Posts made by SubmersedElk

@simon33:

I was referring to the scenario of a capital-less nation conquering someone else’s capital which I doubt was contemplated. Or if it was, they thought it required no special handling.

Yes I was addressing that scenario. That’s a scenario which is so common throughout A&A that I would be flabbergasted if the lack of special handling was an oversight. Even in the original game that happened all the time: Moscow falling to Japan the turn before Russia conquers Berlin (as the 3rd attack in a 1-2-3 with UK and US) was a typical endgame outcome in Classic. As far as I’m aware, none of the rules related to capital capture mechanics have changed since then.

UK capital sack income is determined by which side of the map it’s on. G40 is just Europe + Pacific put together, so in case of doubt, play it exactly as you would on the map in question.

I’m pretty sure this scenario was contemplated, as it’s not all that terribly rare at all.

Which brings us back to subs not blocking destroyer movement.

Tech shouldn’t be in the game at all, at least not in anything resembling its current form - it’s a total feast-or-famine proposition and game breaking in both directions. Either you spend and spend and don’t get anything worthwhile - in which case you’ve crippled your side’s war effort with fruitless expenses - or you hit the jackpot and get a ridiculously overpowered advantage, which all but forces your opponent to spend on tech to neutralize it, which almost always leads to the other side’s war effort being crippled.

If that’s what you like, I recommend Yahtzee! as an alternative to military strategy games.

@creeping-deth87:

@SubmersedElk:

subs don’t block, a sub in SZ92 does nothing to prevent Allied access to SZ93

They absolutely block. A sub in 92 means destroyers can’t go all the way to 93, and if they go to 93 without the destroyers you can just submerge and hit them back on your turn with air support.

Subs don’t block, full stop.

Even if they did, the DDs could move through in noncombat and cover the fleet.

Moreover it would be a waste of effort to block. Allies don’t land in Southern France because it’s a poor landing spot in a very target rich environment.

If you want to block a SZ the least expensive (and most effective) unit for that purpose is a destroyer.

I buy lots and lots of mechs at 4 IPC.

At 5 IPC I would probably buy zero, and pick up tanks instead. At those prices, for every 30 IPC spent, you’d get one more hit if you chose mechs, or +9 attack +3 defense if you chose tanks. The situations in which mechs would be a better buy would be few and far between - so rare, that if the unit were removed entirely it would not be missed.

Mechs are fodder units. Fodder units need to be as cheap as possible since you buy them in bulk and their only purpose for existence is to soak up hits that would otherwise be allocated towards more expensive units. Increasing the price of fodder undermines the very reason it is in the game in the first place.

There might be a better balance of unit costs to be found, but it won’t be found in adjusting mech prices only, all prices across the board would have to be realigned as well as the amount of income on the board.

Mechs are balanced by their awful attack value and lack of unsupported blitz capability. If their mobility is giving you fits, use pickets.

subs don’t block, a sub in SZ92 does nothing to prevent Allied access to SZ93

I pretty much always let the other player bid first and end up accepting whatever he proposes, since the bid offered has been consistently below 20. As a result I’m seeing a lot of subs in the eastern Med combined with a fighter either on Scotland or Malta.

This one time, at G40 camp, …

for their cost, tacs should attack and defend at 4, be able to intercept, be able to strat bomb factories, have a range of 15, and be able to call in the Death Star to obliterate the planet

To clarify, I was discussing the merits of buying a stack of 4 bombers and sending them to the Pacific.

Sure one bomber might get some targets to snipe at - but a full round buy doesn’t add much to what you already got with the starting bomber. Anything can be effective against an opponent making serious mistakes like leaving a transport stack naked and open to attack, and in a case like that, one bomber is as effective as four.

The issue is with the mechanics of movement over the oceans. A Japanese transport at a harbor can be in range to attack a bomber while the bomber is not in range to attack the transport, despite the vast difference in base movement - an airfield for the bomber makes no difference. Land units can effectively move 5 spaces to attack when using a transport at a harbor (one load, three move, one drop). The bomber would need 8 move total to attack that transport and return to base, and of course it only gets 7 with the airport and 6 without.

It’s totally counterintuitive when you look at base move 2 for ships and base move 6 for bombers, but in practice, that transport can attack from one space further away than the bomber can.

@madscientist:

What if USA built 4 bombers on the first round and sent them to the Pacific? Japan is most likely going to leave a transport behind somewhere. If you combine 4 bombers with USA’s starting fleet, you could do serious damage vs Japan’s fleet.

