Posts made by Ruanek

@JimmyHat:

I think what they are saying to do in this situation is to leave your ground army near moscow, but try and also surround it while trading territories with attrition battles.  Russia won’t be able to lunge because your army will still be very near, but meanwhile you are still cutting at Russian ipcs.  10 inf a round is 30ipcs, and if Germany has all of Eastern Europe then Russia shouldn’t be near that total, even with Korea and possibly some middle east territories.

The problem is, Russia can easily have several dozen (70+) infantry in Moscow, plus whatever else they managed to retreat back there.  Sure, Germany can ruin the rest of Russia’s economy.  But the fact that Russia can stack so much there so easily makes it pretty hard for Germany to take and hold 8 victory cities, especially considering the fact that in general longer games favor the Allies because of their economic advantage.

@Gargantua:

HOPE that your opponent does this.

Bypass moscow, and hit every other territory worth money, or that can produce.

You’ll have the game in the bag.  It’s about the economics.  As long as you have more - you win.

Economically Russia is certainly in a bad position.  But Germany’s also in a bad position to grab the necessary 8 victory cities.  And the giant American economy can help alleviate German pressure in the East, especially if Japan isn’t doing well.

@Funcioneta:

First turns, heavy Pacific. When allies have enough to hold against Japan, buy enough to continue holding and use the rest against Germany

If USA can take Norway, hold enough to buy a IC and hold enough to start buying units, and has enough trannies to ferry 10 dudes each turn while Moscow is still soviet (and Calcutta british), then Axis deserve lose. The alphas mayor IC restriction was overkill in my opinion

That’s only holding it for 2 turns, and it isn’t easy for Germany to hit since it’s across the Baltic.

What do you mean it isn’t played as a single nation in a 3+ game?  As far as I know, it’s always controlled by a player who controls another country (even in 2 player games) but it has its own distinct turn.

You could probably explain their lack of a navy with the whole lack of a Vichy France in the game.  The French navy didn’t contribute much to the war, and the British actually sank some of it themselves (they were afraid it would fall under German control).

I don’t think France really offers a chance to distract Germany from building a navy.  From what I can tell most German naval buys are turn 1 (an aircraft carrier and 3 transports seems to be popular) and even if France does survive turn 1 Germany is going to attack with what it has currently (including its massive air force) and won’t build units to deal with France the next turn.  I suppose it stops Germany from building stuff in Normandy and Southern France, but that isn’t too popular anyway.  A German navy isn’t that popular, anyway.

In my opinion, it doesn’t offer much help to Russia either.  Russia’s in a pretty good position to hold out for a while whatever happens in the West, though I suppose it could theoretically delay Germany from taking Moscow by a turn if Paris doesn’t fall round 1.

The main thing, though, is Paris really almost always falls turn 1 to Germany (like 95%, at least).  Its survival to turn 3 indicates a terrible German player, which would spell doom for the Axis anyway.  So any chance of France diverting German attention is pretty much theoretical, anyway.

Germany is in a position to take out France (Paris, especially) in its first turn, which is before the first French turn (and the first British turn, and they have a few units in France).  France can survive if they get very lucky on the die rolls or if Germany for some reason doesn’t commit enough forces to Paris, but even then they’ll probably be taken out before their second turn.  It’s really rare.

They actually make it a bit more difficult for the Allies, in my opinion, because now when they liberate Paris they have to make sure they can hold it, or Germany can take it back (especially given all its factories near it) and get all of France’s money.

France does well only out of the bad luck/strategy of the German player.

In my last game of A&A, that’s close to what happened.  I was playing the Allies.  Germany was doing pretty well against me, so I fortified the minor factories and had most territories held by one infantry to slow the German advance (though the Italian contribution effectively nullified that in the South).  My opponent got lucky a few times, destroying a stack of ~15 infantry and a few other assorted units with only 1 loss (that was right next to Leningrad) but he lost 7 planes to the AA gun in Ukraine.  His army was still too powerful for me to attack directly (this is even with the US trying to take Normandy every few turns) so I pulled everyone I could back to Moscow and had somewhere between 50 or 60 infantry there, plus a fighter, some tanks and some artillery.  He couldn’t take Moscow, and I could build more infantry there every turn.

Maybe I did wrong by giving up on a counteroffensive because of a few unlucky battles in the beginning, but I could have held out for a while longer.  It’s just really hard to take Moscow if the Russian player pours a lot of money into holding it.

To me the UK is the most difficult to play, because they have to worry about so many things - India, Britain, Egypt, etc.

