Game Imbalance massively obvious

Allies are definitely more difficult to coordinate in the early game. I’ve played enough to confidently say that the sides are very close to balanced at the highest competitive levels, such that there’s disagreement on what side if favored still. At lower levels of play, it’s definitely true that one side can win more.

General allies tips to start on a strong path:
attack WRUS with 12 units, Ukraine with 9 units
UK round 1 buy of 3 inf, 1 destroyer, 1 carrier is well balanced
US round 1 buy of 1 carrier, 2 transports, 2 inf, 2 art is well balanced

A key principle to getting at least up to gold level is seeing what your opponent can do in response to a move you make. For example, say you are Germany and are considering putting a lot of units into West Russia. Look at how many Russia can attack you with if you do that. Count everything in range.

A lot of lower-level players will just attack something because that particular battle is favorable to them, not noticing what your opponent can do in response on their turn.

Also, a common mistake they make is building way too many attacking units and not enough fodder units. You want almost all of your losses to be cheap infantry. Use your infantry to kill their tanks and you’re going to win. I play so many opponents that try to just rush at Russia thinking that will work.

If you can get sound tactics you’ll get to at least high silver and probably gold.

Are you playing ranked with Larry Harris Rules? I suggest playing more and getting stronger before making blanket statements about the balance of the game. I have a 90% or higher win rate as both axis and allies, repeated across multiple seasons. I’m about equally happy to play axis as well as allies with regard to win likelihood.

@snoil said in Game Imbalance massively obvious:

@marineiguana if it’s so balanced, why do GenCon games have a bid system for the allies to get extra help?

The online version differs quite a bit from the board game, even with the Gencon setup. Differences such as no friendly AC and transport usage, having to assign casualties after each round of like-valued dice instead of the whole attacking round, not having variable defence profiles for a given combat phase, different time constraints, etc, all make it a bit harder to compare the 2 games.
The numbers don’t lie though. At high gold/plat level, there’s little to no difference in win rate between allies and axis, but at lower levels, it seems axis is winning more. I believe it has changed over the last few seasons too, where top players are figuring out better and better ways to play the allies, leading to many of them to believe that they are currently favoured at high level.

Cheers

@snoil said in Game Imbalance massively obvious:

@marineiguana Yes well you’re definitely better at the game than I by far, and obviously understand the pathings and such way better than me. 90% in both means you’ve got it down. But after reading on some other parts of the forum, if it’s so balanced, why do GenCon games have a bid system for the allies to get extra help? I’ll admit, maybe as a noob I just do better having a load of troops and relative safety early on as I prefer inf/art in great big gobs over fancy schmancy battleships/tanks/bombers etc. At sea I even prefer subs due to cheapness. Easier to make impactful stacks, at least so far.

Anyway, genuine thanks to everyone, will keep stabbing at it diligently!

Your confusion is very understandable.

There is the original board game setup (OOB, out of box). This version blatantly favors Axis. If I played against myself, I would win as axis at least 98% of the time.

The Gencon tournaments attempt to balance this by bidding. People are bidding for the privilege of playing Axis and compensating the Allies player with an amount of income that the Allies player can use to immediately place units on the board. For example, a bid of 7 could be used to place 1 artillery in Karelia and 1 infantry in Caucasus Russia. Typical bids are 18 or more. A second big difference of tournaments is the time limit only allows for about 5-8 rounds of play. It’s more like a sprint to reach victory cities because of this time limit.

The Larry Harris game version is a set of adjustments that Larry suggested to balance the OOB map better. It notably makes changes to the Germany bomber placement and sz7 units. This version is well balanced, and we’re still deciding which side is favored with ideal play on both sides. The online 1942 ranked version uses this version as a default. In casual play, you can choose either this version or the OOB standard version.

@nosho said in Game Imbalance massively obvious:

The numbers don’t lie though. At high gold/plat level, there’s little to no difference in win rate between allies and axis, but at lower levels, it seems axis is winning more.

Take the same supposed data and apply this reasoning. Axis being favored is mathematical fact, but is offset by a glut of bad players that use Axis incompetently. New players are attracted to Axis because they’re simpler. Impatient players are attracted to Axis because they can finish a game early. Etc.

When a player of some skill queues, they are more likely to face one of those bad players, which they likely defeat.

To answer the OP, I’m quite sure the devs aren’t going to do anything about it.

@snoil said in Game Imbalance massively obvious:

Hi guys, won’t give up the ghost but still almost always allies when joining no pref, and still losing except to players making crazy bad mistakes. Have read many strat posts last few days, we’ll see how it goes on Wood level.

@snoil said in Game Imbalance massively obvious:

I’ll admit, maybe as a noob I just do better having a load of troops and relative safety early on as I prefer inf/art in great big gobs over fancy schmancy battleships/tanks/bombers etc. At sea I even prefer subs due to cheapness. Easier to make impactful stacks, at least so far.

Even if your play isn’t brilliant, sticking to inf/art ought to see you out of wood league at least. There’s something else going on; get a decent player to do commentary on some of your live games.

@snoil If playing a KGF, bring everything to the Atlantic. If going KJF, bring everything to the Pacific. I play a KGF probably 95% of the time.

