Posts made by SubmersedElk

I’ve been playing G40 a lot over the past few weeks and have quickly gained a lot of skill with it. In the process I’ve developed this strategy which I am finding even some of the best online players are having trouble defending. It’s a good strategy for players who are very conservative and risk-averse like myself. I’m going to try to outline it here.

The general framework for the opening is that Japan is going to attack on J2, and Italy starts the European war on I2.

Setup:

Germany

G1 - buy a carrier only. This will compel UK to waste a turn’s income defending the Sealion (which you should not do unless he offers a ridiculously easy walk-in. Good odds are not good enough to divert from the plan). Do the following attacks:

1. SZ111: 2 sub/BB/ftr/tac/bmb. Optimal result is to leave UK with a damaged BB only, retreating your BB to SZ112. Next best result is to clear the SZ of all enemy ships. Should work fine even with a Scotland fighter bid by UK.

2. SZ110: 2 sub/3ftr/3tac/bmb. Clear the zone of enemy ships. Unless you get completely diced you won’t lose more than the subs.

3. France: All land units which can reach in G1 attack France. Do not throw any planes into the attack, it’s very solid without them and you should not let the AA gun get a free shot.

4. Yugoslavia: All land units not in the France battle EXCEPT one inf from Romania, plus the remaining ftr/tac, attack. Clear the zone, don’t leave it for Italy.

G1 noncombat pick up Bulgaria and Finland, shuttle the Denmark inf to Norway and set your fleet up in SZ112 with 1 ftr and 1 tac. All air used against UK lands in Western Germany, the Yugo tac goes to Rome and the ftr goes to Tobruk. Land units from Germany go to Poland. Place the carrier in SZ112.

G2 buy all land units to attack Russia.

Clear the Med of UK ships used against Italy with your air force, use the inf in Bulgaria and three tanks from Yugoslavia to kill Greece. If you can spare the air, feel free to add air power to the fight. Doesn’t really matter if you win, and you can leave Greece for Italy to finish off if you like, just weaken it to 1-2 units to make it easy for them. Clean up Southern France and Normandy with whatever is left over from the France battle.

Noncombat, any remaining mobile units from France go to Yugoslavia, Yugoslav units go to Romania. Air power goes back to Western Germany, some fighters can be spared to protect Italy if desired. Stack Finland with the 9 inf you have up there. Place land units in Germany first.

Italy

The only things that matter for Italy are a) to move the tanks and some slower units east as can-openers for the German stack, and b) hold onto Rome. Keep enough in Rome to deter landings, move the rest east. Your ships’ only required function is to attack Allied ships (leave SZ97 for Germany). It’s perfectly OK if you have no ships left by I2.

In Africa grab British Somaliland because it’s a royal pain for UK to recover it. The rest of your units in Africa have one job, which is to survive as long as possible and kill/divert as much Allied attention as you can. If you have a transport left over feel free to rescue some of them from North Africa and bring back to Europe. Don’t attack Egypt, no decent player will allow it, and moving in that direction just makes killing your units convenient. To be honest, half the time I forget I have Italian units in Africa at all, that’s how little they matter. Their sole function is to draw enemy units away from other conflict zones, as far away as possible.

Japan

J1 buy three transports and an artillery unit. Combat move is very simple, attack Yunnan with everything that reaches, attack Hunan with everything else that can reach it, take Chahar with one inf and take Anhwe from the north.

J1 noncombat is staging for the J2 attack. You have a wide variety of options in ship placement, just don’t leave your transports vulnerable to a UK/ANZAC early DOW. Transports should move as many units south as possible, and stay along the coast. At least two transports should be able to reach Malaya, and the remaining four will go to Phillipines. Set up so that all six can be fully loaded for the attack (which will require grabbing a couple from Manchuria).

Make sure that at least one DD can reach SZ16 as a blocker if needed. I tend to put one of each ship type in Carolines for flexibility, and stage the rest off Hainan (if you don’t the US or UK can put a blocker in that SZ and screw up your attack).

Kiangsu units move south towards Kwangtung, not west into China. Remaining land units should beeline to Yunnan, save an inf or two to take Chinese territories.

Every air unit not needed to land on a carrier goes to Kwangsi. Have a transport land an inf/art from Manchuria there as well. They can be used to recapture Yunnan if need be but ideally they’ll get shipped to Malaya next.

