USA Strategy. Green Seas/Skies

This is basically similar to my US build.

Assuming USA enters the war at turn 4:

My buy usually goes; Pacific Fleet buff to combat Japan 1:1 build. Atlantic; produce as much bombers and fighters as possible (end goal is to place these in London and pound German, Italian, and French factories into submission. Fighters produce a shield over London during counter raids. This allows UK to ignore building an air force and spend on army/navy to begin liberating France or destroying Italy.

USA enters the war from the get go; Pacific Fleet follows standard buy, 1:1. Atlantic; build a fleet good enough to destroy the Kreigsmarine and Marina. Then begin to produce enough bombers and fighters for UK.

Army always comes third in both situation. I’ve never been in a situation where I would need a large army from turn one mostly because Axis isn’t crazy (or stupid) enough to try to invade the US. However, I am waiting for that one crazy person to do it.

a) Would it do enough damage to justify cost of building and maintaining?

Not to Germany, who only has 5 convoy damage to do and 3-5 factories.  Perhaps to Japan.

b) How would axis respond by about turn 5 with 15 subs/10 bombers operating?

Annihilate India then Moscow before you can get set up.  They just ignore you while they grab threshold income (70).

c) Would you be better to target one axis member or disperse individual subs across board?

In most cases, one (though I argue some splitting by USA is both desirable and necessary in every game)

Your plan is pretty solid, though as a sole-economic warfare thing, it doesn’t work well for a couple reasons.  Subs cannot defend themselves, either alone or in number.    YG and the group discussed a sub-dispersion strategy that forces the DDs to also spread out, but Germany can just ignore them and so can Italy and Japan until they are standing on their 3 money squares (6, 19, Adriatic).

The only way you can contest control of those key economic squares is by overwhelming force–and subs and bombers help provide that.    However, if you only do subs and bombers, you are adding very little to the DEFENSIVE power of your fleets on the water, which means they can just be ignored, too.

What is necessary is to add them with more diversity, so that you do have some subs, and some bombers, but that your fleet has enough carrier aviation and destroyers as causalities that, when combined with the subs and bombers on the offense, it is truly intimidating on BOTH offense and defense.

Great post, ty for the discussion.

@thespaceman:

Has anyone tried the following strategy for USA.

Assumptions.
Sea Lion Threat only.
Early DOW by axis on all Allies (J1 G2)

USA builds approx 3 subs + 2Str Bombers per turn then goes after axis economically. (rest of income spent on shucking units to Hawaii/Africa/France/Norway)

You will need to purchase a Navy in order to shuck troops to Norway.

Anyways, buying a lot of bombers is a great idea for the US, especially in the Pacific as long as you mix in enough loaded carriers with fighters. Put bombers all over the Pacific on air bases. The Japanese player might miscalculate one time; but you’re still pushing subs.

This plan has been used effectively against me, but I’m mediocre at best in this game.

European Axis usually can’t afford to maintain their navies so having air power to overwhelm it is good enough. Japan is a different beast because they can afford a navy and they have enough open space to keep hiding from bomber strikes. And if you get a Japanese player that is smart enough to start taking over Allied island, it will force US to island hope or rely on USSR territory to bomb Japan.

@Caesar:

My buy usually goes; Pacific Fleet buff to combat Japan 1:1 build. Atlantic; produce as much bombers and fighters as possible (end goal is to place these in London and pound German, Italian, and French factories into submission. Fighters produce a shield over London during counter raids. This allows UK to ignore building an air force and spend on army/navy to begin liberating France or destroying Italy.

That’s generally my plan for the US.  I try to build 1 strategic bomber one each coast, each turn.  East coast gets sent to London for raids on Normandy, France or Germany.  West coast hopefully ends up in Iwo Jima to pound Japan.  I’ll also try to build some destroyers on the East coast if Germany still has subs in the Atlantic.  Those need to be cleared out in order to eventually get the cover navy across the pond with the transports for the Normandy invasion.  Although Spain or Portugal comes in handy if the opportunity presents itself.

As a side note, if the US can get and maintain Iwo Jima for the launching point for bombers, ANZAC comes in handy if they can build some occasional bombers to send up for the assist.  That or I’ll try to get at least one into China (if possible) to hit the minor complexes that Japan is/has set up.

@SEP:

@Caesar:

My buy usually goes; Pacific Fleet buff to combat Japan 1:1 build. Atlantic; produce as much bombers and fighters as possible (end goal is to place these in London and pound German, Italian, and French factories into submission. Fighters produce a shield over London during counter raids. This allows UK to ignore building an air force and spend on army/navy to begin liberating France or destroying Italy.

That’s generally my plan for the US.  I try to build 1 strategic bomber one each coast, each turn.  East coast gets sent to London for raids on Normandy, France or Germany.  West coast hopefully ends up in Iwo Jima to pound Japan.  I’ll also try to build some destroyers on the East coast if Germany still has subs in the Atlantic.  Those need to be cleared out in order to eventually get the cover navy across the pond with the transports for the Normandy invasion.  Although Spain or Portugal comes in handy if the opportunity presents itself.

As a side note, if the US can get and maintain Iwo Jima for the launching point for bombers, ANZAC comes in handy if they can build some occasional bombers to send up for the assist.  That or I’ll try to get at least one into China (if possible) to hit the minor complexes that Japan is/has set up.

