Posts made by trihero

Yeah, my simple point is that you can’t just count the number of infantry; you have to factor in the cost. It’s about cost. You don’t say rulers are more valuable than a house even though you probably can and have bought more rulers than houses. It’s like saying you value infantry more if you spend 6 IPCs on 2 of them rather than 24 on one battleship.

In terms of IPCs, you will be buildling other units more than infantry as the naval nations. Usually as stuff like UK/Japan you’re busting out like 1 inf per 1 tank, and quite obviously the tank costs you more, so I would think that overall you’re spending more on tanks since you have to consider the IPC cost. Do you honestly load up transports with 2 x infantry? Thought not.

Take into the account the actual cost of the unit, not just the numbers you purchased. Battleships cost 8 infantry, so you can’t just say oh I’m buying 3 infantry compared to one battleship therefore infantry is better than battleship in value. You have to factor in IPC cost.

I’ve never disagreed with infantry as the most valuable buy for Germany/Russia, but I heavily disagree with the other 3 nations who pour much more IPCs into naval units and supplements to go into transports. You can’t just count the number of infantry, you have to count their cost. In numbers they aren’t built more than other units as the naval nations because you’re building 1:1 ratio with tanks. And if you look at the costs entailed, they’re skewed in favor of non-infantry units as naval nations.

Infantry are really great for advancing slowly since they’re able to hold the territories they captured with cheap cost, and really necessary for defense for Germany/Russia, but I simply observe that more IPCs go into noninfantry as the other three nations because of the transport limits and heavy naval buildup costs.

There’s no way you can be a new player, and already have devised a brilliant startegy like that.

I agree with what he said. Either you’re some tactical genius or have way too much time on your hands staring at the board for a new player ;P

I think it’s a pretty common misconception to think that transports are superior to complexes. People see that you can have 2 transports ferrying 4 units for slightly more than a complex which can only build 3 units with the land territories in Asia, but rarely do they see that this costs an extra turn to move units as well as what if they have to use those transports elsewhere or lose them, that takes more time and resources to compensate. But still building 3 transports to start is a very good move for the flexibility in the Pacific operations.

Do you honestly build more infantry than any other unit as Japan, US, and UK? The most “valuable” unit is different for each country. I’d definitely vote for infantry as Germany/Russia for most valuable, but really since you’re building tank/art at a 1:1 ratio for the transports for other nations, no, infantry is definitely not the most valuable for those nations. You just don’t infantry push with mass infantry on transports, it doesn’t work. You never build more infantry than other stuff as one of the island nations unless for some reason you’re being assaulted on the your capital, which is rare.

What’re you talking about Imperious? You build mainly infantry for UK, US, and Japan? Germany and Russia probably build mostly infantry (since Germany already has armor/planes, and Russia is playing defense).

With Japan you’re mostly going navy and tanks on the ICs on land. With UK you’re not just massing infantry in the transports, you mix it equally with tanks/art and you’re also building a navy. I probably build more IPC worth of stuff other than infantry for every country except Germany and Russia.

If you build large quantities of infantry as UK/US/Japan you’re destined to lose since you have low attack power in the sea and on land. Since those countries use transports already you’re spending more on tanks/art since transports carry one of each and one tank/art has more value than one inf.

Subs would be good, except one destroyer in the opposing navy removes all their bonuses, both submerging and sneak attacks ; / No running from those fighters……

I think you have a very good grasp on the strategy! Much better than when I first started, and probably even better than I understand it now ; P

You’re definitely very correct about Germany needing to maintain a good naval power in both Baltic and Meditteranean. Those are both extremely key to expanding in Africa and fending off the UK from raiding your coastal areas. I’d definitely hold off on building mass land units to go against Russia to keep these two locations. You will never ever be able to invade Russia anyways even if all you did was mass land forces, since your navies would be sunk and UK would raid your coast, forcing you to defend 3-4 coastal areas from possible invasions. And you’re correct about building lots of infantry to start with, both to replace the tanks in defensive locations, and also because they move very slowly so you have some time to get them to the front before you have enough transports to move them straight to ukraine or karelia.

You’re also probably right about Norway falling quickly (uk can assault with 2 loaded transports, bombardment, 2 fighters and 1 bomber first turn). However you can choose to defend it a bit more with fighters or your initial transport ferrying a couple more infantry there. Even though it’s 3 IPCs, you might want to make him pay for it.

You should also probably play till 9 victory cities. This is the accepted standard in tournaments because 8 obviously favors Axis too much, and 10 favors Allies because their last victory cities are extremely well fortified and delays the game immensely.

