Posts made by The Janus

@Myygames said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:

@The-Janus

Check out these strategy articles:

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/post/1397227

Probably worth mentioning at this point, that I did do a quick skim of the first few introductory posts in this thread.

It’s a lot easier to do in East & West, but what that game taught me is to never endanger any offensive units. For example, you should only really leave tanks on the front line if they add enough defense that whatever attack your opponent could put together won’t be enough to kill them. (Artillery I feel are kind of borderline-expendable; they cost the same as mechs and they don’t pack nearly the same punch as tanks, despite being just as vulnerable. I don’t go out of my way to waste them, but I am more likely to gamble with them.)

With a combination of units and can-opening tactics and such within USSR territories, you can do moves where you hit the back-line with mechs and aircraft and let the infantry and tanks hit the front line – because the first attack insulates them from being hit back. I think the ability to pair tactical bombers with fighters or tanks potentially gives the Germans some interesting options; in my 2nd game I shipped a tank up to Finland, which is a theatre I feel you’ll end up doing strafe attacks a lot. Sending a tac up there to assist seemed to give me a lot of flexibility.

I can definitely see the necessity of “fast-movers” for Germany – and if they had income numbers comparable to the US, it’d easily be tanks instead of mechs the majority of the time. I think the necessity of sea movement and transport capabilities means that the US is always going to cap out at 50% tanks; not to say that Germany doesn’t need a ton of infantry, but I could definitely see them going higher than that 50% threshold w/r/t fighting the USSR (if they had the income for it).

The problem I’ve run into in my 2 Germany games so far is that by about round 10, the Germans have nowhere near enough production/output to deal with a war on two fronts. I think Italy was reasonably well-played by my Ai sidekick in the 2nd game, but I still ended up with just a massive wave of US units on the western front, and not enough units to stop them – particularly because my offense was still almost entirely tied up in the east.

One thing I’m noticing with Germany is that the pathing seems to be such that you kind of want mechs for moving along the southern route in the USSR, but you can kinda maybe get away with standard infantry for heading north?

Specifically, it’s 2 spaces from Germany to Romania, Romania to Ukraine, and Ukraine to Volgograd (i.e. 3 turns, for mech. infantry). Whereas from Germany to Novgorod is 3 spaces (3 turns for regular infantry.)
In my 2nd game, I found myself bunching up in Eastern Poland a lot, before trying to break out in either direction.
2025-1-31-World-War-II-Europe-1940-2nd-Edition – 2nd Germany – G10.tsvg

@Stucifer said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:

Also spreading those attacks leaves the British fleet in 110 alive

Hmmm… I don’t think it’s worth it to try and attack both fleets, though

I recently took my first stab at playing as the Germans, and just to make things really interesting, I declared war on the USSR immediately.
Here’s how it turned out:
2025-1-25-World-War-II-Europe-1940-2nd-Edition – 1st Germany - Fall of Moscow.tsvg

My initial impressions:
Germany feels really resource-poor; I wasn’t paying much attention to national objectives, so that might be part of it. But most turns I found myself pumping out nothing but infantry, and feeling like I was barely keeping up with the USSR. It would have been nice to mix in some mechs or tanks to get things moving a bit faster, but I felt like that was a luxury I couldn’t afford.

I was sort of at a loss as to what to do with my strategic bombers. Is it best to just bomb London until the AA blows them out of the sky?
Is there much Germany can/should do in Africa and/or the middle east?

I felt like I had more than enough planes to hold down the eastern front, so should I be putting out a few subs, in order to have my planes be a viable naval threat? The problem I find is that nowhere in France feels particularly safe to operate planes out of – particularly since I never felt I could commit land units to that area of the map.

I think just generally I felt “over my skis” the whole time, with the US (in particular) building up and building up, looming just over the horizon.

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:

@The-Janus

In my opinion, I think a naval base in Norway is only really worth it if the Allies commit into moving forces in that direction (i.e no large amphibious war in the Mediterranean).

I think the Norway harbor provides access to more “soft targets” – which I would say is kind of the thinking behind the shuck-shuck in Classic A&A. From Gibraltar, it can be hard to crack either Southern France or Normandy-Bordeaux, most of the time; putting guys in Norway or Denmark should be a lot easier, by comparison.

