Posts made by The Janus

@FranceNeedsMorePower @SuperbattleshipYamato

Italy2 is ready to go:
italy-turn-2-complete-game-32-2-1.tsvg

Hopefully my UK moves were adequate ;)

@Cornwallis said in Allied play in Europe 1940:

On G2 germany destroys cheaply the remaining UK ships and fly on to alexandria bolstering the defense.

My sense is that any opportunity to get a shot at the Luftwaffe is worth it. BUT the Allies need to have Italy effectively out of the game ASAP to really be successful, though – and I’m not convinced that can even happen in time to save the USSR.

Perhaps it’s a topic for my other thread, but I’m beginning to disagree more and more with the change in mechanics, where transports no longer have a defense value; navy costs too much, and air power is too effective for the Axis. These interacting factors seem to be what is slanting the game against the Allies.

ANZAC and France moved all of the things:
Germany-turn-2-complete-game-32.tsvg

Italy is up:
Italy1.tsvg

We’ll go with that I guess; @SuperbattleshipYamato feel free to change in edit mode afterwards.

@SuperbattleshipYamato pick some casualties:

Getting back to the topic of mechanics, I think the politics side of Europe 1940 is pretty broken.

The USSR remains fairly weak (relative to the Germans) until they’re at war, but basically the Germans have full control over when that war starts. To the point, the USSR cannot benefit from any of their N.O.'s unless they are at war… so even if they’re given the full 3 rounds to build up, those are done under the circumstance where they’re the weakest.

Germany doesn’t need 3 turns to mop up France, Yugoslavia, and Greece, so the extra money/units they produce over that time is just gratuitous, relative to what they actually require in order to pound the USSR into dust. The fact that there’s a German N.O. for not being at war with the USSR just adds more fuel to the fire.

Another mechanical complaint I have is around scrambling. From a balance perspective, it seems like something where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; from an actual procedural/gameplay perspective, it also slows down the flow of the game. Everything has to grind to a halt so that the players can decide whether or not to scramble, and how much. I think as a general observation, Axis&Allies needs less of these sort of mechanics; the game greatly benefits when automation can speed up the rate of play, and this kind of thing has the opposite effect.
Like sure, you can put in orders ahead of time, like “only scramble X if Y” but the game doesn’t need that level of fiddly-ness.

@SuperbattleshipYamato
let me know about scrambles: UK1 Combat Move.tsvg

@FranceNeedsMorePower said in Global 1940 out of box game: SuperbattleshipYamato (Axis) vs The Janus and FranceNeedsMorePower:

Get that one?

Jokes are supposed to be funny.

Please stop talking.

I think the broader issue is whether the UK can afford to let the Italians into SZ98 completely uncontested. Egypt seems super weak in the early going, and just letting them dump 2 transport loads in for free is going to bury the UK.

USSR is basically a lost cause, so the only thing keeping the Axis from a VC win is UK holding out in Egypt, or a very early D-Day and recapture of Paris.

Having not played the Global game yet, is it generally pretty standard practice to have the UK just send all of their ships from the Pacific map over towards the Red Sea (en route to the Mediterranean)?

You do seem to use a lot of stuff from India etc. in this move, which in a Europe-only game the UK would not have at their disposal.

@Cornwallis said in France's role in Global 1940 SE:

@FranceNeedsMorePower @barnee @SuperbattleshipYamato @The-Janus

Here is the promised video of my UK1 opening:

https://youtu.be/Z4vqnXhq4pU?si=NBU4WuJVUH2WqkVP

The move to East Africa is pretty similar to what I usually do.
I tend to use the transport to pick up the tank and an infantry from Alexandria; you can also send in the mech from Egypt and infantry from Sudan, with the tac to get the boost from the tank.
This leaves the tank and the mech 2 spaces from Egypt – the problem is that Egypt is way too weak in the beginning, so pulling units out to deal with East Africa is a losing idea, it seems.

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Global 1940 out of box game: SuperbattleshipYamato (Axis) vs The Janus and FranceNeedsMorePower:

@FranceNeedsMorePower

Scramble?

Germany Turn 1 Scramble?.tsvg

Actually, can you tell me which Allied powers you’re playing and which ones The Janus is playing? I actually don’t know.

Only scramble from Scotland, plz thx

@FranceNeedsMorePower said in France's role in Global 1940 SE:

Where would the transport go?

Like I said, someplace defensible – so either out of the way (maybe Madagascar, or French West Africa) or else it would have to be somewhere you’d actually be able to muster enough defense to keep it alive.

(I’m just sort of assuming the conventional rule for bid units is they have to be in/on/adjacent to your own territory, or at least in SZ where you already have ships, if not adjacent to your own territory.)

If you’re planning to send the British fleet to Southern France, maybe you even put it there? What intrigues me is whether there’d be any scenario where you could get the units from either Normandy-Bordeaux or Southern France off of the continent before they’re killed; it’d be tricky to figure out the right positioning where the transport would be left alone.

@FranceNeedsMorePower said in France's role in Global 1940 SE:

@Cornwallis @AndrewAAGamer @barnee @SuperbattleshipYamato @The-Janus Idea:

Say the Allies get a bid. Would it be worthwhile spending it on French units. If so what would be the best buy?

And, what would be the most common number bid for the Allies, then the lowest then the highest?

What would be ideas for French bids?

