Western Europe

[madscientist]

So I’m just wondering what most of you do with Western Europe. I played a game where I was the allies and my opponent had a stack of ~15 infantry on Germany that he kept replenishing. He would leave Western Europe open (taking out the AA gun too and moving it to Italy while moving Italy’s gun to EE), and then squash my allied troops there with his stack of infantry and fighters. I couldn’t use my fighters to attack anything, or to land in WE, because he kept taking WE back after 1 turn.

[Linkon]

Assuming both USA and UK have effective trn fleets.

Use Spain as the launchpad to threaten every continental territory.

Ground troops in Spain can also support your attack on WE, so it is as if you had double the inf for the UK attack.

USA can follow up with supportive landings (using trn, marching inf, and landing ftrs) or
an exploitive arm blitz into SE.

EE can be open to attack as well. This one works better if you have many UK/USA trns and BB’s. If Ger is spread thin enough where the US follow-up invasion to EE can win, then the Rus can also follow with an exploitive arm blitz into SE.

It all depends on where UK can lead an assault. US and Rus can both move before Ger can counter.

[aaFiendish]

I have a tough time with west europe. Usually though I leave it pretty lightly defended, and guard berlin instead. If I can persuade the allies to land in spain, it’s not all that bad an arrangement.

Assuming eastern europe has a pretty sizable defense, and a recent infantry build in germany, that means I’ll have a bunch of infantry in germany (say 10) and armor. That will generally be enough to not worry about an attack there. This depends on the circumstances of course and how much xports are around, how much airforce, etc. But I’m going to assume there are around 4-5 xports for UK and 4-5 for the US, with not much extra air. I would play differently otherwise, and I won’t go into the thousands of different iterations. Anyhow…

If I can deter the allies enough from a western europe landing and then into spain, that’s fine. Landing in spain to me does not represent “poised to attack all territories” anymore than the UK seas does. Actually, at that point I will bait an attack in southern europe. Next turn I’ll take it back, and your fleet will be out of position for a turn, good deal. If western europe is taken somewhat lightly, I’ll take that back too with armor and planes. If western and southern are taken, I’ll try and take what I can by splitting my planes and armor, probably sending planes to western since the armor in southern won’t be subject to return fire really, and will still be in position for karelia. Fortunately on southern I can also use eastern european infantry.

Sadly, the allies can always go hard into western europe. With two rounds worth of builds there it’s not very manageable for the germans to hit it usually. So if I wasn’t planning on this I’m screwed. However, two builds worth of units for UK and US means two builds worth of units NOT in kareliea. I am hoping japan is doing pretty well in the east, they usually are. In any event, this will be my best shot at karelia, and if the allies have a good hold in western there’s not much an other option other than hold out and wait for the japanese to come to your rescue. I do not like that option.

[darkangel]

you could build units and send them to western europe. a good size of inft on w.europe is good. but i believe if you buy figters, that would work as well. build fighters and attack the uk navy every turn. this will stop them from w. europe. and for america, they will try to attack w. europe. hence a lot of troops on w europe. then attack there transports with your figters. this will take out the usa land forces, and have them start over with there navy. if that does not work i believe have a sizable force in w europe. say 10 inft. and then have about 6 inft in germany and s europe.

[theduke]

I vote none of the above. You should generally cycle between defending Eastern Europe and Western Europe. This way you don’t go down any IPCs on top of the Allies going up those IPCs.

If Germany ever leaves nothing in Western Europe you should unload 1 inf there. If he leaves 1 inf there, then so should attack with 2 inf and 1-2 ftrs. The object here is to take Western Europe light, go up 6 IPCs with only a 1/3 chance of losing 3 IPCs worth of inf. In the long run the Allies will come out ahead. Take Western Europe strong (send in everything) only when you think you can survive against the Germany counter-attack.

As a general rule, there are 2 common ways to protect a territory:

1. directly defending the territory by strongly occupying it
2. indirectly defending the territory with a strong counter-attack potential.

In your example, the German player is using the latter approach. This approach is not at all uncommon but still hardly ever used by novices. Generally speaking, in both cases you should only attack when you can defeat the large buildup of units. In the first case, attack strong when you can beat the built-up defending units offensively. In the second case, attack strong when you can beat the built-up defending units defensively.
Until you can beat the built-up indirect defense, you should attack the first territory light (1-2 inf and 1-2 fighters).

[cystic crypt]

I am impressed by the responses here so far.
Just a couple of things:

1. often w-eu is a “dead zone” - a place where a tit-for-tat exchange occurs between the US/UK and Germany. This is fine as usually the allies can win out in this exchange and often secure for themselves an AA
2. don’t forget the timing-thing. True - a forified Germany can often overwwhelm defending UK or US forces in WEU, but if you take WEU w/ sufficient strength by the UK you may be able to well reinforce it with US troops. Often this is a 6 inf UK/10-12 inf US thing. This diverts GER air and a ton of inf to retake which can provide some relief to a beleagured Russia.

[YamatoJapan]

usually western europe dosnt usually fall for a couple of turns, but i also put inf. and enough fighters to keep the navies at bay, this is very helpful, especially with a turret in there.

[Avin]

If the UK can take WEU in force, it can potentially be defended quite well, with not just the US but possibly Russian reinforcements as well, if the attack is made at the right time.

In my Forum game against Zero, Zero was trying a very offensive Axis strategy against Moscow and therefore was attempting to trade WEU back and forth from the getgo, but on UK3 I took WEU with 4 inf 1 arm, landed a US fighter there as well as 4 inf 1 arm (I was low on transportable units because he had killed off my navy on both G1 and G2, the latter with great cost to his air), and then on R4 landed the two Russian fighters there.

In most games, moving the Karelian fighters to WEU would probably not work as well, but in this game there was that slight window of opportunity (it required the UK to immediately move fighters to defend MOS from Japan on UK4, and then barely having enough left in Karelia to hold for another turn).

[YamatoJapan]

did this work? i might have to try it if it does. :-?

[cystic crypt]

I’m not sure that the Russian fighters would be as useful in WEU as in KAR.

[Avin]

The game is in the “Play by forum” forum, look at it yourself; it seems like it worked, because Zero conceded within a turn from that move, stating that the pressure on Germany was too great and his offensive movement would not have been enough to compensate for it.

I had actually planned on evacuating Karelia on my next Russian turn so as to move offensively with Russia against Eastern Europe as well, as long as I had enough to defend Moscow. Germany would have easily conquered Karelia but it wouldn’t have done them any good having a northern factory when they would need to spend all their income defending their capital.