@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Global 1940 out of box game: SuperbattleshipYamato (Axis) vs The Janus and FranceNeedsMorePower:
Scramble?
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:
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:
This is a wild idea i want to try:
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.
This might be a really stupid question, but…
As a matter of tactics, are Allied players sending the UK fleet from SZ 98 (Egypt) to SZ 93 (Southern France), after punching through SZ 96 (Malta) with planes or whatever? (It occurs to me that the cruiser at SZ 91 can also meet up there.)
…or is does the game literally come down to “Taranto or GTFO” because absolutely nothing else works?
@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
I find nuking counterattack forces is best
General observation, but it seems like hitting the backline with nukes while hitting the frontline with conventional forces is the way to gradually wear the enemy down.
@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
As a side note: the NATO “at start” nuke is very impactful in the ways that are considered secondary. Removing 5 Russian infantry might be a letdown, but when you do this to the SFE industrial complex on the turn you land in Kamchatka, you ensure the Russian counterattack is less likely to succeed because they’re down five infantry and can’t move their fighters due to EMP. Finally, on the Russian turn, because the IPC value has been reduced, the Russians can only add two Russian infantries instead of four.
This typically forces the Russian player into a horrific choice. Abandon the territory leaving the fighters to be destroyed because they couldn’t move. Or fight a losing battle in SFE and die with the fighters albeit at higher NATO cost. If NATO is using the nuke in some other way, imo - it’s being used inefficiently. Full stop. The NATO nuke is for the critical territory of SFE timed when landing in Kamchatka.
As a matter of tactics, I wonder if there’s a scenario in which the Soviets can afford to abandon Eastern Siberia, and rely on counter-attacking? I know in my early days of playing, China seemed extremely fickle, and always seemed to turn away from the USSR, leaving North Korea exposed and with the Soviets unable to hide in their territory.
Really I think in order to hold off the Americans, they actually need to have a big enough force in both Eastern Siberia and Kamchatka, and to at least control South Korea (even if they can’t hold off the US from landing there) while having the Chinese in, defending the North. Most US players are hesitant to attack North Korea militarily, because if the Soviets can retake it, the Chinese just move right back in at the end of their turn. That means still needing to have a strong counter-attacking force either in Eastern Siberia or Manchuria… but maybe that makes it slightly more workable?
That all being said, I don’t know where these hypothetical Soviet reinforcements would be coming from, in time for rd3. As tempting as it is to not place a ton in the east for the first round or so (while the US navy is all tangled up) I’m getting the sense that the Soviets kind of have to.
I do enjoy discussing strategy and tactics, but I’ll try to keep my posts shorter going forward. I don’t write huge walls of text to drown anyone else out, I just actually enjoy writing :)
@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
I’ve never seen a game of E&W stagnate.
Like I said, there’s generally some nibbling around the edges, but for the majority of the game, the territory that NATO controls is essentially stable by the end of the 1st Soviet turn; the USSR creeps ahead in territory by taking neutrals.
I guess while we’re talking about neutrals, maybe it’s time to question whether paying that tax is worth it, as the USSR. For every infantry that you lose taking Finland (for example) you need to hold the territory for 2 rounds, just to break even. Sure, a 2-IPC territory will pay itself off sooner, but in a game only lasting 8 rounds (and invading neutrals only really starts on the 2nd and 3rd rounds), we might need to rethink whether the juice is worth the squeeze. The other thing is that Scandinavia in particular is so far out of position for offensive units, particularly if the biggest area of concern is holding off Kamchatka.
@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
Most TripleA players will know what board TUV is. After a stock opener as the Soviets the TUV is usually 102 IPC in favor of NATO with land/air alone
You have a point, but you’re also completely discounting the fact that NATO can only really act at 1/3rd efficiency with those units. If we have the “fruity pebbles” situation in France, the USSR typically can’t outmatch NATO’s defense, but likewise even all 3 NATO powers acting in concert can’t evict the Soviets out of West Germany, either.
