Retreats

Me too are bothered about the abuse of the word retreat, when it actually is a strafe attack or raid. It was very rare that an attacker had to retreat, usually when an attack was stopped, both sides dug in and got locked in combat, and the territory got contested, as they say in A&A D day and A&A 1914. Retreating during WWII were usually something the defender had to do. Funny enough, the defender is not allowed to retreat in our A&A game.

In this A&A game an attacker can plan to retreat on purpose, he can plan to attack an enemy territory with just enough infantry fodder to save his hard hitting units, and then retreat after a few rounds of combat, when the enemy only have a few units left. This is a classic strafe, a tactic to bleed the enemy dry. And you dont retreat, you withdraw. Obviously the game designers have less military education.

Another tactic from the days of cavalry is the Raid, you attack from different directions, and withdraw together. The object of this raid can be to surprise the enemy and get him out of balance, annihilate his forces, mess up his strategy, or position your units to a new staging area. Typically raids in A&A Global is slow moving inf and art from Southern Germany that double move via Yugoslavia to Romania as long as a unit from Romania come to meet them. This can make sense since the retreating German army can track supply from many places.

Another, and more cheesy retreat, is to Raid Iraq from Persia and Trans Jordan, and then retreat to Trans Jordan. Lawrence of Arabia did something similar during WW I, but if Egypt and the Mediterranian Sea are hostile, cutting Trans Jordan off from supply, then this raid need to be carefully planed. And there are no longer talk about a retreat. We talk about a campaign, or operation. Not some random retreat because the men panicked.

IMHO the words of the rule should be

1. Attacker press continue attack or withdraw
…and if the attacker withdraw he can split his units to any friendly territories, or seazones that is not hostile, or move them gathered, his choice.

2. Defender press contest the area or retreat.
…and if the defender retreats, his units are scattered and he suffers some penalty.

Amalec, now I understand why you would rather buy inf G1 instead of Art. I think that you splitting your force into two groups (north and south of the Marsh) is flawed, and it is putting you in a defensive posture. You have to choose north or south (south being better IMO), keep your force concentrated (including AAA guns) so they can’t strafe you (w/o much risk).

Germany is the aggressor, don’t lose that edge buy trying to do too much. You can send a token force via the sea combined with the Finns and air power to pressure and take Leningrad rather easily.  You don’t need a carrier to do this, but you should buy another transport or two, and a dd is also useful at some point to kill the Russian sub(s).

You need more Art for the end game to sack Moscow, not more inf to def multiple stacks on the way.

The title of this thread reminded me of this famous 1944 TIME cover:

The caption reads: “Retreat may be masterly, but victory is in the opposite direction”

@ShadowHAwk:

the retreat rule is the same as it was in classic and yes it is a big weird and abbusable sometimes

Right. I never played it that way!

A strange situation came up in a battle: 
Germans had 1 sub + stack of planes
allies had 2 subs + surface ships.

On the first round, the subs all missed and the German planes obliterated the Allied surface ships.  On round two I wanted to retreat the 1 sub since the odds were lousy without plane assistance.  Apparently the sub is only allowed to submerge and has no option to retreat (retreating allows it to be in a safer position).  Is that correct?

If the subs can’t effectively fire then its the same as if a defender has only an AA gun but only if there are no other attackers. You cannot retreat. However, I would think that since the planes can hit other planes then you can retreat.

@simon33:

If the subs can’t effectively fire then its the same as if a defender has only an AA gun but only if there are no other attackers. You cannot retreat. However, I would think that since the planes can hit other planes then you can retreat.

There was still a sub vs sub battle going on; all surface and air battles were over.  Wouldn’t I be able to retreat my attacking sub in that case?

I’m pretty sure you would.

Sub submerge decisions are after retreat decisions iirc

You can retreat as long as the sub didn’t start in that sea zone that turn. If the sub came from another sea zone, then it can retreat from whence it came.

Retreating is more appropriate for a tactical type wargame, with factors like morale and suppression.  There are dozens of these and many of them are better than AxA in many ways.

Like a lot of people allude to here, the attacker in AxA doesn’t really retreat, he stops “pressing the attack” as we like to say.  There are all sorts of variations where this withdraw rule allows (usually the Germans or Russians because of their land territory) to move units extra spaces, or consolidate units during combat.  Of course, whenever you use this rule this way, you will have left enemy pieces behind and that leaves an opening for planes to land and tanks to blitz through your line.

We’ve been going over rules like this a lot lately, I think in the scope of AxA they give the attacker several subtle advantages.  The attacker already has the predominating advantage;  that of choosing where to attack, when, and with how much.  These other advantages don’t amount to nearly as much as the initiative does.  These advantages are important to ensuring that the momentum of the game is always in favor of the players who have the greatest weight of power and focus regionally (this simulates real life blitzkrieg, encirclement, and strategic war and in some ways, chess) and that the game doesn’t end up a stack slog like Risk can.

When we talk about a Strategic retreat, that actually happens on the (to be) defending player’s turn.  You don’t retreat from combat; you withdraw to a reserve position before combat ever occurs.  Its the same with “bringing up reserves”, these units don’t join the battle during combat (say after multiple turns), they reinforce from the rear during the players noncom or appear from the factories.  There are plenty of examples (abandoning an untenable city like Ukraine, Leningrad, Moscow etc) where these happen every game.