Also I noticed one somewhat wrong thing about your proposed Japan strategy -

Transports are superior to Industrial Complexes because not only can they mobilize more forces into the Mainland, but they also leave a constant threat of invasion on Alaska, further splitting the American Juggernaut’s IPC expenditures, or at the least forcing a garrison.

Transports are definitely not necessarily better than industrial complexes. TTransports are definitley very useful to build on your 1st/2nd turn to give you mobility in invading Australia/Alaska and get your stuff off of mainland Japan. However, if you ever want to truly threaten Russia, then you absolutely must have an IC on the mainland. This is because transports create a delay for land units, since the loading/offloading takes away their entire move for the turn.

For instance, if you have 2 transports lets say vs 1 IC on the mainland. With the transports, on the current turn you build 2 tank 2 inf. On the next turn, you transport them to the mainland. On the turn after that they can start moving. This creates a whopping delay especially for infantry who can’t keep up. However, if you had the complex on the mainland in indochina, you can buy 3 tanks. On the next turn they’re already able to move around, whereas the transport method they would just have landed and have to wait for next turn to move.

In the very beginning you definitely need transports to get things moving, but for long term invasions into Russia you must get at least one complex on the mainland. I actually get 2 - one in India as well. Once you get the US navy under control you can put out 6 tanks per turn, which presents a major threat to the Russians and even Africa. The IC in India also lets you build a fast battleship or transport and unload in Africa very quickly whereas if you build stuff in Japan it takes a while to get there. Yeah, building the IC itself might basically cost you a turn because it costs a bunch, but in the overall run it speeds things up immensely.

Also sometimes you absolutely need your tranports elsewhere invading islands or helping you take hits on defense. In this case if your transports are sunk, then you have no ability to get units on land within any reasonable amount of time. This makes your attacks heavily delayed on Russia, which is bad since usually Germany needs you to rear-end Russia a bit so it can live. Not to mention that transports can’t carry more than 1 tnak or inf per one, whereas you can buy up to 3 tanks at once at in IC.

Other than that you have a very good grasp on the actual problems that Germany has. With Japan also once you do pearl harbor II then keep an eye on your options; I usually gun down straight for Australia quickly while the US is building up again; use the battleship/carrier and the transport to quickly annihilate the garrison, and if you fail on the first run then just take your transport and get two guys from the surrounding islands and bombard again. Also with Japan be very aware of how many fighters you have. Immediatley turn them into a huge land assault force if the US navy isn’t threatening; it can really ram Russia in the butt if you get it going with some land troops.

From there you just want to keep a wary eye on the US transporting into Africa behind your back and the UK building up its own carrier to defend itself. You won’t be able to easily sink his Norway landing force if he himself gets a bigger navy. Just try not to lose your Baltic navy or you’ll suddenly find yourself playing in Russia’s position, which is defense. If you do lose your navy then you need to build fighters to sink his navy.

Why do so many people think infantry is so good? Sure, they’re cheap fodder, and their importance cannot be understated, but they’re just not good at all for assaulting areas alone, and you probably want to mix in tank/art with them in trannies rather than load 2 inf per trannie.

If all you do is build infantry then you will never be able to advance. Their attack sucks, they’re not as flexible as planes/tanks. I think it’s a great idea to mix in art/tanks so you actually have the attack power to invade well. Massing infantry gives you good fodder and cheap defense, but if you look at the numbers, their offense really really sucks.

Unless you’re the king of rolling ones, you’ll find your mass infantry falling flat on their faces against defending infantry or mix of infantry/tank/fighter. I think it’s usually best to start with lots of infantry because they move slowly, then build tanks/fighters to catch up them and do a combined attack, whereas if you keep massing infantry you have to wait another turn for them all to meet before going in, which gives the enemy extra time to build infantry on his end for defense.

Also if you have an IC in an isolated area, you want to build the most quality units you can afford there because the mobilization limits are usually very hefty (like 2 or 3 units). While building infantry is obviously the cheapest and best defense, having 3 tanks there is better than 3 infantry if you can afford either one. Infantry is the best when your deployment limits are higher than the number of infantry you can build, but if you have spare cash it’s better to go for quality attacking/defending units, since 3 infantry still take the same number of hits as 3 tanks.

I think the most versatile unit is the fighter. Yeah, it’s fairly expensive, but it has great mobility, ability to attack sea and land, has best defensive value, and isn’t forced to move into a country just invaded (can’t even land there) which is usually weak after you get it. They don’t need transports to move around, and are comfortable with sinking large navies from afar and then helping you take land.

