Paris Failure

Simon, the issue is usually when you take out a couple of units to do another French territory on G1.  That still leaves you 97-99% chance of victory in Paris so is not too crazy of a plan, yet will inevitably fail in one of your games. You are now down 8-10 fast movers and possibly an additional plane.  You also have 4 fewer fast movers that can be purchased on G2, assuming that Italy has sufficient forces to take Paris on I1.

With 12-15 critical units removed for Germany, it is going to be a struggle to push into Russia.  The Red Army can stack in front of your forces and you can’t force them to retreat.  Unless Germany can force the opposition to eventually retreat back to Moscow, your chance of winning is slim to none.  Economically the UK+Russia will be able to match your spending, leaving the US to wreck havoc somewhere on the board.  I am sure that a talented Axis player still has a good chance to beat a much less skilled Allied opponent, but in anything close to a fair match the game is not going to have a favorable outcome.  Still the match might continue for a dozen turns before the Axis gives up so you have spent so much of your life to prove something that you realized on G1.

@Arthur:

Simon, the issue is usually when you take out a couple of units to do another French territory on G1.  That still leaves you 97-99% chance of victory in Paris so is not too crazy of a plan, yet will inevitably fail in one of your games. You are now down 8-10 fast movers and possibly an additional plane.  You also have 4 fewer fast movers that can be purchased on G2, assuming that Italy has sufficient forces to take Paris on I1.

But that is what I was suggesting! Everything land that can reach minus 1inf 1art 2arm will only fail 2.2% of the time.

Going Italy strong has some advantages, not least because a CV can be bought early although for that to work you generally have to avoid a scramble to Taranto or you won’t have anything to put on it.

@simon33:

One thing no one has mentioned is that normally Italy can take Paris in that case. That means that the damage isn’t too severe - just that Italy gets the cash instead, and it’s not severe if the French can retake Paris after Italy’s sack of it. I can’t imagine a scenario where the Paris attack fails so badly that the Italians can’t take it down!?

Actually, it was mentioned.  :wink:

@StuckTojo:

Don’t forget, depending on what the UK does with its fighters, you may also be able to take France with Italy if you don’t want to wait until G2.

Right. But I think it is more than a “may”.

Oddly enough we had this conversation at our last global game.

We came to the following conclusion: There is no time when Germany fails to take Paris that it is not the fault of the player running Germany. Germany has enough resources to have a 100% battle in Paris each and every game OOB.

The only time this might not be true if the Allies place part of the bid in Paris. Otherwise, if you fail to take Paris as Germany it is YOUR fault.

Man up and risk the AA shots if you want absolutely certainty in the Paris battle! Yeah, losing planes to AA sucks, but better to lose a plane than the game when you don’t take Paris.

Marsh

@ShadowHAwk:

@simon33:

@StuckTojo:

Don’t forget, depending on what the UK does with its fighters, you may also be able to take France with Italy if you don’t want to wait until G2.

Right. But I think it is more than a “may”.

If you nearly miss the battle for france what can the UK do? Land 4 fighters and a bomber there. you can attack with 5 land and 3 air units.

I actually think it’s five fighters and a strat bomber that the UK can land in Paris. If I recall correctly, that gives Italy at best a 75% chance of taking France.

Really though, Germany is already hosed if Italy has to take France. It’s a waste of the RAF to do land it all in France for a one in four chance of holding Paris.

Marsh

This just happened to my friend as we were playing TripleA. He had a chance of ~80% to take Paris but the dice were against him, leaving me with two tanks and a fighter. Although he did well in the Atlantic, Germany was pretty hard pressed now, as he also had declared war on Russia. I offered him to just restart the game but he refused. Italy was able to claim Paris the same round but the always brave and hard fighting French took it back with no casualties. Now here’s the fun part: on round 2 Germany failed to take Paris again. A surrender of Axis quickly followed.

Oh well, the games are 1-5 for me this year.  :roll:

Wrong.

I lost an 88% battle that I could have made 100%. My fault. I got greedy and went after an inconsequential transport by diverting one ship, which would have put me at 96%. I could have brought the strat bomber too, and that would have capped it at 100%.

Yeah the dice went against me. It’s my fault for leaving that possibility open!

I don’t recall you losing any 99% battles in that game.

I don’t think it’s game over for the Axis if Germany fails to take Paris on round 1, but it will definitely make for a harder game for them.  Also, let’s not forget that Germany could succeed in taking Paris but due to dice lose most of their units in the process.  I’ve seen Germany take Paris with only 1 or 2 tanks left.  That can be nearly as devastating as not taking Paris.
As far as Sealion goes, I think it is off the table if you don’t take Paris round 1.  Instead of buying all those transports, you will have to replace all those land units that you lost in the first battle, plus you won’t have the 70 IPCs to do it with.
We had a game where Germany failed to take Paris round 1 and round 2 and Italy failed on it’s first try, but got it on the second round.  This was a total suck fest for the Axis because they were also trying the “Operation Cloverfield”, where you fake a Sealion, jump down to Gibraltar after Italy captures it and try invading the Eastern US.  Without the Paris money, Germany didn’t have enough transports/land units and failed to take Washington.
So, Berlin was raped by the Red horde, UK went down and took Rome, which lasted longer than Berlin, and the US was able to go hog wild in the Pacific.  Once they successfully defended their capital, I don’t think there was a single US piece on the Europe board.  Poor Japan was just trounced.

Welcome back knp7765!

But you basically saying that Axis will loose the game :-D.
It will be as you described it.
The US will be on a rampage in the Pac. while Russia doesn’t need much support from her Allies friends. Just UK to lock up the Med. and bomb Italy back to ancient Rome.