Posts made by KurtGodel7

Step 1 is obviously to get a starter pack. But that won’t be enough, so buy some other packs as well. Whatever items you get, you get.

Each unit is worth a certain amount of points. The more powerful the unit, the more points it’s worth. Some of your units will contribute toward your Allied total, some toward the Axis total.

When you play a match, you want each side to have to choose their units. If for example you own 100 points of Axis units and 100 points of Allied units, allow each side to spend significantly less than 100 points for the match. If the Allied force consists of mostly American units, with some British and French thrown in, that’s fine. It’s also fine if the Axis force is mostly Japanese, with a few Germans or even Italians mixed in.

The problem you’ll run into is that some of America’s late war units are OP. This unbalances the game and makes it less enjoyable. To avoid this problem, stick with buying early war units if you can.

@Imperious:

Among the many lies Herbert Hoover told was a false narrative of anything Historical relating to the period of 1939-45. He did however know how to prepare Chicken. If Herman were alive, he possibly could feed him well enough it seems. He may have prepared enough Chicken to feed the Germans who started countless wars and were starving due to Churchill and Herman who either denied foodstuffs because of the wars Germany caused or in Herman’s case ate the food supplies.

Germany never had a “carrot and stick” policy. Only a policy of conquest and invasion that might have led to a future food embargo and general war. Germany choose this course. Stop posting false narratives of reality. The Czechs weren’t treated well , but UK could do nothing… they were a sea power.

Every word you’ve written is false, and at this point I’m fairly sure you know these words are false.

@Wolfshanze:

That’s all that needs to be said right there and is spot-on. Chamberlain sold-out the Czechs, who weren’t even invited to the discussion.

Among the many lies Woodrow Wilson told, one was his claim that the Entente was fighting for self-determination. That idea was of course abandoned at Versailles, as was every other lofty promise Wilson had made.

The people in the Sudetenland were German, and wanted to be part of Germany. The Czech government had been treating them like second-class citizens, with an apparent long-term plan of replacing them with Czechs. (After WWII the Sudetenland was ethnically cleansed of Germans, thus fulfilling the apparent long-term plan.)

In January 1938, millions of Sudeten Germans were under hostile Czech occupation. By the end of the year millions of Czechs were under hostile German occupation. Neither situation was consistent with self-determination. But the British government had not supported self-determination as a value at Versailles or at any point after WWI, making it difficult for them to convincingly argue the latter situation was worse than the former.

At Versailles, one of the reasons for giving Germany’s neighbors land which rightfully belonged to Germany was to ensure that there would always be a significant bone of contention between Germany and her immediate neighbors. This would cause diplomatic isolation for Germany. The strategy worked. In 1935 the Czech government signed a defensive alliance with the Soviet Union. That alliance created fear within Germany: fear of what could happen if the Soviets invaded Germany with soldiers stationed on Czech soil. The Versailles policy of giving German land to Germany’s neighbors also drove a wedge between Germany and Poland; with the latter nation embracing an ill-conceived, disastrous alliance with Britain and France as an alternative to restoring West Prussia to German control.

Starting apparently in 1938, Germany had adopted a carrot and stick policy towards those nations east of itself, west of the Soviet Union. Any nation in that region which adopted an anti-German foreign policy would typically be annexed. Whereas, Germany would extend favorable treatment to those Eastern European nations which embraced pro-German, anti-Soviet foreign policies. That strategy paid off. By the time Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, every nation in Eastern Europe was either an ally of Germany (such as Romania), was neutral in Germany’s favor, or was under German occupation. (Except of course for those Eastern European nations under Soviet occupation.)

Thanks, IL, for the heads-up. I might sell, might not.

Attached is a picture of my favorite online map, Domination 1914 No Man’s Land. The picture shows you almost all the map, except for half the Pacific. While I’ve gotten plenty of enjoyment out of Larry Harris’s maps over the years, I like this map even more. They added some new units.