I wouldn’t recommend massing fighters purely, but sometimes they’re just the best thing you can build for nations like Germany/Japan who need to deal with navies and land. After you see a good germany/japan use their fighters to great effect you’ll see the use of fighters.

What are the new developments in KJF? I’m not familiar with that strategy. I would imagine US would put major naval pressure on mainland Japan, while UK dumps IC in India to undercut Japan’s islands and US puts IC in China to capture the land areas, but I don’t know it. Can you share Imperious?

Germany building an IC is sort of like Russia building an IC - you don’t want to because you need every combat unit you can get your hands on, and you don’t need to because the action’s already hot and heavy where you start. Japan/US/UK have the option of putting ICs in their territories because they’re relatively isolated from direct assaults on their capitals and their capitals are far from the action across the map.

French Indochina is a good place to put it. Try capturing India’s IC or build one there, too once you get it. I believe having 2 ICs on the mainland is the only way to get good pressure on Russia going. Sometimes you can manage to capture China’s IC too if US tried to stall Japan. Then I pump out 6 tanks a turn and come up from Persia into Caucuses or that other area. It’s a very good way to take pressure off of Germany once you can afford that stage.

I believe Germany is very much the hardest to play as, because it is very very easy to mess up and you’re surrounded by two countries.

You will find that if you try to rush Russia that you will get heavily delayed by his infantry tactics since your IC is far away, and then UK will come out of no where into the baltic, which borders 4 of your territories, with many transports and fighters. Your attack on Russia will stall and die, while he slowly pushes in, while you’re dealing with the UK invasion.

With Germany you have to make very very hard decisions on what to do. This is not nearly as true with UK for instance. UK is very easily defended and he has a great safety/mobility in where he attacks once he blows up German navy. Also not true with Russia, just as Russia just keep stalling on the west front and if Japan starts coming in you have an incredible amount of time to build up infantry to defend against it.

Japan is also difficult to play as. It’s not difficult at all to fend off the US fleet, but it is difficult to make big land grabs because how long it takes to really get into Russia and how you’ll never have a big enough attack force with infantry moving so slowly by the time you get there. Also a British IC in India can really put a thorn in your back if he starts island hopping while you’re fending off a US naval swarm.

I could be very wrong, but the Allies have generally really good defending positions and have very little to think about, just respond to what the Axis is trying to do.

I would like to hear good German strategies, but so far the one I’ve always been trying has failed massively (try to take out Russia first). Good Russian players can really defend well until the UK invades Norway and such. And if you can’t keep up pressure on Russia, your outlying territories will wither under growing numbers of Russian troops until Russia overcomes Germany IPC income.

I vote for tokyo express + bombardment. The sub combo is nice but Germany has very little need for subs because he has to prosecute a land war against Russia as well, so the interdiction would be better if you want to play the economic shutdown with subs, but interdiction doesn’t really combine well with super subs since the subs you’re building aren’t necessarily attacking anything (in fact they’re probably getting hunted by planes).

Tokyo express and bombardment turns destroyers into a hybrid transport/battleship, which I think it very helpful for prosecuting island wars and such. For the price of one battleship you can get 2 bomabrdments with 2 destroyers, and they can carry 1 inf apiece too! That would be great to take back islands or invade US with all those bomardments and you could easily reinforce manchuria and the like.

Bombers are ok but still they’re expensive and you need to build stuff to shield them with as US; all you’re doing with heavy bombers is nearly guaranteeing a hit per bomber and/or getting high IPC damage rolls. Although this possibly could be very strong against germany if you land bombers in UK, getting the max 10 out of his territory every turn.

Subs in germany is a terrible idea because US/Brit’s bombers will decimate them. Subs do not fire back at air units!

I don’t know what to do as Germany. If you lose your Baltic fleet then UK has a free chance to dump a lot of bombardments and transports to any of your coastal territories at any time. You won’t be able to push into Russia with UK pincering you from the west as you try to go farther into Russia. But then again if US and UK really go after your Baltic fleet, not even buying AC or other stuff will save it. Germany’s “superior” land force isn’t enough to both push into Russia and defend against amphibious assaults from upwards of 6 locations due to the ease of which transports can reach any coastal Germany area in one turn. Russia can just keep massing infantry in Caucausus and Moscow to hole up Germany’s offensive at which time Germany would have a tough time trying to get enough tanks/inf to the offensive region as well as defend against landing UK troops anywhere along the coast.