German bomber strategy - How to play and How to counter

We tried this strategy of massive bomber buys by the Axis a while back. It was after reading someone’s post of the strategy and called it “Darkened Skies”.
We didn’t just have Germany buying a lot of bombers, but Japan did it as well. Not ALL bomber buys, but definitely a lot more than usual, with a few land units to supplement the starting land forces and in Japan’s case, an occasional extra transport.
It was kind of an experiment game because we just wanted to see what would happen. The Axis won it and our Allied players couldn’t quite figure out a way to contest the strategy. There just seemed to be no way around the Axis bombers. If an Allied fleet got too close to Europe or Japan, they got pasted. And, as mentioned before, it was much easier for the Axis to replace the bombers than it was for the Allies to replace their navies.
Also, Germany SBRd poor Russia into the stone age. Our Russia player thought with Germany buying mostly bombers they would be weak on land forces so they wanted to get aggressive. They bought mostly offensive units for the first 3 rounds and stationed most of their forces at the borders with Germany. On round 4 Russia attacked and destroyed all the German border units, but at some cost. Then Germany sent some reserve units in under an umbrella of bombers and wiped out the Russian offensive. By the time Germany got to Moscow, Russia had very little in defense because of all the factory bombings and losing most of their army in the initial attacks and counter attacks.
Germany also had enough bombers to keep SBRing UK. With the UK spending most of it’s money fixing bomb damage, this made things much easier for the Italians to contest the UK in the Med and Africa.
Japan did the same thing against China and India. A stack of men with an umbrella of bombers tend to wipe out anything it seems.
Even when the US entered the war, they didn’t accomplish much because they couldn’t figure out where to send their fleet. They had already lost one large fleet thanks to Japan and one smaller one trying to approach Europe. So they built a new large fleet, carriers, warships and lots of transports with men and tanks, but with the German and Japanese bomber threats, they were afraid to get too close to Axis air bases.
I’m sure there is a flaw to this strategy and there must be some way to beat it, we just couldn’t figure it out.

@TheMethuselah:

Absolutely no reason to ridicule Marshmallow’s contribution to the discussion, rpg.

In general, I’d like for this to be a pleasant place for anyone to share whatever thoughts and experiences they have. You can disagree with people, but please don’t be rude about it.

other than that it deserved ridicule, go start a drum circle on another thread.

@rgp44:

@TheMethuselah:

Absolutely no reason to ridicule Marshmallow’s contribution to the discussion, rpg.

In general, I’d like for this to be a pleasant place for anyone to share whatever thoughts and experiences they have. You can disagree with people, but please don’t be rude about it.

other than that it deserved ridicule, go start a drum circle on another thread.

Come on…
Marsh. of War is new on the forum.
Give him a welcome, not a cold shoulder.
He may be ironic or simply giving his spontaneous 2 cents.
Instead of turning him ridiculous, just show him, at least why one of his point is clearly wrong.
That way, he can improve his strategic and tactical understanding of the game.

It’s kind of a digression, but I think I’d be annoyed if the price was returned to 15. I mean it should have been fairly obvious when AA50 came out and dropped them from 15 to 12 ipcs, that people would go bomber crazy. The unit used to be overpowered mainly because of the heavies tech, it probably never needed the drop from 15. That said, now that we’re all used to cheap bombers I’d think it would be hard to go back. I admit I almost never buy tactical bombers, when a strat B seems to work just as well in most situations. It’s clearly overpowered, but I think I’d be more amenable to an ability change at this point than just a straight reversion to the old unit stats.

As it stands though, in Global and 42.2 the bomber is tough to beat, so it’s not surprising to see so many strats adopting strategic bombers as the go to build.

In the past if one player magnified their air builds, the other player usually had a tough choice to make, they could follow suit, or do the opposite and go heavy on the ground. But the DoW delay in Global screws with this latter option big time at least for G, and the former option doesn’t do much good since G doesn’t need a navy anyway, so you can’t really punish them the same way they can punish you, even if you match them bomber for bomber. The DoW basically turns Germany into a power more like America, where they can build up bombers in relative safety (at least for a few rounds) so it’s much harder to punish them for making such a magnified build.

