Benoit,
Most players here use Tournament rules which makes you roll for tech during purchase but wait until the end of your turn for tech to take effect. You can’t take UK in the first turn that way. People don’t like it when the whole game comes down to whether Gemany gets LRA or not.
Certainly, bulking up the Med fleet has it’s weaknesses. Just different ones than bulking up the Baltic fleet.
It requires, at times, careful micromanagement, and sometimes Japanese support, to keep it from crashing and I am still struggling with issues brought about in turn 2 and beyond.
But, the extra TP, and maybe CV, gives you the added flexibility to make mass troop movements all over Asia, Africa and Europe. The CV provides wide-ranging air support without having to split aircraft to both Africa and Europe.
Remember, you DON’T HAVE to take Africa if the allies put up heavy resistance there. The ‘threat’ is enough to draw allied attention to that theater. Sometimes, it may be better to move your African units back to Europe to shore up your defenses or exploit an opening. And if the German eastern front begins to collapse the Med fleet can be used to drop troops behind the front lines to disrupt the Russian reinforcement train.
It may just turn out to be a novelty strat once an allied player finds a backbreaking counter to it, but it has shown me enough promise to invest more time in development. I need to play at least a few more games to get a solid opinion.
Another significant benefit to having the Baltic fleet in sz7 is preventing the British aircraft from going too far from home. I have seen many an allied player advocate moving the UK bomber as far as Sink or Yakut on UK1 to prevent the Japanese from leaving unguarded transports in sz61. The bomber can’t reach sz61 if it has to go to sz7 to attack the Baltic fleet so the Japanese player is free to use their entire navy for offensive purposes and won’t have to buy TP escorts on J1.
Can any amount of that Baltic Fleet survive exposed in SZ7 for 1 round to make it to the Med?
Absolutely. The subs can submerge. Although, they will likely be attacked by the US bomber on it’s way to the UK.
If the Brits bring only air and hit you 3 times in the 1st round, you might want to save the DD and take a potshot at one of the fighters because one sub is probably going to be killed by the US bomber. If the Brits hit 1 or less on the 1st round, you can also lose a sub and hope to hit with the DD or TP to force them to push a combat with bad odds or retreat and let the bulk of your Baltic navy make the channel dash safely. Submerged subs in sz7 also have an added benefit of scaring the allied fleets away from the Channel and mouth of the Med because on the off chance that the US bomber misses it can be really ugly for the allied fleets there. But you’ll have to position the bulk of your air forces in W Eur or north Africa to make the threat stick.
Can Germany hold against northern Allied landings that are basically unrestricted?
I believe you can. Your best bet for survival would probably be to try to drive a wedge in between the UK/US forces and the Russians to prevent them from massing in one territory. The longer you can keep the UK/US bottled up in the north the less Russian reinforcements you’ll see because Japan will start demanding more and more of Russia’s attention.
Can the Axis take enough of UK’s income fast enough (the 18 IPC’s from Africa and around the Indian Ocean) to prevent UK from totally dominating northern Europe?
That’s a hard question to answer.
The UK never really dominates in Europe. They need allied help. If Russia is pushed far enough, the UK is little more than a nuisance to Germany even if they are landing max ground units. But it becomes more significant if the US is also landing units and the total force becomes 12+ units per turn. Which brings me to the real reason for the threat of mass African landings by Germany.
Diversion. Specifically aimed at the US. Landing in Africa either forces the US to divert their forces to Africa or let Germany get a whole bunch of free money for little effort. The Axis should always be looking for their units to be doing something not being idle. They should either be killing something or moving someplace to kill something. if you let the allies bog you down into a war of attrition you will lose. Africa provides you with the ability to kill things and move to kill things. The TP’s also serve a dual purpose in that respect. You can not only cork up Egypt and pinball a couple armor down south to grab the money but with the second TP you can also threaten a whole bunch of territories with a good amount of force or just bring the African units home to provide extra punch in Europe if needed.
Don’t get me wrong, the money is important, but what’s more important in Africa is isolating the allies, specifically the US, in their own little theaters where you can destroy them individually as opposed to trying to crash through a combined allied wall.