Trench: costs 3, takes 2 hits to kill, defends on a 0. You don’t need a factory to place trenches. Nor do trenches count against the unit placement limits of territories with factories. Instead you can place up to 3 trenches per territory per turn. Use: cannon fodder.
Heavy gun: costs 5, attacks on a 2, provides artillery support when attacking. Defends on a 4. Gives you more defensive firepower for the money than any other unit, including infantry. Use: defensive firepower.
Cavalry: costs 4, attacks and defends on a 1, moves on a 2. Can receive artillery support. Use: a substitute for infantry, when you need more mobility.
Poison gas: costs 4, attacks on a 4, cannot be used on defense. Movement of 3. Pre-battle kamikaze attack. Units killed by gas don’t get casualty shots. Trenches cannot be taken as casualties against poison gas attacks. Use: if you need an offensive unit that’s more mobile than cavalry. Also useful if you have multiple nations attacking the same territory. Gas allows the first attacker to get a decent exchange, even if the attacker’s force is much smaller and weaker than the defender’s. Also, gas is useful if you notice the defender has too many trenches, not enough defensive firepower. Gas will make that situation even worse–for the defender, that is.

There are some familiar units:
Infantry: cost 3, attacks on a 1, defends on a 2. Can receive artillery support when attacking.
Field gun. These are the artillery you know and love. (Heavy guns are also considered artillery, which is why this unit has been renamed field gun.) Attacks and defends on a 2, costs 4, provides artillery support when attacking.
Fighter: cost 9, movement 3, attacks on a 2, defends on a 3, provides artillery support when attacking. (Okay, so maybe this isn’t 100% familiar because its stats are a bit different.)

Domination 1914 No Man’s Land’s tech system is very very good. The best I’ve ever seen in any map. Tech allows you to reduce some of your units’ costs, to obtain free units, income, and a free tech token each turn, to improve the offensive firepower of your field guns and the defensive firepower of your heavy guns. Not to mention improving the performance of your ships. Tech also allows you to construct new unit types: the tank, the late fighter, and the aircraft carrier.

In looking at the picture of the map, Germany is grey, France blue, Serbia orange, Austria yellow, Italy green, Arabia light purple, Turkey red, UK brown, Nationalist Russia white, communist Russia/USSR dark red, and the USA a different shade of green than Italy’s. Neutrals are an off-white, and can be farmed. There are no diplomatic consequences whatsoever to invading neutrals.

A note of explanation:

Several decades ago, Hasbro released the first Axis and Allies. (Classic.) It was fairly widely distributed, and you could buy it at Toys R Us, among other places. Originally, Axis and Allies was intended to be part of a series of games. Other games in the series included Fortress America, Shogun (later rereleased as Samurai Swords), and Conquest Empire. Of those, I enjoyed Axis and Allies and Shogun the most, with Fortress America also a good game. Conquest Empire was the weakest of the four, by a significant margin. I didn’t own my own copy of Shogun: they’d discontinued it before I became aware of its existence. So I borrowed a copy from my college’s game club, photocopied the map, and taped the resulting pieces of paper onto a table. And that’s how I played. I later rectified the problem by buying a copy of Samurai Swords. (The same game as Shogun, under a different name.)

I played plenty when in my teens and early 20s; and liked Revised significantly more than Classic. But people grow up, they move away. I moved away myself. You make new friends, people who aren’t necessarily interested in board games. My games sat on the shelf for years, unused, while I occasionally gave them longing looks. But they’re not much fun when you don’t have anyone to play against.

Then I went to a gaming convention, in Cincinnati I believe. It was an outstanding opportunity to get back into playing Axis and Allies. I remember playing all day–skipping lunch and dinner–getting out at 11:00 or later at night, without really being hungry. I was that pumped up! Some of the other participants told me how I could go about playing this online. I’ve now been playing online for years. If anyone here wants to play me, I’m on TripleA from time to time.

After years of wanting (but not having) real world opponents to play against, I eventually moved my physical games into a crowded storage unit. Fortunately, I was able to fight through the mess and chaos of that storage unit to find the majority of my games for picture taking.

Not technically an Axis and Allies game, but still, I’m throwing this in anyway.

Only two pictures allowed per post, seemingly. So here are two more games.

@Wolfshanze:

Uh Oh… Gauntlet thrown…

Will Kurt pick up and prove Imperious Leader wrong, or has Imperious Leader just exposed Kurt?

@Imperious:

Kurt does not own or play AA FYI

As usual, you are just making stuff up.

