Med Battleship G1

[MrMalachiCrunch]

When I first started playing 1942 we always did the german Med navy.  I recall a game where I had two german ACs in the Med, Germany was a power house.  Then I started playing a wider field of players.  I think you ought to try your german navy in the med game against some players here.  I think you will find with an aggresive Russia and allied player that you will be fighting for you life as Germany in Europe for the first few turns.  Your eventual increased income will come into play onlly after Russia has experienced increased income as well.  Combine this with your lost income in Europe and you are close to a zero-sum game while anchored in the Med.

I’m not saying that can’t or won’t work, I just have not seen it used outside my circle.  I think the counter would be massive british air builds combined with a few subs.  The axis would HAVE to build a destroyer.  I would see your massive investment in navy in the Med and think a few subs and air units is my counter.  You would have to build destroyers and then send them off to attrit subs while having to build more destroyers.  Again, it could work, but it would be a tight dance and only the Germans can build navy locally.

I tried a double bomber build against Fleetwood Dan, the game was never finished but as I recall he was eating my lunch as Russia, I don’t think I could have won that game.  That’s about as much investment as your navy roughly and I was not diverting forces away from europe.  I found I was too thin against russia and was being pushed back.  Mind you the bombers were more to keep the allied fleet at bay and that doesn’t work for long.

In any event, playing out a game is the best way to prove a strategy.

If you are the allies, you kinda have to go first.

Review the format of how others lay out there moves and duplicate the style you like best.  Play with the dice roller then do russia 1 when you feel you are ready.  Probably less stress to just create a new thread with a title like “Just testing out how to do a PBEM game”, do a few rolls, upload/download a few maps.  When you feel good about it, do Russia 1.  Good luck but not too much luck.

[Hobbes]

@MrMalachiCrunch:

Your eventual increased income will come into play onlly after Russia has experienced increased income as well.  Combine this with your lost income in Europe and you are close to a zero-sum game while anchored in the Med.

Can’t escape the math:

• G starts with a total of 20 inf, 3 art and 8 arm that can be deployed against the Russians (excluding units on Africa and W. Europe). Total unit value: 112 IPCs
• Russia starts with 18 inf, 2 art and 4 arm against Germany (excluding the 6 inf on the Far East). TUV: 84 IPCs
• With a Ukraine-WR attack, Russians should lose 6 inf + 1 art while the Germans lose 6 inf, 2 art and 2 arm
• The German counter on the Ukraine will destroy the 3 arm there but G will lose 2-3 inf on the process
• After all combats, Russians have 12 inf, 1 art, 1 arm remaining. Germans: 12 inf, 1 art, 6 arm. Total losses: Russia 6 inf, 1 art, 3 arm, 37 IPCs; Germany, 9 inf, 2 art, 2 arm (45 IPCs + 10 for fighter)
• R spends 24 to replace the losses, giving it a 15 inf, 1 art, 4 arm force. TUV: 69 IPC
• G spends 40. Just buying a bomber leaves it with 28 IPCs. With the rest it buys 6 inf, 2 arm, but 2 of those units will be assigned to Africa, so it ends with 17 inf, 1 art, 7 arm force. TUV: 90 IPC

At the end the balance of land forces after the first round will remain the same, with a bomber buy. If G buys instead a carrier and a transport (21 IPCs) it will start cutting down on the slight German advantage (1.3 IPC to every 1 IPC of Russian hardware).

But now we have round 2! And Russia now has 29 IPC to spend while G has 42. Of those German 42 IPCs, 8 will be assigned to Africa and some will have to be moved to W. Europe on round 3. Assuming 3 inf + 1 arm earmarked elsewhere, that leaves 28 IPC to spend against the Russians. But if you got that AC and transport, you’ll need 2 extra units for Africa so effectively the Russians have outproduced the Germans on round 2.

And for round 3 the money available should be about the same, 28-30 IPC for Russia and 42-43 IPC for Germany. It will take round 4 for Germany to finally use the extra money from Africa - until then it will be a net loss.

Note: this description assumes certain moves (UK retaking Egypt on UK1, etc.) and doesn’t account for other factors/moves.

[Advosan]

All this german med navy is making me seasick.14(AC)+7(TT)+8(inf,arm)=29 G1 IPCs not heading eastwards but south??By R3 Ukraine is forever lost.The Med fleet actually forces the Axis to adopt voluntarily the biggest Allied problem: surface fleet protection.The differences though are huge:The Allies can easily merge fleets in the Atlantic;the Axis has to do bizarre schemes like japs in the Med.The Allies use all their airforce in their fleet;the Axis need all the airplanes they can muster in WE.By surface fleet protection the Allies pursue their main goal:KGF;the Axis pursue a secondary goal (Africa).With Russia all over Europe,Uk and Us can focus on the Med fleet,merge in SZ12 and either scare the Axis out of the Med or sink them altogether.

[flipper]

All I can say is I would love to play someone who didn’t use Fortress Europe & was building navy as Germany.

[Col.Stauffenberg]

Keep in mind, we play a germany that has bonuses in the Med. We think retaking Egypt with UK as well as G losing 2-3 planes is enough to pretty much ensure an allied win. We give them a sub with the battleship, an extra guy on libya, we switch the tank with the art in algeria AND we move the Ukraine plane to Italy. It’s no so much that Germany is wasting money buying Navy it’s that it makes them money, pressures Russia deep and most importantly forces the allies to concentrate on Africa or else G will make 50 ipcs round after round.

