Right. In fact transports don’t roll. They need other warships as protection. Only the other ships roll.
Attack, Retreat or Advance?
-
A few more indications:
The UK and Russia could have hit and killed the German stack on WRus but that would leave Russia undefended against Japan, which was massing units on Yakut, India and Sinkiang.
The US had essentially botched up its transport shuttle at this point - the Japanese were also overrunning Africa so they needed to divert some forces there and I had forgotten to move units into Eastern Canada and to offload the units onboard transports off SZ4. -
Sorry to go off topic here,but why do you guys not play games on this site?
I’d love to witness some of these strategies & perhaps have a game with someone.By the way I think I would defiantly retreat to Russia
-
Ah, a bit more context and things begin to become clear. I can see with a hiccup in the north Atlantic shuck. You wouldn’t screw up the shuck to do that, but since it already was, less cost to doing so as the lost opportunity costs are being paid for anyways.
A very tough call you cannot get answers for by merely plugging values into AACalc. Reversing a multi-national defense into a multi-national offense reverses the IPC differential in the battle usually. In my opinion, just to win an IPC attrition battle is not worth it in that scenario, unless it was a big payoff like taking a capital as in your case.
I find it tough to get the japs strong enough to be able to overcome a multinational defense, it takes until turn 9-10. I do adventure a bit in africa but not really at lost opportunity costs and not with much in the way of an IPC force and it more than pays off for itself by round 7-8.
As for Flips comment, I can’t agree enough. I actually love the format of PBEM here and generally the speed is my speed. I don’t think I could run with you cats who play with 5 minute rounds in a real-time games. I’m getting old and I am officially brain-injured, dat’s my excuse and me sticking with it! I would love to see a few 1942 games per week here rather than 1-2 a month.
Col Stauffenberg must still be doing homework. Yeah, I got some homework for you. First, three easy letters to learn… NFA, not to be confused with NFG…
-
Germans 40 infantry + 15 armor on Ukraine.
Allies, have a stack of 70+ units on Caucasus, including Russia’s 27 inf and 17 arm, some 35 UK ground units (inf, art and arm) and a few US ones.Allied fleet has finished reinforcing Russia through Archangel and has started contesting Western Europe but Germany still has some 30-40, mostly infantry, to defend itself. And the Japs are getting large stacks to Sinkiang, India and Yakut.
Then Germany moves its 50 unit stack from Ukraine to West Russia. It’s the UK round now. What would you do?a) Attack the German stack on West Russia before the Japanese can land planes to protect it, followed by a Russian attack to destroy the remains.
b) Move all the UK (and Allied) units to defend Russia.
c) Advance everything into Ukraine.How many Japanese units were in Asia? 30 to 40+ ground? That’s my guess.
-
hey hobbes you are speaking about the game you played VS. me. I think everyone should know the game was Low Luck. The main problem we found out that leaving russia undefended was 1. letting japan take it for minimal losses. 2. Since Russia’s capital had fallen and germany didn’t have a huge attacking power Russian forces became almost useless. Since if Russia took Germany’s capital the money germany lost wouldn’t mean much since russia couldn’t use it. Japan was a monster if anyone was asking. Japan was making 14 units a turn from turn 4-5 till the time the game ended. By the end of the game japan had 80+ tanks and was making 70-80 a turn and had its entired fleet in med with 4 transports that could load and offload men from africa onto western europe or southern europe. This combined with the 70 tanks japan had in russia/caucus moving up to Germany meant game over. As for attack or retreat. I think your plan would have worked better if when you were moving up your stack of 70-80 men from Cacus I would have moved it up to eastern europe so the german 15 tanks couldn’t reach Germany to defend before UK attacked. You ended up moving your whole stack to balkans. Making eastern europe open to move through with 15 tanks to get to the capital before UK attacked. Since it was LL Germany easily held off an attack from UK. I could have attacked the Eastern Europe stack and retreat to Germany with my remaining forces. This would have worked in your favor. Since Russian men at this point are near worthless you could have taken the first round hits on all your russian infantry. Making Germany much weaker and killing Russian units that don’t mean anything. All in all hobbes in this game tried the Norway attack (I was curious to see if it would work out well) and then lost his stack on western Russia. From there it was an uphill climb.
