Strategy Advice

Those modifications completely change the game. Specifically, bombers with a 2 cost are so good that every country should make an all bomber buy and Russia, UK, and USA  will produce no IPC from round 2 forward. The game will be determined by whether Japan or us gets hit by SBR. Very likely Japan through bury.

While we are going with game modifications, why not make all units free with unlimited movement and 6 attack and defense? That would make things most simple.

Don’t worry about the Americans. If they split up their IPC’s between Japan and Germany, the Allies will end up loosing the fight. The Brits, if aggressive, can normaly only attack one of both Axispowers. Even if they sink your tranny and your sub, there’s nothing to be affraid of. You can destroy a lot with few efforts when the UK-fleet strikes at the Japanese in turn one, using your fighters.
The only problem is that if and when the UK strikes at the Japanese in UK1, you can probably expect a KJF. Then it’s up to the Germans to Panzer their way to Moscow.
If UK strikes the Japs on UK1, but then divert their offensive actions towards Germany, you shouldn’t have any trouble wiping them out of the Pacific and start nibbling on their income. Especially if USA splits its income between Germany and Japan.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve experienced in the games that I’ve played. An Allied player who tries to assault both Germany and Japans digs his own grave…

In a good KJF, Germany will be stopped before getting 50 IPC, Switch.  Any layman player who puts some thought into it can easily slow Germany enough to prevent them from being at the doorstep of Moscow before Round 10, at which point, Japan should be castrated.

The trick is to put 2-3 transports of troops into Africa a turn.  Easy to do without building a single extra transport.  Actually, odds are, you’re putting 4 transports in a round.  Maybe more, if England is focused on Africa and fighters for Russia.  America can take Japan without England’s help.  Just use the English fleet to make it near impossible to sink the American fleet and let America take the islands.

We’re using a different Luftwaffe I found on these boards somewhere…bonus to each tank accompanied by a fighter…both attack on a four during the first round of combat.

So three tanks and three fighters is six fours in the first round…bad part is that it doesn’t work against ships.

But that game is over…all three Allies got Rockets, and Germany was being hit by six Rockets each turn…effectively no income. Japan’s southern force through Persia was hit 1-2-3 by Britain, America and Russia…India was likely to fall on Britains next turn…and Japan no longer had enough to break through on the other two avenues of attack…we just conceeded rather than wait for America and Britain to get their act together and take Berlin.

@yamamato456:

I like that idea of a KBF in the sense that your not trying to take the capital itself only trying to wipe out its colonial IPCs.  Germany and japan help each other to take Africa and mideast.  Japan takes india, australia, and new zealand.  Depending on the situation Japan could invade canada and alaska.  All of this and maybe a G1 AC buy could put Britain nearly at the single digits.  Anyone else have some thoughts on this?  Will this leave Russia too strong?  What naval strategy (naval units bought, joining fleets or not,etc…) would you have to have in order to take out almost all of Britains colonys excluding eastern canada and britain itself?

think somewhere similar as you do :mrgreen:

In one of my games, I had staged UK in Karelia with about 15 units…

at one point of the game, I also had 5 trannies in SZ 4…
I pulled 10 units out of Karelia and put them into an amphibious assault in Western Europe!
Germany didn’t see that one coming, I can tell you!!!
USA could easily reinforce W-E massively as well, so G ended up looking at about 20 units in W-E.
I can tell you: the next round G was taken and my adversary resigned :-P

1. I have tried it.
2. I usually try to have 6-8 Russian infantry defend Sinkiang. You need about that much and sometimes the Russian fighters to deter a full push from Japan if his goal is to knock it out.
3. I’ve done that a few times. It scares the crap out of newer players. However you have to understand that you’re letting the Kwangtung transport and the Solomon Islands sub to live.
4. My friends have done both. Personally I think it’s a mistake to gun the British fleet down in the first turn in that scenario. Letting Pearl Harbor survive is a big mistake as it allows the US to accumulate a significant naval force 1-2 turns faster than usual.
5. Well, what do you mean by work? In the short term doing all of those things (both ICs, combining British fleet, sending us fighters and russian infantry) will indubitably control Japanese expansion. But past that it’s all up to what the US does. The ICs alone won’t stop Japan for long; if you look at the math Japan can overwhelm India on turn 3 even after doing Pearl Harbor. Japan simply has too many fighters to stop early on if he is focused on his targets. If the US continues to gun after Japan then you will stop Japan from being strong permanently, but then Africa will fall to Germany quickly. You always also have to keep a very careful eye on the UK because a tricky Germany player will pop out 6 transports in one turn and try to overwhelm the UK since he’s been building troops in India and is down all those IPCs in Africa.
6. A tough question no doubt. Like I said, I think it’s asking for trouble if you let Germany take over Africa, which means it’s a good idea to have the US liberate it early on. However, if the US doesn’t follow up on those ICs, then Japan will overwhelm them if he’s good.

I’m not really an expert on this as I haven’t tested it extensively in a while (I tried KJF a few months ago but I didn’t know a few tactics I know now). I would say though that if the Japan player is excellent, then nothing short of all 3 powers going after him will hinder him permanently. I have personally broken free of the sinkiang/indian IC very quickly without US naval support bogging me down. Good Japanese players realize that it’s OK to empty the mainland territories to charge straight into China; although it lets Russia/UK take a territory, this lets you completely and utterly bone the Sinkiang IC turn two, and you can always easily regain the coastal territories using your fighters and battleship bombardments. Your strategy is very good against perhaps low-mid level Japanese players though, looking at that combined British fleet and all those ICs on the mainland it bound to panic him.