The main exploit with StratBs is their ability to nuke fleets over huge distances. Perhaps if they were less effective against warships, the unit wouldn’t be quite so deadly, but that gets into HR territory.

I know there are a lot of house rules that try to improve the intercept concept, but using it in normal combat. Or other ideas that try to capture the “altitude” concept. But I know that’s not really the subject of this thread.

@Black_Elk:

The main exploit with StratBs is their ability to nuke fleets over huge distances. Perhaps if they were less effective against warships, the unit wouldn’t be quite so deadly, but that gets into HR territory.

I know there are a lot of house rules that try to improve the intercept concept, but using it in normal combat. Or other ideas that try to capture the “altitude” concept. But I know that’s not really the subject of this thread.

That’s what I have in mind when I suggested to introduce a naval AAA when Carrier, Battleship and Cruiser are 1:1:1.
So, each time you get these 3 units, you get, at least, up to three pre-emptive roll @1 against up to three planes.

This can somehow be a deterrent to launch all out Naval attack with StBs only.
Or, at least, it provides a way to do to something against such massive Bombers buying.

Here is an old thread of HR forum which I started on that topic on Bombers Strategy to suggest HR to fix things:
Are Bombers broken? HR adjustment explorations continuating the Global tread
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=31373.msg1151809#msg1151809

@captain:

This is not a new topic for G40…it had a quite active thread years ago.

Are bombers broken? : Axis bombers lead to allied dismay.
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=31284.0

Yeah I agree, and people have been bringing up the cost vs ability several times in this thread too. But it doesn’t really get the methuselah’s opening Q.

Honestly on all the latest boards, the advantage seems to go to the side that builds up their air the fastest and then dominates with it. If it was a game of rock paper scissors, Air pretty much always beats Naval. The fighter is overpowered as much as the bomber, but the cheap bomber at 12 just really highlights the disparity.

On previous boards my response to a first round save, no purchase by the enemy, was usually to do the same. And basically keep the guessing game going. But that’s a little trickier in Global because of the DoW situation. I think it might be wise as USA to save if Germany saves, or go nuts with Bombers if Germany goes nuts. I mean someone has to match them right? and you know it’s not going to be UK or Russia! Haha

ps. the Brazil idea might be worth exploring some more. It’s really too bad French West Africa has to be French. Because a naval base there would allow you to launch transports back and forth between 101 and 87 and be able to push on Africa in one go, without having to move so perilously close to the bomber threat. Getting a bunch of ground moving towards Cairo along a somewhat less circuitous path. Unfortunately sz91 can be put on blast by Axis bombers. 87 is at least of more a pain for Germany to swing their bombers around to threaten, since they’d have to buy more AB, or move their bombers into crappy positions. Plus its a faster push to on Cairo going Sub Saharan than N. African since its one less move. But the inability to place a naval base in 87, makes that sz much less desirable place to launch into, because getting back takes 2 rounds instead of just 1. With a Naval Base there, you could at least threaten S. France and Normandy, while you funnel ground to Egypt (something an NB in Brazil still doesn’t get you.)

French West Africa would have been a much more entertaining territory if it was under British control. Or if all French territory in Africa was made more like the dutch, controlled by the first power to claim it. I suppose one might allow the British or Americans to purchase bases on French territory? That might be kind of gimmicky. Short of that, doing it from a Brazil harbor you could at least launch transports continuously between 101 and 86, then set up the shuck from 87 to Brazil and back. Seems like an awful long way to go just to stay out of Bomber range. Alas

I’ve given it some more thought and my conclusion would be:
Again… :-(, the allied solution may be in the Pacific on a, more or less, KJF strategy. The exact reason why I am not playing this game a lot anymore. Allied strategic options are just 1: KJF. Maybe some very, very few exceptions aside.