-
I often read dazzling numbers of stacked troops (for ex. over 30 UK units in Russia?, 80+ tanks from Japan?)
…i don’t get it, do you people buy for 7 rounds before you do anything?
-
@special:
I often read dazzling numbers of stacked troops (for ex. over 30 UK units in Russia?, 80+ tanks from Japan?)
…i don’t get it, do you people buy for 7 rounds before you do anything?
Precisely my thought! I play the game only occasionally, and have never played online. But it simply never lasted long enough to have such numbers. Perhaps I never met a good opponent?
-
A tripleA save file for this game would have been helpful. Those do seem like large numbers before the ‘final’ dance(s)
-
In online games with two good players using Low Luck (or even regular dice) it is common to see large stacks like that because players will rather not take chances and wait to move those stacks until they are sure that they can’t be destroyed. It also depends on the overall strat you’re following: if you are ahead on income and you’ve stopped the enemy from advancing then it’s best to keep piling up units until you are ready to move. You’re already ahead of him on income so he’ll be the one who has to take more risks.
On this game the Allies essentially kept their advantage on income and started a reinforcement chain through Archangel to fortify Russia for a few rounds. That’s how the UK ended up with 30+ units in Caucasus. The problem is really that the Allies work together great on the defense but it can be very hard to advance since each one will have to attack individually.
Oh, and I don’t think it was so many Japanese tanks… but by then I had stopped counting :D
-
Hobbes put the point perfectly. A good game Vs. two experts is almost always going to last for 12+ rounds. Most of the game becomes posturing. This is the problem I have with the allies as well Hobbes. Normally when I play the allies I let the UK and Russia do all the attacks unless an attack from US presents itself. I just build up my forces with US until they are too great and since they haven’t done any fodder attacks, their army is huge!
-
Normally when I play the allies I let the UK and Russia do all the attacks unless an attack from US presents itself. I just build up my forces with US until they are too great and since they haven’t done any fodder attacks, their army is huge!
Which brings another question, which role the UK/US should have. The most logical is UK nibbles, US delivers the major blow, as you described. However, there are situations where it gets inverted:
- The UK is better placed and can start assembling a large force while the US is still building up their transport chain.
- UK forces in Russia can both defend against Germany and still use their advantage of playing before Japan, in coordination with previous US/Russian blows to the Japanese.
-
This may or may not be consistent with the conventional wisdom, but with regard to low luck games, my philosophy as Allies was always to be aggressive and wear down Germany with all 3 Allies. So in my view large stacks are more beneficial to Axis (unless they are pinned down and losing bad economically). In dice it’s not as easy to be as aggressive because amphib assaults can go terribly wrong, and one bad amphib can completely ruin a structured KGF. For this reason I was inclined to believe the Allies have a better chance at winning in low luck.
-
I believe you are right. The allies should have the advantage in low luck because of the amphibious asaults. I also spend all my units as UK. Meaning I try to take as many territories as I can but still have a steady stream of 2 inf 2 tanks a turn to norway or lenningrad if can stack. I think in our game Hobbes decided against these attacks and kept a steady stream of 8 units heading to archangel with UK.
-
Re: Large Stacks: You see this a lot in games in which both Axis and Allies are controlled by conservative players of moderate to high skill. If one or the other player is aggressive, large stacks won’t form, and the game will end quickly as the battles are quickly resolved. If one or the other player is not at least moderately skilled, that player will make a mistake that the other player can exploit, which makes the game shorter (so large stacks don’t have time to build up).