@taamvan:

Are you trying to apply an AxA Rule to real life, because indeed, a submarine can shoot at aircraft, many had airborne interception radar and permanently mounted flak guns, it just doesn’t work really well because the submarine’s best protection is to submerge, not fight.

My post was intended to gently poke fun at some of Larry Harris’s rules.

Obviously, the Industrial Revolution did start in England, hundreds of years before Larry made a rule against building industrial complexes on islands. And, equally clearly, subs sometimes did shoot down aircraft, as CWO Marc pointed out in his solid post.

I remember seeing a WWII movie starting Cary Grant. Grant was portrayed as the captain of an American submarine.

In one scene, the sub was attacked by two Japanese aircraft. This, even though there were no Japanese destroyers present.

To make matters worse, the Americans on the sub responded to the attack by using an aa gun mounted on the sub to shoot down both Japanese aircraft. (The aa gun could be removed and stored inside the sub for when the sub wanted to travel underwater.) Such a scene was far-fetched at best, because subs cannot fire at aircraft.

On a somewhat unrelated matter, I also read a book which claimed the Industrial Revolution began in England. This, clearly, could not have been the case. As everyone knows, it is impossible to construct an industrial complex on an island. Just can’t be done.

@Wolfshanze:

Hindsight is always 20/20… there’s many ways almost any war could have gone the other way from history if the losing side knew then what is known now.

Agreed. It’s easy to construct “what if?” scenarios with a few throwaway sentences. A more challenging task is to develop a compelling picture of Germany’s overall economic, political, and military picture; and to demonstrate a viable military strategy within the context of that picture.

Germany had a prewar population of 69 million, as opposed to 169 million for the Soviet Union. In the key year of 1942, the Soviet Union produced 3 - 4 times as many land weapons as Germany, and nearly twice as many military aircraft. Germany lacked oil, food, and raw materials. Major Western nations were pro-Soviet and anti-German. By the late fall of 1941, the Red Army consisted of 600 divisions, compared to just 150 divisions for the German Army. (Granted, a German division was somewhat larger than a Soviet division, so the disparity was less than 4:1.) The United States had virtually unlimited industrial potential. Even if it had stayed at “peace,” the plan was to produce overwhelming numbers of military aircraft, and to send half of those aircraft to Britain for use against Germany. Moreover, the U.S. was led by a highly pro-war president, who by gradual steps was moving the U.S. ever closer to war. “Don’t declare war on the U.S.” sounds good as a throwaway line, but does not by itself constitute a strategy for preventing escalating levels of American industrial and military involvement.

My best “victory scenario” for Germany would be as follows:

Step 1: Invade Poland and France, as happened in the actual war.
Step 2: Invade Britain, as proposed by General von Manstein in his book Lost Victories.
Step 3: Grab much of the Middle East in 1940, when it was weakly defended.
Step 4: Launch Operation Barbarossa about when it was launched. Put von Manstein in charge, to achieve even better initial results than those the Germans actually achieved.
Step 5: Accept Stalin’s peace offer in the fall of '41.
Step 6: Sign a peace treaty with the remnants of the British Empire. Or, if the British government is still unwilling to discuss peace, continue conquering British colonies. Recruit large numbers of soldiers among the inhabitants of German-held colonies to counter the soldiers the British recruit from the colonies they control.

These six steps, in themselves, would not be sufficient to win Germany the war. In particular, the United States would stand unfought, with an extremely anti-German and pro-war president. The Soviet Union would also be able to lick its wounds, and harness a core of military and industrial strength to resume its war against Germany at a time of its own choosing. These dangers would be exacerbated by the American invention of the nuclear bomb.

In 1944, Germany’s military production was triple what it had been in 1942. Germany’s 1944 production was roughly the same as that of the Soviet Union, and about half that of the United States. For Germany, increased military production was a necessary, but not a sufficient, component of a strategy to defend itself against an alliance between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.