(In an Axis & Allies game where each side is split between 2-3 factions, this dynamic is more balanced out. Come to think of it, this might be why the Pacific 1940 game is so tilted towards Japan, because their opponents are split into China/UK/ANZAC/US whereas the Japanese are just one unitary behemoth.)
I mentioned it earlier in the thread that the total infantry of both sides is relatively even after the Soviet opener, meaning it’s only the rd1 purchases keeping NATO ahead; after that, there’s a big drop-off for WE from their starting income. (In fact, one of the house rules I had proposed back in the day is that their rd1 income should reflect only the territories they start their turn with, but that’s another conversation.)
Off the top of my head, (after S1) typically the US has 5 fighters, UK has 3, and WE has 2 – compared to 7 for the USSR.
For tanks, it’s in the same ballpark; USSR has 12 (+3 heavies) vs. 5 for the US (one that’s stranded on Okinawa, of all places), 4 for the UK (scattered across the globe), and 2 for WE.
If there’s one obvious place where NATO is ahead, it’s bombers (5 to 1) but again, outside of naval combat I find myself mainly using them for paratrooper transport; granted, SBR can really sting the Soviets, but a bomber lost to AA basically isn’t getting replaced – so that stings pretty hard, too. I should also add that the US is essentially always at risk of losing one bomber to deliver a nuke, because ballistic missiles have such a limited range – and if you try to fire a nuke from anywhere in Europe (to get closer to the juicier Soviet targets) you’re risking a costly detonation, even if you did ship over an AA gun to do it without risking a bomber.
(Another point worth mentioning is that the ballistic missile tech works like a tonic for the USSR, because all of their coastal ICs/AA guns are basically exactly where you would want to launch a nuke from, if you’re gunning for NATO’s ships – meaning they effectively don’t require bombers for their nukes once they get the tech, unlike the US.)
So even if NATO is ahead by 102 on TUV, if 60 of that is just bombers, and another 34 of that are WE’s tanks+fighters…? I’m not sure there’s as wide a gulf as the numbers would seem to demonstrate. We’re both on record as saying that total infantry / infantry production is something we pay close attention to in E&W – I think that metric might be more telling than TUV in this game. Case in point, the USSR can be behind by ~100 in TUV and probably still be competitive, but if they’re below NATO in infantry production, their goose is cooked.
As our current game hopefully illustrates, I think there’s a case to be made that NATO needs to focus on building their logistics up in order to get all that TUV to where it actually needs to be; if this means building transports ahead of spies, that also opens a window for the USSR. Generally I think the randomness of tech and spying make for a bad balancing mechanic, but it’s not nothing at least.
I think it’s safe to say that both sides are on timers of their own. The USSR needs to come up with ways to disrupt the naval situation ASAP (as well as throughout the game) while patching up their defense enough to at least counterattack (if not repel) any/all likely invasions.
NATO on the other hand needs to make landfall before the USSR can spin up their nuke production. If the NATO fleet is bombed, the remaining transports are sitting ducks; if there isn’t another nuke in the pipeline, then sure, they can just keep on keeping on for a while – but my sense is it’s better to preserve those units by redirecting them out of range, rather than just feed them into the wood-chipper and replace them afterwards.
This is why I point to a Philippines IC as a way to keep some flow of US units into Asia if/when nukes make the Kamchatka route unsustainable. But this sort of begs the question of “if NATO loses the naval game, do they just lose? or is their 2nd-best strategy still a viable option?” Having tried non-Kamchatka strategies as the US, I’m inclined to think that the shortest/fastest supply chains for NATO are the only ones that work – so if the USSR develops a hard counter to that, then NATO just can’t win. The followup question then becomes, is 6-8 rounds enough time for the USSR to leverage nukes and defeat the navy? I think shy of them shooting way under on their opener, it should be doable.
@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
You don’t even need to buy a nuke as NATO
Correct, the US and UK instead need to add how many transports to the board, to even be viable? Compared to how many the USSR needs?
You’re trying to do the “crying poor” argument as the USSR, and it doesn’t wash because I’ve already laid the numbers out.
