Warning: these experiences are from AA Europe games, so I’ll leave it up to you to judge if it applies here or not.

I did several testgames to see if a) Operation Sea Lion can be stopped by the UK and b) what effect it has on the overall situation in Europe:

• If Germany really invests in a large G3 Operation Sea Lion, it’s almost impossible to stop for the UK. While trying to stop the inevitable and pouring all available resources into defending London, the UK will also be losing on the other fronts … which will make Italy very happy.

• If committed to a large G3 Operation Sea Lion, the German army can not be in a good position in G4 to stop the initial SU4 attacks in the East. If all/most of the forces used in Operation Sea Lion are shipped back to the East, the Germans and Soviets will have roughly equal armies … with the advantage going to the attacker because they can either concentrate attacks against a spread out defender or pick off undefended areas if the defender concentrates.

• The UK can choose to basically ignore Operation Sea Lion and concentrate on the Mediterranean and Africa. Building just enough in the UK to force Germany to go for a large transport fleet, they simply evacuate the Royal Airforce and go after Italy. With London in German hands, the UK still managed to lock down Italy by destroying their entire fleet and concentrating enough units in Africa to prevent Italy from holding Cairo.

• The US will have their first amphibious assault fleet ready at Gibraltar in US4. This forces an already very weak Italy to defend their home territories and forces Germany to use their large bonus from G3 to defend the UK, defend Western Europe, defend Northern Europe and build an army to defeat the Soviet Union … and they should be helping Italy in the Mediterranean too. (Playing Germany, I also wanted to increase my factory capacity and expand the fleet so I could operate in the Baltic and delay the US at the same time … but 90ish IPC just not enough for all that.)

8-)

@Raeder:

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Raeder:

Am I the only one who always upgrades to a Major Factory in Germany on the first turn? I never see it mentioned but to me it’s obvious. You need to be able to mobilize 10 units there.

Yes, because everyone is doing sealion right now and building a carrier G1

I see. Well, I’m not much of a Sealion guy, more of a Barbarossa guy. On G1 I’m already thinking Barbarossa.

Look at it this way. The carrier is very important to delay/defeat the initial Allied landings in Western Europe which gives you more time to capture those vital victory cities in the East. Without a carrier, the Kriegsmarine will probably go down during UK1 which leaves the entire coast wide open for the Allies.

So even if I don’t go for Operation Sea Lion (which turns out to be a self-defeating victory if you ask me), buying a carrier is still a very viable choice.

8-)

@Hobbes:

The best way to stop that, as I mentioned before, would be to counterattack before it reaches Moscow to kill the infantry …

Counterattacking a stack so loaded with tanks (and possibly planes as well) will remove most, if not all of the screening infantry. But it will also bring more losses to the attacker because of the tank stack.

after that the battles will be almost pure armour v. infantry which is a very bad match-up for the attacker.

If you mean that the attacker will be trading units of more value than the defender, yes. But if both sides are equal in numbers (and attacking the tank stack will kill a lot of Russian infantry) then the attacker has the advantage since his units have a bigger attack factor.

Let’s take the G3 concentrated armoured push through Belarus as an example. I’ll leave the “Italian option” out since it’s too easy to counter.

The Germans can take Belarus with a max army of 19 inf / 5 art / 13 arm as you said. The Soviets can counterattack with a max army of possibly 33 inf / 6 art / 2 mech / 2 arm / 2 fgt / 2 tac (though build can vary of course). Tossing the numbers into the calculators gives the Soviet counterattack an 83% chance of success with on average 6 soviet ground units surviving.

This leaves Germany with basically just 1 stack of 10 armour at the factory, which could of course again take Belarus. The soviets 2 stacks of 10 infantry ready, 1 stack adjacent already to Belarus for the next counterattack with air support.

There is no doubt that eventually Germany will win with using a 60 IPC build each turn against a Soviet 30 IPC build, but without that all-important infantry screen that armour will not be at the gates of Moscow anywhere near turn 5. So the question is, how long can Germany afford to spend nearly 100% of the economy on the East?

Another option for the Soviets at Belarus would be to fight for just one or two rounds before pulling back. Such a two-round counterattack (counting pips) would leave the Germans with 2 art / 13 arm in Belarus and the Soviets with 9 inf / 6 art / 2 mech / 2 arm and an extra 10 inf reinforcements in Smolensk. No matter how you look at it, without a good screen it will be a slow and costly road towards Moscow for the Germans.

Assuming the first landings can start as early as turn 4, Germany simply can’t afford to spend everything in the East for that long.

8-)

@JamesAleman:

I agree, if you build all Infantry, and move all units to Moscow…It would not be “Ideal Conditions” for you to continue my all mech push.

At this point, you would have to adjust your plan. It should be apparent by the beginning of turn 4, that Russia is moving its units to Moscow. I suggest you have two choices, based on what the other allies are doing.