Quite possibly Germany would have been well-served to resume its war against the Soviet Union in 1946. (Assuming, of course, that Stalin hadn’t chosen an earlier resumption date.) By 1946 Germany would have had better tanks than the Soviet Union, better handheld anti-tank weapons, the world’s only assault rifles. Unlike the Soviets, Germany would have had jet aircraft. Given these qualitative advantages, as well as the advantages obtained by having tripled its military production between '42 and '44, Germany’s offensive against the Soviet Union would likely have been successful. Moreover, its jet aircraft could have kept the skies clear of Allied aircraft, thus protecting German cities from nuclear devastation. This time, Germany would not make peace with the Soviet Union on any conditions other than unconditional surrender.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, and with Britain’s colonial empire either conquered or pacified, the only strategic threat left would be the United States. By itself it would be difficult for the United States to wage war against Germany. It wouldn’t have Britain to use as a base from which to perform its strategic bombing, and it wouldn’t have the Red Army to engage and destroy the bulk of the German Army. Germany’s jet aircraft would provide initial protection against American nuclear attack. Later, Germany would develop the ability to engage in retaliatory strikes. Its chemical weapons program was about ten years ahead of any Allied nation, so it could have used a devastating chemical attack as a substitute for a nuclear attack. It was in the process of developing intercontinental ballistic missiles when the war ended, and those missiles could have carried payloads to the eastern seaboard of the United States. Eventually Germany would have developed nuclear weapons of its own. Those weapons–in combination with its ICBM technology–would have provided the ultimate long-term guarantee of German security.

I recognize the above plan is not without risks. It contains a number of opportunities for things to have gone wrong. But it’s also the best, most likely to succeed plan I can think of to protect Germany from Allied invasion.

@Wolfshanze:

To be more specific, at the time they were designed, they were designed to outrun battleships… ie: WWI dreadnoughts that could only do 20 knots… by WWII, the WWI dreadnought/battleships were themselves as obsolescent as the German “pocket battleships”, because the major powers in the 1930s designed and built the modern WWII “fast battleships” that could outrun and outgun the old treaty-restricted pocket battleships. Every major power, England, the US, France, Japan, Italy… they all had battleships by the start of WWII that could outgun AND outrun the pocket battleships. The Germans themselves lowered the classification of these ships to heavy cruisers and forbade them from participating in fleet actions due to being too slow to run if things got dicey…

The Germans also forgot one other important factor… ARMOR… its all fine and dandy to “outgun” an enemy ship, but if your armor sucks you may find that there seems to be something wrong with your ships today when you get in a fleet engagement.

Kurt, I recommend you lay off the propaganda catch phrases and concentrate more on actual schematics, capabilities and limitations… you’ll go a lot further then relying on catchy propaganda snippets.

Wolfshanze, the last sentence of your post left me scratching my head. It seems truly bizarre to characterize anything I’ve written in this thread as a “catchy propaganda snippet.” Since it’s not obvious what in particular you have in mind with such a vague and nebulous disparagement, maybe you could be more specific?

@Wolfshanze:

It’s not even close… Kurt chiming-in and talking about it being German… well that pretty much should seal the deal that the Baltimore would win (we all know where the one vote of the Baltimore getting sunk came from, ty Kurt).

Actually I didn’t vote, because I wanted to gather more information first. If I were to vote, I’d vote for the Baltimore. In addition to the reasons already stated, I’ve read that the fire control on American surface ships allowed them to radically maneuver while keeping their firing solutions. Everyone else’s ships of the time were unable to keep their firing solutions if they maneuvered.

In my post, I talked about how, because of the Versailles Treaty, the Germans had fallen behind some other nations–and especially the Soviet Union–in terms of tank design. After throwing off the Versailles Treaty, they would have needed until 1946 to achieve the world’s best tanks in terms of both capability and ease of production. They had achieved the world’s best fighter design in 1944, and the world’s best medium bomber design in 1945. Other late war achievements included the world’s best handheld anti-tank weapon, and the only assault rifle of WWII. But Germany’s late war accomplishments do not mean that an obsolescent ship, designed under Versailles Treaty limitations, with an inferior targeting system and inferior armor to that of its opponent, would have been the equal of the Baltimore.

However, I am not as familiar with surface naval engagements as taamvan. On paper, the Baltimore wins this hands-down. No question there. But taamvan appears familiar with actual naval engagements in which German ships did better than one would have expected based on the combatants’ stats. Until I have more information about that, I don’t want to cast my vote one way or the other.

@taamvan:

A fascinating discussion!

