Posts made by chompers

I dunno, without the Japs having some real teeth to their starting army (perhaps not in the form of 5 billion planes) they won’t be able to keep pace with the US economy and will fall far short of Moscow in the same time frame that the Allies are crushing Europe.

I have no problem with them remaining relevant as long as they have to spend some IPC’s to do so.  As it stands, they don’t (at least not in Africa)

Even without the UK1 attack Italy has close to a snowball’s chance in hell of taking Egypt with a few extra fighters from India landing to back it up.

@eddiem4145:

The purpose of AA is not to force the game to take a historical route, but to start the game with an accurate historical representation of what was at that time. Then change history from that point. Italy taking over Africa is ridiculous. You are not playing Italy then, but some other power in it’s place with the same name.

Italy to me serves as a tool to not allow Germany to be so consolidated unlike the traditional game. Again, it is about getting Germany there to help.

I am in my first game. By the 10th game or so, I will probbably have more to say on this subject and hopefully a KISS suggestion on how to balance the game if it indeed ends up being broken.

This is nowhere near as ridiculous an outcome as the Japanese overrunning all of mainland Asia and striking for Moscow.  It would have made for a more compelling game evn if Italy had just a 50/50 chance of pulling off a win in Egypt.  They still would have to deal with the South African IC as well as the US landing in Africa.  It would by no means be a done deal.

Italy got shut down by the Indian air force 4 of those games, and once by the UK fleet blowing up the Italians the first couple turns.

Shouldn’t they have at least left Italy a chance to achieve an ahistorical outcome though?  It’s completely impossible outside of hoping for a massive dose of dice luck currently.

5 games.

4 allied wins and 1 draw that in retrospect would probably have resulted in a 5th allied win.

Deciding factors:  Bad G1 dice luck, virtually unassailable US economic base.

@plumsmugler:

@bugoo:

1. Control of Gibralter.  There are many ways for germany to get boats into the med.  If both G and I have boats in the med and transports, they can continually trade gibralter to prevent the allies from entering the med.

I totally agree.  Based on the Straights of Gibraltar rule, it is much wiser for Italy to either hold Gibraltar or trade it back and forth.  This way they don’t have to have a mega-fleet to offset the American one.  They will still need some boats to protect their transports from air attack but they don’t need an uber-fleet.

How is it possible for Germany have the points to do all this plus hold off the Russians and cover West Germany/Denmark against the brits?  Where does Italy find the pts to do Gibraltar trading if it’s stuck at 10-14 pts and it’s fleet is sitting at the bottom of the Med?  The US can come at Gibraltar on T4 with 150 pts of fleet and units with more arriving each successive turn.  It looks wiser to me to have Germany concentrate its army in W Germ, Denmark and South Germany to counterattack after any allied landing and to just say to hell with Gibraltar.

Both the Leningrad and Stalingrad complexes are minor, and both cannot be upgraded as they’re sitting in 2-pt provinces.  Moscow is the only province in all of Russia that has the capability to churn out 10 units per turn.  This is the fundamental problem to a German offensive into Russia.  In order to have any sort of advantage going in, you need a considerably bigger stack than the Russians have at the time in order to expect any reasonable chance of success.  There’s simply no way to do this that doesn’t cripple Germany’s ability to fight the other allies.

@purplebaron:

Playing my first game tonight, so everything I have is speculation, but I suspect the key against Russia will be Mech infantry.

For the cost of a minor factory (12 IPCs), you can upgrade 12 infantry to mech infantry, this represents 4 turns of production, and the once the front is two territories into Russia, the mech inf will get there faster than units produced in Romania, for example.

I expect a typical turn purchase (Assuming a non-sea lion strategy) to look something like:
~12 ipcs on navy or air force (two subs or a plane of some type)
1 tank
4 inf
4 mech inf

Total: ~46 IPCs (typical turn 2-4 income)

The tank and mech inf are dedicated to the Russian front.  Some of the regular infantry will go towards building up coastal territories, the rest will go on the transport to either Scandinavia or the Baltic Russian front.

I believe, with regards to German purchases for a battle w/ Russia, that anything bought for such a purpose must be viewed through the perspective of “Is it more effective on the attack than the 10 inf Russia will be placing each turn?”.  Even throwing out the fact that Russia will have a close to decisive advantage in numbers early on against any combination of of purely mech/tanks the Germans can throw at em, I think they can stall an attack like that by virtue of their purchases alone.

Yup, it’s true.

Furthermore, any IC building or upgrading done early-game as Germany IMHO in order to shorten travel time for newly purchases units is done at the cost of lowering the number of units you’re initially going into Russia with.  This is why I’m not sold on that being a cost-effective solution for the Russian problem.  Perhaps using transports as shuttles to Leningrad might be a way around that, but that doesn’t seem to swing the odds enough to make a German offensive anything more than a limited one.