If the USSR “needs” 2 nukes and 2 spies to win the game, that’s 60 IPCs
If NATO needs 3 spies and at least 4 transports just to be competitive, that’s 62 IPCs already. So let’s call that a wash, for the sake of argument (maybe it’s 2 spies and 5 transports, etc.)
If the USSR is collecting 70 IPCs at the end of their 2nd turn (which, they are) that’s already putting them at 35 inf compared to a (reasonable, but generous/rounded up) 32 for all of NATO; if that trend holds, the USSR can basically afford to not purchase 3-4 infantry for 6 rounds, build 2 nukes with that money instead, and put the game out of reach – while still being at parity w/r/t ground forces.
And that’s to say nothing of the fact that after turn 2 they can likely/reasonably still boost their economy by invading:
…at a time when NATO is maybe maintaining parity in France, and often is struggling or failing to hold onto Italy.
Prior to rd3 NATO is only ever nibbling around the edges of the USSR, and at best they’re “trading” those territories – meaning both sides cash them in. The problem is that trading territories is a losing proposition for NATO, because their infantry cost so much more.
If NATO spends 2 infantry to kill 1 infantry and take a 2 IPC territory, and then the USSR spends 2 infantry to kill NATO’s 1 surviving infantry to take back the territory – guess what? We’ve both lost 6 IPCs in units for 2 IPCs in territory… but the USSR started with the territory, and also ended with the territory.
This is why the game stagnates; there’s no point for NATO to attack, unless they can either a) catch the USSR with their pants down, taking out tanks or aircraft with a nuke or paratroopers or similar, or; b) make a big enough landing that it can’t be pushed back, and also can be continually resupplied. Yes I’m talking about Kamchatka.
The problem fundamentally is that nukes are a hard-counter to anything NATO is doing involving transports, while the hard-counter for nukes is…? There isn’t one. If anything, the only counter is to be winning the game militarily/economically, which I think I’ve pretty clearly established that NATO is not the faction which is in the driver’s seat, in that regard… in addition to being at a disadvantage in spying, too!
@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
buy a spy with the pregame IPC
What’s the implied game-ender that the Soviet spy provides? Spain?
I’ve said it upthread, but I think that’s also the strong counter-point to saying, “US can go all in on the Pacific, and there’s literally no downside.”
Leaving France susceptible to that stab in the back is what makes me think the Kamchatka push is less of a sure thing. I feel like a split focus between Europe and Asia for the US is often warranted.
@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
the USSR has to blow holes in its economy to build the two needed to make something you might call a difference in the naval war.
The situation in the Pacific is really a gambit, just because the US has the option to potentially retreat up to 2 subs, out of the Soviet attacks. But like I said, I’ve often seen the US lose all of the naval units that are attacked on S1.
That leaves them with 1 bb, 1 crz, 2 CV for the Pacific (generally assuming they’ll lose the Hawaii sub in mopping things up.) If those get taken out by a nuke (even if you lose some fighter aircraft to save ships) the remaining transports are pretty vulnerable to a kamikaze-style attack. If nothing else, that would cause a player like myself to consider pivoting my navy somewhere out of fighter range (i.e. perhaps supplying India instead.)
If the Soviets get the nuke tech early enough, I know that the US can’t really afford to have their navy out of position if/when the nuke arrives – that’s why in games where that early tech happens, I’ll often just focus on the southerly route, with an IC in the Philippines.
@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
When NATO buys a nuke, the opportunity cost is 6 infantry and two IPC. When the Soviets buy a nuke, the opportunity cost is 10 infantry - that hurts.
I think you need to ask the question, “why would NATO buy a nuke?” because you’ve always based the entire cost/benefit analysis on how many infantry a nuke costs. Why would NATO spend 20 IPCs to kill 10 IPCs of infantry? Even with the upgraded nuke, it’s still only a break-even proposition for NATO.