With UK reinforcement free from the north, can Germany/Japan succeed in taking Russia via Caucuses route?
The north is NEVER free from UK reinforcement. There is rarely a time when the UK will have an empty transport, even with Africa lost, it just depends on whether there are armor being TP’d or just all inf.
Germany’s role in the Caucasus route will most likely be to trade Russian reinforcements to allow Japan to make some headway in Asia. But don’t forget the Afrika corps. If the heat gets too much from the US you don’t have to TP them back to Europe. You can always walk them to Persia. By then Japan will probably own it and those German reinforcements can really put the screws to Russia in Caucasus.
Hope that helped.
If bombers were reduced in price to say 13 IPC’s it would ruin the game.
Germany, on it’s first turn, would be able to buy 3 bombers, go hog wild attacking every possible Russian ground unit in sight and immediately begin a crippling SBR campaign against Russia with Japan doing the same from the other side. The allies couldn’t respond in kind because Germany would be making a such a huge bankroll from owning Europe and any American bomber produced on US 1 wouldn’t be able to SBR Germany until turn 3. Germany would have 2 full turns of income (minus the UK SBR’s) while Russia would be making $0 after turn 2. Two turns of German income is more than enough to replace initial bomber losses, build a Russia attack force, and build enough units to hold off the allies until Russia falls. Plus, with Germany making $40+ the allies couldn’t fully bomb Germany to $0 every turn.
If you reduced it to 14 IPC’s then the US could build 3 bombers on the first turn and Germany would be screwed.
jsp,
It is clarified in LHTR. On page 18 under the heading “Air Units” it states:
" If ther is any question about whether an attack is a “suicide run”, then in the combat move phase, you must declare, prior to rolling any battles, some possible way ( however remote the possibility is) for all your attacking air units to land safely that turn".
If the UK is going to have a hanging fighter, it has to find a way to land it on UK’s turn.
If you’re playing out of the box rules, it might be worth taking a shot, though.
Yes, you may. I’ll let you. :-D
Actually, the carrier doesn’t even have to participate in the attack as long as it will reach sz30 in non-combat.
Why WR and not Cauc or Karelia?
And isn’t artillery better then armor since it doubles your infantry’s attack power for every artillery piece? That basically means you ahve double the firepower for your infantry plus 2/3rds the firepower of a tank for 80% cost of a tank.
Because WR borders Ukraine, Belorussia and Karelia. All three of those territories usually are traded back and forth as they are the contested territories between the Russians in WR and Germany in E Eur until one of them gets enough of a numbers advantage to advance (usually into Belo) and force the other to retreat. Germany is frequently the winner in this contest, but Russia can get the upper hand if Germany turtles up early or sends a lot of units to Africa(my focus).
Artillery is at a disadvantage on a small scale comparison 1inf, 1art vs 1 inf, 1 arm, but on a large scale, artillery has a distinct advantage due to it being lower cost and therefore more can be produced.
Armor, however, retains the mobility advantage. When the frontlines are a large distance away from your IC’s, armor gets the edge as they can get there faster. This effect is most often associated with Russia vs. Germany in Europe or Russia vs. Japan in Asia. The closer to the front that you are the more artillery you will produce and the further away the more armor you will produce.
I believe you can save in “real time” although I don’t know exactly how it works. I also believe that pausing the game in “real time” is VERBOTEN. I think it confuses the server. It would have to be played at slow or very slow, IMO, or it would just be a confusion fest to me. I don’t know if the game is played directly off the Paradox servers or if it’s a host/client deal either.
A few tips off the top of my head:
Always run air missions during the day. Unless your enemy has air superiority in the area and your bombers are being shot up. It takes forever to repair and regain org for air units so don’t let them get wasted for no reason.