Come J2, declare war on all Allies, hit Malaya (1-2 trans full plus half the fleet) and Phillipines (other 4 trans plus other half of fleet), crash Yunnan and take the easy shots at China/FIC/Shan State, and any ships left lying around in the South Pacific. This is both an attack and another staging round; your fleets will now be set up to either drop a ton of units in Burma (unblockable), or capture all the DEI in J3. This is going to force UK-Pac back home (or he hands you India for J4).

If US stacks Hawaii in US1 then block SZ16. If he can air raid SZ6 then buy a carrier. Buy more loaded transports with whatever else is left over, and another DD if you require it (be able to block SZ16 every round as long as US has threat on SZ6). You have about three times the air power that you actually need, so don’t be shy about sending fighters or even an extra capital ship back home to protect SZ6.

At this point you are set up for a J3 which will accomplish the following: wear China down further, punish UK Pac if he’s adventurous and moves to Burma (6 loaded trans plus ALL your fleet and 15ish air units can reach - he cannot defend that territory), or take all the DEI in one turn if he isn’t. You should also drop a factory in FIC which should push out tanks if you can afford them, or mech inf if you’re on a budget, and these will seal the doom of a UK Pac which will be making 6 income or less at that point, allowing you to focus the rest of your considerable production against another enemy.

At the end of J3 you are now pulling high 60s income, UK Pac is already neutered, China is separated from support, and the only way there is any threat against you anywhere is if US went full Pacific (which you can now defend solidly with high income and already-existing air power). From there, I tend to wipe out China then India since both are weak targets, and if the US is not full-building Pac you can also attack Russia at that point since the extra 6 inf from Mongolia will be no big deal to clean up.

Following Through

In Europe, the follow-through is now very straightforward - build fast units to stack against Russia and push him back. You want to go south, not north - Novogrod will be abandoned by Russia by necessity, he hasn’t the units to defend it and counterstack Bryansk both. He probably can hold Bryansk, though and stop your stack from moving directly east. The way to get around this is to literally move around him - to Ukraine, then Rostov, at which point you can cash in on Volvograd and Caucasus NOs, plus your fast units can swing around to Samara, forcing difficult choices and collapsing the defensive position. Trading off units works in your favor the whole way, as you can replace them faster than he can even buying more expensive units. You can now also threaten to hit the Middle East, where defenses will be light. Russia soon ends up with very low production and defending it can consume all of UK’s attention, making things easier elsewhere around the board.

The Allies won’t be idle while this happens. They will inevitably build an Atlantic “hammer” with the US - just enough fleet plus a big stack of transports that can move 20+ units around the perimeter of Europe very quickly, looking for a soft spot. The way to defend this is to build lots and lots of cheap inf in Western Germany and France supplemented by a few artillery and remaining air forces to punish landings.

Allies tend to first go for Rome, so plan for this with Italy - I’ll often start building a stack of inf on Rome as early as I3, so by the time the hammer is a real threat it’s already covered. Germany can counterbuild against it faster than Italy so it can wait to build its own infantry defenses until a round or two later. Defending against landings takes priority over finishing off Russia - the only threat Russia can provide is to attack your stack, he cannot invade from the east any faster than you can spam more inf in defense so you don’t need to keep his stack in front of yours. Then trade, trade, trade - Russian units can’t be replaced due to production, UK units traded are units not building in the Middle East and India, and US units take 3 turns to rebuild and ship over and cost extra in transports as well.

Meanwhile, who is stopping Japan? The US is the only one who can do it, but it requires ALL his production against your 70 income Japan, and that really gets him only a stalemate. And if he does that then Germany has no need to build inf at home and can build more fast units to finish off Russia instead. It becomes a no-win situation for Allies.

If he builds Atlantic instead, once he lands those units and has to defend something instead of having the Sword of Damocles hanging over Europe, you can now lock it down with inf/art spam. This usually forces a landing in Norway, the only place Allies are reasonably safe from the German counter. Once that happens, the threat to Rome is gone, freeing up Italy’s units and production, and he’s got a three-turn march merely to hit Novogrod - during which time, if you care to, you can outbuild him and reach Novograd in time to kill off his stack.

