Just About Impossible To Defeat Allied Strategy

I see a number of holes in this strategy.

1. With only 1 Russian infantry defending each territory, Italy really doesn’t need much to can-open with…the starting airforce and starting mechs/tanks, even without forces from Tobruk, will probably be enough. You only have to can-open three times for Germany to be sitting at the gates of Moscow. Germany could be attacking Moscow as early as turn 5.

2. With only 2 British fighters (and no infantry!) built in London on the first turn, Germany can do a very easy, very cheap Sea Lion…maybe only 3-4 total German transports. With no American warships built in the first 3 turns other than 1 destroyer, it becomes easy for Germany to screen the Americans out of London with German destroyers, or maybe even have Germany sink the 6 American transports with air power based out of London or a Baltic carrier. This means that Germany takes and holds London while still making progress in the east.

3. Building an early factory in Cairo is in tension with your plan to fly fighters from London through Nenetsia to Moscow – if you’re building lots of British fighters to defend Moscow, you won’t be able to afford to fill the Cairo factory. If you can’t fill the factory, you’d be better off building a transport in South Africa, or just building mechs in South Africa and letting them drive north.

4. You don’t really explain how you plan to take Italy out of the game other than a first-turn Tobruk + Taranto, which can fail pretty badly for the UK if they try to do both at once and the dice go poorly. Even if the dice go well, that’s not a knock-out blow. Italy still has one fleet left, and an army in Italy, and an air force, and some infantry in east Africa. You say that you will “focus Britain’s power chiefly against Italy,” but you also talk about building British fighters for Moscow and building multiple tanks in Cairo, neither of which are necessarily anti-Italy. How do you get the tanks from Cairo to Rome? Italy doesn’t necessarily have to take Cairo; they can just clear the Med, take Gibraltar and Greece, and wind up collecting plenty of income.

How much have you tested this strategy, either against yourself, or against the AI, or against live players? It sounds like part of the appeal of the strategy is that you’re imagining Britain doing two different things at once (guarding Moscow and smashing Italy) at full force, and you’re not taking Britain’s budget constraints seriously. I think if you played this out a few times you would see how and why Britain is unable to afford to do all of the work that you’re assigning to Britain.

Even without Italian can-opening, simply retreating all the way to Moscow is a dangerous play.

When Russia does this, I use the Luftwaffe to attack territories behind the front lines that only have 1 INF defending them. Helps clear them out quickly, allowing me to blitz through and it frees Italy up to focus on Cairo. I don’t like Italian can-opener strategies, Italy needs to be challenging the UK in Africa/Middle East, not just helping in Russia.

As Russia, you need to know a lost cause on the front lines and trade territories for turns while fortifying Moscow, but you need to push back too. If Germany has one giant stack of ground units, you need to be pushing back with mech infantry trying to rush “past” it into Germany’s original territories (Romania, Poland, etc). There are IPC’s + Russian NO’s to claim by taking German territories, even briefly.

A smart German player will bypass Moscow to go claim the Russian territory with the +9 NO and then start pounding on Moscow. Russia needs to fight smart, but they can’t just collapse into Moscow and hope that they can hold the Alamo … they have to actually fight back.

several things i like about this strategy:

1.  you are hoping the Allies win.  I call global 40.2 the axis’ wet dream.
2. planes to moscow.  10 allied planes to moscow can make it nearly impregnable. britain is the better gifter because they can do it so much more quickly.  It also gives the russian player a backbone confidence to go on the offensive and regain some territories.

i’ve got to get ready for work.  this might not be THE answer that rebalances the game, but keep thinking.  it’s out there.  like the white whale…it’s out there.

@AxisAndAllies1940:

Also, another criticism I can see coming about this strategy is “you’re giving Germany 40 free IPCs a turn”. Well, yes, but I’m also forcing them to spend a lot of that money. Because Italy is being kept weak, Germany is going to need a Mediterranean IC. It may even need to build naval units or an Afrika Korps. Also- it takes time and resources to build an army that can smash Moscow, so a lot of that 40 will be needed to maintain the Eastern Front.

There’s something I’m wondering about this.  The strategy being proposed, if I understand it correctly, is for the Russians to retreat into Moscow, transform it into an impregnable fortress, abandon all their other territories to the Germans and resist the temptation to attack the German units besieging Moscow.  What I’m wondering is: what if the German player realizes that the Russians are doing this?  If he does so, he might draw the following conclusions:

1. The Russian strategy has given Germany a ton of free IPCs.

2. Moscow poses no offensive threat to Germany because the Russians have dug into a purely defensive position at Moscow.

3. Because of this purely defensive stance, Moscow’s financial and industrial importance is being used for the sole purpose of reinforcing Russia’s static defensive position in Moscow, which on the one hand makes Moscow a tough nut to crack if Germany decides to attack it (as AxisAndAllies1940 says, “it takes time and resources to build an army that can smash Moscow”) but on the other hand it means that all the Russian reinforcements being poured into Moscow will remain idle – and thus will be wasted – if Germany chooses not to attack Moscow…a choice that Germany can afford to make because, as point 2 above argues, a purely defensive Russian stance at Moscow poses no offensive threat to Germany;

4. Germany is therefore free to keep minimal forces around Moscow (rather than doing what the Russians are expecting them to do, which is for Germany to deploy massive resources around Moscow), and can most profitably spend its ton of free IPCs by building up and using its forces elsewhere – such at Italy.

there were islands in the pac that the allies bypassed because they were not strategically valuable.  that is my view of Moscow.  chase the rats into their hole and bypass for the middle east, India, north Africa and eventually Siberia.

When they come out to play, play wack a mole.

In my experience with Europe. As Germany I always get Russia, it is really easy to take, especially under a g1 dow and especially with low luck.

The allies should try to get something going before Russia falls on g5 or g6

It comes down to taking norway with usa, africa corp with uk, and later mass drop spain.  There really isn’t much Russia can do, if Russia lives long, allies win automatically.