How often are the Central Powers winning?

@SuperbattleshipYamato You’re on. And no offense taken. I look forward to being handed a solid walloping.

The emblem (or emblems) on the territory is more important than the color.  Since colonies don’t have small major power emblems on them, they aren’t considered to be aligned territories.

From a simple math min/max perspective which some are intersested in, a naval strat is extremly unwise. Simple plus/minus math will tell you you need to add appr. 81 IPC worth of naval as CP in total accross the board (using the starting naval as ref) to even break even which means if you wanna “controll” something you will need to add more than the competition.
As CP you cant ever get into a building race with the allies as your starting income is so much less, but rather you need to as fast as possible close the incomecap.

Consider sz17. (I will assume the ottoman and russian navy cancel each out). Allies can after turn1 have 2 BS (France+Italy)+3Cruisers(UK+Italy+France which means AH wont be able to break even, even if the go all out navy. After turn2 the allies will have additional 1BS+Crusie (UK) in the zone and again AH wont be able to break even, even if they spent all during 2 turns. After this france plus Italy can with great ease together spend equal to AH for each turn.
So I have to ask how in hell are AH suppose to get controll over sz17?=)

I suppose you can counter and say “the allies dont counter my moves in my games” but then what is the point of argue the value of strats. I can  ask what do you think about my “attack-AH-first-as-Italy strat”, assuming AH dont defend their borders?=)

unless another ally does it for you let’s say france :p ;) then you can move them in your first turn

@Tyberius:

@zanetheinsane:

@Tyberius:

I guess what I find most puzzling is the relatively puny size of the Russian Army.  The Central Powers have a huge concentration of inf and art right on russia’s doorstep.

It is very deceptive. Russia has the strength that all of their starting units can easily mobilize in one territory: the Ukraine. The Russian “super stack” round one is immensely intimidating at the start of the game and the Central Powers have to walk on eggshells in the Russian territories, planning each move carefully.

If you slip up on a single move or attack as the central powers, Russia can bring the hammer down and wipe out your forces on one side. Germany and Austria have to work together. You don’t beat Russia in this game by force, you beat them by outmaneuvering them and forcing the Russian revolution. In all of our games when the Russian revolution happens Russia still has an overwhelming mass of troops left in one spot. The trick is that you have to make it so that Russia can’t risk splitting up so many troops to attack everywhere or else they leave Moscow too weak to defend and Germany or Austria will simply conquer Russia.

Instead of a brute smash it’s more of a cat and mouse. Russia will still be making 15-17 IPCs even toward the end and can still pump out troops all the way to the end. With their starting units and a few rounds of buildup the Central Powers are easily looking at fighting against a 60+ infantry stack and a decent amount of artillery.

Excellent point.  Looking at the map I can see how a blustering player can very easily botch things on the Eastern Front.  But surely, most players with a fair amount of A&A experience should be able to shrewdly maneuver the Russian stack into a contested fight in Moscow?  I agree, the Russian army cannot be so big that the game becomes lopsided in favor of the allies.  However, making the Austrian army larger than the Russian one is far more historically inaccurate than allowing the U.S. to offload troops to Europe in turns 1 to 3.  At least the U.S. was shipping war goods to the allies in the early years of the war.  But AHO with a larger army than Russia when the reality was that the Russian Army was twice the size of the Austrian one?  It’s a major historical flub.  While I’m at it, I’m not a big fan of assigning a 1 IPC value to Switzerland which instead should have just been labeled “Swiss Alps” and declared unpassable.

Still, this map looks AWESOME and this game has an epic scope on the scale of A&A 50th Anniversary, which is my favorite of all the games.  Wish the game would already hurry up and get here.

No army in any A&A game is historically accurate beyond the basic ‘Germany had a lot of subs and Japan had aircraft carriers.’  Additionally, there is no distinction between units- a German tank is the same as a british one, so they have to fudge the numbers a bit.  This is to make the game balanced, or else you would have the same result as the real wars- Germany and her allies losing.

@KimRYoung:

Question,

Since you used the optional Russian Revolution rules, did youuse the rules from the game, or the new revisions from Krieg?

Thanks, looks like you had a great game!

Kim

Thanks, Kim.  I used the Russian Revolution rules from Krieg, which is great because that is how I was planning on playing anyway.  Make no mistake, RR is a GREAT thing for the Central Powers.  (Frankly, I think I even prefer it over capturing Moscow in retrospect.)

@Tavenier:

With the OOB the centrals never won one game. With the tournament rules it is about 50/50. And the only house rule we use is impassable Switzerland.Â

Played a lot with the Tournament Rules and no one even bothered to go there as you can get around it with the 2-moves quite easy. Its not worth slowing down the offensive with the CP. Just an observation from my group.

FYI, we have had the CP get wins with OOB rules, but its a grind and that was WITHOUT using the RR rules too! 2-move rule makes for a more dynamic game.

Kim

@toblerone77:

Lets play what if and let the US enter early…I’m all abouf that!

Then boy will we have the map for you  :wink:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=30390.0