OR
Russia can become stronger than I can anticipate on from just scratching my head (I need to playtest strategies to get an epiphany ;-)) and start pushing west. That’s a big IF, but doesn’t seem impossible. Here’s the idea:
Russia should play conservatively and not too aggressive too early (would be a mistake). Preserve its army and build up critical mass and then march west. With the help of, say, 10 allied FTR, they should march adjacent to the German army. Then the allied FTR rebase into the stack as well. The Germans, not being able to attack this huge combined Russian-allied stack, will have to retreat because their defensive ability is abysmal…
This idea of Russian ‘strength’ comes from Germany buying so much bombers. Even if Germany buys only 10STR, that’s the equivalent of NOT building 20ARM, 30MECH, 15MECH + 10ARM, 9ART +28INF, etc. etc. Imagine Germany buying 3STR/turn. That quickly adds up to 18. Anyway, an equivalent force of land units performs a lot better offensively and infinitely better defensively if produced instead of a large number of bombers. This may be wishful thinking, I don’t know but I’ll playtest it some time. Far ahead. Big question remains when the SBR of Moscow begins and how effective it is in terms of losses on the Luftwaffe and how well Russia can handle the economic damage (repairing each and every turn may be too costly but still a necessity, etc.).

For me, a big problem with the game is intercepting. Needs further refinement. I just can’t accept that bombers and fighters go at each other with same combat value, and that tac bombers can’t even intercept at all. That may be the one area of refinement that fixes the problems.

Also, wouldn’t it be cool if any facility aa could be upgraded to fire at 2 instead of 1 for, say, a cost of 10?

@ItIsILeClerc:

I’ve given it some more thought and my conclusion would be:
Again… :-(, the allied solution may be in the Pacific on a, more or less, KJF strategy. The exact reason why I am not playing this game a lot anymore. Allied strategic options are just 1: KJF. Maybe some very, very few exceptions aside.

OR
Russia can become stronger than I can anticipate on from just scratching my head (I need to playtest strategies to get an epiphany ;-)) and start pushing west. That’s a big IF, but doesn’t seem impossible. Here’s the idea:
Russia should play conservatively and not too aggressive too early (would be a mistake). Preserve its army and build up critical mass and then march west. With the help of, say, 10 allied FTR, they should march adjacent to the German army. Then the allied FTR rebase into the stack as well. The Germans, not being able to attack this huge combined Russian-allied stack, will have to retreat because their defensive ability is abysmal…
This idea of Russian ‘strength’ comes from Germany buying so much bombers. Even if Germany buys only 10STR, that’s the equivalent of NOT building 20ARM, 30MECH, 15MECH + 10ARM, 9ART +28INF, etc. etc. Imagine Germany buying 3STR/turn. That quickly adds up to 18. Anyway, an equivalent force of land units performs a lot better offensively and infinitely better defensively if produced instead of a large number of bombers. This may be wishful thinking, I don’t know but I’ll playtest it some time. Far ahead. Big question remains when the SBR of Moscow begins and how effective it is in terms of losses on the Luftwaffe and how well Russia can handle the economic damage (repairing each and every turn may be too costly but still a necessity, etc.).

You know, I think a good idea that might fix this in some areas would be to treat aircraft like they do in the A&A 1914 game. In other words, have the aircraft battle it out before any aircraft can attack any land or sea units. So, you would have an “Air Combat” phase before the regular combat phase.
First of all, the battle would go until one side or the other has no planes left.
Second, the combat values would be different in the air combat phase. I think the following would work well:
Strategic Bombers == A 1, D 1
Tactical Bombers == A 2, D 2
Fighters == A 3, D 3 or 4

I figure Strategic Bombers do have armament and could get a possible hit. Tactical bombers would handle themselves a little better than strategic bombers in a dogfight, thus a value of 2. I wasn’t sure if fighters should retain their regular defense of 4 or drop to 3 for air combat. Either way they obviously outclass strats or tacs in air-to-air combat.
I wondered if perhaps in the “Air Combat” phase, a fighter’s attack value be bumped up to 4, so a fighter would attack and defend @ 4. That would definitely make people want to include fighters in their air fleets. Also, for those that want to give different values to early-war and late-war planes, you could have the earlier, more obsolete models (like the Russian I-16 in HBG’s Russia Early War set) hit @ 3 in the “Air Combat” phase.
This also might make the Axis alternate between bomber and fighter buys in this “bomber spam” strategy. After all, if you attack a force with 20 bombers but come up against 6-10 defending fighters, your precious expensive bombers could get wiped out before even dropping one bomb on the land troops.