In most KGF games as the US, all you need to build is 1 carrier US1. Other than that, it’s all transports and land units. Sometimes you mix in a plane, but that’s a luxury buy. If Axis is investing heavily in air and naval units then more US navy is definitely needed. The priority is always taking and occupying land. Owning land is what gives you income to build more units. Water is worthless.

So, since land is the priority, then land units are the priority. Land units are the most efficient on land. Ships are the most efficient on water. Planes are less efficient but more flexible on land or water.

So you want to be building as many land units as possible. The large majority of these are going to be infantry because they are cheap so you can buy more of them. As the US, you have a logistics problem getting those land units somewhere useful, so you need transports. To move your transports you need surface ships like carriers with fighters, destroyers, cruisers, battleships to protect them.

Pound for pound destroyers are the best unit for protecting transports. Carriers with fighters are good too because the fighters can attack on land. Cruisers are alright, but over-priced. Battleships are situational and not ideal for an Atlantic fleet. Where I use a battleship is when I’m facing multiple fleets.

For example, as Japan if you are facing a UK fleet and a US fleet, then a battleship is pretty good because it gets a free repair, but for the most part they are just too expensive.

With the US you want to be up to around 7 or 8 transports by the end of round 2. After that reasonable people disagree on how many transports to have. I usually get up to 11 or 12. If the US doesn’t have France it’s 11. If they do, it’s 12. If I’m doing a Med shuck I might get up to 14. Some people keep it at 8 and build bombers.

Another KGF tip…

Use those starting AA guns in the US. They’re just sitting there doing nothing. Use them. Maybe you had the UK take France and the UK has a few units left in France. Have the US go drop another 10 in France behind them, and make one of those units an AA gun.

A warning though: Check to see if Germany can re-take France. If they can take it, how many units will they likely have left in France after the battle? If it’s low enough that the Allies can re-take it the next turn, then by all means throw everything in. It’s just a large trade. You’re exchanging UK and US units for German units and that wears Germany down. If Germany has enough where they can take it and then stack it so it can’t be retaken then be cautious and just drop a minimal number in.

For NW Europe, this is likely just 1 transport. For France, it’s more because it’s a 6 IPC value territory in the situation of a strafe. Sometimes Germany will have a lot that they can bring at France, but if they bring everything then it leaves them too weak elsewhere. For example, if they bring 25 infantry and some tanks to France to take it hard, then that would leave them too weak in Germany.

In that situation bring 3 transports to France to leave about 4 or 5 there. It’s too few for them to do a strafe because they don’t want to lose the income from France. It’s too many for a light trade, so you’re still getting your goal of a heavier trade.

You have to read the situation in Europe though. Sometimes it may even be worth it to have a negative net trade with Germany if it’s early game and Germany is pushing at Russia hard. It will divert units away from the eastern front.

@snoil said in Game Imbalance massively obvious:

Fun fact, I notice a lot of custom games are the imbalanced version where the game creator is GER and JPN! LOL

No shame in knowing your limits.

@marineiguana attack Ukrainian territory not a good idea .you can lose that battle still and you risk heavy losses WR.then Germany can walk right through.you should think more about giving yourself at least a chance with every game of winning .

@ericb you say Germany is in a lot of trouble if allies target her .that’s a funny joke .first of all Germany targets the allies first round except Russia which should be on the defensive anyway unless you think russia can just walk on into Berlin .just look at the facts Germany starts at the gates of Moscow ,real good way of targeting Germany.so Germany can all but sink the allied week indefensible navy because that’s realistic to ww2 ,British Navy is nothing but tug boats .apparently.then good luck rebuilding the navy having to abandon the pacific to Japan ,leaving you wide open for a victory city loss.

@panzer666

Rebuilding the navy and attacking Germany while giving Japan the pacific is actually the main way the game is being played at a top level.
A VC snipe is indeed the main axis threat early game, but is avoidable as long as allies properly defends india round 3 and hits fast with US and UK in europe.
If you lose ukraine its disastrous, but when it works(80% of the time) its too strong to not do it.

Pulling historical accuracy in these WW2 games is kinda moot, since for the axis players to have a shot the game cant be historically accurate. US would have more IPC than J and G combined, R would have more IPCs than germany etc.

For a video example of an allied opener you can check out this video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVvXfL0vnMU

@panzer666 said in Game Imbalance massively obvious:

@marineiguana attack Ukrainian territory not a good idea .you can lose that battle still and you risk heavy losses WR.then Germany can walk right through.you should think more about giving yourself at least a chance with every game of winning .

That reads like attacking Ukraine doesn’t have a chance of winning.

@panzer666 said in Game Imbalance massively obvious:

@ericb you say Germany is in a lot of trouble if allies target her .that’s a funny joke .first of all Germany targets the allies first round except Russia which should be on the defensive anyway unless you think russia can just walk on into Berlin .just look at the facts Germany starts at the gates of Moscow ,real good way of targeting Germany.so Germany can all but sink the allied week indefensible navy because that’s realistic to ww2 ,British Navy is nothing but tug boats .apparently.then good luck rebuilding the navy having to abandon the pacific to Japan ,leaving you wide open for a victory city loss.

As I see it you’d need aberrant dice, bad play on both sides, very particular Allied risk aversion preferences, and even then what’s stated and implied above still doesn’t quite happen with competent players.

Extended discussion of the point would derail the thread. Could start another thread though.