Posts made by I like Ike

Not trying to say your wrong or stir up trouble tin_snip……But it seems to me that the Axis can get there a lot easier.  By Jenn’s numbers it’s 3-1 in favor, and by bigdog’s it’s 2-1, for the the Axis.  So if we factor that out to 100 games (I know big jump), that would work out to 75-25 and 66-33 in favor of the Axis.

@wodan46:

If Britain builds Bombers, then you can go secure the seas around the United Kingdom easily, whereupon Britain will never be able to invade you.  Since invasion is no longer a concern, you can then return the focus to crushing Russia.

There’s one problem, you just gave Russia 2 rounds of much needed time to gain Territory, Units, and IPC’s.

@wodan46:

Why would I build more German Subs?  I already have 8.  At this point, Germany should probably switch to massing Infantry and Bombers.  7 Infantry and 2 Bombers is about right.

Because you said in your post above to mass subs on G2 (just like you did on G1).  So now your going to go almost exclusively Infantry?  Sounds pretty defense to me.  But that’s probably a good call because on UK2 and US2 turn……you’ll need to get everyone in their bomb shelters.  (Better hope they’re not HB’s)

@wodan46:

First turn, Japan should sink all of its IPCs into Research Chart 2.  By the time it collects some real money on the following turn, it will probably have a tech, and it can mass appropriately.  If they get Super Subs, Radar, or nothing, they should probably invest in some Subs to keep Americans away.  If they get Improved Shipyards, they should crush the US with a more conventional fleet, and anything else they should focus on abusing their uber air force instead.

Ummmm nope, you said on J1 to spend everything on that massive 2 sub fleet.

@wodan46:

Then Japan sinks the American fleet, and either invades West US or goes back to ignoring America and pounding Russia.

OK sinks the American fleet with what? Transports?  You just spent all your IPC’s on Tech?  And if your going to sink my American fleet (which is subs)  how you gonna do that without Destroyers?  That tactic sounds familiar…now where did I hear that?  :wink:  Also how is Japan gonna pound Russia if you’re sinking all your IPC’s in Tech dice and Subs?  In order to pound Russia you gotta buy ground forces and Transports and keep shipping to the mainland.

@wodan46:

Here are some strategies for Subs
Germany1: You mass the Subs in a single stack, while using Destroyers or Cruisers as shields.  For Germany, this would consist of building 1 Cruiser and 3 Subs first turn, use the Luftwaffe to kill the Destroyer in Sea Zone 6, then retreating the Subs to the Baltic Sea.  You now have a fleet of 6 Subs and 2 Cruisers, which if attack the British Airforce, will use the Subs to soak up hits (as a result, the British are unlikely to bother.  Land the Fighters on Western Europe and Norway.  On the second turn, you move the Cruisers to Sea Zones 7 and 3, and the Sub stack to Sea Zone 6, sending additional Subs as fodder if Zones 7 and 3 are occupied (unlikely).  The Sub stack can now hit anything around the United Kingdom, with 2 Fighters apiece able to hit Sea Zones 2 and 8, while the British fleet can’t.

Germany2: You mass Subs in the Baltic Sea, though building Bombers would also be useful.  Destroy any unit that enters Sea Zone 7, 6, or 3.  If it is a small force or a singular unit, send a single Sub along with a Bomber, which should be enough.  Doing this ensures that any Allied Invasion fleet will only get to invade once, before they are all sunk.  From a technical standpoint, you don’t really need many Subs for this strategy, the only difference between them and Bombers is that Bombers can also be used against Russia, but have half the hit soaking ability.  As a result, you would probably build a good mixture of the two.

Japan1: Build a large fleet of Subs, then scatter them across the Pacific, with no more than 1 Sub per space that is within range of a Destroyer.  This will force America to mass mainly Destroyers or be overwhelmed, and Destroyers are in turn useless for actually invading Japan or East Asia.

Keep in mind that the purposes of these strategies is primarily to stall invasions by Britain and America, and secondarily to sink their fleets so as to eventually give the option of invading them.  So long as that is true, Russia can’t be expected to hold even Eurasia, let alone Africa or Oceania.  They have 25 or so IPCs a turn.  The Axis will have about 125 IPCs a turn.  If they can stall out America and Britain with 75 IPCs, they can easily crush Russia with the remainder.

So on G1 your going to mass subs, then on R1 I’m going to counter with armor for the counter attack on Germany since your not reinforcing the lines.  Then on UK1 I’m stocking up on Bombers so I can bomb Germany and Italy to the Stone Age.

G2: to my delight you built more German subs so I’ll just keep building Russian tanks and UK Bombers and possibly tech dice.

J1:  If we’re playing '41 17 bucks is only gonna get you 2 subs, so I wouldn’t consider that a large fleet.  Even if you buy them that doesn’t force America into buying Destroyers.  America can counter with subs just the same.  While Japan is busy stocking up on subs to scatter around the Pacific, I’ll just buy some bombers and tech dice to help out the UK in crippling the German war machine.

@Cmdr:

I am currently toying with a German submarine fleet.  Filmatleven on whether it works out or not though.

Funny  :lol:

@wodan46:

@I:

@wodan46:

If Germany uses Subs to full effect, the the seas around Britain, and possibly the whole Atlantic, will be empty of allied ships, because whenever they are built, they are immediately sunk by Subs

Are subs now attacking at a 4 and I missed it?  Because when you say immediately sunk by Subs you are making an assumption that the Subs will score a hit first strike hit by rolling a 2.

No, I mean that whenever Britain builds a fleet, the Subs immediately attack it.  This means that in addition to having the best HP per IPC ratio, they will also have the best Attack per IPC ratio, and possibly get first strike as well.  Germany’s Bomber and Fighters will support as well, making it even more of an overkill.

