Posts made by SubmersedElk

So I just played my first ever game as Axis - to date everyone has been willing to give a 9-15 bid, but an opponent last night bid 8 so I let him have it. (He added a sub to the Med and pocketed the other 2 IPC).

He spent US IPC in Atlantic (perhaps in response to my standard G1 fleet buy) and pulled Pac ships back to western US and put initial UK focus on Italy.

I DOWed him J2 and the situation for Japan couldn’t have been better. At the end of J2 I had every IPC/objective-relevant island in the Pacific except Celebes already in hand; could hold Yunnan; was two full levels deep into China; was immediately threatening India (forcing ineffective turtle by UK Pac); and there was not a single opposing transport between western US and the horn of Africa. This was later followed up by two factories in Asia each of which pumped out 3 tanks/turn by turn 5 builds; and a full-on strat bombing of India facilities, effectively taking UK-Pac out of the game before UK4. By the time the US switched to all-Pac (turn 4 or so), he was so far behind he couldn’t advance past Hawaii (and only got that far because I was still prioritizing Asia for Japan’s air force). The tank/air force just needed to mass in order to smash the remnant of China and then UK Pac, and I could then spend 40+ IPC/turn on fleet with a pullback of a few fighters to counter the US buildup.

I did lose the game but only because I messed up the tactics on the German side, which was more a result of my inexperience with Axis than anything. But there I was, first time Axis player and let to its own devices I was able to leverage Japan to take them to the house. I made lots of mistakes too, so it’s not like I had to play it perfectly - I was basically imitating all the things that I had seen others do from the Allies’ perspective to see if my opponent had answers that I didn’t.

I know some people automatically assume that having those units from the Far East in Russia proper is the best course, but if Japan does its job right those units make it west of Mongolia just in time to be confronted by a mixed Japanese stack that can overwhelm them. I would argue that those units are compelled to mass in the east in order to give China/UK-Pac a chance to survive. Taking 10 Japanese land units out of the equation in those early rounds makes a huge difference. Also allowing Japan control of the Mongolia situation by allowing it to trigger the intervention at its leisure (when it has had the opportunity to move in 4 extra inf to clean up the new Russian units) and collecting the northern Russian territories by running tanks around empty space instead of having to knock out at least a picket every space for the whole march.

It’s because of this that I believe that a) Russia can’t abandon the east, they need to put those 18 units on Amur at some point to force Japanese units away from China/UK; and b) UK/ANZAC/US need to play an aggressive counter-game to force Japan to spend to defend its Pacific territories while eliminating as many land units on the ground as possible.  If you don’t, there are few good answers to a J2 where J1 is pounding China and staging naval units and transports in complete safety for a mass J2 attack followed by a J3 cleanup. Yes, you bring the USA into the war early, but they’re not really positioned to do much that early anyway. I prefer J2 to J1 because having that first turn to move in safety and stage units is a powerful asset and allows you to see Allied 1st turn buys which tip off your opponent’s strategy before you commit to your own strategy and maintains the option to delay further if there is advantage to be gained by it.

“Out of range” for the Japanese air force is as many as 3 or 4 spaces off the coast - carrier and island landing spots really extend that fighter range quite a bit!

First should come a playable game; historical accuracy should take a back seat.

If your first goal is accurate history, then a history book is better than a wargame for that. The ultimate test of success or failure in game design is: is the game an enjoyable experience that is worth spending discretionary time on?

For me, for a wargame, one element that is required to make it enjoyable is challenge. To that end, I pretty much can’t play Axis on this map because it’s not challenging to have straightforward, unimaginative play that could be replaced by a computer program be the best way to win. If I win as Allies, I know I’ve beat the odds and that struggle to do so is enjoyable. Winning as Axis would be meh, that’s what’s supposed to happen.

I just observed a game where on J3 Japan had 15 different 100% combats, only 2 of which could be countered by Allies on the next turn (neither one important, and neither counter sustainable), while creating no positional weakness.

It was a very on-point demonstration of the power in the Japan G40 setup. Allies didn’t make any mistakes that I could see, and there was no particular brilliance involved it was just what was there for Japan to do.

Thank you Bill that was exactly the kind of advice I was looking for!

@MarineIguana:

For what it’s worth, It’s my experience that Axis and Allies is inherently scripted on both sides with one optimal strategy that dominates all others. This is my experience on Revised, 1941 v3, Big World, Global 1940, Lord of the Rings, and New World Order.

Then again, the optimum strategy is complex enough to execute that few/nobody humans can actually attain it. It’s similar to Chess, where state of the art computers have nearly solved the game such that the computer can look at each point and evaluate the decision tree of outcomes to select the best one. The parallel I am drawing is that there’s an inherent optimal play in both game structures, not that Axis and Allies has good AI (doesn’t yet.)