Extending the “floating bridge” out to Greece can be very effective (and fun, IMO) but it’s also a big investment in time and money, since I feel like you need solid fleets on both sides of Gibraltar, in addition to one at Greece – plus, needing a harbor in Greece, too. The Norway supply line seems simpler, particularly since you only need really strong defensive fleets at Norway; the fleet off the west of Gibraltar is usually out of range of Axis planes, so as long as enemy subs are accounted for, you’re good.

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:

Egypt: I don’t find the naval base there used much after the first few turns (though if you eschew Taranto and preserve the British fleet it’ll probably see more use). Still, I find it easier to temporarily disable the Suez Canal by going after Trans-Jordan. Similar to Gibraltar though, it’s often out of the way for the Axis to have tactical bombers hit there. Unless you’re having an ongoing offensive campaign in sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East or furiously trading North Africa, there’s not much else for a tactical bomber in Tobruk, Syria, Ethiopia or Iraq to do.

I find the harbor in Egypt to be pretty handy, if you’re planning to transport a steady flow of 2 units at a time from South Africa; TBH with the strategies I use as the British, controlling the port is more important than controlling the actual canal, most of the time.

In each case, particularly in the Pacific, tactical bombers don’t have long enough range to attack from land bases

I think this is the crux of it, and strategic bombers can do the same job better/easier. I guess it’s more the tactic of bombing harbors that I think is underappreciated, rather than it being a thing that makes tactical bombers underappreciated as a unit… if that makes sense.

@barnee said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:

@The-Janus

Hi Janus

In case you are interested, Roger is going to mod East vs West for triplea

https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/4059/a-new-year-and-a-new-mod/17?_=1737940118197

“East & West, a variant published in 2025” – might want to inform Roger that it’s a little older than that 😂

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

@The-Janus You got a lot of good ideas by chance did you every watch his video I made. It talks about France.

Here’s the link: https://youtu.be/I0nxyB3JwAk?si=K0GHmYXuijhuSVDA

I just went back through this thread earlier today, so I had copied the link, and watched it just now. Here are my overall thoughts:

1. UK fighter: Generally I don’t scramble planes, ever; in a recent game I saw the Ai send some undefended transports, so I took the option to scramble, then. In the early naval battles around the UK, it just never seems worth it, because the scrambled planes can’t retreat from combat so they’re basically doomed to die.
2. North Africa: I tend to see the Ai axis take Tunisia but then back off; as I mentioned earlier in the thread, it seems like the thing to do as France is back off as far away from the Italian transports as possible, and add French units from the UK there as well; this basically means defending Morocco until the US/UK can land to reinforce the position. If you push everything into Algeria (assuming the Italians leave Tunisia alone, at first) I worry that they’ll get dogpiled by an amphibious landing; Morocco is a lot safer.
3. Egypt/East Africa: I don’t typically see the Italians break into central Africa, but just in case they do, I always move the French infantry from West Africa to Nigeria, rather than to French Central Africa. This might be a little bit superstitious of me, but basically, as a general rule I want to leave French territories undefended, so that they can potentially be reclaimed by my Allies, if Italy captures them.
4. Madagascar: As I said, I tend to send the destroyer to the Atlantic; I don’t find much use in keeping a large fleet in/around Suez. If the Allies can’t challenge the Italian navy in the Mediterranean, they’re best off hiding behind the canal; you only really need enough navy to fend off any planes from sniping UK transports. If there aren’t any Axis planes within range, then I just run the transports naked. What I tend to see happen in my games is that the US and UK built up around Gibraltar, and if the Italian fleet is in range of both those fleets and the Suez fleet, then the UK fleets merge up for an attack. (As I’ve mentioned in this thread: https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/post/1696439 I know it’s popular for the UK to use their planes for a Taranto attack ASAP, but I tend not to.) I also tend not to build ships off of South Africa, aside from a transport or two – sometimes more, if I get in a position to start shuttling guys from the middle east into Greece.
5. Indochina: I think the obvious reason there isn’t a French infantry there to start the game, is because the Pacific game on its own can then easily have no French pieces, no? I think if it makes sense and/or makes the game better balanced, I don’t see any objection to adding it for the Global game. IMO that’s basically the same idea as how the Global game adds ANZAC infantry to Egypt. (I think if you wanted to represent the French in Indochina when using just the Pacific game, the obvious thing to do would be use an American infantry; they’ll be long dead before any “real” Americans show up, anyway.)
6. Mediterranean: Now, perhaps because I don’t do the Taranto raid, I see my French ships in the Mediterranean usually get wiped out on the Italian turn – so i tend to discount them from my planning. If any of them do survive, I treat it as a bonus (likewise for the Channel ship) and just try to merge them up with my other destroyer. To me, Gibraltar (SZ 91) is the obvious rallying point for the allied fleets. (edit: That being said, on the first turn I oftentimes send the UK fleets to sz 106, off of eastern Canada, to rally up and drop down a new carrier for existing fighters to land on. That way they’re well out of range of the Luftwaffe.)
7. Paris: I tend to play pretty old-school, so when I make a landing in Europe as the US, it’s generally all infantry with some planes; not that I expect France to have much to do at that point in the game, but I don’t agree that adding more French infantry for defense is the obvious move. I think if you want France sniping as much territory as they can manage when the opportunities arise (particularly if US/UK are doing can-opener type moves, for them) you might want to mix in another offensive unit, to go with your starting fighter. Generally I don’t change the default 4 inf in TripleA, but once I get France up and running, I always immediately feel like I need tanks or artillery, or else I’m just going to be sitting around defending – like France has been, all game.
8. Psychological Warfare: It depends on your opponent; if it’s someone who’s running every battle through a calculator, they’re probably not going to be fooled or have any surprises pulled on them. If you’re playing “live” and people are just eyeballing things, then sure.
9. Can-opening as France: I think the trouble is that most of the time, you’re going to (at best) be attacking with 2 infantry and a fighter. So you’re only really going to win a battle vs. 1 defender. And if you get hit back, suddenly you’re completely out of steam for basically the remainder of the game. I honestly feel it’s better to have French units as a mixed defending force, than trying to use them offensively, particularly since taking territory (even by accident) as France is a detriment to the Allies. (For example: it’s better to have the US land a 50/50 tank/inf force in Morocco, if it’s defended by a handful of French infantry + a fighter; otherwise, the US would want to go heavier on infantry and not risk exposing their tanks.) You make a valid point about opening up Tobruk for mech/tanks to break through; do you often see the UK push coming from that direction, with those types of units? I tend to see everything flowing in from Morocco.

@The-Janus said in France's role in Global 1940 SE:

(I find rallying the French into Northwest Persia as sort of an obvious helpful deterrent to the Germans.)

To expand on this a little bit…
I tend to try and get my French infantry from London down into Africa, ASAP (usually using a UK transport, but sometimes US – just depends on what happens in the game.) After that, I try and rally French units towards Egypt, and basically just defend the port until the other Allies clear the Mediterranean.

If you’re trying to support the USSR without putting units in their territory (and thus infringing on their national objective, if they still hold Archangel) Northwest Persia is the obvious place to park 6(ish) French infantry + 1 fighter. They can also be moved up into the Caucasus territory, if that N.O. is not longer a consideration.

If the USSR is in a really bad way, what I’m finding is that the best way for the UK to bail out that situation is to secure the Kazakhstan front; if France is defending the Caucasus (with maybe US tanks racing in, to help) this makes it a little easier. As the UK, you can do this by having 2 transports in the Indian ocean and a harbor in Persia, or by cycling 3 transports between Persia, Egypt, and South Africa (assuming you only want to move 2 infantry at a time; if you want to ship a 3rd unit from South Africa, then you’d need more transports, obviously. If I’m not using that factory to put out transports, I typically just place a tank there and have it drive north, towards Egypt.)

By landing in Eastern Persia, the British are able to insulate India a bit, as well as march up the back wall of the USSR; this is important because of the national objective for controlling Novosibirsk (in 2nd Edition, anyway.) Then the USSR can focus on their core strength, which is trading and defending territories adjacent to Moscow, while holding onto Volgograd for as long as possible. If the UK is also funneling troops into Scandinavia, you can eventually link these up with forces coming through Kazakhstan, to help push the Germans out of Novgorod.