I think if the USSR can pull ahead by, say 3 infantry per round over/above what NATO can put out, they can afford a nuke every 3rd round while still maintaining parity on land units. If they can get the “10 IPC free SBR” of a spy kill, that helps their economic prospects even more.
If you take the standard chunk out of NATO (Norway, West Germany, Greece, Turkey, South Korea) on rd1, they’re down to 94 IPCs (31 infantry, rounded down). If the USSR can add Sweden, Finland, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan (usually doable by rd3) they’re at 69 IPCs (34 infantry, rounded down) without any contribution from China – already putting them ahead 3 infantry per turn. If NATO loses any more territory than that, they’re completely behind the 8-ball economically (never mind militarily, because that would probably mean losing/trading Italy or India, or both.) So yeah, by rd3, the US had better have put together a landing that can sustain itself; if the Soviets are able to push that back either militarily or with nukes, I don’t see a path to victory for NATO.
As for the naval units, I find I tend to burn through most US and UK subs in the first few rounds, mopping up the Soviet navies; by the time nukes start flying, I usually don’t have any/many left – and this is coming from a guy who prioritizes using the US starting nuke on navies, whenever possible. I also find the WE navy very useful, so I’m not in the habit of just parking it by the UK to soak nukes; maybe I’m too aggressive as NATO but I feel those transports are valuable in opening new fronts around the Mediterranean (and that’s probably the best assignment for the UK’s carrier, too).
It also takes the UK a long time to consolidate their ships from around the Indian ocean into either the Atlantic or Pacific, if you spend any amount of energy gathering up units from Australia, Africa, and/or putting down extra transport loads of infantry at Singapore.
That all being said, I do think it is hard to defend Kamchatka (…unless the USSR has an amazing Tokyo Drift – which seems to happen about 50% of the time). The problem is mainly that the USSR has such a low production capability in/around the region, that even having 2 rds to build up doesn’t always amount to much. And the other problem is that aside from what starts in the region, all Soviet equipment is basically 2+ rounds of movement away from being able to help out. One of the things I’ve looked at is trying to get the tanks (or infantry?) from Moscow over to East Siberia ASAP, rather than stranding them in Turkey – but 2 tanks worth of offense is basically impossible to replace, on rd1.
This is why when I gameplan as the USSR, I’m always trying to squeeze as much non-combat movement out of my S1 attacking units as possible. I look at things like, can I get a fighter into my Scandinavia attacks, instead of a tank? or even a heavy tank instead of an armor? Can I get another fighter into Turkey and use the heavy tank somewhere else? etc.
The other thing I’ve tried to hammer out is, where should the USSR be producing more infantry, to send to the far east? Having a defensive line at Turkey/Georgia/Kazakhstan and maxing out placement in those areas, while marching them eastward seems like a good idea. The problem is the USSR is so tight on cash, that they need every scrap of territory in order to be competitive; not taking Iran, and also just abandoning Turkmenistan doesn’t seem to be viable. But if you dip too far down into central Asia, those units are effectively stranded for the duration, and can’t be used elsewhere. It’s a catch-22.
Basically, I’m taking the principles of the Orient Express where units do “double duty” as both offense and defense, and trying to apply that to the Soviet’s supply chain into the far east. For example, would it make sense to be placing infantry in Orel every turn? They could be used to counter-attack landings in Karelia or Komi, but also moved to defend Moscow and then continue eastward. But is that really better than just placing as much stuff as close to the front lines as possible? It doesn’t seem to pan out that way, and it actually seems like it’s not maximizing the value of the placement rules, for the USSR.
@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
The TripleA AI does not make good use of nukes and generally will not buy them. I do see that Russia has an advantage with its cheap infantry and central position.
Not sure how you would code it as such, but the Soviets should view the nuke as an anti-ship weapon; never mind just raw “TUV swing” numbers, but taking out 5 transports is way more valuable than only taking out 5 infantry.
As for the infantry cost and such, the start of rd2 typically should have the cash on hand as something like:
So already, the Soviets are ahead of the allies by 1 infantry – but that’s not taking into account that the US likely needs to put down about 4-5 new transports at the start of the game, as well as up to 3 spies for the NATO alliance, and as many as 3 more transports for the UK.