Now, this wouldn’t fix the “Bomber Spam” strategy everywhere because obviously the Allies can’t afford to put fighters in every strategic location, but perhaps it would slow it down and maybe even prevent really crucial locations from falling, thus preventing an Axis win (or Allied win if you are playing the other way).

By the way, I agree that Tactical Bombers should be able to escort and intercept in SBRs as well. I think this “Air Combat” idea would be better used for the dogfight phase of an SBR as well. Maybe still leave it at one round of combat, but use the combat values (strats = 1, tacs = 2, fighters = 3 or 4)

@TheMethuselah:

Absolutely no reason to ridicule Marshmallow’s contribution to the discussion, rpg.

In general, I’d like for this to be a pleasant place for anyone to share whatever thoughts and experiences they have. You can disagree with people, but please don’t be rude about it.

Rpg can act pissy if he likes.

As I said previously, I haven’t played against this strategy. That being the case I stand by my position for these reasons:

1. One of the fundamental concepts of the game is resource usage. Given finite resources, a heavy concentration of power in one area is going to lead to vulnerabilities in other areas. Those bomber stacks are expensive. If Germany is building bombers, they’re not building ground forces. Granted that Germany has lots of ground forces at the start, but those will get worn out pretty fast. This cannot work without ground support from Germany’s jr buddy in the Med.
2. It’s amazingly easy to destroy Italy’s income. A stack of three or four Allied subs can all but shut down Italy’s production. Italy can work on killing Russia or it can try to protect its income, but it can’t do both effectively. If you shut down Italy, the Axis offensive should stall out. Remind me again how those bombers do against subs when you have no destroyers….The Chinese ground forces can claw their way to the coast, depriving Japan of a lot of its income.
3. Allied strategic bombers work against captured factories too. If you want to build at those factories, you’re going to have to buy off the bombing damage first.
4. Those bomber stacks are really only effective if kept together. The Allies are more than capable of presenting multiple threats on the same turn that have to be dealt with and giving the Axis tough choices about what to do. Splitting stacks diminishes the effect of the law of large numbers on the stack’s effectiveness and increases losses to the stacks.
5. It’s amazingly dumb to assume that Axis bomber stacks will never have to land somewhere where Allied bomber stacks can attack them. Even if the Allies only get one or two bombers at a time, that stack is getting smaller. It’s a hefty assumption that the Axis can keep that bomber stack at full strength for the entire game.
6. Given the same amount of IPCs spent on bombers vs fleet, the fleet will beat up the bomber stack pretty damned well, killing a heck of a lot of IPCs that it will take many, many turns to replenish.
7. Allied factories in Iraq, Persia, and Egypt can shuttle enough fast-moving ground forces, fighters, and even strat bombers into Russia to counter the presence of Italian troops, slow down German troops, and strat bomb captured factories. The Axis can’t keep going forever if it’s being pressed on multiple fronts.
8. Since the Axis has to be conservative with its existing ground troops, there are going to be opportunities to deprive Germany of valuable income (Finland, Norway, etc) and give those NOs to Russia. That will lessen the impact of strategic bombing on the Allies and also lessen the ability to replenish lost Axis bombers and the ground forces that shield them.

At first inspection this seems like pretty much every other Axis strategy – if the Allies can live long enough and coordinate their defense, the Axis will run out of steam. Is this a viable Axis strategy? It seems so. Is it a guaranteed win? If it were, wouldn’t you all be running it all the time? This strategy can be probably be countered with the right combination of skill, analysis, and teamwork on the part of the Allies.

