BID on Flames of Europe

@Funcioneta:

@Subotai:

The KGF strat is not about ignoring Japan, no countries can be ignored, it’s just that allies cant do much against Japan for the first 2 rnds, and Japan can be partially ignored early in the game. The KGF strat involves slowing Japan down as much as possible, but most resources goes against Germany.
The reason why KGF is most popular among the best players is because a good axis player will make a too strong Germany if only Russia and UK tries to stop them.

And there is no such thing as KGF fanmania, it’s about the-most-effective-strat-fanmania :)

There is not really a KGF for many (99%) Revised games. A true KGF will include some US naval units to Pacific to distract Japan and force fight it … I only had seen a true KGF once in my PBEM games and it was in AA50. 99% of players do a Try Ignore Japan strat that includes sending all stuff to Europe and Africa, even the starting Pacific fleets. Most (99%) of players will counter this making a JTDTM, while some others will counter with a Polar Expres, that’s why I call the “so-called KGF” a “Try Ignore Japan (if you can)”
Allies can do a Ignore Japan strat only if Japan lets them. In my games I noticed that Polar Express is, at least, as good as JTDTM, and I’m pretty sure that Polar Express can improve because it has been used less (many play by memory with TIJ-KGF)

The funny thing is when in some games Japan gets diced J1 and anyway allied player lets Japan breath and TIJ just because they think that a Pacific Fleet is useless

My point is that in this or any future A&A games many players will never stop from trying ignore Japan, no wonder how bad idea is, how many income have Pacific Ocean and mainland Asia, how bad gets Japan diced, how good can be Polar Express or how boring can be ignoring Japan. KGF is a religion

If they try that in Global 1940, Japan will destroy everyone with its 2 BB, 3 CV, and lots of transports/income.

Lots to think about here.  Thinking about the Polar Express and the entire game itself, the phrase, “For everything gained, there’s something lost” comes to mind.  If Japan is in W. Canada, it halts the US shuck, but if they’re in Asia, it forces Russia to spend more to defend against Japan.  Every game I play as Japan, the thought always crosses my mind to send my 4 transports to Alaska/W. Canada, but I can’t ever come to terms with it because of all those units you take away from Asia.  Even if the US was out of the picture in Europe because of having to deal with the polar express, I don’t see how Germany could overcome Russia and the UK by themselves anyway.

As far as simply bidding a Jap transport….that works well regardless of whether you go after the US or not.  It’s a win-win for Japan.  I just won an Axis game with that transport in SZ50 implementing a KRF.  It’s key to grabbing income very early on–income that you wouldn’t normally get a hold of that soon.  I was able to hold Africa for a while with Germany as well.  I admit, I was pretty fortunate to do that without the German bid.  Overall though, I definitely recommend bidding the Jap transport.

personally if i got a 11 ipc bid it would be 1 fig to Germany then 1 ipc to Japan. then i’d build 4 figs as Germany first round. it seems interesting to do.

“How may I do thy bidding my Master?”

With software? Are you sofware? Wait a moment, you are Smith agent from Matrix  :mrgreen:

For the record, letting the allies keep W. Europe is worse then E. Europe but both should be avoided at all costs.

=)

Oh yea, and never let America take Norway.  Better to let England have it.  Odds of them affording an IC and putting out 3 armor a round there is much smaller. =)

@rjclayton:

I disagree with one part of NPB’s post.  The LOWEST bidder should be awarded the country, not the highest bidder.

Otherwise I bid 7 million and o lookee here I get to play Germany with 7 million extra IPC?

(sigh) I was so gonna kick Aretaku’s ass and get that beer.

NOW SEE WAT U DID!

Wow, what a thread!

I must say, I take NCS’s position on this one for several reasons, the most pertinant of them being that

a) While the Axis certainly CAN win without a bid, when you have players of equal skill and who are equally skilled at playing both Axis AND Allies (not just one or the other side), a bid can certainly make the difference in the early round(s) and many times it’s what happens the first 2 rounds that can help decide the game.

b) figuring out statistics is something that can only be done over thousands and thousands of games. I mean, you can flip a coin 100 times and get 90 heads. Does that mean the odds of getting tails are skewed? No, because if you were to flip that coin 10,000 times or 100,000 times the odds are it would be very close to 50/50 and 1,000,000 times or more and likely the difference would be so negligible as to allow us to say it was 50/50. While we cannot play 1,000,000 AAR games, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that a bid helps even out the game.

You know, just as many of the issues of AA Classic were worked out in AAR, I think probably in the next iteration (or version) that many of the issues we’ve seen here will be worked out as well. Maybe an extra unit here or another territory there… whatever it takes to balance the game.