Choice 1: Change G4’s planned production. Continue with your move towards Moscow as you have the units on the board, when Russia moves its stack into Moscow, since it is all infantry you can move next to it with your stack…pinning it in Moscow and send 1 - 3 armor to clean up the southern territories plus the V-City. Use the Finland infantry to secure the Northern V-City. Send the Bulgarian infantry to Berlin. Russia retreating to Moscow leaves them maybe 8 IPCs a turn, so add 20 IPCs plus 2 N/Os to Germany’s estimated 39 + 10 for the Norway N/Os. I estimate a German Production of 79 IPCs by turn 6 under this scenario. Now, budget 12-15 IPCs for artillery in Volgograd/Russian front, the rest in navy to either do a late game Sea Lion for city number 8 or a sub air force strategy with a Neutral crush that prevents an allied buildup in Gibraltar…Italy ground forces will enter Spain when Germany takes it. With Spain as a landing field the W. Germany air base reaches most allied staging areas, Axis control of Gibraltar protects Italy. Play a game of production with the allies, eventually Moscow or London will fall if you outproduce them.

Choice 2: build all armor G4, and maybe another round of armor and try to take G7 or G8. I haven’t done the math to see if that would be viable.

This may seem risky, but changing strategies mid game is not without its risks. Again, I am not advocating this as a be all end all strategy. It was just a fast way to take Moscow, unless Russia does “extreme” builds and moves to prevent it. All it takes is a small Russian stack protecting Novgorad or move offensive unit builds and I bet the numbers change. Maybe they don’t and I’m just wasting our collective time.

Thanks for the input and crunching the numbers for me. I value the debate and hope to benefit from the points presenting regarding this strategy.

I only crunched the numbers on that total-infantry defence to get an idea of what the situation would be during the mech-infantry push to Moscow on G6. Needless to say, those numbers turned out to be very extreme indeed. So extreme actually, that the Soviets can afford to operate several smaller infantry formations away from Moscow and still have something like a 95% chance of victory at the capital. Due to the massive defenders advantage, the Soviets have a lot of flexibility in their build … the Germans on the other hand do not.

This immediately locks down your first choice as alternative strategy. The German mech-inf can’t lock down the Soviet army in Moscow because it has no chance of victory in either attack or defence. For every small flanking formation you move away from the  main army, the Soviets can intercept with more and still keep their massive advantage around Moscow.

The reason for this lies in the effectiveness of the initial builds. Germany builds mech infantry to attack, the Soviet Union builds regular infantry to defend. For every 30 IPC Germany uses on the mech infantry, they gain 7.5 pips in the attack … the Soviets gain 20 defensive pips with their infantry build using the same 30 IPC. That’s almost 3 times as effective!

Choice 2:

G7 attack with 10 extra armour gives 1.1% chance of success
G8 attack with 20 extra armour gives 14.5% chance of success
G9 attack with 30 extra armour gives 36.7% chance of success

Personally I don’t put too much faith in precise predictions so late in the game though … way too much can happen to mess things up. I also don’t think it’s realistic to expect Germany being able to spend up to three turns of (almost) full production going East … in my games around turn 4-5 the landings in the West start to become very serious and drain a lot of income.

On a sidenote: I haven’t been able to find a good way to attack the Soviet Union yet, but I’m considering trying lots of smaller attacks in stead of the single concentrated push towards Moscow. So far I haven’t seen any concentrated push strategy with good odds of success. The advantage of multiple small attacks would be:

• The Soviets will either have to defend with multiple smaller stacks or give up a lot of ground and lose valuable economic power.
• Multiple smaller attacking formations can easily concentrate attacks against a single defensive formation, defenders can never react in time … and if the concentrate in an important location, the attackers will remain spread out and take more territories.
• Defending infantry becomes very scary in large numbers … but small formations are easy to destroy. So the defender has the choice of losing valuable troops defending against multiple attacks which prevents concentrating a large powerful army, or giving up a lot of ground very fast leaving him with very limited resources to build his main army.

8-)

Ah, miscommunication there …

I used the list of the German mech inf army as it would be in G6 when attacking Moscow …

I was talking about the Mech Inf army of JamesAleman and his G6 Moscow push. Your Armour army has a lot more punch, but also a lot less screening units. The best way to stop that, as I metnioned before, would be to counterattack before it reaches Moscow to kill the infantry … after that the battles will be almost pure armour v. infantry which is a very bad match-up for the attacker.

8-)

I’m not kidding …

I used the list of the German mech inf army as it would be in G6 when attacking Moscow and then made a guesstimate of the Red Army (starting army + 5 turns inf buy) that could be in place at that time to defend it. Tossed the numbers into the Axis and Allies odds calculator … and it came up with 0% chance of a win for the Germans. Keep in mind that the Red Army can have as much as 70 inf by that time …

:-o

I’m a bit puzzled here … if I add 5 turns of production (guesstimate of course) to the initial Soviet forces, the German has exactly 0% chance of winning against that massive Red Army. That is of course an extreme example of when the Soviet Union chooses to concentrate everything in Moscow, but the odds are so overwhelmingly in favour of the Soviets, that they can easily afford to have smaller formations elsewhere dealing with minor German flank operations (who will also be very limited due to the concentrated push strategy).