Is the bomber unit broken? Probably. You can add it to the list of things that aren’t right with the game. I’m sure it wouldn’t even make page one of the list…

Marsh

Issue isn’t as simple as calculating bombers vs boats. If all those carriers and fighters could somehow also simultaneously threaten the japanese, then you can make the comparison. Again the threat projection is the real problem allies face. Those same bombers are keeping the allied boats at distance, while simultaneously threatening London, Cairo, the Middle East, and Moscow.

I understand rpg’s frustration. Unless you’ve actually played against this strategy, which is very frustrating believe me (we both have failed against it), one just doesn’t really see the problem.

@ShadowHAwk:

Done some calculation. Using Low luck as i can do those things in my head :)

Bombers vs ships.
Actualy if you take 3 bombers 36 and attack a loaded carrier 36 ipc you have nearly mutual annihilation ( slight defender advantage )
Attack 12 vs defence 10. Defender hits once you hit twice, round 2 8 vs 8 lets call that even shall we.
If you take 6 bombers and attack 2 loaded carriers the defender will nearly always win.
attack 24 defence20, 4 hits attacker 3 hits defender. Round 2 12 attacker vs 14 defender  defender will win this with 1 fighter left.

So if germany wants to spend most of its money on bombers the US can easy counter buying carriers with fighters. If they time it right the UK can add their carrier + fighter as well. You can even add a few destoyers in the mix just for good measure but your carriers will hold out against german bombers and while germany is trying to outspend UK + US ( they can barely outspend the UK ) russia is just going to say Hello on the eastern front.

Bombers vs ships isnt that overpowered. Same IPC value can defend against it and in higher numbers outright defeat it.

Put another way, if you have to assemble a large enough stack of boats in the Atlantic just to overcome the bombers, then you may as well pack it up in the pacific. It’s hard enough as it is against the japanese when you have america giving it full attention.

Furthermore, no one wins with just boats. Say you manage to dominate the seas and then start dropping troops in Europe. How many do you think you can drop if much of your income went to buying your boat stacks? With 20 or 30 german bombers and say 5 inf, do you think your landing party has any chance of surviving?

thanks for the insight Marsh…very well stated.

Back in 2013 when the guy who started the “Dark Skies” strategy claimed it broke the game and it was unstoppable he was challenged my some high level players to try it against. And when things for him didn’t go quite as anticipated he disappeared without finishing the games. Most of us following the game went away with the feeling that it wasn’t really unstoppable then.

Looking back at the game I played against Dizz…there were several things I could have done to reduce the impact of his bomber stack.
Like buying more US bombers earlier in the game. Had I not waited to do that I could have eliminated the IJN earlier and then moved my stack to India…where it could have attacked Japanese ground units or German units coming through Caucasus.

Another mistake I made was being reluctant to let his 30 bombers attack my fleet in 91. I had three loaded carriers, 11dd’s, 1 ca and six fighters that could have been scrambled from airbases in Gib and Morocco. I don’t think I would have won that battle but it would have reduced his bomber stack considerably.
But I withdrew out of range of the bombers and UK fell before I could get that fleet back in position.

The most direct defense counter to the bomber is the fighter. Problem is, the fighter has a significantly shorter range and furthermore, while the bomber can threaten many crucial targets at any given time, the fighter can only defend one place at a time. You therefore would need a lot more fighters to sit and guard in different places just to somewhat neutralize all the threats.

@axis-dominion:

Put another way, if you have to assemble a large enough stack of boats in the Atlantic just to overcome the bombers, then you may as well pack it up in the pacific. It’s hard enough as it is against the japanese when you have america giving it full attention.

Furthermore, no one wins with just boats. Say you manage to dominate the seas and then start dropping troops in Europe. How many do you think you can drop if much of your income went to buying your boat stacks? With 20 or 30 german bombers and say 5 inf, do you think your landing party has any chance of surviving?

Very good point my friend.  Those Carriers can escort but after that they just sit in the water and watch the fireworks.

@axis-dominion:

Put another way, if you have to assemble a large enough stack of boats in the Atlantic just to overcome the bombers, then you may as well pack it up in the pacific. It’s hard enough as it is against the japanese when you have america giving it full attention.