The ships were almost a decade apart, but as the crew has pointed out, the loss of the treaty restrictions and the move past the 10,000T=cruiser concept probably opened many design doors that couldn’t be exploited by the German shipbuilders who had to stick closer to that political but not helpful weight limit at a time when so many facilities were being added to ships (radar, sonar, AAA, ASW gear, seaplanes, wartime crew sizes)

Its difficult to see how these kinds of things would work out in practice, as only a single battle (kommandorski isles) was ever fought under the proposed hypothetical circumstances of “all-guns no air support”.

In my study I have found that (in regards to WW2 surface/submarine naval action not counting carrier aviation) while the Americans often had some technical or material advantage in most qualitative regards, that their performance was generally lower than would be expected because of inexperience, poor communication or tactics, unreliable equipment, or surprise.   The Germans often performed better than expected at sea, despite having a deficiency of numbers and equipment, and tactics, and the Italians much worse than would be expected given the size and expenditure on their navy.

As with tanks, the Americans did not have spectacular ships, guns, crews, torpedoes, but rather the benefit of having well-designed, average and reliable equipment in adequate quantity and available in abundance at critical times and places.   The opposite is true of the Axis;  while their systems were stronger in design and performance, (and their preparations for night fighting and innovations of oxygen powered torpedoes, guided missiles/torpedoes etc.) they suffered from over complexity, poor general strategy (fleet submarines, solo raiding by unsupported warships even after PoW/Repulse were easily sunk), weak logistical support and coordination, and substituting novel design and variety for numbers.

So, its a great question as posed, without a date or any help, it may have been a closer match than stated above;  the American ship is clearly a more robust, general design, a bigger, newer ship (and probably with a much better radar), even with those advantages, many US/UK ships with similar advantages were utterly mauled, and not just by submarines, mines, guided bombs, human torpedoes, air attacks, but also in face-to-face battles against similar ships.   This has a lot to do with the specific situations (savo island, the bismark chase) but not really luck, more Axis moxy.

Couple of lucky hits, and the “better ship” can have an ammo explosion or lose its steam.   And under the scenario of no-air no-helpers, 1v1, some luck or moxy might win the day, given the disparity in the attributes of each ship.

Have a great weekend!

Outstanding post.

I’d like to expand on what you’ve written. The Axis logistics were greatly inferior to those of the Allies; but that was largely by necessity. Germany had almost no natural resources except for coal. Coal was useful for powering trains, but a train could not get supplies all the way to soldiers at the front. That was especially true in a dynamic campaign, when the front would tend to shift far more rapidly than new rail could be built. Good logistics required large quantities of military trucks; and these in turn required large amounts of petroleum. (Without which they would be useless.) Had Germany been able to secure the Caucasus oilfields, and had Japan been able to better exploit the oil in the Dutch East Indies (without interference from American subs), the Axis would have had the oil required for good logistics.

As for tanks: during the Versailles Treaty Germany was not allowed to build tanks. Upon ridding itself of that treaty, it began designing tanks. But its future enemies had had an enormous head start. The Soviet Union had done an outstanding job with tank design. Its tanks were mobile–far more mobile than France’s, for example. Soviet tanks were less complex and easier to manufacture than Germany’s. They had sloping armor. And in 1941 or 1942, a Soviet T-34 or KV-1 could outperform any German tank in a one-on-one battle. During the 1940s the Soviets had far and away the world’s best tank designs.

For Germany, catching up to that represented a two part process. The first step was to redress the individual inferiority of German tanks. This was accomplished with the Panther and Tiger tank designs. In particular, the King Tiger was an absolute monster, and was individually far superior to almost any Allied tank it might encounter. But Tiger tanks were expensive: several times as expensive as Panzer IVs. Even Panthers were more complex and difficult to manufacture than T-34s. The proposed solution was the E-Series of tanks. “Compared to these earlier designs however, the amount of drilling and machining involved in producing these Standardpanzer was reduced drastically, which would have made them quicker, easier and cheaper to produce, as would the proposed conical spring system, replacing their predecessors’ torsion bar system which required a special steel alloy.” Not only would the E-Series have made German tanks much less expensive to produce, it would also have resulted in a modest improvement to individual performance. The heart of Germany’s tank strength would have consisted of E-50s and E-75s; both of which would have had the same gun as the King Tiger. (As well as optical rangefinders to improve long range accuracy, and infrared sighting equipment to improve night vision.) However, the war ended before development work on the E-Series had been finalized. Had the Germans and Soviets reached a temporary peace in late 1941, and resumed the conflict in 1946, Germany would by then have surpassed the Soviet Union to become the world leader in tank designs.