I consider difficulty to be how hard it is to know what to do.  With Italy it’s generally only hard to survive the initial British attack (and maybe subsequent American attacks) - aside from that its course is fairly straightforward.

I usually leave 1 infantry in the border provinces, just to stop Germany from blitzing through them.  I retreat most of my other units to the important points to defend (Ukraine, Leningrad, Moscow) depending on where it looks like Germany will attack.

Generally I think Russia should retreat if it doesn’t have a good chance of winning.  You can easily hole up in Moscow with dozens of infantry if necessary, and if the Germans are occupied on other fronts you may be able to survive there.  It also seems to be good to keep a few small groups of tanks to try to exploit weak points in the German advance, but that’s really situational.

@Rorschach:

@SgtBlitz:

Bah.  Change the rules so that submarines can retreat if they survive a round of combat, offensive battles OR defensive.  It’s stupid that a single destroyer with backup planes can destroy an entire sub stack with the current rules.  Maybe have destroyers’ effects on subs only work on a 1:1 basis.

If you have a SINGLE destroyer and a bunch of air, all that stack of subs needs is ONE hit and the air becomes unable to hit the subs (as the attacker can not take fighters as casualties against sub hits).

It’s still a net loss, though (probably).  The subs can take out the destroyer, but they can’t even target the planes.  Meanwhile, the planes and the destroyer can probably get rid of at least 2 subs.  This is probably going to be a situation where the subs are defending, meaning they only hit on a 1 anyway.

The problem with that is Germany generally doesn’t have a reason to invest in subs when it weakens the Russian offensive, especially when the US can come in with the hammer in a few rounds and wipe them out anyway.  I think the best way to see more submarine warfare is to give them more starting subs, because then they’d actually be able to use them.

So no one actually has any thoughts on giving Germany more starting subs.

How would it affect the game if the Germans started out with 1 or two more subs in the Baltic?  Submarine warfare is something Germany can really use, but since it seems to often lose its starting subs and then need to focus on Russia it doesn’t happen too much.

I think the convoy system needs to be reworked.  A lot of it just isn’t realistic.  For example, Germany could certainly do some convoy raiding off of Normandy when it’s controlled by France, since they receive shipments there.  But when Germany controls it, it doesn’t make as much sense, because Germany wasn’t anywhere near as dependent on overseas shipping (except through the Sweden-Norway-Denmark-Germany route).  It really hurts the Axis off the coast of Europe, when in reality the European Axis didn’t have too many convoys going through the Atlantic.

I think the “U-boat Peril” optional rule is German subs remove 3 IPCs for convoy raiding instead of the normal 2.

@Hitlers:

@knp7765:

Whatever you do, protect your transports at ALL COST.  Make sure each one has a good amount of naval escort and don’t leave any sitting there alone or with a weak escort like a single DD or CA.  I made that mistake once.  I got half of the DEI then lost my transports and their weak escorts thanks to British and ANZAC ships and planes.  My other transports were clear back on Japan and it took another two rounds to get down there.  Really set me back a bit as Japan and let the US become even more of a problem for me.

Do you think that if he takes all of his navy for escort on round two that it will leave other areas too exposed?

This is the entire Japanese navy near the money islands?  That’s not a bad position, I think, because it’s near India and Australia.  It is a bit far from the US, though.  But they may not even be in the war yet.  I’d be careful to have a fleet or at least some destroyers (as screens for delaying tactics) further back to slow down the US when it enters the war.

(In case you didn’t know, Larry Harris is the designer of Axis & Allies.)

@Sire:

I’d like to have Krieghund or any other seasoned columnist of this forum confirm this point. I always used to think that once a power capital is captured, an allied player of that power could “take care” of these territories by walkink/rolling on them in non-combat move.

No, it was confirmed somewhere (I don’t really want to search for it, though).  Allied powers can only take income from another nation’s territory if they liberate them from the Axis and that nation’s capital is held by the Axis.

@Idi:

Confirmed

Except not…

@Idi:

@Ruanek:

@Idi:

@HMS_Artemis:

ANZAC has 27 IPCs a turn now (10 in NO, plus 17 in territories) and I’m not sure what to do with them.  What is the best thing to do with them?

I believe the official rules plays that the NO’s only come into play when ANZAC is at war with Japan.

Personally, I think that rule is too restrictive for such a small nation like ANZAC (10 IPC’s) that is why I wrote a thread on ANZAC autonomy. Imagine if Italy (10 IPCS) didn’t get their NO’s……>

War with Japan generally doesn’t take too long for them, though.

Wow Do you mean the UK declares war on Japan

That depends on the Japanese player’s (and the UK player’s) actions, obviously.