The rd1 attacks should more or less even out the units on the board (if it’s implemented in TripleA we can get an accurate accounting of TUV, but even a mock-up of the typical battle results would likely bare this out) so from rd2 onward, the USSR should be edging ahead. It isn’t even really advantageous for NATO to attack (in most cases) because unless they can take out planes or armor, or guarantee an infantry kill ratio of 3:2 or better, they’re just spinning their tires and likely weakening themselves in the overall calculus of the game.
In rd2, the USSR typically builds on their lead by taking Iran and Sweden, with Finland, Pakistan, often Afghanistan (and Switzerland, depending on the circumstances) falling in rd3. In that time, NATO might be able to counter-attack a weak West Germany position, and the US might start to land in Asia. But the alliance is most definitely behind the 8-ball from the outset.
@The_Good_Captain I’ve watched your first few videos about A&A: Europe (1999) and your comment about the game being a 6-round affair sort of struck a chord with me.
I think E&W is similar, except that it’s “1d6 rounds” owing mainly to how soon the USSR can get the first nuclear bomb tech. Granted, their economy needs to be strong enough that they can afford to build a bomb while maintaining parity in terms of land units.
The issue is that NATO generally can’t counter-attack anywhere on rd1; if the Soviets spread their Pacific fleet properly, they can insulate Korea as well as Kamchatka. The only place that’s usually left open is Yugoslavia. The adjunct to that is generally the USSR spends all of rd2 attacking neutrals, which NATO can do nothing about; since there is no “Pro-neutral” type of mechanic within the designs, NATO can’t lend support/deterrence to neutrals that are vulnerable to attack (i.e. on the Soviet border.)
If the strongest weapon in NATO’s arsenal is the US attack in the far east (which takes til rd3 to reasonably get new transports involved in a landing) you’re at least halfway along the doomsday countdown by that point.
Even if NATO is splitting their fleets to mitigate the effects of a nuke, I think that having to rebuild, say, 3 transports in the Pacific is more cost-intensive than the USSR having to crank out another nuke – particularly if their income is anywhere in the 70 IPC range. If India is bottled up, you end up in a situation of the UK basically throwing good money after bad, just to maintain the status quo, with no real potential of ever swinging the momentum, from that position. Never mind the costs NATO is going to incur trying to keep up on spying.
I think the Kamchatka landing can absolutely work, but it’s a lot easier if NATO can sway China (hard, if not impossible) and they absolutely need to be pushing past Eastern Siberia within “1d6 rounds.” Otherwise the game just deteriorates until NATO slowly dies to nukes. Even when I’ve had NATO making grand offensives to try and keep the economics of the game from stagnating, they either can’t sustain it because the USSR absorbs and counter-attacks everything, or they’re forced to pivot off of one position to bail out another, and all momentum is lost in the process.
NATO has time in which to gamble, but they don’t have the economic edge in this game – and they have all the drawbacks of the Allies, always needing to build up their logistics chain (and spying!) before they can really even act. They’re on the back foot from the word ‘go’ and they have only a handful of rounds to do something decisive.
@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
Here’s what he said about strict neutrals (while this is about Global 1940, 90% of strict neutrals are located on the Europe map, so it mostly applies):
@AndrewAAGamer said in Violate a true neutrals?:
I ran a game recently, where I ended up declaring on the neutrals, as the Allies. The circumstances were as such:
The German counter-attack in Spain got “diced” (only managing to clear the territory but not take it) and they managed to wipe out the UK navy that took Norway – but rather than rebuild it, I had the UK put down factories in Greece, Turkey, Iraq, and (ultimately, the least-needed) Norway. Combined with shipping guys from South Africa directly to Iraq, the constant pipeline was too much, in the end.
It’s interesting how Iraq + Turkey forms a wall, insulating Africa and essentially steering any Axis attack towards India – a dead end in the corner of the board. But I had been funneling enough units into Kazakhstan, that the push into the Caucasus by the Axis never made it into the middle east.
