the DEI.  Move the French DD to SZ 58 and then to SZ 43 (Borneo) to block.  Move the India DD to sz 37 (Malaya), USA DD in sz 35 (Philippines) and ANZAC DD to sz 45 (Dutch New Guinea) for a complete umbrella over the DEI.

I love this plan! I hadn’t thought of moving the French DD to 58 then 43, and completing the block with the Anzac and USA.
Of course, this won’t work if Japan goes to war round 2. If, as Japan, you saw this blocking maneuver coming, would you go to war round 2 just so you could get the islands earlier?

Admittedly, France is not exactly the most important power to play perfectly. If you never move a french unit the entire game, it is still entirely possible to win with the Allies.
I’ve seen a number of players in our group hardly ever try to do anything with the french units. They just stick them into a stack of British units on London & Cairo and merge their surviving fleet units into the rest of the allied fleet and just leave them there as cannon fodder.

However, used properly they can be quite helpful, so I created this thread to discuss the possible uses of the various french units scattered around the game board.

France’s main problem of course is that by the time they get to go, almost all of their stuff is destroyed.

First, Normandy. It is pretty common for that infantry and artillery to survive round 1.
If you leave them there, then next turn they will almost certainly get killed, either by the Germans or the Italians. On defense, you are almost never going to get a chance to kill anything more valuable than a mech infantry, and usually it’s just a regular infantry.
So, I like to go on the offensive with these guys. Especially when Germany doesn’t build a carrier on round 1, then it has to usually land at least 1 plane in Holland. I once played against someone who landed a bunch of German planes in Holland, and didn’t move in anything else to support them. I, of course, attacked and got lucky snake eyes, killing two planes. My opponent was not amused.
More commonly, the German player will move some AAA into Holland to protect his planes from this scenario. In this case, I still attack every time because AAA are worth more than an infantry or mech.
If the German player leaves Holland empty, and there is nothing worthwhile to attack, I still move in 1 unit to Holland as this inevitable pisses off whoever is playing Germany.

Second, the North African units. Some people like to leave them all spread out and make Italy attack each one in order to take those territories.
What I like to do sometimes is bunch them up in Morocco or Algeria and send the fighter down from London to support them. This usually stops Italy in its tracks.

That fighter in London is probably the most important unit France has on the board. You can send it down to Gibraltar onto a British built airbase there. You can put it in North Africa. You can land it on a carrier. You can fly it all the way to Moscow.
Probably the most useful thing I’ve seen it do is to stay in range of SZ92 to attack any Italian blocker that gets put there. It can really hurt the Italians when they think they have another round to protect Rome after putting a destroyer in 92, only to immediately have it destroyed by that pesky French fighter.
Same with anything put out by Germany into 110 or 104.

Lastly, the destroyer in SZ72. I’ve seen it go entire games just sitting next to Egypt. This seems wasteful to me. I often like to send it to India. Makes me feel better about sending the whole Pacific British fleet back towards the Med, and it can be very useful as a blocker over there. Or you can send it around Africa and have it join the rest of the Allied fleet in the Atlantic. Use it for cannon fodder there, or, again, to help bust open blockers put out by Italy & Germany.

One last thing I’ve thought about doing, but never done, is to march the Infantry in Syria all the way up to Moscow. Send it with the fighter and he can help kill any annoying Italians trying to take out your blitz blockers. Or just help defend Moscow.

Anyway, what do you guys do with France?

@ItIsILeClerc:

Thanks for clearing it up, knp and Pancake.
Although I am none the wiser because you said different things ;-). Nvm though, it is not really important.

On topic again, I can only somewhat repeat myself with a little correction: 12-20 turns in [?variable amount] hours, if the allies managed to stay alive and to keep the game undecided up to turn 7.

Sorry, I wasn’t communicating what I meant very well. knp has it right.

I use Skelly’s app too. It’s fantastic.

Yeah, I think we both are saying the same thing :)

Well, yes, obviously those things are cheating. No quotation marks needed.
That’s just the point I was trying to make. Those sorts of things are obviously cheating, but using a battle calculator is not.

Actually, yes, I have seen that many units make a big difference in the battle calculation for a large battle.

Using a battle calc is not cheating, and it’s ridiculous to say that it is. ‘Accidentally’ producing 11 units from a major factory or moving a plane an extra space or things like that are cheating. Calculating your odds of winning is just smart.

I like how it is used in our group. It improves the quality of play because it helps people make less bad moves. And it helps bridge some of the gap between experienced players and newer players.
If you want to forbid its use in your face to face games, that’s fine, but in our group I would only get upset if someone was using it for every single fight and was taking forever.