Still, Axis and Allies is a fun game that’s certainly captured my attention across over 500+ full games.

That’s fine IF there are less-than-100%-optimal strategies that are still playable and viable. The ideal case allows for maximum creativity.

To bring up the chess example, there may technically be a “best” play in any given situation, however, there are often dozens of viable plays that can still be winners, some of which may even be situationally better than the technically-best play in the context of an opponent who is less familiar with them and thus less able to find the optimal counter-play. Just crack open a book of chess openings - even if white opens very conventionally and conservatively, black doesn’t have to do the same to have a strong and viable game.

@Dafyd:

Wow…I didn’t realize that the game that I have so much fun playing was so screwed up and unfair.  There are a number of posts along the forum that sound like whining rather than newre players trying to discover what experienced players have done over the years with the purpose of becoming better players.  When all is said and done, it is a game.  Have fun with it.  Try something and if it doesn’t work,  try something else.  If the axis have an advantage then learn ways to overcome the advantage.  We had to in real like anyways.  To get back to the opening question: are the allies doomed from the outset on the G40 map?  No.  Are they at a disadvantage?  Maybe but that’s what makes playing the allies so much of a challenge and thus fun.  Guys…Just have some fun.  The world is hard and nasty enough without bringing into our leasure time.  Just an old man’s opinion I guess.

There wasn’t anything on this thread that genuinely qualified as “whining” until you showed up. Please don’t derail my thread with get-off-my-lawn protests. Not everyone shares your just have another beer approach to wargaming, for some of us the analysis is not only also fun, but an essential part of playing well.

“give the opponent so many good targets that he can’t hit them all” is not a winning strategy IMHO

@Young:

A balanced game can also be described as one that allows for strategy options, and multiple mistake recovery… if an experienced Allied player can beat an experienced Axis player for 50% of games, it just seems to me that the Allies would need to follow a very narrow script without any room for mistakes.

That’s not necessarily a question of balance but of strategic depth. A good game should have both of course.

My fear is that so much of the G40 map is scripted by the particulars of its design that it leaves no room for strategic depth even if it were balanced. For example, some have said that they have seen games go well without UK doing the Taranto raid, but can they do so against quality Axis players? If not, that attack is effectively scripted by design. When I analyze Allied-side choices, many of them are essentially scripted responses to Axis openers, since deviating from those responses can only produce worse results than the script. When you boil it down to optimal openers followed by scripted responses, it becomes a one-player game (all choices on Axis side), and not a terribly fun one at that.

The ultimate test of balance is whether the best Allied players can go toe-to-toe with the best Axis players.

If they can’t, then the game is not balanced, regardless of any other factor. People have playtested and analyzed this game thoroughly enough to try everything worth trying.

If they can, then the question is: what are the best Allied players doing that the rest aren’t?

Take as an example, those Russian inf in the east. What to do with them and why? Bring them home always for Moscow defense? Use them offensively when focusing on Japan? If used offensively, do you bring in tanks and/or planes to support them? Is a bomber buy appropriate in that case? Should there be an extra inf or three pushed into Chinese territories south of Mongolia to trigger the war pact if Japan attacks them? Are there a set of Chinese/UKpac/ANZAC/US moves and buys that are necessary to make this kind of initiative successful? Are these good moves against certain Axis openings and bad ones against others? If so, which ones? Etc.

Feels like whole-map coordinated allied strategies are missing, even though there is a lot of point-level advice out there.

I never claimed to be all that great on this map (though I was a top-25 online player back in the Classic days, so I’m not a newbie either). That’s why I came seeking help unwinding this problem of standard Axis openings for which there seems to be no good counter.

I’m going to try some of the ideas put forth here and see if I can work out some combination of them that can be effective for Allies in countering those Axis strategies. Maybe enough incremental improvements in the way I play the response will be enough to equalize - I’m probably now a better player for having posted this thread and gotten the feedback from it, thanks to all.

in case you were wondering, that’s where I encountered the “blockade damage against no-longer-owned territories” problem, just a heads up

@Nippon-koku:

@SubmersedElk:

But the US enters the war on their next turn… isn’t Japan typically going for those islands on their next move anyway? How does J3 and US3 change in practice with a UK2 DOW?

Now that I’m thinking it through the whole way, is there a good reason UK and ANZAC shouldn’t DOW Japan on their 2nd turns every game?

Funny you should mention this because I had the exact same revelation yesterday.  The only thing I can come up with is that if the US is planning heavy Atlantic activity and really wants to get to Gibraltar on turn 3.  Otherwise, there is no reason not to do this.

