UK in KGF

@Oddbjoern:

What are your first moves with UK in a KGF?

A reaction to the German first moves  8-)

Seawolf is right. First few turns, the Allies are reacting. They are lucky if they get the initiative early. Need to see what the nasty Axis are up to first.

My personal view is that Uk’s R1 buy should be 2 fig, 2 inf, 1 art. Place 3 land in india and 2 fig in UK that goes -> Wrus R2 -> India R3.
This purchase maximizes the india defense.

This purchase is generally irrespective of Germany’s R1 moves, unless Germany plays very sub optimally and doesn’t sink UK’s atlantic fleet. I do not believe UK can both purchase land units in India and buy enough naval to make a naval stack off UK R1. The 2 fighter buys serve a dual purpose of either supporting India or creating a UK navy stack R2.

Of course you’ll change your purchases if Germany goes for a Sealion!

… and you will most probably HAVE to change if G1 has a bombing on UK. And if G1 purchase is 2-3 more of those bombers, UK has to reconsider its role anyway (let alone the Japanese starts to bomb India as well…)

Another thing with W-Russia: Soviet2 will be a movement out of W-Russia for me most of the times (with one AA left as BlitzBlocker) to recapture Caucasus, that would leave those Fighters quite vulnerable there  :-D Why not sinking the small German fleet and going over Gibraltar? If that’s not an option because of G1 occupying Gibraltar you have to come up with something else… For example taking North Africa UK2 (cuz G1 used the transport in Med for Gibraltar, not North-Africa, so you can make some space there!?) But if G1 had a successful bombing you won’t have 31 IPCs to spend anyway… Then I buy 2 Fighters and what’s left for Inf and Art (in the worst case you have only 24 IPCs in UK1 to spend!) and place it all to India: Et voila: 2 Fighters there in UK1 already, nice  :mrgreen:

Long story short: Yeah, I guess you just react to G1!  :-D

Germany bombing UK is a very suboptimal move for germany. UK should be pretty happy if germany invests bombers to trade with UK. The allies start with a unit and income advantage over Axis. The Axis have a positional advantage where Japan and Germany can pressure Russia for profit. If Germany invests in bombers to strategic bomb UK, this relieves pressure significantly on Russia.

The optimal R1 for germany involves sinking the UK fleet, trading ukr/belo with russia, and positioning the germany land forces to begin threatening karelia R2-4.

There are so many possible options for purchasing, movement, and attacking in Axis and Allies. The problem is that many of these strategies can be directly and brutally punished with the right opponent counter play. What happens with optimal play is a set of purchases, movement, and attacks where you maximize your chances to win even if the opponent responds optimally.

For example, as Germany could go for a kill USA first strategy. Buy 5 transports in germany R1, move to france R3, and take USA capital in round 3-4. This is a simple 4 round victory for axis. The glaring problem is that the UK air can easily sink the transports, or the US could build an overwhelming number of units in the East US. It’s obvious to even a novice player that this strategy won’t work.

Sea Lion and Germany bombing UK are examples of strategies that can be hard countered by allied response. With Sea Lion, UK buys 6-8 infantry R1. With Germany bombing, russia buys land units and bullies Germany.

Applying this explanation to the UK R1 buy topic, the UK fleet is sunk by germany R1 so it’s not safe to build a fleet. India is a major contested territory, and UK can really influence the outcome through purchases. I believe that 2 fighters, 2 inf, and 1 art maximizes this intent.

Being a non-expert player, one interesting thing to me, when playing AA, is figuring out a way to destroy the opponent’s optimised purchase.  Perhaps sending a Germany bomber to bomb UK is not optimised for Germany, but if this cost UK a less optimised purchase and let them react to what I do later on, it might be worthwhile to do it too.  Without the full bucks in hand, do you want to maximise fighters or land force?  When Japan commits full resource to attack India it is not easy to defend, in particular when UK can’t make optimised purchase as usual.

@innohub:

Being a non-expert player, one interesting thing to me, when playing AA, is figuring out a way to destroy the opponent’s optimised purchase.  Perhaps sending a Germany bomber to bomb UK is not optimised for Germany, but if this cost UK a less optimised purchase and let them react to what I do later on, it might be worthwhile to do it too.  Without the full bucks in hand, do you want to maximise fighters or land force?  When Japan commits full resource to attack India it is not easy to defend, in particular when UK can’t make optimised purchase as usual.

If you want to try a non-optimal opening, try buying 5 transports. Then try suiciding all your air and 1 transports against UK R1. 99.8% of the time, you’ll lose about 3 fighters, 1 bomber, 1 inf, 1 tank to kill ~ 2 inf, 1 art from UK.