Those transports don’t have to drop off in Africa, they can drop off in UKR or Cauc if it’s weak. We usually make between 46-50 ipcs on round 2. We also build navy in the baltic on round 1. This keeps the door open to Karelia, Norway and with two transports, Uk has to worry about getting invaded come their turn. For the first two rounds G is only buying 5 inf plus art for two rounds in addition to their navy buys but from round 3 on it’s Inf, art & tanks.

That said, G is walking a tightrope but they still have the attack advantage, they just can’t get diced, but when can they? Without the IPC’s they just fold quicker.

Despite all these advantages we give to Germany, we can still win as the allies. That’s why I think I can beat a no advantage Axis opponent. I don’t care about fortress Europe because we are already buying massive navies as US/UK. By the same token, I doubt I could beat any of you if I had to play a no-advantage Axis. I would need 3 rounds of miracle roles.

[Col.Stauffenberg]

I’ve also finally installed Triple A so I’ll try and get a game going either tonight or tomorrow.

[MrMalachiCrunch]

I was hoping we would play by forum on here.  Although I have tripleA installed I have not used it other than to review a few saved games so graciously provided by Hobbes.  TripleA  does have some bugs I am aware of, probably easy to deal with though.

If you really want to use tripleA rather than do it here then so be it.  I thought it would be nice to play it here since this thread originated here and people would want to follow it.  We would have to create a thread here to post tripleA save files and then only those here with TripleA can follow it.

[MrMalachiCrunch]

Col, in case you have not installed the BattleMap utility, here it is:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=12873.msg357193#msg357193

That and the dice roller is all you need to do Play By Forum.  I’m not sure if the dice roller works in all areas of the website, we shall see after this post:

Here is how it works, you begin the dice roller command with a colon and the letter “a” repeated 3 times all without spaces   and it end with a colon.  I can’t actually show the proper command as it will fire the dice roller and replace my ‘command string’.

“colonaaa #ofDice1@WhatItHitsOn optional#ofDice2@WhatItHitsOn optional#ofDice3@WhatItHitsOn colon” is the syntax you use to activate the dice roller.

More simply:

colonaaa 1@1 1@2 2@4 colon

If you replace the word colon with :            you would submit your post, and in place of that string you would get 4 dice rolled, 1 that hits on a 1, 1 on a 2 and 2 on a 4 and it would look like this:
Rolls: 1@1 1@2 2@4; Total Hits: 11@1: (5)1@2: (5)2@4: (5, 3)

[Col.Stauffenberg]

I downloaded Battlemap but I don’t know what version it is. They have Ger, JP and US with the wrong IPCS.

Edit: got it. Just had to click new.

[Hobbes]

Decided to try GTO today. Already played 2 games and lost both! :D

Has a few bugs, but looks good so far. Much better than the version they had a few years back.

[Granada]

@Hobbes:

Decided to try GTO today. Already played 2 games and lost both! :D

Are you fracking kidding me?  :-D Who are the players there? Caspian Sub reincarnated or what?

[Hobbes]

Well both games were played with a time limit of 5 minutes per turn, with 2 minutes for movement. I had never played Axis and Allies with an automatic limit, and I was also playing with a different interface than I’m used to. So I made a lot of ignorant mistakes.

On the first game I simply got diced playing with Russia. Germany went for a round 1 8 armor buy and stacked Karelia. Then it moved the stack to Archangel. I lost the attack on Archangel despite having 70% odds…

The second one was simply crazy. Made a lot of mistakes with Japan on round 1 and half my fleet was at the bottom of the ocean by J2 while the US were going full Pacific. Meanwhile Russia sunk the German Med fleet (missed the 3rd fighter buy) and stacked Ukraine on R2 due to some other German messed up G1.
Well, what happened afterwards was that Japan immediately switched production to only infantry, fighters and bombers and started sending it all towards Russia until the US eventually caught up with the remaining Japanese fleet off Africa and sunk it. But meanwhile Japan was able to send 1 big infantry stack through Yakut while taking India and overrunning most of Africa. And the airforce started landing on Karelia to protect the German stack that moved there that was preventing the UK from landing and joining a very big Russian stack on West Russia.
Since the UK was blocked from major landings on Europe (Germany, W. Europe and Karelia were all defended) it bought 1 IC for South Africa, and later 1 IC for India, after the Americans liberated it. And that also build 2 ICs on Phillipines and Borneo. The UK meanwhile had also gotten East Indies.
Meanwhile, the UK started worrying about the 8 fighters, 3 bombers and 1 Japanese sub within range of its fleet, so it decided to pull back from SZ5 to SZ6 and add a 2nd carrier and destroyer, giving it a total of 3 carriers, 1 battleship, 4 destroyers, 1 sub and 6 fighters. Enough to stop the Japanese. Alas, not enough to stop a kamikaze Japanese attack followed by Germany’s 5 fighters, 2 bombers and 1 sub. Just that battle was worth losing the game.
Germany then managed to build up 20 inf and 30 arm and send them to West Russia, forcing the Russians to pull back from Caucasus, which felt on the next turn. The UK and the US meanwhile had ICs all over Asia to try to help the Russians. Japan was fortified against the US but out of the game. But after conquering Caucasus I was thinking of sending that army to liberate Asia (all the ICs… yummy). However, Allies managed to liberate Karelia and take Rome. Game over, they got the 9 victory cities.