I have some additional tips for KJF:

1. Take a good look at where the Japanese player is placing his first turn transport buys. If he is silly enough to place them in the outer Japan seazone, then blow them out of the water with the Hawaaiin fighter + Washington Bomber or just one of them. Believe it or not, the bomber can reach that outer seazone and land in Buryatia; fly up to eastern canada, then to western canada, then to that seazone bordering the north of western canda, then I think from there it’s 2 spaces to that seazone then 1 space into Buryatia, making for 6 spaces. It’s an almost instant game win if you destroy the 3 transports he builds there, and is very clever the first time you see it, although probably past then it will never work. Also if China somehow survived then the fighter there is in a great position to strike at either seazones that the transports deploy in. It takes an observant and clever Japanese player to protect his transports carefully.

2. Somtimes you can panic the Japanese player by consolidating 6 infantry into Buryatia as well as sending 2 tanks in Moscow to the east 2 spaces. Against good Japanese players this probably won’t affect their strategy but against people who haven’t seen it, they will usually panic and not attack China first turn because they’ll look at Manchuria and panic.

3. You can consolidate the British fleet into sz30 as well as sz38. Sz30 is much more out of the way of the Japanese navy than sz38, though if your intent is lure them into attacking your fleet with a lot of units then this isn’t the way to go. Putting them in sz30 though really forces the Japanese to keep an eye on it since it’s in a position to invade some islands. Load full infantry into both transports when you converge them into sz30 will make the Japanese player sweat a bit. He’ll have to keep his bship/car in west indies or you’ll invade it, and he’s not in a good position to attack your fleet with just that because he’ll probably take at least 2 hits and lose a fighter or so. He may be tempted to strafe you with all those infantry aboard but thats’ pretty much what you want because your navy will make him pay for the strafe (1 car + 1 or 2 fighters if the anglo egypt one survived, 1 sub, 1 destroyer, 2 trans).

Also Britain can send their bomber to sinkiang on turn one. This puts an additional monkey wrench in Japanese logistics if they’re used to buying all transports turn one. Now they have to protect their transports wherever they mobilize them, which means buying a destroyer or something which they normally wouldn’t do.

Another alternate monkey wrench move is instead of consolidating the fleets, do this: send the destroyer, carrier, and transport to attack the Kwangtung transport. Send the fighter and sub to attack the solomon island sub. The fighter will land on the US carrier =) Usually you’ll end up destroying the enemy sub before it can submerge. Now you have presented the Japanese with some thorns. Pearl Harbor is a little harder to attack now since he lost a sub and now that there’s an additional fighter defending there. Also now there’s this quirky fleet sitting next to Kwangtung which is poised to strike as new naval units being built if it isn’t instantly targeted by the Indies fleet. Sometimes you can incur a fighter casualty with this fleet when Japan strikes it (2 hits total).

4. When your US fleet is gunning after Japan, I personally believe that the best tactical maneuver is not to charge straight west into the Japan seazone (2 turns), but to drop down to Solomon islands. This puts Japan in a bind, because from here you can attack his money islands (boreno, philiippines, west indies) as well as the Japan mainland. He is going to be forced to attack you there, giving you the defending advantage, or risk you grabbing his money islands because he can’t defend nearly all of them and then deploying an IC there, which totally throws things out of whack for him.

There are a number of Japanese strategies to help counter these tricky KJF strategies, but I don’t want to go into them right now because I’m lazy. Besides a few tricks the basic goal is to wait for Germany to overcome Africa, take some Russian territories, and then either crush Moscow then go to India or surprise attack Britain.

Hi Hannibal (ante portas),

In fact, I agree with pretty much you said. Surely I couldn’t keep up with your tactical understanding when A&A was new to me. So congratulations at first.
Nevertheless there’s some more input. Just my humble opinion:

Except of the Baltic AC in your first round, ships usually don’t buy for Germany. If you really want to build 1-2 Subs/Trans in the Baltic each turn you’ll have to stay there with your own navy or they’ll be sunk immediately with british airforce. UK and US can together close you up in the Baltic and wait for your attack, of course it will be costly for them, but usually more expensive for you.

You are quite right about going through the north is a superior strategy. Karelia is a very strong position for both sides. As the axis you should take and hold it in the first round. UK has different options to support Russia. His support in NWY can be strafed to death by your forces in Karelia. Better to cut of your supply lines in EEU after your Baltic fleet is removed. Or, most likely, he can support Archangel, so you’ll meet the main UK/Rus forces in ARC.
If you wanna go south through UKR, Russia will concentrate it’s forces in CAU and the UK can take a lot of your income away from you. You won’t be able to trade more than one territory with Russia (WRU), but it’s harder for Russia to trade a lot of countries (due to the max. of 3 Ftrs)
In fact, I most likely wait in KAR until the japanese player puts preassure on Russia which forces the allies to retreat on my front, then I take a step into WRU.

Don’t underestimate a US counterattack on Pearl Harbour. Especially if the go KJF it’s very hard to replace your lost navy again. An aggressive british opening in the Pacific and a Pearl counter, 2 ICs in IND and SIN and Japan is in big trouble.

You are quite lucky that your Russian player is rather predictable. Maybe he should be more aggressive, attack UKR, build some tanks or even a Ftr, etc.

These are just my opinions and can, of course, vary in different games and against different ways to play. I hope this gives you some input.