Thank you all for the responses.  As always, such a helpful community!

While playing yesterday a buddy and I had just finished the first round of combat for a naval battle and we began removing our casualties before the second round. I saw him take his destroyer off so I decided to keep my sub instead of another piece. Just before rolling for the second round he noticed I’d get pre-emptive and adjusted his casualties to leave a destroyer. A back and forth ensued and we didn’t know how to resolve it.

So my question is, who removes casualties first so there isn’t this “oh I changed my mind based on what you lost”?

It’s pretty consistently 8-9hrs for my games.  I’ve played a lot of 1 on 1 recently and my counterpart usually takes a long time to do his turn.  Expect to set aside a whole day for it if you plan on going start to finish.  Hope that helps.

We’ve played only one game with tech but that was Europe only.  This would be really good to get a solid answer on, though I think you may be right.

I’ve played with Alpha 3 maybe 6 or 7 times now and the games have been fairly balanced.  OOB was fine until we realized how easy sealion was.

I’m not sure where wittman is getting the 37 for Soviets but I’d think that would greatly unbalance things.  Nor have I heard of the extra UK inf in Egypt.  Would love to know as well.

Forgive me if this is already apparent to you but Axis need to make very smart decisions on the first 4 rounds.  If they don’t hit the allies hard enough by the time the US comes into play, then it’s only a matter of time before the US comes to trounce you.

I typically hit Soviets heavy on round 2, and make sure to try and take UK navy out as fast as possible.  The more resources you can send to Soviet territory the faster you can take it and not worry about that side of the map.  And if you’ve hurt the UK navy enough you won’t have to worry about units on western europe for a few turns.

If you’ve ever had a friend who thinks “I’ve still got a chance in this” and won’t stop until game rules are met…then you’ll know the pain :)

But I think it’s just eliminating any possible scenario where the axis might have the ability to come back and win with troops amassed somewhere.

I’ve played approx 6 or 7 games with the US getting 20 extra IPCs in wartime and we’ve had fairly balanced games.  I haven’t used the 9 IPC bonus Soviets get (where did you find that?) and it’s been just fine.

Until it’s laid out in detail, for Europe especially, you’ll just have to wing it and find a balance for your play style.

I play with the current alpha 3 rules as well.  I don’t do the extra soviet units during wartime, and for the US I give them 20 extra IPCs instead of the 30.  So far it’s been pretty even as far as wins for each side so I don’t know if I’m unbalancing things with how I’m playing.

I also would like to have some sort “for now, play E40 like this” since it’s been what, over a year since E40 came out?

@Krieghund:

@wwestpro:

If the attacker survives with boats (non transport boats) then the amphibious assault may take place after.

The attacker doesn’t necessarily have to have surviving warships.  The only requirement is that the defender does not (excluding subs that submerged in the battle).

Ah, yes.  In case anyone was reading Krieg’s answer wrong like I was… transports are dead in the water ONLY if there are surviving defenders for the next round.  I didn’t consider if the round ended and only transports were left on the attacker’s side.  But planes can still take them out if the defender is scrambling.