Since Russo-Japanese non aggression is usually not an issue because no one plays like history. There really isn’t a reason to bomb Tokyo from the islands when you can do it from USSR and it makes it easy for USSR to protect US bombers.

That has nothing to do with this game though. Have USSR declare war on Japan, move as many bombers and fighters as you need to USSR eastern territories and then if you really want to p�ss off Japan, just have USSR move all their eastern force on the bombers and now you can bomb any factory on Tokyo, Korea, and Manchuria into submission.

USA Bombers in Amur can strike IC all the way down to Hong Kong, very powerful.

Bombers on the Phillipines can hit every single IC on the main land.

Bombers on Iowa Jima can hit Japan.

The main benefit of a island based Bomber plan of attack is that the only way Japan can stop them is to send in navy with a Ampb assault or a kamakazi strike of air power onto the island.

I prefer that the USA island hops to Iwo Jima or Okinawa because Japan can only really stop it with navy.

USSR bases can be stopped with a land commitment from Japan, which is in their wheel house.

Make Japan stop this crap by having to commit navy. That is one thing Japan never wants to do. Which is good Allied play, make the Axis do stuff they do not want to do.

Except I maintained to this day a US invasion in Europe or Africa is not needed when USSR and UK can do it themselves. It would take A LOT for me to commit a liberation force in these areas when I’d rather do it against Japan where it’s more needed. You can simply bomb German factories into submission and then take a fleet and starve Italy in the Med. USSR and UK should be able to do the rest. Japan however is a different beast and requires an actual invasion to stop. Something that USSR and UK can’t really do due to there unrealistic weakness that the creators put on them in the east and thus require US to do eventually invade the island or liberate other allied territories and since I have yet to see a single Japanese player who actually goes for every single island like Japan did in the war because why would waste the resources going for islands that doesn’t have value and doesn’t have NO on top of it.

“Something that USSR and UK can’t really do due to there unrealistic weakness that the creators put on them in the east”

They’re also unrealistically weak in the West.

Yes I am currently working on a historical setup for G40.

@Caesar:

Yes I am currently working on a historical setup for G40.

Are you familiar with ozteas 41 ? Don’t how much/if any would be of help to you but he did a good job for a historical set up.

@barney:

@Caesar:

Yes I am currently working on a historical setup for G40.

Are you familiar with ozteas 41 ? Don’t how much/if any would be of help to you but he did a good job for a historical set up.

No but I will say that G40 historical set up is a little more pain in my A$$ only because I can’t find details in some nations setups. I’ve only used wikipedia so far to get exact placements on units where I think the ‘correct’ number should be.

A truly historical set up and play would mean

no tanks for japan
no strat bombers for the axis
no carriers to Germany
1/2 the number of tacs and fighters for axis
Axis and UK carriers carry 1 plane

and

100+ $ for USA
-40 for Japan

@taamvan:

A truly historical set up and play would mean

no tanks for japan
no strat bombers for the axis
no carriers to Germany
1/2 the number of tacs and fighters for axis
Axis and UK carriers carry 1 plane

and

100+ $ for USA
-40 for Japan

I think Japanese and American carrier both carried large numbers of planes.

Also:

1 less CV for Japan
Luftwaffe can’t attack on water
Uboats can’t attack North America for a few turns
At least 1 more British carrier
Lots more British destroyers in the Atlantic
US should have an Atlantic battleship
Larger Russian air force
Japan not allowed to march across Siberia

They did, but Japan had so few of them that the fleet carriers (CVs in AxA) that 3 to begin with is outrageous.    Japan might get 1 or 2 fleet (normal) carriers, then a couple converted cruisers and escort carriers, then nothing.

Then on turn 3, it would run out of oil, new pilots, and crazy risk-taking ideas, like in real life ;)

I would like to add that Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas of that city along the rivers produced more tons of steel for the war effort than Germany, Italy, and Japan combined! I did not know this until having lived in Pittsburg recently for 3 years. On a side note, the steel industry was close to out of business because of environmental regulations in Pittsburgh (pollution was horrible there at one point)…ect., but with new cleaner technologies, the steel industry has been making a huge come back.

One might have to bump up the US’ income from 100 IPCs to like 300 IPCs per turn to get a “historical” representation in the board game. Perhaps the Axis get 5 turns before the US joins the game to really simulate December 1941. But good luck once the Sleeping Giant joins.

That’s just one location.

Look up the figures on the amount of Carriers w/ Battle Groups the US had by 1945.

@Ichabod:

I would like to add that Pittsburgh and the surrounding areas of that city along the rivers produced more tons of steel for the war effort than Germany, Italy, and Japan combined! I did not know this until having lived in Pittsburg recently for 3 years. On a side note, the steel industry was close to out of business because of environmental regulations in Pittsburgh (pollution was horrible there at one point)…ect., but with new cleaner technologies, the steel industry has been making a huge come back.

One might have to bump up the US’ income from 100 IPCs to like 300 IPCs per turn to get a “historical” representation in the board game. Perhaps the Axis get 5 turns before the US joins the game to really simulate December 1941. But good luck once the Sleeping Giant joins.

That’s just one location.

Look up the figures on the amount of Carriers w/ Battle Groups the US had by 1945.

Yeah, it’s ludicrous that both Japan and Germany can easily make more money than the US after about 5 turns in this game.