Note that I’ve all but completely ignored Africa. That’s deliberate - Africa and North America are basically the only parts of the map where Allies have an easier time than Axis does. Fight where it’s easier for you. Once you beat down Russia and India you can march through to Africa if you please, but it would take a truly masochistic Allies player not to concede well before you reach Egypt.

The best part about this method/strategy is that it is highly tolerant of mistakes for the Axis player, as long as you don’t make any huge ones, giving up favorable attacks on: 1) Germany’s offensive stack; 2) Western Germany, or allowing the 1-2 punch through Denmark to Germany proper; 3) Rome; 4) Japan’s defensive fleet; or 5) SZ6 and Japan proper. Five or six points on the whole map are all you really need to defend and you have the advantage in every one of them. Make small investments in other threats as opportunities arise if and only if it’s more expensive for Allies to defend against them than it is for you to create the threat.

I realize there’s a big wall of text and a lot of analysis in this summary, but in practice it’s actually quite easy. By round 4 or 5, German turns take 5 minutes to play out, Italian turns two minutes, and Japan maybe 7 or 8 minutes, and it’s all pick target, focus forces, kill, rinse & repeat.

There you have it… that’s my script for an old school, Classic-style Axis win against Allies on the G40 map. As a side note, I’m now won over on the Balance Mod since it’s actually a bit challenging to pull this off with that mod while it is a slam-dunk boring-easy win with the standard layout even at high bids. Looking for feedback, primarily on what kinds of strategies Allies might use to try to counter this.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve developed an Axis strategy I’m calling “J2I2”. It’s probably not original but it works for me and I’ve not seen anyone play it quite this way. My last two games I played against very strong players, one on the standard G40 map and once with the “Vichy France Balance mod”.

It’s a super conservative strategy with very little risk on the Axis side and it’s apparently impossible to stop on the standard map even with a healthy bid, and it even works with the balance mod. Very tolerant of mistakes on the Axis side, and Allies only need to miscalculate once and it’s game over.

As per the name, the Pac war starts on J2 and the European war starts on I2. Germany gets in the game on G3. I’ll write up a separate post about it but these experiences plus my experience as Allies with low luck settings convince me that the standard setup doesn’t let the Allies win against even a moderately skilled Axis player who follows the strategy.

Now that I have enough experience to judge, I’m afraid I have to agree, the standard G40 game is broken.

The more I play the more I see DDs as “sea infantry” and subs as specialty units primarily good for killing DDs economically, sticking in blockade zones, and forcing opponents to buy more DDs than they’d otherwise like to spend on.

One little trick I’ve learned recently is that buying single subs and putting them in zones where your opponent doesn’t want to leave his whole fleet is a good way of bleeding off his DDs so that when he runs out you can place subs as a way to build a navy in a zone that would otherwise be vulnerable to a strike.

The sub/DD game is like a little minigame within the game. Whichever one your opponent has, you want the other one as a counter. Opponent has subs, you need DDs you have no choice. Opponent has DDs you have more choices but subs are the cheapest way to get the job done.

I tend to J2 (never J1, IMO too much advantage in holding off a round) and have started putting a few units in the Carolines on J1. At worst it doesn’t change anything, at best it gives a few strike opportunities. Unless your plan is a very early (J4) India capture, it’s a good move.

I have been starting with a BB, loaded carrier, sub, dd there and sometimes a transport as well. The merits of Japan taking the inf off Carolines to use in attacking other islands are worth discussion, since they’re the only Japanese land units in the starting setup that typically don’t get used offensively. Even the Paulau inf gets used for Celebes often, and the inf in Iwo Jima can be utilized without going out of your way too much.

one AA shot @1 if a cruiser is present (just like an AA gun) might work

a cost of 10 would render the BB obsolete so you can strike that option

I like the carry-1 option, the New World Order map does that and it works pretty well.

Following up on this one… after getting pasted by several very skilled Axis players, I’ve been giving larger and larger bids to opponents and playing Axis more to get a feel of what’s going on on the other side. I’m now up to giving 15 bids, and still not having much difficulty at all winning with the Axis side.

What’s crazy is that I’m not following any of the optimal openers at all (although I’ve been gleaning a lot of tidbits of wisdom from this site for sure). I have a really old-school approach where my primary attack plan is to squeeze Russia from both sides, just like in Classic.

