How is tech countered?

Why are you letting Germany get such a high bid?

If Japan gets shipyards round 1 all is not lost.

Round 1:

Russia NCM 2 Infantry to Persia, Build tanks in Caucasus; NCM everything to Buryatia
England: NCM Infantry from Burma to India; Build Industrial Complex in India; NCM Air Force into Russia for deployment to India; NCM Infantry, Artillery, Destroyer, Transport to Solomons
Japan: Get Shipyards
USA: NCM Fleet and Airforce to Solomons, Build as normal.

You might want to try for your own tech, to off set his advantage, but I think with a strong open against Japan there you can mitigate his benefit.  From the Solomons you can liberate Sumatra or Borneo denying him the National Objective there, or you can land on Carolines and give England a National Objective.

Tech ruins the game.

A lucky paratroopers roll can result in the immediate fall of Great Britain.  Heavy bombers usually results in a timely concession in whatever power opposes that who rolled it.  Long range aircraft, at least in the Pacific, it pretty much game over.  Especially when the US rolls it and is now about to hit an undefended stack of bombers with their new found range.

Our gaming group plays with the house roll that techs are delayed, and don’t come into effect until the end of your turn.  However, even this probably isn’t enough for heavy bombers, which is just ridiculous in it’s power.

We’re toying around with an espionage rule that allows you to steal techs reached by other players, in order to ‘balance’ tech.

build some bomber’s and fighter’s, move them with your starting bomber’s to stanovoj chrebet, keep around 7 russian infantry at stanovoj chrebet, and 1 -2 infantry at the soviet far east and buryatia, after 3 -4 round’s of S.B.R. the improved shipyard stuffing would be knocked out of japan, it is a good plan aswell if japan does not have improved shipyard’s, although the new bomber’s would not be needed to S.B.R. japan

Glad to see someone agrees that Paratroopers can be very powerful.

However, I don’t see the technologies “ruining” the game.  If you are winning with technologies, you would probably have been winning anyway.  If you are losing with technologies, you could have cost yourself because you spent too much on technologies.

In other words, technologies can hurt your chances to win, they cannot win for you.

I don’t care how many heavy bombers you have with Japan, if you don’t have a fleet and all the islands are liberated then Japan has lost.  It does not matter if they keep sinking the American fleets in the Pacific, eventually, the attrition against the Japanese Heavy Bombers will prevent them from sinking the Americans and then American can take out Japan itself.

I don’t care if you have half a dozen bombers and half a dozen infantry in your capitol, if you’re losing the game, then England will be more than able to keep 8 ground units and a couple of fighters in England every round, using them all for amphibious assaults into Europe and replacing the ground units with new builds (the fighters would go back to land in England.)

Same thing with Shipyards.  If you don’t own the ocean, then what’s the shipyards doing for you?

For any Tech game, I’d always make sure you have 1 researcher going.  My rd 1 tech buys would be:
Ger - 2 tech
Rus - 1 tech
Jap - 1 tech
UK - 1-2 tech
Ita - 1 tech
US - 1-2 tech

Now if Japan got shipyards (or any tech) I’d go with 2 techs for both UK and US.

Also, I’d pull out of the Pac minimizing the effect of shipyards.  If there is no US fleet to confront then Japan will only benefit when they buy trns.  And in most cases they’d probably stop at 6-8 and still need to buy ICs for the mainland.

Assuming I didn’t get a counter tech with UK and/or US I’d go all out KG(I)F.

@Cmdr:

If you are winning with technologies, you would probably have been winning anyway.  If you are losing with technologies, you could have cost yourself because you spent too much on technologies.

This is exactly it.

Game mechanics that usually result in the winning side ‘piling on’ don’t make for fun games, IMO.

DM:

I think that might be good policy, but starting on Round 2, not Round 1.

Especially for the Axis, since they desperately need troops to support their initial push.

That’s just my tech bias from Classic.

My theory is if you play tech and are going to use it, you might as well roll early (esp in AA50).

I don’t think the Axis get held back that much if at all, it is a good bet someone will get some techs by the end of rd 2, so you might as well start rolling for it.  Plus you never lose your roll.  An early 5 ipc investment for Ita can last the whole game (if you keep missing).

Is 7 inf really that bad on G1 when you have a 33% shot at a tech?  Too many awesome techs for Ger to get.  Even a rd 1 shipyards/super subs is playable.

So J can only buy 1 trn, again I think it is worth the shot before you start committing to a strat.  Heck, with shipyards you can still get 2 trns!

I can see waiting on Ita, but they have easy attacks in rd 1.  Trj is usually a walk-in and Egy can be reinforced/taken as well.

My main focus is I’m assuming both the UK and US will be teching in Rd 1 so I’m not worried about a “typical” Axis rd 1, certain techs just change things so much that I’m not even counting on a standard game when I start.  Someone is eventually going to get HB/LRA so I’ll try to play for that from the start and hope I’m first with those or another game changer tech.

Yeah, techs benefit from compounding interest. The earlier you start the better off you are and the last thing you want is to be chasing your opponents who developed tech earlier than you because you wanted to put a few more armor or aircraft out there.

Most everybody knows my negative feelings about tech, but even I will acknowledge that if it’s on the menu, you have to order it or your opponent will eventually hit on a jackpot winner.

Funny, Italy was the nation I was thinking “heck, just get two dice on round 1!” because they are the only axis nation that starts with all the equipment they’ll need for the first two rounds of the game without need of building more. (Though it helps to build them anyway.)