Source: Zero loss British opener - F18 .tsvg
As the file name suggests, I also had no losses on my UK1 turn – which was mostly my standard moves, particularly in Africa and the Med.
(By the end, I was just screwing around and trying to give France territory, as I usually do.)
Re: US navy
I’ve recently keyed in on just spamming out a bunch of planes, as the allies.
One interesting thing with the US, if you’re going for a “floating bridge” to take and reinforce Greece: once you get a carrier set up in SZ92, you can move fighters from that SZ to Greece, while also having fighters from the Eastern US (with the airfield) able to reach SZ92. In this way, your carrier is always loaded, while also moving new fighters to Greece every round (once you control the territory) – taking 2 rounds to get from the Eastern US all the way to Greece.
I should also say more generally, my initial assumption about the US navy build was just to dump carriers with aircraft into SZ101, however:
The other thing is while I feel a loaded carrier is a strong defensive/deterrent piece of any naval group, it doesn’t really serve much purpose in SZ91 once the Atlantic is cleared of Axis subs/ships (and especially if there aren’t any bombers close by.) You also need a good number of destroyers for defense of any naval group, but I’m not sure a carrier is necessary for SZ97, if the idea is to be landing fighters in Greece all of the time (and maybe laying down an airfield?)
I recently tried an early battleship buy, pairing that with the starting cruiser and adding destroyers, to use as the tip of the spear going into the Mediterranean. Since you’re likely to need a few landings in Yugoslavia to wear down the Axis, the shore bombardment is nice to have – and it feels like more value than just parking a carrier there to passively defend.
So, I’ve said before that you probably want at least 2 destroyers and a loaded carrier as part of any naval group; now I’m trying to see if I can pare that down and be more efficient with how I spend and set things up. I can pretty easily get a “global domination” win as the Allies by about round 20, but I feel like I should be able to speed that up.
@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
1 reason why I, at least, usually avoid 109 on turn 1 is that the fighters in both London and Scotland can scramble.
Fair enough, and I wasn’t even thinking of that to be honest.
What about 106, though?
Let me write this all out, so I can gather my thoughts…
Subs:
124. can hit 111 or 109
118. can hit 106 or 109 or 111
117. can hit 106 or 109
108. can hit 106 or 109 or 110 or 91
103. can hit 106 or 109 or 110 or 91
…and then you’ve got your battleship that can hit 110 or 111
Now, from that, the obvious tactic would seem to be:
So that’s just me ballparking it without even hammering everything into a battle calculator; run 10,000 times, 2 sub vs. 1 crz, 1 trn has the defender winning 14%, whereas 2 sub vs. 1 DD, 1 trn has the defender winning 12% of the time.
The thing I think people don’t often do (in lieu of using a calculator) is just look at the number of hits you can afford to take vs. the number of dice the opponent is chucking. So in this SZ111 battle, the Brits can defend with 4 units (3 if they don’t scramble) – so it’s possible that they could hit you as many as 4 times, given 1 round of combat. If they don’t scramble, there is a 100% chance that your sub and battleship can absorb the hits from 1 round of combat, and your planes will be at 0% risk of getting hit. So, if you think they will scramble, then you need to include another sub in this attack, just to be 100% sure you’re able to retreat all of your planes after 1 round.
Including the scrambled fighter, if you calculate this battle as “retreat after 1 round” it’s like a 55%-45% (even if you send like 6 planes) but if you do it as “retreat when only air left” it’s like 5-to-1 (83%-17%); if you add another sub into the attack, it becomes 97%
So to add another sub to SZ111, we’d be pulling it out of the battle I had proposed (in 106) from SZ118
Since the 3 remaining subs can all hit SZ106 (Canada) and because I, as the British, tend to want to form up my navy in that SZ this seems like the way to go. (This is a 98% win)
This leaves the British wide open to just pile everything into “Gibastion” but it (hopefully) would disrupt the move I do, of building a carrier (or really, any navy) in Canada on UK1
Ultimately it’s a question of whether it’s better to run 2 battles that go in your favour >95% of the time, or to run 3 battles where 1/6 of the time, you lose more units than you wanted; if the losses only come in the form of your submarines, that might be worth the gamble. It’s when you start losing planes that it becomes not worth the risk. How that first round of combat goes in SZ111 determines a lot, including whether or not the scramble is used.