I’m guessing that some more experienced Allies players could mop the floor with me still, but this is what I’m doing:

G1 I’m now buying a carrier only, saving the rest. This essentially forces UK to build against Sealion their first turn, so they don’t get the jump on me by building a factory in Egypt. Other than that I’m super conservative with Germany, doing the 110/111 attacks, using the spare sub to make the coin flip attack on the DD/trans off the Canadian coast, taking France and Yugoslavia, absorbing Finland and Bulgarian axis-neutrals. Sending one plane to Tobruk and a tac to Rome is working out well so far so that’s also become part of the standard plan.

With Japan, the first turn is always is basically dedicated to preparing to stack Yunnan and staging for an assault on Malaya/Phillipines with as many transports as I can get in range. J2 seems like the best time to declare war, it’s the earliest I can have all my ships in good position to follow through to DEI effectively, and it seems to put Allies players off balance when they don’t see the J1 and I get lots of free transport and destroyer kills in the bargain. Having 4 loadable transports on the Phillipines and a couple more off FIC at the start of J3 provides a huge range of options. Enough of my fleet goes to Phillipines in J2 to make sure US can’t do anything in SZ6, and I usually build a carrier that round as well if US has built Pac, leaving me with two fleets: a defensive fleet in Phi with 3 carriers, and an expeditionary fleet off Malaya with 2 carriers and whatever bombarding capital ships I can spare. Sets me up perfectly to sweep the DEI in J3 while providing a threat against Burma to keep UK Pac land forces at home. If Russia goes full retreat I consider attacking them early and letting them have their Mongolian allies (which aren’t of much help to Russia without the 18 inf to provide some punch/resistance).

China is always target #1 on land, that “build anywhere” ability is a super power and the only thing other than a SZ6 attack that I really fear playing Japan. I feel that if I take them out early I have enough land units without needing to reinforce, but if I wait then it becomes a production grind and that’s not good for Japan because their land production even with IC builds is meh at best. If I do that then I can focus J3+ builds against whatever buildup the US puts in play, or if they don’t then more loaded transports get produced.

With Italy I declare on USSR in I2 and use them to lead the way so the German stack can have air cover if needed. The one time someone actually didn’t do Taranto on me I found the BB wasn’t as effective as reputed, I might consider not doing that attack anymore as UK. Germany follows with its own wardec on G3, with G2 and G3 having been land builds, and so the march begins.

I end up just wearing down Russia back to its capital where at negligible production it’s no threat at all, same for UK Pac. The actual killing blow is no rush, seems that I can do that anytime in both cases - so what I end up doing is building to exploit whatever weaknesses the Allied strategy offers. By the time the Allies have an Atlantic counter ready I’m already spamming western Europe with cheap inf and an occasional artillery unit.

I’m sure that more experienced Allies players can crush this kind of ad-hoc adjustable strategy but it’s working so far and it’s not all that terribly difficult to play - much much easier than the finely-tuned calculations needed on the Allied side. I’ll probably try giving bids of 20 or even more and seeing if this remains the case.

The game has a totally different character depending on which side I’m playing. Axis I can be freewheeling, and adjust on the fly, never needing to plan more than a turn in advance. When playing Allies I feel like I need to know what the board is going to look like in 3 more rounds while I’m deciding builds.

Sorry about the stream-of-consciousness post here, just thought I’d get some of these things out there to see what more experienced players have to say, how they would attack this as Allies, and if there are any glaring errors that need to be fixed to improve my play.

Best option to save it is to send it to Iceland, where it can be reached by German bombers and any subs left over after UK1… but it’s awfully inconvenient (they need to land it in Norway) and those bombers can’t participate in counter-Taranto so that often means one extra tac casualty unless Germany rolls well in SZ97. Trying to shelter it in 109 is another option (forces G to bring overkill to account for scramble), or if you have a DD to sacrifice you can send it to 118 and put the DD in 119 to block subs.

Depends to some degree what G builds in G1. If it’s carrier/dd/sub and there are G1 subs left over, then the BB is pretty much as good as dead.

I played very poorly that game so I wasn’t inclined to remember the details all that well. Not saying it’s solid, just that I’ve seen it and in that one instance it worked out for Axis. I’m not a top expert on this map like some of the people here, still learning the tricks of the trade where G40 is concerned. But I thought I’d throw it out there to see if anyone else had experienced or tried it. Sure frustrated the hell out of me as Allies and messed up my US/UK invasion of Western Europe.

