Posts made by TimTheEnchanter

You advocate a strategy focused on subs, and how the supersub tech is a good boost for germany, but then tell us you don’t even understand the rules for how they work?!?

Looking at germany, How in the world do you rank War Bonds in the first 1/3 of the game just a 1 but Super Subs a 2??  After the first turn, germany generally doesn’t ever get an attacking shot off with a sub.  Even if they get the tech, they are rarely in position to safely build more.  The same applies to shipyards.  It would take a HUGE additional investment to be able to take advantage of that (an IC somewhe other than the baltic, or a MAJOR fleet dedication) and I still don’t know if I’d build any ships.  I’d put SHipyards at 0 and Subs as a 0 for germany unless they’re on the first turn and then give them a 1.  War bonds should pay on average 3.5 ipcs per turn for at least 2/3 of the game, which should do more than just "pay itself off’ unless you dropped 20ipcs to get that tech.

@P@nther:

Another question:
One of the SU’s NO is: “Gain 5 IPC if no Allied forces are present in a territory controlled by the SU and if the Soviets control Archangel.”

Let us consider a scenario, in which the SU controlls and holds only Russia and Archangel. All other soviet territories are captured by Axis powers.

The SU will still gain 5 IPC because no Allied forces are present in one of the two territories controlled by the SU.

Am I right?

Sounds like 5 more IPCs for the Axis to me!

I’ll ask a followup to this one.  When it says “controlled by the soviet union” that means currently controlled, not “originally” controlled, right?  If russia controls norway, and the UK lands there, it’s bye-bye bonus, correct?

While the option of making SBRs when an IC has no interceptors is still there, I think the likelihood that there will be interceptors will lead to a decrease in the production of bombers since SBRs vs. interceptors is a very poor proposition.  If you don’t think “spare” bombers can be used in SBRs, they are not quite as valuable so you’ll buy more figs instead.  Therefore you’re less likely to have that opportunity because there won’t be a lot of bombers laying around.  Again, this rule pretty much kills SBRs.

@keplar:

what if germany took it?, i’m sure it could be used as an airbase somehow

If germany can take and hold it against an allied pounding, they don’t need it as an airbase because they’ve probably already won.  And even if they could use it as an airbase, how is that different from greenland?

@Perry:

…and if there is a sub or trn in the sz (not a DD)- what gives?

1. The invading fleet may attack the ss/trn, but then they cannot bombard. They MAY however ignore the ss/trn, and then bombard…

2. The invading fleet may attack the ss/trn, AND bombard, in the ensuing amphib assault

3. If defender is lone tranny/-ies , then the invading fleet may BOTH kill the trn/-ies & bombard

If there are subs and/or trns and no hostile “surface warships” in the unloading zone, then the attacker has the choice to EITHER

Ignore the subs/trns completely and conduct bombardment

OR

Engage the subs/trns in sea battle to clear the sea zone, but NOT conduct bombardment

Under no circumstances can you clear the zone and bombard during the same turn.  As long as there are only subs and/or trns, it is the attacker’s choice, but he must chose one or the other.  That is why you have to purchase at least a destroyer to block bomardment because then the attacker must clear the zone of surface warships in order to land, and therefore can not bombard.

@Stoney229:

@Cmdr:

Germany needs to pound Russia EXTREMELY hard in round 1.  It’s your only chance.  So far, I’ve seen Germany win almost every game of KG/KIF if they take Karelia, Baltic States, East Poland and Ukraine on Round 1 (that would include sinking SZ 2 and SZ 12).

uh… how in the world can you take Karelia, SZ12, AND SZ 2 in round 1??  not to mention, how do you sink sz2 & 12 if you are sending 4 fighters to karelia like you said??

I hadn’t done the math, but I was wondering the same thing when I read that.  +1 for spotting the apparent use of jenforcez  :lol:

I think he was referring to the original poster: Craig Bee to your Craig A.

Of course, I don’t know many brothers that aren’t the sons of former heavyweight champion boxers and kitchen appliance hucksters who have the same first name, but why let a silly thing like that get in the way of someone’s fun  :-P

@tin_snips:

this guy has started two topics on the same thing, in as many days. i’m sensing a theme here …  :roll:

I THINK I’M SENSING THE SAME THING!!  :wink:

+1!  I miss some of the details of frood, but it looks like it will be a great help!

Thanks to both of you.  I was pretty sure that was the case, but
A) I couldn’t remember definitively from older versions because there’s no tech in most (league, tourney) games around here so I’ve never fired them 
B) the rules for AA50 (which I did look at) seem less explicit
and
C) [[i]perhaps most important] I was too lazy to go back and look at how it was explained in the prior versions

I think I know the answer to this, but if an AA gun fires a rocket, can it then move during NCM, or is the rocket fire considered a combat and therefore ends the AA units turn?