@Imperious:

I find it interesting that both your sentences contain lies.

I find it interesting that you cant tell that what you call two lies are actually comments from two different people. I guess baby Herman was one skinny guy who didn’t wear a bottle of perfume.

Your first sentence was “Hello kurt its not a hyjack [sic].” That sentence was a lie, because you very clearly were hijacking this thread.

Your second sentence was, “Sorry the info isn’t going your way– but that’s called truth overcoming lies.” Prior to you writing that comment, your contributions to this thread consisted almost exclusively of inane jokes about Goering, or deliberately deceptive comments about Germany’s food situation. The one statement you made which doesn’t fall into those categories was your comment that “you left out Quisling.” None of your contributions to this thread represent “truth overcoming lies,” which means your second sentence was just as dishonest as your first.

@Imperious:

Quote from: CWO Marc on April 18, 2017, 06:32:57 am
An interesting figure to see would be a width measurement on Hermann Goering.

Hello kurt its not a hyjack. Sorry the info isn’t going your way– but that’s called truth overcoming lies.

I find it interesting that both your sentences contain lies.

@Imperious:

yea Herman… the star pupil of the reason why Germany was “starving” due to Churchill ordering a basic economic blockade of Germany

Is it necessary for you to hijack every thread in which you post?

@Imperious:

No. He was an abject failure. Not unlike Hoover, his brother :evil:

Thats a good reason why none of these blokes ( Nazi’s [sic]) were assassinated. The Allies needed them as failures in order to guarantee the final result. If somebody other than Hitler ran things, Allies would have been in huge problems.

You are trolling, and can’t possibly be serious about either the above post, or any of your other posts in this thread.

I would like to see a movie about Erich Hartmann. Hartmann was the highest scoring fighter ace in history, with 352 victories. The highest-scoring non-German ace of all time is Ilmari Juutilainen of Finland, who had 94 victories.

Hartmann said that he was more proud of the fact he’d never lost a wingman in combat than he was of his (very high) number of enemy planes shot down. He wrote to his fiancee every day of the war. He was never shot down by an enemy plane. But there were times when he was forced to crash land, due to flying into the debris of enemy aircraft he’d just shot down. On one of those occasions he landed behind enemy (Soviet) lines. The Soviets captured him. Upon being captured he very convincingly faked an injury. The Soviets left him lightly guarded. When the one man guarding him became distracted by a German attack, Hartmann overpowered the guard, and quickly fled his Soviet captors. Bullets whizzed past him as the soldiers attempted to recapture him. He safely made it back to German lines.

Near the very end of the war he was ordered to surrender to the British, while the rest of his unit would surrender to the Soviets. He’d never disobeyed an order–except for that one order only. He felt it would be bad character to abandon his men to Soviet captivity (a very strong likelihood of death) while he himself enjoyed the comparative safety of British captivity. He remained with his unit, with himself and the rest of the unit eventually surrendering to the Americans.

However, at Yalta FDR had agreed that any German servicemen who’d engaged primarily in fighting against the Soviet Union would be handed over to that nation; regardless of who they’d actually surrendered to. As a result of which, Hartmann and the rest of his unit were handed over to the Soviets. Hartmann spent years in Soviet captivity, during which the Soviets used torture and threats to attempt to get Hartmann to turn traitor to West Germany. Hartmann steadfastly refused, at one point physically attacking his Soviet interrogator. Fortunately, Hartmann’s celebrity status prevented him from joining the many, many German servicemen who’d died in Soviet gulags due to hunger, overwork, cold, and disease.

In the 1950s, large numbers of German servicemen were liberated from Soviet captivity due to a trade deal between West Germany and the U.S.S.R. Hartmann was among them. He rejoined his wife, and learned that his son had died while he was away. Hartmann then put his energies into building up the West German air force. Due to political corruption and bribery, some of the aircraft used by the West German air force were unsafe, leading to the deaths of West German pilots. Hartmann took a stand against that corruption. He was punished for this good behavior, and forced into an early retirement.