One game I played recently, Axis declined to take either Normandy or Southern France at all, which ended up being very significant later on as these factories couldn’t be used by the US or UK in the counter-invasion. It was an interesting trade-off, 5 IPC a turn sacrificed for ~5-6 turns, and in exchange those factories were useless to the Allies later on, which turned out to be fairly critical to the game’s outcome.

Doesn’t it make sense for UK to scramble the ftr to 111 if Germany only goes in with 1 sub/bb/ftr/tac/bmb? According to dice calc the scrambled fighter will on average pay for itself and significantly increases the chances of that fight going south for Germany.

I also see a lot of SZ111 strafe attacks that, if the dice go right, will leave just a damaged BB (which can’t be saved from a G2 second strike) and let Germany keep its own BB. Where Germany buys a carrier in G1 saving that BB can pay dividends in securing the German fleet from counters for several rounds. Scrambling the fighter makes it much less likely the German BB survives.

There’s really no downside to landing it in Tobruk. It prevents the Italian stack from being wiped out, and what are you going to use it for in G2 anyway? You’re going to use it to counter the remains of the Taranto fleet, which it can reach from Tobruk just fine, landing at the airbase in Rome in noncom, from which it can hit any target you were planning to attack with it in G3.

Landing a tac in Rome in G1 instead makes zero difference in the Taranto calculation for the UK, if UK is going to go for it (as it almost always does), you’re not going to scramble it anyway. Never ever will a UK player say “I wasn’t going to do the Taranto raid, but since the 3rd scrambler is a tac instead of a fighter now I will”.

As UK I’m probably going to hit that Tobruk stack in UK1 if the fighter isn’t there, but it just ain’t worth it if it is.

Getting to keep the Italian units instead of having them wiped off the map before you get to move them, you now have the option of advancing to Alexandria again with German air cover, denying UK its original possessions NO and projecting an air threat to Suez. Or if all you wanted to do was rescue those units and bring them back to Europe, you only have the chance to do that if they live to see the second round.

I had some success today moving the Italian stack to Alexandria and reinforcing with German air (which then got a nice opportunity to kill off some UK fleet at Suez). It’s just enough to keep pressure on Egypt, which can lock down planes and prevent them from reinforcing India or providing counters against Japan.

Last game I played the Axis player basically ignored China entirely other than to move troops through to attack India. I had a great Chinese stack plus the Russian stack eating up all the Chinese territories, but sadly it did me no good as he ruthlessly exploited the fact that his airbase/factory setup in FIC could not be attacked by Chinese troops, and moved on to conquer India and then Egypt. It was undescribably lame, but those are the game rules so I can’t blame him for playing by them.

What do you do with 40+ Chinese units that have already conquered every territory they can move into?

SZ110 with only 7 attacking units is begging for a scramble-three to wipe out your attack. The first post has the safest combo.

It’s more than just the extremes you get rid of with low luck.

For example: are two hits from two defending infantry an “extreme” outcome? It should happen on average every nine times you throw the dice - in other words, it occurs many times during a normal game with normal probability.

How about three inf on defense missing all their shots? That’s a 30% probability outcome with dice, zero percent with low luck. And at the same time, those three inf will never hit twice in a round - when you add up the possible outcomes that disappear with low luck, you’re actually throwing out up to half the actual outcomes that occur. The three-inf case, if you work out all the probabilities, is actually really really REALLY different between dice and low luck - in a way that’s really bad for the defender: one third of the time three inf will score two or three hits. Eliminating those very common, very frequent outcomes has a huge impact on the amount of commitment an attacker needs to make (many fewer attacking units needed over the course of a game) as well as that for a defender (many more defending units needed).

Consider a must-take scenario for an attacker. With two defending inf, 11% of the time they’ll deal two hits. In a must take scenario, that’s not acceptable, so the attacker needs to commit three land units to take (assuming you don’t want to trade your planes for inf). With dice, you never need the third unit to be sure, so now that third unit can be used in a different attack, as are all the overkill units that are normally used in a must-win combat.