Regarding the French destroyer at Madagascar (I should mention, only in the Europe game, rather than Global) I’ve tended to move this to the Atlantic rather than the Indian Ocean or Mediterranean. If the US is going heavy on carriers or the UK is going more for submarines, having that one French destroyer in the mix can help ensure you can target enemy subs – I’ve occasionally mis-bought as the US while German subs are still lurking around, so being able to move this destroyer to the US east coast for defense can be handy.

Is an allied harbor in Norway as strong as I think it is?
This enables US forces to effectively be 2 turns away from Norway/Denmark/Western Germany – which feels huge.

Marching guys from Norway to Leningrad is a bit of a slog, but honestly the ability to land units in Denmark and put pressure on Germany that way, might be even more helpful to the USSR in the long run.

Also, does anyone do the more conventional “Classic” shuck-shuck, i.e. routing US forces through eastern Canada and then to the UK? IME it seems like “east US to Gibraltar” is always the way to go (although admittedly the Ai is probably putting way less pressure on London than an experienced Germany player might.)

I had mentioned it upthread, but bombing harbors to disrupt the allied naval supply lines might be one of the more underrated use-cases of tactical bombers; I don’t think I’ve seen the Ai ever try it, FWIW.

@PGsquig
I’ve had a game or two where the USSR get’s KO’d and the UK/US have to try and pry a victory out of the jaws of defeat.
In that context, I could see a scenario where Germany is going so hard after the USSR and the middle east that the Allies manage to actually prop up France and get her back into the game.
But if USSR is still alive when France gets reactivated, I would agree that Germany is probably already cooked; in that case, I’d still be curious to see if France could do anything interesting on the Pacific board :)

@FranceNeedsMorePower
So one interesting thing that happened in my game is that the UK and Italy managed to kill each other off, in Italian Somaliland; just for yuks, I had France take the territory, since it’s not worth any IPCs anyway – so it wouldn’t be a detriment to the Allies.

Anyway, maybe France should get an extra 1 or 2 IPCs for any Axis territories they hold? Or a bonus for controlling all territories surrounding Switzerland? Maybe bonuses for France controlling or having units in pro-Allied territories? (I find rallying the French into Northwest Persia as sort of an obvious helpful deterrent to the Germans.)

One thing I’ve also noticed in my games is that there seems to be a tipping point, where once the Axis can’t really reach any of the ‘true neutrals’, the Allies are better off gobbling them up – Spain and Turkey (at least positionally) come to mind, in particular. Maybe give France a bonus if Spain and/or Portugal are still neutral?

So I did a test run where I actually focused on liberating France, and even tried to feed them some extra territories once I did so (rather than have US or UK take everything.)

Oof, even when France is back on their feet, they don’t have enough income to really do much. Would it help to give them some national objectives, to pad their economy (not unlike what Italy gets)?

@SuperbattleshipYamato
I’ve only poked around with the Europe game, hence this thread being in the Europe subforum ;)

I definitely agree that you want carriers (with planes) along with destroyers – and not just purely destroyers. But my point mainly is that, in the European theatre (and particularly as the allies) you need destroyers (and planes) to attack enemy subs, and you also need destroyers (and planes) to defend against enemy aircraft.

What I tend to see the Ai do, is basically once the allied navy sticks its neck out too far (if it isn’t strong enough) the German planes will just suicide attack them. It’s easy enough to “out-defense” the Italian navy, and just box them in, but it requires a lot more of a surface fleet to fend off Germany’s air force. My point is essentially that submarines can “out-offense” the Italian fleet, but they don’t do anything about the latter problem, of German air power.

Like, I appreciate the validity of the math you’re putting forward, but to me the problem is that if my job (as the allies) is to kill 288 IPCs of submarines…? Guess what, I still have to use destroyers (and planes) because the game literally doesn’t let me use any other units to do that job – including other subs!

A game I talk about a lot on these forums (East & West) has a similar problem, whereby the submarine tech that makes it so subs can’t be attacked by planes is actually a tech nobody wants – because everyone more or less wants to use subs as cheap fodder, so that transports (which aren’t picked last, in E&W) and other units can be spared.

So, as I’ve said up-thread, destroyers are hogging up too much of the design space:

1. They do all the fun ASW mechanics, on their own AND shoot at planes
2. They facilitate planes shooting at submarines (making carriers only facilitate planes’ movement – never mind carriers just being a weaker combat unit all-around, than in other versions)
3. They fulfill the “cheap fodder” role (which was basically taken away from subs/transports) while still being necessary for everything mentioned above

So the only thing cruisers have over destroyers is that they can do shore bombards – but a cruiser costs more than a fighter that you could throw into the same amphibious assault for multiple rounds of combat, whereas a cruiser only fires once.

