@david-06 No worries at all! Great to see more people playing! I would certainly not call myself an expert, but have played for a while now, and A&A for years and years before that too.
First, what is the Japanese component of this strategy then? Somewhat what @insaneHoshi is saying as part of it? There’s so much trickle down in these games, my follow ups for Japan, similar to what I posted about Europe:
-
How does this buildup against the USSR by Japan affect play against China? Are you just ignoring China at first? If I’m the KMT, I’m pretty happy about this, as it gives me time to build up forces, or allows me to take Warlords without any real danger from Japan.
-
Does this play mean that you are not focusing any forces to the DEI and taking those money islands down there? That’s a lot of money left on the map, and not much money up towards the USSR to take to compensate.
Kind of reiterating my immediate take above. Yeah, in this situation, I’d say the Comintern is screwed. It’s a great concept if all you had to worry about was the Comintern. They wouldn’t be able to do much against that combined Axis power I can’t imagine. At least not right away. But in doing this, I think the Axis screw themselves by ignoring the Allies on all fronts. This allows France, China, FEC, UK, all to get stronger without any real fear of immediate losses it seems.
What if instead of the the 2 factories, I build 2 artillery and 2 more colonial Infantry for the defense of Rome, I send in 1 infantry and 1 militia from northern Italy and use the LA for an Invasion on Southern France?
A couple things for your Italy thoughts.
-
Just remember that Italy’s income is only 10 IPP’s. I think it’s hard to have a ton of huge plans with Italy early in the game. For me, I’ve usually had concise early objectives, and I see how those go.
-
Just make sure you consider the two options for French surrender:
- France Surrenders when Paris is taken.
- France surrenders if Paris is totally surrounded.
I only point this out to remind you there’s options for defeating France. I can see both ways. To me, it’s probably more economical to attempt to surround Paris than attack a city and take those lumps. On the flip side, if you attack Southern France with Italian troops, to me that’s a lot of precious Italian units lost for no Italian gain in the end, especially if wanting to create Vichy France (i.e. Italy wouldn’t even keep the Southern France territory or the IPP’s it’s worth.
I tend to focus Italian efforts on North Africa, and in Greece if I can help it. But in your scenario, I think you need to have defensive forces in Northern Italy because the Allies might be bold with no immediate German threat. And to me, Italian troops in Northern Italy takes away from Italian troops in North Africa and/or the Balkans.
Just to get some intel, What’s your usual mentality with France? do you go all in on defense, or do you go in on colonial forces, or some mix of the 2?
I have found France a very interesting nation to play in this game. I think it’s sometimes hard to find the right balance! In theory, France should be defeated by a German/Axis player somewhat quickly before they really have a chance to build up too many defensive forces and/or have UK reinforcements. Because of this theory of France’s eventual, unavoidable demise, I think it’s natural to think about “saving” as many units as you can. By that I mean sending units to North Africa in hopes they turn Free French. But that is certainly not a given, they could just as easily turn Vichy.
So to me, it makes more sense to defend the Home Country of France as much as possible to inflict the maximum amount of damage to the Axis as they attack. Since there’s two ways to force France to surrender, I think it’s typically good to have a balanced defense of Paris itself as well as the surrounding territories. You don’t want to just pack everything in Paris, because then the Axis will just surround the city and that will be that. But you also don’t want to leave the city entirely undefended either, because that would allow the Axis to exploit the weakest way into France, and then use their blitz move to take Paris the next turn.
There’s just a lot to consider with France in that regard. But that’s also indicative of the game at large I think. There’s going to be pros and cons to most everything, and of course your opponent may dictate some of these things too!