I think the Allies would have to choose which side to win on and which side to “not lose on.” The Pacific is the obvious side to not lose on – all you have to do is not let Japan take Honolulu or Sydney or, at the very least, be capable of immediately recapturing them. This would mean making sure that bomber stack could not hit the sea zone off Hawaii by depriving Japan of any possible landing areas for them. That would mean to me take Marshall Islands early and don’t let Japan get another foothold.

More balanced buying for the US.

@axis-dominion:

Furthermore, no one wins with just boats. Say you manage to dominate the seas and then start dropping troops in Europe. How many do you think you can drop if much of your income went to buying your boat stacks? With 20 or 30 german bombers and say 5 inf, do you think your landing party has any chance of surviving?

Isn’t that another turn that those bombers are not being used against Russia? Also possibly more air losses to Germany? Every turn that Germany lets Allied troops land and has to kill them is more time for Russia and more possible losses for Germany.

Please don’t misunderstand – it does seem like a frustrating strategy to play against. It does seem to me that the only way to counter it is to “keep chipping away at the mountain until it’s no longer a mountain”. I’m just saying that it doesn’t look unbeatable. It just seems like a counter that demands a great deal of patience to play. The good news is that if you are better at being patient than the Axis player that you can probably turn the frustration around on them…

Marsh

I agree with you that at some point one of your allies just has to make that sacrifice to force the bomber reduction and ease the massive threat to the other allies (eg US sacrifices ships to reduce threat on moscow or London). However, the problem is that of making the sacrifice really count. For example, in a recent game, I decided to offload 16 ground units into Norway without the cover of warships. I made a tactical sacrifice of 8 transports to gain a larger strategic objective, and this of course was required as the german navy and airforce were too much for my navy. So, if you’re going to risk your entire atlantic fleet, then it should at least mean you’ve gained a strategic objective like establishing a critical beachhead in Normandy or elsewhere in Europe. French West Africa or morocco, or even London, just wouldn’t cut it IMO.

This too presents a problem, as even getting close enough to then make that sacrificial leap onto Europe is too challenging as those 30 bombers have an ungodly reach.

@captain:

thanks for the insight Marsh…very well stated.

Back in 2013 when the guy who started the “Dark Skies” strategy claimed it broke the game and it was unstoppable he was challenged my some high level players to try it against. And when things for him didn’t go quite as anticipated he disappeared without finishing the games. Most of us following the game went away with the feeling that it wasn’t really unstoppable then.

Looking back at the game I played against Dizz…there were several things I could have done to reduce the impact of his bomber stack.
Like buying more US bombers earlier in the game. Had I not waited to do that I could have eliminated the IJN earlier and then moved my stack to India…where it could have attacked Japanese ground units or German units coming through Caucasus.

Another mistake I made was being reluctant to let his 30 bombers attack my fleet in 91. I had three loaded carriers, 11dd’s, 1 ca and six fighters that could have been scrambled from airbases in Gib and Morocco. I don’t think I would have won that battle but it would have reduced his bomber stack considerably.
But I withdrew out of range of the bombers and UK fell before I could get that fleet back in position.

@axis-dominion:

I agree with you that at some point one of your allies just has to make that sacrifice to force the bomber reduction and ease the massive threat to the other allies (eg US sacrifices ships to reduce threat on moscow or London). However, the problem is that of making the sacrifice really count. For example, in a recent game, I decided to offload 16 ground units into Norway without the cover of warships. I made a tactical sacrifice of 8 transports to gain a larger strategic objective, and this of course was required as the german navy and airforce were too much for my navy. So, if you’re going to risk your entire atlantic fleet, then it should at least mean you’ve gained a strategic objective like establishing a critical beachhead in Normandy or elsewhere in Europe. French West Africa or morocco, or even London, just wouldn’t cut it IMO.

I agree 100% with this.

Marsh

I’m thinking now that if I had moved that fleet to 109 instead of back to the US then the UK could have put an airbase in Ireland… and that would have given me three more fighters to scramble. I still don’t think it would have survived a 30 bomber attack but it may have reduced the bomber stack so it wasn’t such a threat for a couple more rounds.