Posts made by 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.  And whatever they do they’ll be dominated by the US Pacific navy anyway.

I’d build up a transport fleet to threaten the Japanese mainland to divert some attention from Russia/North America.  Carriers could help for that, too.

Yeah.  The fighters can scramble to defend, but without a destroyer present they can’t target the sub.

Historically, the Allies would never invade true neutral countries (and this game was designed with a desire to be historically plausible).  And the Axis had no problem doing so (and doing so did not make other neutrals want to join the other side).  I think the rules should be changed somehow to reflect that, because with the two most popular rules (normal and geographic blocks) the allies have an advantage.  Really, making true neutrals unattackable would solve all the problems.

Italy and/or Germany could possibly get some free South American infantry, but not too many (considering the US could easily stop them and it’s probably not worth the expense).  Germany would get infantry from Switzerland and Sweden.  Aside from that, I don’t know if the Axis could do anything else.

Low luck is game play without dice.  You add the fighting strength of the units (e.g. 6 attacking infantry + 2 tanks is 61 + 23 = 12) and divide by 6, dealing that many hits.  I’m not sure what’s done with rounding, though.

G1 Germany has 1 transport, so you could attack with only 2 units (not counting the luftwaffe, though they’re needed for France and the British fleet).  The British fleet also makes it impossible to reach London in 1 move.

@kcdzim:

@JamesAleman:

@kcdzim:

@Cmdr:

To my knowledge, taking London doesn’t bring America into the war early, of course, I dont have the rule book memorized either.

Probably moot, earliest you can take London is G3 and America can declare in R3 anyway.

Per OOB rules, a take over of London (or an attack on any territory in north america) allows the US to declare war at it’s earliest convenience.  Per OOB rules, the US cannot declare war until end of turn US3 unless an axis power declares war on the US first.

I think you mean “Per Alpha rules” instead of “Per OOB rules”….London or North America in Alpha permits an early DOW by the US. Scotland does not if I understand the rules properly.

Yes, sorry, fixed, tired.

An attack on the UK (territory) or Scotland won’t affect US DOWs, nor a takeover of Scotland.  Only a complete sacking of London will set off the US.  Or a violation of the Monroe Doctrine (any attack on north american territories, successful or no).

Speaking of the Monroe doctrine, it would make sense to include South America here too but I doubt it would affect the game.

That’s assuming the US has naval superiority in the Mediterranean, because otherwise Italy could send a small fleet to deal with it (not that the US has trouble there).  But -12 for one sea zone (and technically I think that only requires 2 subs) is a lot, especially for Italy.

@Gargantua:

Niether did the Invasion of Poland.

The typical German thing to do, was to attack between 2 and 4 in the morning.  Whilst on the previous day, trying to come to “on the surface” conclusive peace talks.

It worked handidly in the favour, against the smaller countries.

Ironically, France and the UK (along with many other allied nations) declared war on Germany before Germany did.  Not much happened for a while after that, though.

Germany taking Scotland does not bring the US into the war.  Only taking London will do that for Sea Lion.

My understanding is they can attack France without declaring war on the UK.  I’d have to check that, though.

Japan starts out with 20 planes.  I’d say that alone makes AA guns worth it.  If Japan attacks a land territory with even 3 planes, you have a decent chance of shooting down at least one before the battle even starts, which is definitely with 5 IPCs.

This is a bit unrelated, since it’s Europe, but in my last game I built an AA gun in Ukraine and it destroyed 3 German fighters and a tac bomber.  Eliminating 41 IPCs worth of enemy units for 5 IPCs is definitely worth it, even if that is pretty lucky.

@Cmdr:

Can America virtually ignore the Pacific without letting Japan win with Victory Cities?

If I remember correctly, Japan needs 6 of 8.  The US has 3 of those (San Francisco, Manila, and Honolulu), so theoretically they could hold their own and if UK Pacific turtled in Calcutta Japan couldn’t take it easily.  But if Japan is allowed to take everything else its own economy would become a lot greater, making it harder to stop them in future turns.  Also, Manila is hard for the US to defend adequately, and the US couldn’t stop Japan from taking Honolulu either if they didn’t invest some IPCs into a Pacific fleet.

I think the point of Japan’s victory condition is to force the US to worry about Japan, rather than being able to completely ignore it like in previous A&A games.