Always split your BB/BC’s and carriers into separate battle groups and run subs in groups alone. The AI’s admirals, and your’s as well, will ALWAYS attempt to stay within range of the carrier aircraft but OUTSIDE the range of capital guns and subs, so if you have 1 carrier in a group with 10 battleships/battlecruisers you will be wasting your BB/BC’s. I usually go with 1 Light cruiser(best air defense), and 1 Destroyer(best sub defense) per carrier plus 1 or 2 Heavy cruisers or 1 BB/BC (a few more if the fleet is huge) on the side in case someone’s fleet sneaks up on you at night( carrier’s almost always catch daytime raids well out of range of subs or capital guns, but night raids can be a different story). Always keep your capital ship/small ship ratio at 1/1 or better. If your capital ships(BB/CV/BC/HC) outnumber their support ships(Lt cruisers/DD’s) you take a penalty to combat effectiveness. The bigger the difference the bigger the penalty.
Avoid maxing out an admiral’s or air general’s command max even if you only have one good air general/admiral and the rest are strokes. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had two maxed out fleets get caught by an enemy fleet in the same sea territory and end up having the more powerful of my two fleets get hit with the over command max penalty. Over command max KILLS combat effectiveness.
If you are playing one of the Axis powers, especially Germany and Italy, make ABSOLUTELY SURE that you are loading up on resources, money, and oil through trade agreements BEFORE the war starts. After the war starts, your trading options get rather limited (agreements with the allies get cancelled and UK cuts off the Med routes) and your overseas routes will be subject to heavy allied convoy raiding. Heavy industry and oil using units can run you dry quickly and I try to keep as close to minimum as I can with “consumer goods demand” so I’m always heavily negative on money from my tech team salaries. I trade supplies for resources, money, and oil. It hurts your production but supplies give you the best bang for your buck. Germany has a huge energy supply so you can get away with trading that for some of your needs.
I also can’t stress enough that you get the research assistant. Losing two weeks or more on research because you chose the wrong tech team can start to add up quickly. I’ll dig up the link later, I’ve got fireworks to watch now.
Solomaxwell,
As a new guy here also, I can honestly say that coming in and immediately getting into a fight between you (a rookie) and MADDOGG (a veteran) is not a good way to start out.
MADDOGG is right in his last post. He dropped it and you took another shot at him just to have the last word. The Mods are only going to ask him to hold back for so long.
My experience here is that everyone will be more than helpful and accomodating as long as you aren’t a “bull in a china shop”.
Just my $ 0.02.
I can’t imagine playing online. Not being able to pause the game would kill me, especially if I was playing Germany where by 40’-41’ you’re dealing with 250+ divisions on 2 fronts, not including air, fleet, research, diplomacy, production, partisans…… Ugh.
The updates are pretty good about helping the AI be competitive and I always play on very hard so you get hamstrung while the whole world gets boosted. You CAN trick the AI in some circumstances but in very hard difficulty the AI’s divisions are faster than your’s and they regain organization even when moving so it’s a lot harder to isolate and destroy small pockets of it’s units until you get the numbers advantage.
Jermofoot,
I’ll assume that you took Gibraltar. An easily defended mountain territory with a level 10 port facility and a lock on access to the Med would be priority one for me.
The answer to question one is yes, provided FIC remains in Japanese hands after combat. They are NOT allowed to land and participate in the land combat but, they are also not immeidiately destroyed because they can’t land in the contested territory. So even if the naval combat goes before the land combat your surviving fighters are safe until your opponents non-combat phase. (pg 18 of LHTR states “If any fighter has no place to land by the end of the NON-COMBAT move phase, it is detroyed”).
Question 2, I’m not sure. I’m almost positive that it is in the rules somewhere but I didn’t reread all the way through.
I would say yes you have to go at least one round because it prevents you from retreating from a battle if you discover your other battles have turned out unfavorably.
Exactly jsp,
And it keeps the Brits out, too. I ALWAYS try to position my entire German airforce within striking range of sz 12 as well as pulling the baltic fleet to sz 7. The possibility of sinking 4 allied TP’s (2 U.K., 2 U.S.) on G2 is usually enough to discourage an allied landing in Africa on the first turn.