Swap that around to the defender’s side - you want to at least have the possibility of dealing two hits to an attacker (let’s say that’s all he can move into a given fight before he loses planes). In a normal game, two inf produce that threat. With low luck, you need twice as many inf to produce that same threat - minimum four inf just for the mere threat of dealing two hits in defense.

In this scenario, low luck cuts the attacker’s commitment by a third, minimum, while doubling the defender’s! That’s a massive balance change, so much so that it changes the very nature of the game.

Sure everyone has seen those fraction-of-a-percent outcomes which change the winner of a game, but the vast majority of the time it doesn’t happen. To throw out 30% outcomes in order to avert the possibility of a 0.1% outcome has a “baby with the bathwater” kind of feel to it.

I played a low luck game tonight for the first time on this map (I’ve used it on other maps) and boy oh boy did it feel like I was playing a completely different game.

As someone who had only played G40 the normal way, running into someone who wanted low luck and already had specific strategies that worked in low luck (but probably wouldn’t work nearly as well with dice) was a completely demoralizing experience.

My opponent played Axis and it felt like he had the game’s entire play sequence completely mapped out before we started. It was an enlightening experience, but not fun at all (and not just because I got spanked).

Maybe it’s just sore butt syndrome, maybe it’s just that I ran into a really good player who steamrolled me (and I made plenty of mistakes to help him along, to be sure), but low luck really felt like a lobotomized version of the game, and that a lot of things that usually worked out well for me just weren’t effective at all.

When dice are used, it is inevitable that attacking forces will encounter setbacks every so often, but that’s never the case with low luck. There is something just not right with always knowing the outcome of a battle before it starts, which makes the game qualitatively different from knowing the probable outcomes but not being certain in any given case.

A slightly underdefended territory might still be too risky of an attack with dice, whereas with low luck the attacker just needs that one extra unit to be certain of victory. 50/50 outcomes disappear almost completely, as does everything else between 100% and zero. Picketing sucks when two inf and two planes will capture every time and never fail. AA loses its bite when an attacker can calculate exactly how many planes - and no more - will go down to it. And the precisely calculated strafe is just cheesy.

I think many people view infantry as strictly defensive units, but if you have a large enough pile of them they become quite significant on offense as well.

My last game I stacked Amur on R2, didn’t advance until R5 (overran a single inf in Korea), and on R6 took out a dozen defending units on Manchuria with 8 inf and 2 AA surviving. My opponent unwisely took back Korea only to have the US take SZ6 and recapture immediately, which for all practical purposes ended Japan’s game and allowed the US to focus 100% on Europe thereafter, which was much more significant in keeping Moscow out of Axis hands than another 18inf 2aa in Moscow would have done. The US only needed 3.5 turns of production in the Pac theater to build that fleet so it was already full-building in the Atlantic by US5 and safely stacking units on Gibraltar by US6.

@Nippon-koku:

I’m with you 100% and often argue that very point on the board.  I like Buryatia R1, Amur R2, and if the opportunity is there I like to attack Manchuria or Korea R3.  I believe the upside to this is greater than walking back to Moscow

I’ve actually not been attacking with them until and unless Japan is committed too deeply in the south to respond. Just leaving them sitting there keeps pressure on Japan and keeps a good chunk of its land units out of the fight. Factoring in expected J1 losses, the units that have to hang out in Manchuria can be half of all Japanese land units on the board that are just stuck defending. And if he thinks 10 units plus an AA are good enough, he’s in for a surprise when you attack with 66% odds. It’s a 12-unit commitment for Japan to keep those Russian inf idle and out of its northern territories.

The threat of reinforcing a US landing in Korea is only part of the story. The other part is that you pin a dozen Japanese land units in defense, and those are units that are not advancing on China and the UK and not being shipped around the South Pacific to take over islands.

My contention is that neutralizing those Japanese land units and magnifying the danger to Japan of a US attack on SZ6 provides more overall value to the Allies. By supporting China and UK Pac this way it can actually enhance defense of Moscow, since UK and ANZAC get more freedom to fly extra planes in that direction rather than needing them against Japan.

In my mind the equation is something like 18inf 2aa in Moscow in R6 vs. the benefits described above and 3-4 UK/ANZAC ftr in Moscow at the same time. (ANZAC ftrs can be there at the end of the 4th round if you’re hustling).