I read through my previous post.
When I say I don’t play on the level I’m describing - mm, okay, I sort of do. Players that have played commented games with me know that I’m regularly running projections that go four or five turns in advance as a matter of course. Sometimes I even use aacalc (gasp).
But that’s not the same as having a detailed complete playbook of branches and contingencies in case of aberrant dice and/or player action, or having the tools necessary to building such a playbook. I know it’s possible in a practical sense. I just haven’t gotten around to it personally. Lot of work. Collaborative effort.
Okay so, back to German Med cruiser. From the last post we know it wasn’t a G1 cruiser.
But let’s take a glance at some other lines. Destroyers and carriers.
First, G1 Med carrier. I don’t know if it’s a solid line of play, but I think it very well might be. I wrote out details of the projection somewhere on Steam, but for here let’s just say Germany can bridge to Libya, risk a fighter to hit the UK destroyer, use a sub and fighter to hit the UK cruiser, and if Germany gives up position on G2-G3 as it’s sending infantry to defend France against UK invasion from East Canada, what of it? Sending a single submarine against the UK destroyer/transport only has a 1/3 chance of clearing the transport anyways; sending a submarine to the UK cruiser instead has compensatory factors in that Germany threatens any US1 landing to French West Africa. And if you’re playing for the long game with a German Med carrier for African income, if you give up some short-term considerations oh well. Costs and benefits, that’s how it goes.
But a G1 carrier is not the same as a German Med cruiser. A G1 carrier is part of a calculated brute force strategy that sacrifices some of Germany’s ability to push in the first few rounds in exchange for a good chance at African income. A G2+ Med cruiser is not a brute force strategy, it’s an opportunistic build that exploits dice outcomes and/or opponent play to change key timings in Africa.
That said, why not a German destroyer? Or two? Instead of a cruiser?
Because Germany is never meant to hold the Mediterranean by itself.
At this point, we have to consider some aberrant dice and non-meta moves. Why? Because you can expect the German Med battleship to be destroyed after capturing Trans-Jordan (previous post had details). So why didn’t UK blow up the German battleship?
Three major possibilities.
- USSR did not attempt to hit Ukraine and/or failed, possibly contributing to 2)
- Germany wiped out Egypt’s units
- UK hit Japan’s East Indies fleet so didn’t have any forces to allocate to Germany’s battleship.
Other things, like UK did try to wipe out Germany’s battleship but failed - it happens. But whatever.
This is where things start to branch out a bit.
First, when does Germany probably NOT have to build any Med navy whatsoever? Suppose UK tried to hit Germany’s battleship and failed. UK lost all its air, Germany kept its battleship. Now what? USSR risks its fighters against Germany’s battleships? Ew. US isn’t in position. If Germany DOES want a fleet, it should maybe try building it on G2 while bridging to Libya make sense. On later turns Germany certainly wants to push Egypt and/or Trans-Jordan and/or slip its fleet out through the Suez. But that game isn’t necessarily a G2 Med fleet buy. There won’t be any air for a while, and why bother to buy expensive navy if Germany does all it really wants to do with its Med fleet anyways
But when would you want a German cruiser? Again, if Germany hit Trans-Jordan on G1 and its Med fleet survived, here’s how it plays out.
Probably UK hit the East Indies fleet. I’m not saying it’s a fantastic attack, but I think it can be argued the line is competent. But then, UK is not in position to blow up Germany’s fleet on G2 either. If the UK Indian Ocean fighter survived it’s on Persia. The UK Egypt fighter is probably destroyed (no place to land unless the UK carrier survived which is pretty aberrant dice though it does happen). UK’s bomber is wherever. UK’s starting London fighters are on West Russia. So of those, how much has range to Italy’s sea zone? Just the bomber.
Meanwhile, remember Germany bulked up at Libya (moved Algeria units over, the transport went with the battleship to hit Trans-Jordan), perhaps even using a Germany fighter. Perhaps not. But whatever. If UK doesn’t blow up Germany’s battleship then there’s really not much point in UK trying an aggressive hit on Libya against not-great odds as Germany can just drop bridge units to hit Libya even if UK wins, and UK loses Egypt anyways when Germany hits Egypt from Trans-Jordan, and if UK hits Egypt and Trans-Jordan, just look at what UK has in the area, it’s going to give up odds somewhere. And remember, we’re thinking about hitting UK hitting the East Indies fleet which is probably why the German battleship and transport aren’t destroyed in the first place.
But then what? On G2, Germany’s Libya stack advances to Egypt and Germany can re-take Trans-Jordan. And what does UK do, exactly? The UK bomber can have range, no question. But how do the UK fighters reach? If the UK fighters park in Persia they’re out of range of the Italy sea zone, and Germany can still be pushing units with units fed into Africa from Libya. I know it’s expensive for Germany but more on that later. If UK doesn’t counter Germany’s push, great, Germany controls the Suez and that gets dirty. If UK does counter Germany’s push, great, Japan has less to deal with in capturing India. And if Japan builds pressure on India then the UK fighters have to park on India unless the Allies pull out early, and every turn the Allies pull out early mean three less units for UK’s medium-sized India stack and three more units for Japan’s push.
Yes, you don’t use UK to fight a losing-stack battle for India. But you don’t just give up that unit differential either without fighting for it like crazy. You stick around until the last moment (remembering that UK has to pull out of India before Germany cuts it off with a capture and hold of Caucasus). And if Africa has to go, that’s just too bad. If India gets bled out faster to protect Africa, Japan captures India then leapfrogs into India and grabs it all shortly anyways.