Jennifer,
You might want to be careful about pushing a U.S. unit train through North Africa. It is possible for the U.S. to get moving quickly into Africa with the E. Can to Algeria move. And the U.S. does have enough funds to eventually max out the East U.S. 12 unit production max (10 inf 2 arm is 40 with U.S. up Alg,Lib down China,Sink) with 6 TP’s. But even if you can get away with landing on U.S.1, your first infantry won’t reach Persia until U.S. 5. Five turns of allowing Germany and Japan to hammer away at Russia before the U.S. gets solidly involved is a long time and with only the Brits for support it’s a risky road to take. You could get by with building more armor to get some guys to the front faster, but it means less units are hitting the beach every turn, so it’s a tradeoff.
But, this is purely speculation on my part. I haven’t given it much thought. If you can get it to work, by all means, go for it. I’d like to see it in action so I could expand my U.S. bag of tricks.
The thought of attacking FIC had crossed my mind as well. But I determined it was mostly situational. If Gemany gets thumped in Egypt or I’m bringing the Russian hammer to Japan it’s worth a shot, but otherwise it’s just sacrificing a lot of irreplaceable units early for an average payout. Japan can live with only 5 fighters.
Yeah, this revised section does have a sticky for the v1.3 LHTR.
For the map you’re on your own. I just look at my gameboard or Abattlemap.
The bigger question is: Did you get the AI to work or is it already incorporated into the new version?
Oh yeah. One other thing that I though was kinda funny is that even my version incorporates the LHTR 1.3 changes. I tested it and German subs in a U.K. SZ CAN submerge when attacked by the U.S. bomber even if a newly built U.K. DD occupies the same SZ.
No problem. I don’t game there so I don’t have much to offer in that respect, but I am well versed in the program and the warclub ladder following is growing so it’s becoming more tempting to register.
I did neglect to mention that triple-a WAS invaluable to me during my training period. The ability to save games in between battles allowed me to manufacture scenarios (1,2, and 3 attack R1 openings, good/bad battle results, G1 Egypt openings) that I was able to revisit regularly. And the one thing I do know about the new version is that now you can even save between combat rolls, which is helpful.
Sorry switch, I was making some assumptions about the Allied forces there but I’m still gonna have to side with Tri on this one.
I assumed no American interference because I would do exactly what Tri described. If I’m not attacking Hawaii SZ (I have a thing about calling it Pearl Harbor) the only naval units I don’t have in SZ 60 will be the 2nd carrier group (East Indies CV/BB) and a U.S. attack there would be just like attacking Hawaii except Hawaii comes to me. I would never lose transports either, thats what the sub and DD are for.
I also assumed that the British were moving to Africa and that at least 4 Russian infantry were going toward Germany. With the kind of Russian hardware you’re talking about ( air support, armor), as Japan, I’m thinking KJF. A British mobilization in India and an IC build there would be the final indicator for that. No IC and I’m not worried about massive Russian movements in east Asia because that front structure is going to collapse quickly even if I have to split my builds to counter a U.S. fleet build. With two BB’s hugging the coast any incursions into Japanese held territory is risky at best.
Which brings me to the exact reason why, if I get at least a 2 bid, 2 bucks, not 1, go to Japan. If I see heavy Russian and/or British resistance, I won’t build the 1st turn IC. I’ll build either 4 trannys if I don’t see an Indian IC(any empty trannys immidiately go to the islands, if possible) or 3 trannys and a sub if an Indian IC is built and I can expect a fleet competition with the U.S.
Switch, I understand that Japan will be lean infantrywise on the mainland pre J2, but c’mon, when are you going to get another chance to bash open the door to Siberia. The remaining units that the allies can muster there are just picket forces and they will all be retreating once you start landing and producing 9-11 units a turn. Plus, they aren’t likely to be reinforced until Japan is threatening Russia’s 2 dollar territories even if Russia is making a few spare IPC’s because Germany is farting around in Africa and not in Europe, like me :-D.
I’m not even going to go into the merits of the U.S. building a fleet in an attempt to delay you further because, as far as I’m concerned the U.S. can build all the fleet it wants with my blessing.