Yeah, in my experience using the battle calc actually makes things go faster. You can spend your time adding up all the troops, doing a poor estimation in your head, etc, or you can just calculate it and it makes the decision a lot easier. Generally shortens the game in my experience.
Granted, there are some people that insist on not using it and just going by their gut feeling, but I’ve found that those people often end up losing.

Wow, he gave up after round 1? That kind of sucks. I wouldn’t want to play with someone like that. The game is still very much winnable for the allies at that point. Even if you did get rather lucky, it’s not that unlikely that you win all of those battles.

Well, if you are lucky enough to keep the 97 fleet, even if you have to keep all your fleet hiding in 97 under air cover, at least then you aren’t getting convoy raided to death there. So that’s something useful they are doing at least :)

That’s how we play tac bomber’s too. Even if the naval and airbases are fully damaged, you can still go on the raid, and they are still shot at by AAA.
It’s just territories like, say, Ukraine that don’t have a naval or airbase that you couldn’t send them on a raid.

I most commonly buy Tacs with Germany. Especially the round before I plan to attack Moscow, I always try to get 3 in Novgorod to help out, but I find them to be regularly useful with Germany.
For one, Germany usually has lots of tanks and is on the offensive. Tacs pair really well with your tanks and can catch up with a highly mobile force of tanks & mechs to give you a lot of extra punch.
Granted, I don’t usually buy a LOT of them, maybe 3-5 over the first 6 rounds, but I find them useful. If I can, I like to find the extra 1 IPC to get a strategic bomber though.

With Japan, since they start with so many already, I rarely buy them, and when I do, it’s usually only to replace losses.

With USA, I will buy them when I’m going heavy on the offensive in the Pacific. When I do that, I like to get an even number of fighters & tacs on my carriers for maximum offensive punch. Even so, this usually only means an investment of 3 tacs in the first couple of rounds. Once your carriers are full, and you don’t need TOO many carriers usually, then I find bombers to be a much more effective buy.

I can’t remember ever buying a tac with any other power, except maybe near the end of a game just for fun.

Does a Japanese SBR on a Russian air base built in Amur activate the Mongolians?

@Young:

Why are we talking about the “War with the True Neutrals” as an axis strategy? Invading Spain with the Americans could possibly be the only Allied strategy that will win them games on a consistent basis. Now if you want to talk about the war on how quickly each side can get those neutrals, or the losses each side would sustain for clashing over such territories, than I would like to hear those arguments.

Can you possibly point me to a save game file where the USA does this successfully? I’ve been thinking for a while about doing this in my game group, and would like to see how others have pulled it off.

A strategy of spending most of the USA’s money to kill Japan can certainly work, I’ve just found that it isn’t usually necessary.
A lot really does depend on what Germany/Italy do and how well the UK can bottle up Italy.

If Germany goes G1, and Japan waits until, say, round 3, I’ve found that spending heavily in the Atlantic can be very effective. It really depends on what the Axis does as to how I decide to allocate the USA money.

In my experience, you are correct about the Pacific. USA just needs to spend enough there to keep Japan from taking Hawaii or Sydney.

On the Europe side, Germany shouldn’t be able to take London on turn 2 ever unless the UK player just abandons it. To even have a chance, Germany would have to build all transports on turn 1, and then UK could just easily build max infantry in London, not move any units out, move the Scotland units in and Germany would have little or no chance of taking it.

In the Mediterranean, usually the UK destroys most of Italy’s fleet before Italy has a chance to use it. Sometimes they get lucky and are able to destroy the rest of the UK fleet on their turn, but usually it seems to require Germany to help finish off the UK fleet.

Generally though, yes, if the USA is unwise and ineffective, then the Allies will usually lose. If they invest nothing in either the Pacific or Europe sides, the Axis should be able to win fairly easily on that side most of the time.

One idea I’ve also toyed with is using the India transport to grab Persia on round 1, and crushing the Ethiopians with the Egypt transport at the same time. I just have a hard time giving up that sweet sweet island money.

If you don’t have a factory in Persia, I would get one there asap (assuming you can hold it). Build Mechs/Tanks out of Persia and South Africa until you are able to retake and hold Egypt.
Egypt should be your #1 priority as long as London isn’t seriously threatened.
You also have the option of building a transport+inf+art in South Africa to get reinforcements into Egypt in 1 round.

I agree. I’ve never had any real problem with dealing with those Italian units round 2 or later. On the other hand, I’ve found that getting a Persia factory up on round 2 can be critical to stopping the Germans.

No, Mongolia is all or nothing.

If you have a Kinko’s type place nearby, you can just take your external hard drive there, and they can usually print and laminate stuff for you right there (for a price of course).