In East & West there’s a strategy for attacking Italy as the USSR on the first round, but it involves sending (at least) a bomber against a territory with an AA gun; so there’s always that 1/6 chance that the AA gun hits and the whole calculus is thrown out the window. I know that these are not the odds that @AndrewAAGamer would tell you to roll on, but sometimes the riskier option pays off more in the grand scheme than the safe option – sometimes the safe options still lead to inevitable failure (i.e. in an unbalanced game.) I also think it’s interesting that all of the battles I’ve calculated here fall into that roughly 1/6 failure chance, because as A&A gamers, that’s very easy for us to contextualize.
@SuperbattleshipYamato re: Taranto
My general ethos is that I’d rather the British keep their fleet intact, and back them up behind the canal. Even if the Italians take it by land, you can keep them from expanding into the Indian Ocean by sea.
The other side of it is like… I think air power is great, while navies are sort of “the cost of doing business” – so trading my planes to take out your navy is a bad exchange. I’m fine with taking the cheap/easy win of sniping the fleet at Malta, because in the grand scheme of things, I think the transport will cause more damage to me than the battleships and cruisers and whatnot.
I’ve seen some weird things, like 2 subs being sent against the British cruiser at Gibraltar and both subs being sunk. Generally I assume there will be a sub there, and a sub up near Canada; I tend to send the SZ109 fleet to Canada, along with a couple of fighters, and place a new carrier there on rd1. If there’s a damaged battleship (and sub/s) in SZ111, I’m usually inclined to attack it with the fighter from Scotland and/or the UK bomber.
Do German players usually prioritize the UK transports? The Ai always seems to leave those 2 sea zones alone; granted we’re talking subs attacking destroyers, and their planes are out of range (except the strat. bombers, but landing in Belgium would be pretty undesirable…)
To me, it also seems like it stands to reason that the Germans should prioritize hunting destroyers, just because I tend to assume that the great strength of the western allies is their air power; if you have no transports, your battleships and cruisers can’t influence land combat, and if you have no destroyers, your planes can’t target subs – it paints a picture that as “guy who has subs,” the German player should be targeting things a certain way, to play into that. Honestly though, it seems kind of moot, given how relatively short the battle of the Atlantic ends up being.
I’ve run a handful of test games recently where I’m using battleships as my main surface unit, with the US. I think it’s a strat that pays off later/in the long run, when you’re stacking landings over multiple rounds (usually in the Mediterranean.) If your floating bridge consists of 4 transport loads and you can pile on 4+ shore bombardments, it starts to add up. But honestly, on the Atlantic side, I’ve seen a British strategy of just stacking bombers and fighters and strafing down the French coast – the number of casualties inflicted is staggering compared to what the battleships are able to do. Not an unexpected result, but I think to me this just cements the utility of destroyers, in that convoy-escort role.
I’ve found that when I’m too aggressive with pushing the allied fleets east too early, the Germans still tend to kamikaze their planes into my ships – but this actually only serves to speed up their own demise. As long as I’m not losing a huge amount of transports all in one go…? I can afford to lose a loaded carrier and 2-3 surface ships, as long as I take enough of their planes down with me. In these instances (for the cost) I’d rather be defending with the extra shots I’d be getting from buying destroyers, as opposed to the higher attack rating of a battleship.
But I think it’s generally best to be cagey with your allied fleets, and build them up to a point where the Axis can’t afford to attack them. This feeds into why I generally don’t like the idea behind the Taranto raid; I know I can outspend the Italians, so it’s actually in my interest to keep my fleets strong while I do that, rather than do a move that at best amounts to “mutually assured destruction” in my estimation.