@Telamon:

And if the defender is concerned they might lose their fighters because the escort stack would shred them - they can let the bomber(s) through to the keeper and they have wasted the opportunity of the escorts to do something better.  And the fighters still suffer akak fire, for no gain.

Wow, I completely missed this part the first time I read it.  Yuck!  You can’t even use your escorts to try to overwhelm a token interceptor?  They can just sit safely on the ground if you send enough figs?  Goodness. That takes away the incentive for sending a major airstrike.

I don’t like the “tech-optional” recommendation at all.  First, I think anyone claiming that techs don’t result in additional randomness to the outcome are fooling themselves, just because very few situations have such wide swings in both immediate and long term value on just a few dice.  However, I am not convinced that, in and of itself, is bad.  It certainly should lead to more variability in how games play out. It might let a few poorer players win a few more games if they gain a tech advantage, but overall I think smart play will usually win out in the end.

The problem I see with “tech-optional” is that it seems clear from this thread that there will be one group who only play with techs, and another that refuse to, so there will essentially be two groups playing under different rules within the same league.  There will be a few people who probably switch back and forth for the sake of finding opponents, but I would suspect most people will find their comfort zone in one camp or the other.  This will make it that much harder to find competition for games and to get experience playing all the members across the community.

I think league should be either one way or the other and people will likely learn to adapt to it if they want to play in league - which is where most of the ‘action’ has been for the last year+ that I’ve been here.  Personally, I’d lean toward giving the techs a try and take some more time to see if they really are broken - much like finding out whether bids are really necessary.  If you start with tech, you could always pull them back out.  If you start without them, they’ll never be part of the league.

Interesting.  Thanks.

Is anyone else having trouble getting the latest files?  I just tried to grab them and got an error from mediafire: “The page you are looking for might have been removed, had its name changed, or is temporarily unavailable.”

Given the recent discussion, it would serve me right if this is because you’ve exceeded bandwidth limits or something similar.

I hope you realize I was just trying to give you some goodnatured ribbing.  Mostly it just boils down to the fact that I’m just lazy.  Although, I think it is very rare that something like this could become a standard from a grass-roots basis, you’re welcome to advocate and proselytize. The cost difference between good-enough and better is often hard to justify a change to the existing inertia.  (I know, that doesn’t mean it’s not the right thing to do.)

And I’m not even going to touch the argument about the environmental impact of the energy needed to put a few extra KB on disks and through the net.  I’m pretty sure I’d do a better job reducing carbon emissions if I just ate one less burrito a month. :-D :-P

Oh, and sorry about that ,/. thing. We stoopid americans tend to forget there’s other people out there who might actually do things differently ;)

Trying to understand the driver for the interceptor/escort rule.  I understand it from a historical standpoint, but not sure about a gameplay perspective.

Figs that serve as escorts can not participate in any other battles, and stand only a 55% chance of survival (1/6 chance of being shot down by AA, then 1/3 chance of being shot by fig) if there are equal numbers of interceptors and escorts.

So unless you can afford to load up on tons of fighters to go with your bombers, you just killed SBRs with a single fighter per IC  However, the one power who can probably afford to do this is the US, who can potentially overwhelm Germany with airpower instead of land troops and either wipe out token interceptors, encourage germany to leave its figs out of IC defense, allowing relatively free shots at the SBRs, or force them to amass figs in germany rather than participate in french defense, eastern front activity etc.

Basically you seem to be encouraging a heavy allied air campaign.  Is that the intent?  Maybe I’m looking at this too simplistically since I haven’t played this version much.  I guess it allows germany a chance take out russian air if they go with a mass air raid on moscow from 2 terrritories away?    How much did you gametest this optional rule?

With the black sea rule, is there any way to open it, or does it essentially become a lake?

Something tells me you mean kb, since I have yet to see a way to store data in .015 bytes on a computer.  :lol:

Even so, I have a half-empty 500GB hard drive with an external 750GB hard drive.  I don’t care if it takes an extra 300 kbytes for the files.  The difference in download time is negligible.  Disk space is cheap.  Labor (i.e., my free time) isn’t!

And even if I did care, I have to download and install a new application that takes up several MB, in order to save 300kb?  Somehow this doesn’t quite fit my definition of “better”  :-D :-P :wink:

@Funcioneta:

We should start talking about allies bid. I can stand a no tech game (even if I think a no tech game needs less strategical and tactical knowledge than a game with techs), but each game I play in 1941, I hate more and more Godzilla Japan. I almost never pick Japan in fun games if I can (too easy to be fun), but if we get a vanilla competitive league, I’ll play Japan all the games I can  :-D

I say at least bid 12 IPCs to China in 1941, maybe more  :-P

Good idea, since China can’t spend any IPCs. ;)