Did I mis anything?

:?

@JamesAleman:

Axis win G7 under ideal conditions otherwise G8 if the US does not take Egypt,Berlin, Rome or France.

I find this line the most interesting. With no early sizable naval builds, all of the Luftwaffe going East, most of the other reinforcements going East as well … how can Germany ever hope to fend off the amphibious assaults coming from the West? Combined UK/US landings are pretty much guaranteed as early as turn 4 and you have nothing to push them back.

8-)

@Hobbes:

G can move to E. Poland/Slovakia/Romania 19 inf, 5 art and 3 arm, if it doesn’t attack Yugoslavia. Lets assume 1 inf dies killing the Russian inf on E. Poland and another is killed by the Russians on taking Belarus, leaving 17 inf, 5 art and 13 armor on Belarus.

The Russians have initially 24 inf, 3 art, 2 arm, 2 mech, 2 ftr, 1 tac and they can add 2 rounds of builds to the attack, less 4 inf used to garrison Baltic/E.Poland/Belarus/W.Ukraine. If they purchase solely based on the offensive, they can buy 6 art on R1 and 3 art for Karelia, 2 arm and 1 mech on R2, maximizing their attack on Belarus and that will leave them with 20 inf, 12 art, 4 arm and 3 mech (plus the 2 ftrs and 1 tac), which would give them odds of 73% attack (including the shots by the German AA).

But there’s another one possibility when taking Belarus: let the Italians take it on I2 (on I1 you’d have to move the 2 armor from Albania/N. Italy to the Eastern front. It is something it should be done always since they can act as can openers for Germany). Then the entire German stack can move to Belarus, including all the planes. Odds for a successful attack by Russia? 19%, just by landing 2 German ftrs and 2 tacs there.

The Soviet strategy would basically remain the same though. Counterattack the German army, fight one or two rounds (depending on rolls), withdraw and link-up with the reinforcements coming from Russia. This strips Germany very quickly from it’s infantry protection while the Red Army gets immediate reinforcements moving towards the front … limiting the overall reduction in strength of the frontline army.

I know it’s impossible to actually go into details, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make. As an overall strategy, I’ve had a lot of success with the Soviet Union playing a very active defence instead of just moving back and defending Moscow with one massive stack. The Red Army needs to make the Wehrmacht bleed every step of the way, without getting drawn into one big all-deciding battle.

• Engage, kill infantry, disengage, link-up with reinforcements.
• Threaten every German move with a counterattack.
• Keep your important units (airforce!) always out of the actual frontline.

@Hobbes:

Then G simply moves its stack to W. Ukraine. It cannot be attacked by a Russian stack on Smolensk and if the Russians pull back the stack to Bryansk then it may be attacked by the Germans.

No need, this creates exactly the same situation as in Belarus. The Red Army in Smolensk can threaten every move towards Moscow with a counterattack … and every turn not moving towards Moscow bring the Axis one turn closer to defeat.

8-)

@Hobbes:

G may conquer Moscow on G5 with a G2 attack.

I just had another look and if the Germans buy a Major IC for Romania on G1 and buy 10 armor for it on G2 then they can have enough power to conquer the Caucasus, by not attacking Yugoslavia on G1 and taking East Poland on G2. The armor on Romania will be able to hit Belarus on G3 and even if the Russians have moved everything possible to Belarus (23 inf, 2 art, 3 arm, 4 mech, 2 ftr, 1 tac) then it’s 75% odds for the Germans if they bring their 20 inf, 5 art and 13 arm. With the use of the Luftwaffe the odds get even better but the Russians will have an AA.
With the stack moving to Belarus on G3 then it’s Smolensk/Bryansk on G4 and a massive battle on Russia on G5. If G keeps buying 10 arm each turn until G4 then it should conquer Moscow on G5.

Never expect your enemy to do what you want them to do!

The weakness of your proposed G2 Barbarossa is that you move into the Soviet Union at top speed with minimal infantry, maximum armour and no flank protection. It’s not really interesting if the Red Army can hold in Belarus against a massed German attack, but a lot more if the Wehrmacht can hold Belarus if the Red Army concentrates behind it and counterattacks once the Germans have moved in.

After a quick count (might have missed a few) the Germans can move 13 inf / 6 art / 13 arm into Belarus on G3 and the Soviets can have a maximum of 33 inf / 6 art / 2 mech / 2 arm / 2 ftr / 2 tac ready for them in counterattack position behind Belarus. Though in reality they will have some of those guarding flank and threatening German open positions (which the Germans should be guarding as well by the way!).

The moment you move forward, you will lose your infantry screen. After that you can either wait for new troops to take the hits, losing a lot of time while the UK and US fleets are making their first landings in the West … or start trading armour for infantry against the Soviets, which is also a recipe for disaster.

By the way, not saying that a G2 Barbarossa is always doomed from the start, but that quick massed armour push to the north will fail against an experienced Soviet player.

8-)