Japan ICs/tanks vs. transports/infantry

[chizzado]

So, as Japan, what are your thoughts on producing all tanks with 3 mainland ICs (3 ICs built by the end of round 3–assuming they will be sufficiently protected) instead of producing transports?  The 3 locations for the ICs, of course, would be FIC, Manchuria, and India.  The tanks reach Moscow quicker and forces Russia to do something about Japan sooner.  Sure, the TUV trade-off isn’t optimal when trading territories with Russia in Asia, but who cares?  Russia has to sacrifice their precious units to fight off the tanks on a dwindling income while Japan’s income is always increasing and can much better afford the uneven swap.  It worked in a game I just played–this was in a full-on KGF game–that is, India, Indian Ocean, Sinkiang, Buryatia, Soviet Far East, and US battleship and transport off the western US coast were evacuated in round 1.  Japan was only using 1 transport in the Pacific the entire game.  Has anyone else had success with the 9 tanks per turn strategy instead of the traditional use of the 4 transports?

This also begs the question…what’s the best way to defend against it as Russia?  I suppose you’d have to pull back your attack on Germany sooner, which leaves it up to just the UK and US to handle Germany.  I haven’t been successful at taking down Germany with only 2 of the 3 allies committed though.  I find it difficult as Russia to find the balance of keeping sufficient pressure on Germany while at the same defending the sudden tank blitz from Japan.  The last couple of times I played as Russia against this Japan scenario, I waited until Japan had gotten a couple of units to Novo and Kazakh before taking them seriously.  By then though, I had a Russian stack of infantry in Belorussia and couldn’t bring them back to Moscow in time for an adequate defense.  The Jap tanks just showed up too fast.  I started contesting these territories with Japan, but there were always more tanks right behind the ones I killed, and Russia just couldn’t keep up.  I had no choice but to contest Novo and Kazakh because Japan was threatening Moscow/Caucasus not only from Novo and Kazakh, but also from the tanks in Persia, Sinkiang, and Yakut.

Thoughts??

[Hobbes]

Pumping out only armor works against inexperienced players. Once the Allied player knows how to deal with the armor stacks then the Axis advance will slow down.

It is a mere matter of mathematics - if you are contesting Novo/Kaz/Persia/Evenki then you’ll have to use 2 armor (10 IPC) to kill 1 single infantry. Divided by those 4 territories it means that you’re trading nearly all of your produced 5 IPC units for cheap 3 IPC ones.

The way to defeat it with Russia is to let Japan advance until those territories then contest them using a combination of Russian/UK/US forces. Then you’re bleeding the Japanese dry on their advance because it simply becomes impossible to create a stack that can take Caucasus or Russia. The key is really that you need to coordinate all 3 Allies to defend Russia and prioritize.

[Pherman1215]

what Hobbes is saying is 100% true.  But, where tanks become a real problem for the allies is on Persia.  Stack 8+ there and use German force to open Kazhak.  Even if the Allies know to look for it, the mere threat of it is often enough for them to give up the Caucausus complex.