Barbarossa definitely didn’t have an official declaration of war, though.

@Krieghund:

@Ruanek:

I thought nations could temporarily claim territories of defeated nations.

Only by recapturing them from the enemy.

I could have sworn the UK could occupy French Indo-China to get its 2 IPCs.  And occupying territories controlled by powers whose capital is taken is similar in the concept for occupying the Dutch East Indies.

In any case, what’s the logic behind not being able to occupy friendly territories whose capital is taken but being able to do it after liberating it from the enemy?

Actually, German U-boats were torpedoing American naval vessels a lot earlier, with the first American casualties on October 15, 1941.  But that’s a different matter.

The point of the war declaration  in A&A isn’t what it is in real life.  In real life, it’s something to say “We will now attack you if we see you”, something that is said just as well by actually attacking.  The declaration is really just a formality.  In A&A, the declaration of war to me at least means the leaders of the country declaring war are saying “A state of war now exists between us and them”.  It doesn’t necessarily mean the other side is informed if this immediately, though if they aren’t then they are notified by your attack.  You could regard the declaration itself as some sort of internal military memo.  In game terms you can’t attack until you’ve told your officers they’re allowed to attack, meaning you know who your enemies are and who your enemies aren’t before you actually do the combat move.

I thought nations could temporarily claim territories of defeated nations.  It would mainly apply to France, but it could apply to some others as well.  I’ll have to check the rules.

http://www.harrisgamedesign.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=40&t=4167

It’s for Global, but I don’t think there is a Europe-specific version yet.  You should be able to just ignore the stuff regarding the Pacific.  The 2 ANZAC infantry in Egypt become 1 UK infantry, and the USSR gets 9 extra income from the Soviet Far East.

I just played my first game of Global and I have to say, at least it’s historically more accurate.  I love seeing Japan not going for Moscow and the fact that the allies actually have to focus on both sides of the map.

In my game Japan went for an early US attack (J2) because I left most of my initial fleet on Hawaii, but Japan lost the attack due to unlucky dice (though the US only got out of it with a damaged battleship).  UK and ANZAC built up a fleet at Hong Kong, and Japan basically gave up in China because it needed to focus on rebuilding its navy.  Japan was actually able to take out the UK fleet (including the Med fleet) and the US couldn’t quite catch up to it in time to stop repairs.  In the end Japan made a suicide attack on the UK/ANZAC fleet because we were out of time and came out of it with 10 fighters, 10 tac bombers, 3 damaged battleships, and 2 cruisers.  But while the US had clear naval superiority, it would take a while to actually take Japan because of the huge army there.

In Europe, Germany and Italy successfully took out France, the British north Atlantic fleet, and the Balkan peninsula round 1.  Germany then proceeded to make massive fighter and tank buys and steamrolled Russia (invading G4 with some really helpful Italian tanks going in I3), eventually taking Leningrad and Ukraine, and they would have gotten Stalingrad if given one more turn.  Moscow though had a stack of around 60 infantry, and Russia was able to kill off most of Germany’s non-tanks (despite being unlucky and losing several stacks of 10+ infantry with very few German losses).  The US built a huge Atlantic invasion fleet after the Japanese fleet beat the UK fleet the first time, thinking it would be able to catch up to and destroy the remaining Japanese fleet, and it took Gibraltar, eliminated the Italian navy, and took out Rome, but German troops then went into northern Italy.  The UK made an attempt to take Normandy/Bordeaux, but they lost it in the German counterattack and settled for Norway.

All in all, I’m really impressed with how much the game (or Alpha + .2) feels realistic, like it could have actually happened this way.  It seems like even when the US achieves naval superiority in the Pacific, though, it still takes forever to actually take out Japan.  And while it’s fairly easy for the US to take Gibraltar and Rome, Germany can easily stop any more Allied capture/liberation of Europe for a while while still killing Russia.  Building tanks in Russia and infantry in France/west Germany will take a while for the Allies to counter.  It also seems like if China is allowed to hold onto the Burma road they can get truly massive amounts of infantry/artillery, though this could probably be countered by Japan focusing a bit more on China instead of pulling out.  Italy feels like a minor power, because despite its objectives once the US can devote some IPCs to Europe it’s hard to keep Rome.