Re: UK/US (and USSR) roles: This following comment is not directly relevant to earlier posts in this thread. If Germany holds a territory originally controlled by Russia, UK can attack and fail and retreat, then US can attack and fail and retreat, then Russia can attack. That is, the Allies have three chances to commit minimal force to attack a German-controlled Russian territory and take control of it by the time Russia collects income. On the other hand, if Japan holds a territory originally controlled by Russia, there are only two chances. If Japan holds a territory originally controlled by US, there is usually just one chance that has to be taken by the US.
If this wasn’t already an indicator that KGF is better for Allies, there’s the additional logistic advantage in going KGF. UK/US fleets in the north Atlantic can hit any number of territories with cheap infantry (plus support) from amphibious assaults. Allied forces in east Asia have almost no relative mobility because they’re stuck walking around instead of being offloaded from ships; the Japanese are the ones with the mobility advantage as the Japanese can offload to any number of key points (Buryatia and French Indochina being key), plus have the air power to turn a couple of infantry and a tank or two into a significant attack threat.
Re: “conventional wisdom” - the “conventional wisdom” behind KGF is to attack 3 vs 1; the Allies are delayed by having to build the naval infrastructure, but then have a logistic advantage with amphibious assaults that potentially lets them trade off at 1:1 or better. The delay is usually long enough for Japan to get quite large and nasty, which means the inevitable loss of Moscow. If the Allies do NOT trade off with Germany early, Germany can potentially have defensive stacks that get reinforced by Japanese fighters. Japan then tries to either grab Caucasus or Moscow while Berlin holds fast; if Berlin can hold for a few turns while the Japs control Caucasus or Moscow, the Axis probably win.
Re: low luck favoring Allies: Try to quantify that with an Axis bid if you would, please. 3 IPCs worth of units preplaced on the board / added to the bank? More?
-
I think I see a wabbit… with a machinegun! :-D
@Bunnies:
Re: UK/US (and USSR) roles: This following comment is not directly relevant to earlier posts in this thread. If Germany holds a territory originally controlled by Russia, UK can attack and fail and retreat, then US can attack and fail and retreat, then Russia can attack. That is, the Allies have three chances to commit minimal force to attack a German-controlled Russian territory and take control of it by the time Russia collects income. On the other hand, if Japan holds a territory originally controlled by Russia, there are only two chances. If Japan holds a territory originally controlled by US, there is usually just one chance that has to be taken by the US.
If this wasn’t already an indicator that KGF is better for Allies, there’s the additional logistic advantage in going KGF. UK/US fleets in the north Atlantic can hit any number of territories with cheap infantry (plus support) from amphibious assaults. Allied forces in east Asia have almost no relative mobility because they’re stuck walking around instead of being offloaded from ships; the Japanese are the ones with the mobility advantage as the Japanese can offload to any number of key points (Buryatia and French Indochina being key), plus have the air power to turn a couple of infantry and a tank or two into a significant attack threat.
I completely agree with all the theory you described, although that’s what happens when the ideal conditions are met. With amphibious assaults, in many occasions you’ll be unable to expect any Russian support because they will be more occupied against Japan. But logistically and otherwise the UK+US combo against Germany is the best, even better if you manage to get the Russians involved, even if it’s just to protect the territory.
However, there are quite a few important factors in deciding to swing against Japan the Russia+UK combo. First, it can be quite unexpected for Japan, if the player has never seen it before, to watch the US+Russia+UK attack unfold and be unable to do anything about it (other than flying some fighters to defend a territory, usually). Second, it can break any coordination by both Axis powers and give the initiative to the Allies. Third, it can be easier to set up (sometimes I find setting the supply chain to W. Eur harder than to Archangel because of all the movement involved due to Axis planes). Fourth, even by landing on Archangel, you’re keeping the pressure on W. Eur, by being able of landing 24 units, while at the same time send 16 units each round, to Moscow. -
I am not a big fan of tripple attacks, unless for a capital. Tripple attacks almost always means that the allies lost many more men than Germany overall. Unless this totally obliterates 70% or more of germany’s forces I tend to just build up and stack off eastern europe when the situation allows for it.
Suggested Topics