I tried a German push into Russia G2 by skimping on tanks into France G1 and using my air-force to make up the difference while purchasing 3 tank 3 mech.  You can take Leningrad very easily but the offensive loses steam afterward. This also leaves the majority of the brit fleet alive so you gotta be very creative in order to adequately defend against allied landings.  Seems too risky to do in future games, G3 looks like the earliest you could possibly pull it off and the question remains whether it’s even worth it to do any sort of aggressive push into Russia as Germany has so much to do already (try and keep the allied fleets honest w/ naval and/or air purchases, try and save Italy in the Med, prepare a large army in case the US decides to go all-in on Atlantic) with a limited economy that will actually lose IPC’s the first turn of attack into Russia.  Russia doesn’t even ened to worry about the Japs showing up around Moscow till further into the game and can afford to stop the Germans in their tracks with inf walls and then turn around and march back to Moscow to thwart Japan. Holding out for someone more creative than I to come up with some sort of strategy to make this more than a high-risk low probability of success move.

You’re not an idiot at all and your plan has its merits, but using the Lutwaffe in force on 110 could critically weaken your attack on France (I personally don’t feel comfortable going in there without at least an extra 2 plans to swing the odds further in your favor but that’s just my playstyle) and perhaps even more importantly it leaves the Battleship and Cruiser in 111 unscathed (the cost of rebuilding said units is probably about a wash with comparison to the convoy disruption you could reasonably expect to pull off).  Meanwhile, the other half of the Italian fleet dies the following turn, giving them effectively zero chance of taking Egypt as the Indian fighters land to reinforce it.  All of this is dwarfed by the fact that around turn 5 the American Mega Fleet of Doom is knocking on the door to Rome and Italy is completely incapable of marshalling the forces to stop it even if it plays flawlessly up to this point.  Believe me, I’m not whining and I hope it doesn’t come off sounding like it I am.  I think most of the concerns raised here so far are pretty valid and part of the beginning stages of balancing the game.  Italy has some serious issues accomplishing any of its objectives due to a weak starting position, weak economy, and the fact that it takes its turn after GB.

Whereas I agree that understanding the game in its entirety will take many many hours of play, it’s very hard to find a silver lining for the Axis in this situation.  I’ve had the game since Thurs and have played 6 games and counting so far.  Each one Italy has been quickly and efficiently shut down with very little effort through a variety of means.  This is arguably the best way to do it, and there’s not really any downside to the move that I can see personally.  I would absolutely love to be proven wrong.

GB can easily afford to sink the SZ 95 fleet in a statistically fairly high probability attack while purchasing 9 inf their first turn thus negating any reasonable chance of a G2 sea lion.  They’ll need the inf down the road anyway for landings in Europe so it’d not like you’re forcing them into making a sub-optimal purchase, whereas Germany’s blowing about 25% of its starting IPC’s on a mostly useless transport.

Not to mention there’s no point using the word convoy in the description of the NO if it involves a convoy-less sea zone.

Hey, I’m down for anything that makes the European theater more compelling so I hope you’re right.  You sure about it being sea zone 127 though?  There’s no convoy symbol in that sea zone, while there is one in 125.

Nope, a DOW on Japan activates the Russian 5 IPC bonus.

5 IPC’s if the Soviet Union is at war, the convoy in sea zone 125 is free of Axis warships, Archangel is controlled by the Soviet Union, and there are no Allied units in Russia.

If they meant for that rule to apply to only European Axis, they left it out of the rulebook.  I’m hoping its a misprint, because otherwise its kinda a no-brainer.

An extra plane or two is all you really need. The Russians don’t really have to worry much about concerning the Germans as the Russian player can easily purchase 10 inf in Moscow every turn along with a toy or two (assuming of course the Russian player declares war on Japan R1 and picks up those extra 5 IPC’s, a move I have yet to see any downside to) thus stalling the Germans about 2-3 provinces into Russia tops as their line of reinforcement stretches.  This also draws the bulk of the German army out of Europe making it even easier for the US and Brits to make a combined landing in force.  The main problem I see with this game so far is the European Axis’s complete lack of ability to press an offensive into Russia with any hope of success.  Their forces are either forced to retreat or die assaulting 70 or so russian inf supported by a handful of 3’s and 4’s.

I agree, but I also think their are far more efficient ways for the Allies to slow the japs down ( chinese inf stack supported by a russian AA gun, australia banking its points for a few turns and then unleashing waves of subs into the pacific, backing up those 18 russian inf w/ a couple extra 3’s and 4’s etc etc).  Anywho, don’t wanna hijack this guy’s thread anymore :)