Another thing E&W did was have it so that units hit by shore bombardment actually do not fire back, which makes this ability much more useful. It also makes this mechanic functionally the same as submarine or AA gun hits; I think unifying these outlier mechanics for combat is indicative of good design, personally.

My immediate hunch is that, in order to make cruisers useful, you’d need to start by (probably) making shore bombardment be insta-kills – particularly if you’re still (for some reason) limiting the number of shots to the number of units being landed. The other thing that jumps off the page to me is that there’s no way a cruiser should cost more than a fighter.

FWIW, I also think the reason that in Classic you have carriers at A1/D3 and transports at A0/D1 (and not chosen last) is precisely because there isn’t a destroyer unit. So that version does a better job of spreading the design space around, to have those other ships fulfill the role that destroyers play; even letting subs get hit by planes is useful, if your goal is to preserve transports (as mentioned with the E&W example). It allows subs to be cheap fodder, while still packing an offensive punch; transports can do the former, but not the latter, so you still need a good mix.

Edit: (to add)
I can see a case for limiting shore bombardments in the Pacific, where nearly every land battle is going to be an amphibious battle. Again, I feel certain mechanics lend themselves to one theatre and not the other (naval and air bases for example, seem fairly shoe-horned into the Europe map.) It might be the case that each theatre only really needs one “middleweight” surface ship and not two. From a realism perspective, sure you’d want both – but from a mechanical and gameplay perspective? The unit balance is clearly busted.

Stupid question of the day:

In the TripleA version, after France loses their capitol, any French territories liberated from the Axis by the other allies become controlled by that ally (i,e. not liberated to French ownership.) FWIW, I’ve seen this happen with the USSR territories if Moscow falls, too.

Is this intended, in the out-of-box rules? or is this just a TripleA-ism?

I mention it here because my strategy as France involves trying to balance out, “How can I maintain as many of my infantry as possible/inflict the most casualties/take the fewest losses?” with “Actually, just let the Italians have the territory, so the Americans can get the IPCs for it later.”

Like, if I know the Italian transports are in a position to just dogpile me if I push all my infantry east, I’ll pull them west instead, for sure. If the transports are too far away, I’ll try and move up – but I don’t actually want to move too far east…?

And this mechanic actually dovetails into the fact that it seems better for the US to try and hold the factories in coastal France (to place units immediately on the front line) than it is to give all that land back to France – or possibly just bypass France altogether and try to land in Greece (a favourite of mine, for example). You could argue that this simulates the “Battle of the Bulge” (or something… I guess…) but it does just seem to reinforce the fact that having France as an active ally isn’t really a value add, and is actually a detriment in the later game.

@AndrewAAGamer said in Warfare Principles of Axis & Allies (By AndrewAAGamer):

FRANCE is, well, ummm… does not really have a role in this game except to die on G1.

The way that 2nd Edition 1940 is structured, I’m inclined to think the role of France is “give the US player something to do, before their actual country joins the war.” ;)
I could see pairing up France with USSR, but France with USA makes the most sense to me.

Having just fired up the game again, for the first time in a long time…
Looking at it from the American perspective in particular, it feels like destroyers are just too good(?) If they were a little more expensive, it might feel more worth it to mix in submarines; likewise, cruisers feel too expensive for the value they provide. Is there a consensus on how cruisers should be re-balanced?

Also, I forgot to mention it earlier, but submarines defending on a 1? That’s a hard sell for me. It makes them feel too much like battleships, in that they’re more of a “unit that exists on the board” rather than something anyone actually buys.

FWIW I have been poking around with the Revised game, and I feel like it really nailed the unit balance; destroyers still feel like a “must have” but the higher price-point is a better fit for such a quality. Subs still probably needed to be cheaper, if anything. For the scale of the game, I think the tanks costing 5 works out fine, too. I think battleships auto-repairing at the end of every turn is a bit much; without naval bases, I think the obvious way to handle it is “once per round” either at the start of the owning nation’s turn, or at the end (…probably the former).