This forces UK to make a less optimized purchase. Instead of buying 2 inf, 1 art, 2 fig, UK might have to buy 5 inf, 1 art, 1 fig to defend against a germany attack on UK. What’s bad about this strategy? It’s about 80-100 IPC worse than the optimal germany R1 move just on the first round. The effect is then amplified in the subsequent rounds as Germany can’t hold its territories against Russia.

–-- Back to serious discussion ----
An optimal set of moves by its nature puts your units in good position and limits your opponents options. If you can buy some unit that forces the opponent to invest an even larger amount to counter, that could very well be an optimal purchase. For example, Germany could accumulate fighter purchases to force UK and US to buy extra carriers in the Atlantic.

The advice i’m giving presumes that the player wants to maximize the chances of winning. This may strike some people as too intense, and then maybe my advice isn’t appropriate. If you want to just to play for random fun, I suggest trying to get a Japan AA gun to greenland : ).

New goal. Get a Japan AA gun to Greenland :)

Get a Japan AA gun to greenland would be next to mission impossible now :-D

Just to clarify…all I was trying to say is I don’t see how sending a bomber to bomb UK in G1  would have a huge impact to later game even (assuming) this is not an ‘optimised’ G1 move.  I don’t mean to cases like doing some suicide moves to force opponents doing non-optimised purchase.  It’s true in real expert play the first few round of purchase might be fairly static, but at least there are some subtle variance a player can choose without compromising a big picture.

Here are my optimized purchases for the first 4 rounds of play as allies in almost every game where I go KGF. This assumes there is a bid of 9, which is fairly standard.

Round 1

USSR: 2 armor 4 inf
UK: 1 art, 2 inf, 2 fig
USA: 2 bombers 1 destroyer 1 transport

Round 2

USSR: 1 art, 8 inf
UK: 1 armor, 2 inf, 2 fig
USA: 3 bombers, 1 transport

Round 3

USSR: 9 inf
UK: 2 inf, 1 art, 2 figs
USA: 1 bomber, 4 inf, 2 transports

Round 4

USSR: 1 art, 7 inf
UK: 8 infantry 1 transport (this one really depends on German buys and if you can defend your fleet)
USA: 2 bombers, 2 inf, 1 transport

Russia just holds West Russia for as long as he can, and the R1 buy of 2 armor helps keep Germany out of Karelia.

UK needs to hold India for as long as possible. The fighters help defend either West Russia or India, and can be really nice for offense as well.

US’s goal is to do damage as fast as possible and bombers are the best for that. Your goal is to get up 7 bombers (this is for LL games). 1 bomber hits southern Italy and the other 6 hit Germany. You need to build at least 1 bomber a turn after you have reached 7 bombers because you will auto loose 1 bomber every time you bomb Germany. US should has his entire pacific fleet to help him defend his fleet of transports.

What this essentially does is make it to where Germany can’t take Western Russia, and he has to worry about landings from UK/US. Germany by turn 5 should be experiencing major factory damage from US’s bombing runs.

The key to this play is to know when to evacuate India. If Germany pushes hard he can eventually West Russia, and with Japan in Russia’s back door you will have immense pressure on you. If you see it coming retreat India and you should be fine. This is likely when you will be using your money on making landings anyways. Make sure US is landing guys in Africa every turn from turn 2 onward. These men will help defend Africa from Japan, and will give you a powerful shuck into Europe later in the game.

This strategy is best in LL, but I think it works well with dice also. I’ve tried US just building transports and troops, and the problem I always run into is that I can’t make a landing anywhere in Europe, so my guys don’t have much of an impact. While bombers, on the other hand, give you immediate damage to Germany and lessens Germany’s ability to wage an effective war vs Russia.

Hope this works for you guys! :)

@MarineIguana:

Sea Lion and Germany bombing UK are examples of strategies that can be hard countered by allied response. With Sea Lion, UK buys 6-8 infantry R1. With Germany bombing, russia buys land units and bullies Germany.

Sealion isn’t necessarily a bad move for Germany. The trick is to do it properly and leave yourself a way out (don’t commit 100% to it). If for example Russia doesn’t destroy a German fighter and Germany spends nothing G1, the threat of an all transport purchase G2 forces UK to buy land units for the capital UK1, otherwise with a maximum of 8 units purchased UK2, there won’t be enough to defend on G3. If UK responds properly by placing a few land units on their capital on UK1, Germany can call off Sealion and switch to purchasing nothing but land units and go after Russia strong. The only drawback for Germany is that a few land units will reach the front later, but the total IPC worth of land units at Russia’s doorstep on G4 remains the same. The cost for UK is to lose their capital if they didn’t respond with land purchases, or to have extra idle land units on their capital for many turns if they did. I’m not saying it’s always the best move to do this with Germany, but in the right circumstances, it can work even against a good opponent.