OK good to know I’m not totally crazy… so unless there’s some huge benefit to having US units in Gibraltar in turn 3 rather than turn 4, it sounds like a good idea for UK/ANZAC to take the initiative instead of waiting for Japan to maneuver at its leisure. Whatever Japan’s plan was for J3 then gets disrupted at least a little bit, and that seems to give China a much better chance to survive.

never mind, question answered while I was posting

So the price of UK2 DOW on Japan is the US entering the war one turn later. I guess the next question is, is the potential to contest Yunnan before Japan can consolidate there worth the trade-off?

I have to wonder, is having the UK stack Burma and declaring war on Japan on UK2 (presuming J is setting up for J3 DOW) a reasonable way to go? What’s the downside to UK (and ANZAC) unprovoked declarations against Japan?

Why would anyone NOT do the Taranto raid? What’s the alternative benefit from using that fleet elsewhere that can compensate for leaving Italy with opportunities to contest Africa and the ME?

The question is, how can the Allies pose a credible threat to the Japanese navy without 100% US Pac buys?

As-is, it seems the choice given to the Allies is “Let Germany go hog wild” vs. “Let Japan go hog wild”. There’s no in between or shades of grey, as anything less than a full commitment just leaves them undermanned in both theaters rather than just one.

The Pripet Marshes thing is a huge benefit for Germany - Russia can only defend north or south of it, and because it has so little mobility it must choose and choose first. Germany can then easily advance to whichever side that Russia deprioritizes. The marshes then serve to protect the German advance from being flanked or cut off. It forces Russia’s defensive force to move behind the line instead of holding the line, since it can’t consolidate a counter/strafe stack in any of the the 2nd line of territories off the front without abandoning the other side.

Try playing without it, you will see it has an immense impact on the Russian defensive position, and as a consequence, also on the speed of Axis advance against it.

It just seemed weird to me that there are only three impassible areas on the board - the Sahara, the Himalayas, and… the Pripet Marshes? Why the Pripet Marshes vs. any other inhospitable place? Clearly it was placed there not for realism but to produce this very effect on the Russian defensive position.

With regards to the discussion about supply lines - Axis supply lines don’t actually get longer. Axis captures of Russian ICs combined with SBR on Moscow moot the issue in that theater, and in the East Japan can build ICs in quite a number of effective places, later using the UK Pac home IC, while the only Allied nation that can afford to build one east of Persia is the US, and its choices are limited to Alaska and Mexico, (thanks to the “no ICs on islands” rule) - neither of which shorten supply lines. It also can’t build any in North Africa due to the 2IPC minimum rule.

Onto the balance topic, If I had the aim of making changes to balance the game, there are some items that stand out to me as Allied liabilities that could be fixed:

• Priapet Marshes impassibility is a killer for Russia’s ability to defend its territory.
• US should be able to get ships from the coast of the US to the coast of the UK in one move instead of two.
• Blockade zones shouldn’t take IPC from a nation that no longer owns the territory that’s being blockaded.

Let me start by saying I appreciate the feedback, I am trying to figure this problem out and it’s quite frustrating at the moment.

To address some of the comments above:

• The reason I made the notes about the material IPC situation is that that is the only Allies apparent advantage other than the not-difference-making ability to dominate Africa. Otherwise the Axis are much much better off due to unit concentration, force composition, map layout, initiative, and lack of by-rule movement/attack restrictions. Normally a playable game is either straight-up well-balanced (e.g. chess, exactly even material and positioning, with only imbalance that White moves first), or unbalanced in a way such that both sides have advantages and weaknesses. I’m not seeing ANY advantage on the Allies’ side on this map.

• Regarding the Allied Pac fleet: I’ve tried the ANZAC fighters trick and that doesn’t work either. Full US Pac buys plus full ANZAC fighter buys can’t create a stack that can advance against the Japanese air/fleet combo. The Allies can stack 30+ by Round 4, but the Japs can do that as well without making any major sacrifices. By R4 the Japs are done with China for all intents and purposes and have the ability to assault Calcutta while maintaining effective deterrent against the Allied fleet and have equalized income.

• The timing of Japan’s DOW doesn’t seem to matter. J1s, J3s, all fundamentally end up in the same position by R5: China dead, Japanese fleet and air concentrated in SE Asia, UK Pac on its heels with very little (or even no net) income, and not enough Allied fleet to do anything more than sacrifice transports contesting DEI and trading sub and destroyer blockers. I’ve been considering whether to have UK and ANZAC just DOW Japan immediately in the event there’s no J1 might help. Once China is dead, Japan is free to then concentrate the land units against UK Pac - which is not building at all by that point thanks to blockade and SBR, and at the same time run a few extra units up Russia’s backside. Meanwhile by that point Germany is already pushing Russia back and the Allies no longer have an income advantage.