Also, even if Subs fail to stop a fleet, they will at the very least make Britain mass Destroyers, which have no anti-ground abilities whatsoever.

I would think that if a German player is concentrating on building German subs and using the Luftwaffe for Sub support instead of ground support, Russia will be able to counter attack and press Germany.  The longer Russia hangs around, the better the chance the Allies will win a drawn out war.  IMO.

@Cmdr:

Got my tallies from just this site.  (Since other games cannot possibly be confirmed and I don’t want silly people like axis trying to say I’m lying or making stuff up, we all know how much he enjoys flaming me for no reason.)

Axis: 11 Victories
Allies: 3 Victories

This was my suspension.  But it wasn’t quite sure since I was playing myself.  I have a hard time seeing the Allies win the '41 scenario without favorable dice in the first two rounds.

@wodan46:

If Germany uses Subs to full effect, the the seas around Britain, and possibly the whole Atlantic, will be empty of allied ships, because whenever they are built, they are immediately sunk by Subs

Are subs now attacking at a 4 and I missed it?  Because when you say immediately sunk by Subs you are making an assumption that the Subs will score a hit first strike hit by rolling a 2.

@Stoob:

4 games, all 1941 scenario.

3 of 4 games were with N.O. – 1 without.

If we play with N.O., the Axis have won 2 times.
1 time the Allies won with N.O.
The 1 game without N.O., the Allies won.

That’s my experience.

I always play with NO and Tech.  So just out of curiosity, the game where the Allies won, were dice a factor?  I mean did the Allies had favorable rolls?  And the 2 games where the Axis won was it a somewhat easy victory even without favorable dice?

@EEB:

Well, germany had a naval build 1st turn, that might have something to do with it. He also focused more on Ukraine and East Poland; he had minimal force in Baltic States, so I took Finland 1st turn and Norway and Baltic States 2nd. So, by the 3rd turn, he was down 5, only up 3, + having to counter UK in Northwest Europe almost every turn. I’m still not sure how I did that awesome though.

Yeah IMO a G1 naval build is foolish.  I like to go almost exclusively Tanks (dice rolls and UK naval battles pending) on G1 & G2 and push right up the middle thru E.Poland, the Baltic and Belorussia while taking the Karelia IC.

If you have a game where a Russian player is able to push through to France, IMO the German player played VERY BADLY.

@EEB:

Actually, it is quite possible to win as allies, the only Axis victory I got was with NOs and a new strategy that I hadn’t used before.
I have had one game without NOs where Russia was capable of taking France, but UK was doing bad so I let UK take it :-D.
So in my opinion, the game is very balanced with NOs and favoring Allies without. Or maybe I’m just godlike with Russia :wink:

Russia was capable of taking France?:-o  You must be hellagood at rolling ones!!  :wink:

@bbrett3:

@I:

Just out of curiosity.  Has anyone tried the strat of buying an IC in India for UK on turn one then placing 3 subs there on turn 2?

Haven’t tried it yet but I thought it may be an interesting twist to help keep Japan from island hopping and reaching pacific NO’s.  My thought (brief as it may be lol) was that the 3 subs could keep Japan from sending unescorted transports all over the pacific and force them into “wasting” money on surface warships (particularly destroyers).  This in turn could also help slow down Japans “bulking up of land units” for the Asian invasion.  And giving the Indian IC some much needed time to build land units and preserve the IC……

Any thoughts on this or am I just out of my mind? :

that might work, but then you would immediately lose the IC to Japanese ground troops.  If yo want to start making ships out of the Indian IC you would first need to secure most of mainland Asia

OK play tested this a couple of times and it didn’t turn out well.  If the Japan player focuses primarily on the Northern Asian front then the IC stands a chance of surviving and helping Asia in later rounds.  But if the Japan player focuses primarily on the Southern Asian front (which IMO should be done for J1 & J2) then the complex doesn’t stand a chance.  By J3, Japan now has a nice new complex and Japan can put pressure on Russia from the North and South.

I’ve play tested several '41 scenarios (by myself maybe that’s a problem) and I don’t see how the Allies can win without favorable dice in the first 2 rounds.  Here’s my thoughts so feel free to flame me  :-).

Without going into a long drawn out post on in depth strategies, I’ll just keep it simplistic and just mention the US which IMO is the key to Allied victory.  IMO the US can’t fight 2 fronts and be effective fast enough.  Even still, if they go KGF Japan becomes so strong that by turn 4 the US has to start worrying about the West Coast.  If they go KJF, Germany will be able to withstand any UK bombing raids or Atlantic Invasion with Italy aiding in the defense of the Atlantic Coast.  So without the UK and US having Heavy Bombers and Bombing Italy and Germany into the stone age.  How can the Allies win the '41 scenarios???

WOW!!  Nice job dk!! :mrgreen:

That’s an awesome program!  The only problem that I’m having is the program isn’t displaying correctly.  It seems that it works good, I just can’t tell what all the controls are because of the display issues. (I download the jar file)

Thanks!  :-D

@TG:

Steel binder clips have worked the best for me.

I second this.  That’s what I’m using it I think it works great!

Just out of curiosity.  Has anyone tried the strat of buying an IC in India for UK on turn one then placing 3 subs there on turn 2?

Haven’t tried it yet but I thought it may be an interesting twist to help keep Japan from island hopping and reaching pacific NO’s.  My thought (brief as it may be lol) was that the 3 subs could keep Japan from sending unescorted transports all over the pacific and force them into “wasting” money on surface warships (particularly destroyers).  This in turn could also help slow down Japans “bulking up of land units” for the Asian invasion.  And giving the Indian IC some much needed time to build land units and preserve the IC……

Any thoughts on this or am I just out of my mind? :-D