So if UK has fighters at Asia, then how does it really use them to destroy Germany’s fleet, especially if Germany is just bridging units to Libya? UK2 the fighters aren’t in position at all, Trans-Jordan can be recaptured but the fighters can’t land there this turn. Egypt is unsafe. UK can try to defend Trans-Jordan past G3 then land fighters so Germany can’t escape. So you start to see if the German battleship wasn’t taken down on G1, even with no build it’s still very tough to take down.
But that only accounts for UK in the east. We still have to think about US in Atlantic or Pacific.
First, the Atlantic. I already described that maybe you get this whole scenario off a KJF, so I’ll get into the KGF first to get it out of the way.
Suppose US1 builds a carrier, then US2 captures Morocco. (Ideally UK2 captures then US2 reinforces but eh.) So as early as US3, US threatens to whack the German battleship; the US bomber on London can hit the Italy sea zone and land in Morocco which was captured on UK2/US2. This cuts off Germany’s options in the west.
But here you start to see where a G2 naval buy can make sense under the right conditions. If you only think about UK then it looks like Germany can play keep-away in the Mediterranean forever. But actually Germany’s on the clock if US pushes in Atlantic, and if Germany doesn’t get its business done before the clock runs out then it just runs out of time.
What if US is pushing in Pacific? There doesn’t seem to be any clock on Germany then. But Germany doesn’t want to bridge to Libya forever; that’s just inefficient. Besides if Japan’s pulled away from India then UK has more breathing room. So again, you can get UK pushing into position then threatening to destroy Germany’s fleet with air. Regardless, Germany wants to consider some sort of naval reinforcement. It’s just too easy and cheap to blow up a lone battleship.
So this gets into the question of why a German Med build at all, and exactly how it’s used. Depending on the Allies’ play, if you want to defend against air, then subs won’t do, and cruisers have a little bit of an edge over destroyers. Cruisers also give the bombard ability, which helps in capturing isolated territories. If you’re satisfied with what you’re doing in Europe and want to send Germany’s fleet to help do something, then what do you send? Do you really want to allocate a full carrier and fighter escort, considering you may need each and every fighter to get an on-odds attack to break Russia? Probably not. Will a destroyer be adequate? The odds on the defense are not as good. And what about a cruiser? The cruiser can be used for naval bombardment; if you’re trying to hit isolated territories that are defended by 1 unit, does it make sense that you would bring a cruiser or destroyer? As to destroyer coverage, that should be handled by Japan in any event.
If you sent two destroyers with Germany’s battleship, well, that would be a lot better than a cruiser. But you don’t know that you’ll need those destroyers. You want to make use of every IPC to fight in Europe.
That said, why get a cruiser at all?
Because of German income in Africa. Japan starts with few forces in Asia/Europe, Germany starts with a lot. Germany has a load of production capacity and all its territories with industrial complexes are connected through land to Russia. So either Germany pushes sheer unit count (in which case it needs income; it has 15 capacity between Germany, Italy, and Karelia, then 19 after it captures Caucasus, and you can see how Germany even with Africa probably won’t have 57 IPCs every turn to spend on infantry. Or if Germany wants to push speed, then it needs IPCs to buy tanks. Regardless, Germany wants income and can use it.
Contrast to Japanese income in Africa. Japan’s industrial complex on Tokyo is horribly placed, and industrial complexes on Asia are expensive. Japan can build air for flexibility, but there’s nothing Japan can do about starting stack sizes. Instead of feeding Japan to try to get its stacks to eventually rival USSR’s for a major stack battle it just makes sense to feed Germany to get its already large stacks over the top. If you have a choice between Germany getting IPCs and Japan getting IPCs, it’s probably best to choose Germany.
So you look at Africa and think well it’s just four or five IPCs. But that’s another entire whole unit, or another tank instead of an infantry that’s produced on Germany, which can catch up to the front and hit the timing. And you’re also doing this a bit early, robbing UK of IPCs, and UK has an IPC income issue especially once Africa falls. UK just has a hard time building up forces to really make a difference; true UK is best used to make a lot of small plays all over the board that add up to a big difference, but it does mean UK has a hard time trying to build any sort of critical mass.
So far I wrote mostly about the KJF scenario. But returning to the KGF scenario. Maybe UK thinks it has something really important to do with its bomber and air elsewhere or something and the German battleship survived to G2.
So far I’ve been writing about the German timings and counters in the Mediterranean/India region. But there’s a lot more to the game than that. What does UK do? What does US do? What if it’s KGF?
Well suppose it is KGF. Suppose Germany builds an early carrier in the Med. And how is that good, exactly? A carrier is a lot more expensive than a destroyer but has the same defense and can’t even hunt submarines. So when is it good? When you land fighters on, of course. You can cycle fighters into Africa and southeast Europe, and that’s nice.
But if you have fighters in the Mediterranean, then they don’t have range to the Atlantic. And this creates some weirdness.
Suppose you say that you don’t want to use German air to hit Allied fleet anyways. You use German air to threaten Allied fleet, but actually you want to use German air to trade with USSR. But then what? If there’s a light escort fleet with a huge juicy stack of transports, you want to hit it right?
Consider UK. Suppose UK1 builds 3 infantry, destroyer, carrier. You’re already doing okay as that’s fighters that didn’t land on West Russia. But depending on whether UK’s East Canada destroyer/transport survived or not, maybe you’re starting to look at a kind of bulky fleet. If USSR captured Ukraine Germany only has 5 fighters. Risking 5 German fighters to go after 5 UK defenders isn’t the greatest, and if you win you only get one transport. Eurgh.
So this is why some Germany players just shrug and go ahead and build the Med carrier. They feel that they’re not going to challenge UK in the Atlantic meaningfully anyways. But actually that’s not really how it plays out.
So now we have to look at projected outcomes of the G1 attack on the UK battleship and various opportunity costs.
In future posts in this series -
Projected outcomes of the UK battleship, opportunity costs and France
UK3 fleet timing and German air positioning