If they are any good…

Honestly, my immediate “out of the box” idea would be to get a transport, someplace defensible. Getting those 2 inf off of UK can be helpful, and being able to move units around with your own transports is always faster than walking, or using someone else’s transports.

Beyond that? it really depends on what sort of limitations there are, in terms of where you’re allowed to place stuff.

Could you put a harbor in French West Africa? That space always intrigues me because it borders 3 distinct sea zones; the problem is only 1 of them is within naval range of the US, and it’s the one that’s 4 sea zones from South Africa – so you can never quite complete that chain.

…other than that? I dunno. Would you want a tac. to go with your fighter, if all you’re really doing is defending? A harbor in Syria, to effectively connect Greece to Gibraltar? An airfield in Equatorial Africa (7 spaces from the US…)?

Would an airfield in Morocco or Algeria have any utility? I’m always intrigued by that possibility, since both straddle 2 sea zones.
If part of the Gibastion tactic (as mentioned by @AndrewAAGamer )is to build an airfield in Gibraltar, then having one in Morocco is probably just as effective.

I generally wouldn’t find much use for additional units (other than the transport, like I mentioned) but some infrastructure pieces might be useful.

@Cornwallis said in France's role in Global 1940 SE:

The time i would see use in it is when you activily try to hunt the luftwaffe.

I’ve theorized that this needs to be the crux of Allied thinking.

To wit, when playing against the Ai, the builds for the western Allies are sort of focused around having a strong enough escort fleet to either soak or deter a kamikaze-style attack by the Luftwaffe, in order to protect your supply chain of transports.

There’s a few issues, that you have to try and balance with that:

1. Deterring the attack vs. baiting it out and making actual kills. It seems like the only ways to achieve the latter is with some combination of scrambling and bombing/escorting.
2. Soaking hits with your navy vs. having meaningful attack power on land. An escort fleet heavy on destroyers does the former very well, but for making landfall in Europe, you need a stronger contingent of carriers+aircraft, with maybe some battleships for a mix of soaking hits and adding offense.
3. Spending too much on fleets vs. not enough on ground troops. If every SZ you need to meaningfully defend requires something like 40+ IPCs of escort ships, I can’t see how the British alone (or the US waiting until round 3/4) can meet that demand while still making any meaningful inroads militarily against the Axis.

I think these last 2 points in particular are why I’ve always found myself pulling the UK fleet behind the Suez canal, rather than sending those ships on a suicidal Taranto attack. But, to the 1st point, is part of the Taranto move an attempt to bait/kill German planes, too?

What I’ve found in games where the Ai does go after an allied fleet with the Luftwaffe (beyond the 1st round) is that the result is a much shorter game overall (i.e. the Axis lose faster.) So I can only assume the competent Axis players have taken this into account, and just won’t ever make this sort of move. Again, this brings us back to the 1st point, about how do we bait an attack from the Germans.

Re: France's role in Global 1940 SE @FranceNeedsMorePower
@Cornwallis said in France's role in Global 1940 SE:

@FranceNeedsMorePower

This is a wild idea i want to try:

https://youtu.be/ZQDC0iGa7UY?feature=shared

To avoid derailing the France thread, I’m making a new topic here.

I think this is an interesting idea, insofar as it does keep the US fleet in a relatively safer position. You end up 1 turn behind (essentially the turn you’d spend moving units to Mexico) compared to something that just relies on going from port to port.

But you have also hit on something that I noticed as well: the pathing from West Africa to Egypt is much shorter than going through North Africa. (6 spaces from Morocco to Egypt vs. 4 spaces from West Africa to Egypt)

The other thing that it immediately makes me think is, “Well, this is just like walking guys up to Canada and shucking them over to the UK.” The difference being that we’re assuming a strong German air/naval force in that region, thus making the southern route more desirable. But the upshot of any tactic that lands extra US forces in the UK is that it safeguards against a sealion attempt.

This video also made me realize (unintuitively) that the J1 attack makes the Europe game much easier for the Allies; getting the Americans in early can be a huge swing, but there’s basically no incentive for Germany/Italy to ever do it (maybe if you really wanted to take a shot at the US’s fledgling navy? maybe? I guess…?)

@FranceNeedsMorePower said in France's role in Global 1940 SE:

@The-Janus Now if you go to sea zone 93, would the French Ships escape then on the British turn the rest of the fleet takes off?

I’m generally assuming the Italians would still attack, just that they might take more losses.

Like if I’m the UK and I’m going to lose my entire navy either by doing this move or by doing the Taranto attack…? My preference would be to do whatever saves more of my planes. I’m not the biggest fan of the idea of landing the bomber in Malta, and letting that get blow’d up, on top of everything else.

@AndrewAAGamer said in France's role in Global 1940 SE:

I am not understanding the purpose of going to SZ93. Is it to try and save the French fleet?

My assumption would be that the Italians are taking out the French ships on their turn – it’s a simple matter of turn order; if you want to protect the French, the British have to do something before the Italians have a go.

It might be the case that the current meta that all the kool kids play doesn’t have the Italians doing that.

I’m just looking for alternatives, because seemingly a) backing the fleet behind the Suez is a non-starter, and; b) Taranto feels like a coin-flip (if you have any amount of German planes able to scramble, I feel like you’re basically screwed.)

Using the typical Gibastion strategy the English fleet would have 3 additional fighters protecting it in SZ92.

So wait, are we talking about putting an airfield in Gibraltar? Of all the things the UK could/should be spending money on, that sure was not anywhere on my list, fwiw.