@barnee
re: E&W in TripleA

I sent a message to @Argothair but I got no response… So I figured I might as well ping you and post in the thread, to see if that helps.

Recently I’ve been poking around with the TripleA version of Revised (a map that’s much closer to E&W than most other ones) and an idea occurred to me:

Would it be at all worthwhile to just bolt the “rules” from the 3rd Edition/Iron Blitz version in TripleA onto a different map (such as the Revised map) to get something approximating E&W? Is such a thing even possible, or is it harder than just doing it all from scratch and getting it exactly right?

Likewise, would it be easier to start with the Europe 1940 map, and rewrite the mechanics to fit E&W? Or is there too much code baked into the maps themselves, already?

As a follow-up, this might be a slightly controversial opinion:

I think tactical bombers are okay

Now, in terms of actually bombing? They seem useless on the Europe map (although bombing Gibraltar’s naval base as Italy can really screw with the allies.)

That being said:

1. As the US, you’re going to be using a combination of destroyers and carriers. I find these carrier aircraft are meant more as a deterrent, rather than expecting them to actually be attacked, and needing to score hits on defense; having a tac. and a fighter paired up comes in handy, since you know you’ll be using those planes offensively over and over again. In this case, the trade-off of 1 defense for 1 attack isn’t that detrimental (although arguably it still doesn’t justify the extra 1 IPC cost.)
2. As the UK, pairing the tac. with the tank in East Africa in the early rounds of clearing out the Italians can be really handy, allowing you to put fewer infantry into those battles, and preserving them for defense or for attacking 2 territories instead of only 1, on the same turn.

Generally speaking, my go-to move for building fleets is to just assume 2 fighters for each carrier, but since pivoting to 1 tac. and 1 fighter with the US, I don’t feel like I’m losing out on anything. If there is a downside, it’s when you try and split up your carrier group, sending each of the 2 planes to attack different territories, rather than attacking 1 territory together.

But if you have a carrier in SZ 109 and another in SZ 110 or 112, you can easily use all 4 aircraft in attacking Norway, Denmark, Holland/Belgium, or Normandy. This is particularly powerful when sending minimal landing forces, and just wanting to strafe the enemy down.

I’ve toyed with the idea of going all bombers and destroyers as the US, but it definitely leaves your convoy escort fleet feeling a lot weaker, despite the extra “HP” worth of destroyers (relative to the same cost for a carrier + planes.) I do find the bombers come in handy for neutralizing Germany’s income and production, but also just for their movement; being able to get into theatre on the 2nd turn after being purchased is very valuable.

I’m kind of an old skool, Classic-ish grognard; I’ve been poking around with the Europe 1940 game (in TripleA, against the ai) mainly as the Allies, but a little bit as Italy.

I guess my question is, which units should each country purchase?

For example, I’ve found that the UK can make use of subs against Italy’s surface fleet (although I guess I’m a n00b for not just YOLO’ing and blowing them up with all of the UK’s planes, on rd1.) But generally, it seems like no one should really want/need to build any navy other than destroyers, transports, and carriers (with aircraft to go on them). Destroyers just do everything…

Is there any sense in bringing along extra carriers, i.e. more than just enough to hold your planes, in case one gets sunk? Why are carriers 2-hit anyway, if they’re effectively useless after the first hit? Are there any good spots to put down new airfields, or is scrambling underused in the Europe map, and really only applies to the Pacific?

I don’t find artillery all that helpful; if you’re the US for example, you have the cash to build tanks, and if your intention is just to send as much stuff as possible to the USSR, then you want units that can race across North Africa quicker. I think for poorer countries, artillery makes sense but even as Italy I tend to go all infantry, and as USSR I maybe crank out 1 artillery per round; if you can get your income up, tanks seem way more helpful for counter-attacking in and around Novosibirsk, while using your planes to clean up along the main front line.

What circumstances do people use mech. infantry in? Honestly, I rarely buy it other than to place at an Allied factory in Persia, Norway, or similar/nearby territories (Greece, Turkey, Finland). I particularly can’t justify putting one on a transport, instead of a tank (or even possibly an artillery.) I’ve heard that it’s a good unit for the Axis, on defense…

I guess I just feel like there’s a lot of chrome/cruft to this version of A&A, and I believe it could improve by being stripped down a little.