Bombers aren’t anywhere near as useful in the Pacific as they would appear to be at first glance. The island geography and the lack of decent landing spots does a lot to limit their effective range. If you’re just sniping transports, you can do it cheaper with ANZAC subs.

Send your bomber to the Pacific next time you play US and you’ll see there aren’t a lot of targets to shoot at. Having 5 bombers isn’t enough, the IJN can defend against that. Those bombers are actually going to be a lot more effective against a German fleet, because Japan can afford to buy new ships every turn if it has to, but Germany can’t.

You can’t build a major in Kiangsu - its “original owner” is actually China. Only place Japan can build a major is in Korea.

@Young:

I would allow them to pull one artillery unit per mech infantry during non combat movement only, and I would charge 5 IPCs each.

turns them into a completely different unit

Their current purposes is as mobile defensive fodder, and at their current cost they are good in that role. At a cost of 5, you may as well throw in one more IPC and get the real deal and buy a tank, because that’s already too expensive for land fodder.

A better approach to the problem you are trying to solve there would be to create a mobile artillery unit and make that unit cost 5. With a move of 2 but no blitz ability there would be a role for them without having them dominate the game.

FIC is the best spot, hands down.

Kwangtung is generally my second choice, especially if I see the possibility of needing to build ships there, and later in the game it makes a nice launching pad where you can build a loaded transport every turn - good for attacks against Australia and pushing back against the US, with the option of sending them to the Indian Ocean instead.

After that it depends. If Russia retreated and I’m building an early IC, then Manchuria is a very nice spot for a first IC build. You can focus your initial forces south and have units from that IC attack northern China and later into Russia proper. Its effectiveness is game-dependent, though; if it’s four or more territories away from any contested area, it’s going to be of limited effectiveness.

@ABWorsham:

@simon33:

Regarding attacking Greenland, if you can get that far why not attack Quebec? Stops a turn of production from the facility there, presumably slowing down efforts to regain SZ109. Attacking Greenland only robs US of a landing field they don’t need, unless I’m missing something?

That was the plan, force the Allies to place some focus on otherwise “safe” territories. My U-boats controlled the Atlantic and I was using original units for this ploy.

The problem there is that they are “safe” territories because they are easy to defend. Attacking your opponent’s strong points in preference to attacking weak points is generally not a sound strategy.

If you’re going to help Italy in the Med with Germany, then taking Southern France with Germany makes sense.

However, Germany really has its plate full and shouldn’t be spending any IPC in the Med. It can’t overrun Russia while building ships.

Also, Southern France isn’t a great place to build anyway, no airbase cover and easy to strike for the Allies’ Atlantic fleet. If you’ve got the extra IPC for ships you may as well do it right and build an IC in Yugoslavia for that purpose.

If you were only planning to build a couple of ships down there, it’s better to leave Italy with the 2 income and let it use that to help build its own ships, or swing your fleet around Gibraltar in G2.

@Bravehart:

So….

If the ukP land units claim the pro allies territory like Persia, the 2 ipc value goes towards… UK E cos its on the European side? The standing army would go towards UK P?

BH

There’s no such thing as a UKP unit; there are only UK units. The acquired pro-Allies units would become UK units.

The Persia income would go to UKE because it’s on the European side.

The key concept here is that UK Pac and UK Europe are not two separate countries. Both place “UK” units - there is no such thing as a “UK Europe” unit as opposed to a “UK Pacific” unit.

The way it works is that any territory owned by UK is owned by “UK”, not by “UK Europe” or “UK Pacific”. When income is collected, the territories owned by UK are divided by a vertical line west of India. Anything west of that line is UK Europe income, anything east is UK Pacific income. So there’s really no such thing as a territory being explicitly held by UK Pacific; they are actually held by the UK, and the income is allocated to the Pacific capital if it is east of the divider, or to the Europe capital if west of it.

To summarize:

• in terms of territory ownership, there is only UK ownership, UK Europe (UKE) and UK Pacific (UKP) do not own territories
• UKE and UKP are relevant only in dividing UK income, purchasing and placing separately, and maintaining separate IPC pools in case of a capital capture
• the division of UK income does not change if one or both of the capitals is captured.

No, the term predates anything you’ve seen on the Internet. I distinctly remember using that term when I first learned the game almost 30 years ago, which leads me to believe that it came from the original rulebook or other supplementary materials that came with the boxed set. The group of friends I played with weren’t in contact with any larger gaming community and didn’t have the Internet to research with, so the only way we could have known the term is if it was used as part of the instructions from the game. We definitely did not come up with it on our own.