Posts made by creeping-deth87

I noticed something odd when running a game on Triple A earlier. I accidentally bought a complex a turn early, with the intention of putting it in a friendly neutral territory after I took control of it. When it came time to place units at the end of the turn, I noticed the program actually did allow me to put it on the friendly neutral even though I had just captured it in that round. I then tried to put the IC on a territory I actually fought over, and predictably got the error msg saying I can’t put an IC there yet.

So, under the rules, it says you can’t put ICs in territories you ‘captured’ this turn. I’m thinking friendly neutrals don’t count as ‘captured’ which is why I was allowed to put the IC there, but wanted to clarify in case I’m getting something wrong and the Triple A program has a bug. Thoughts?

Going to be playing my very first game with the balance mod tomorrow and had a question about one of the NOs. The UK NO regarding subs… do Axis subs in the Mediterranean prevent the UK from collecting the bonus? Not sure if the Mediterranean counts as ‘the Atlantic’ so figured I’d clarify.

Thanks Krieghund

I’m no stranger to Axis and Allies but this version has quite a few new gameplay mechanics and I just want to make sure I have everything right. Regarding political collapses… I understand that the nation returns all of its pieces on the board to the box, and that it no longer gets a turn, but I’m a little unclear as to what happens after that.

1. If there are enemy pieces in their territories that were contested by the collapsing nation, do these territories become controlled by the enemy player automatically?

2. If those territories were contested by the collapsing nation AND one of their allies, does the collapsing player simply remove their pieces and the territory remains contested by their allies and the opposing power(s)?

3. According to my understanding, once their pieces are removed it seems like enemy nations can still gobble up all the territories once that particular nation surrenders. Is that correct? How does this work with allies of the collapsing power? Can they also take control of those territories, or do they only get to put their roundel down on the collapsed power’s territories if they take the territory from an enemy power?

Funny, there actually was an airbase on Malta in Alpha +2 (as well as an air base on Gibraltar!). I believe they were both removed for balance reasons. While it would fit definitely be at home from an authenticity and thematic standpoint, I can’t fault Larry for taking them away to improve the actual quality of the game overall.

Sea zone 6 is within 2 sea zones of the Aleutian Islands, not Alaska. There is no problem there with the rule.

@simon33:

@creeping-deth87:

@simon33:

SZ26 is three spaces from W USA. It’s 2 spaces from SZ10 which is not W USA.

P. 8 of the rulebook “Japan may not end the movement of its sea units within 2 sea zones of the US mainland territories (Western US and Alaska)”

SZ1, SZ10, SZ2 are all one space from those territories.

SZs 11, 3, 8, 9 and 12 are all two spaces.

SZ26 is 3 spaces
SZ25 is 4 spaces

LOL wow you are really trying to stretch this. SZ 26 is within 2 sea zones of western us. There is no ambiguity here, it’s a very explicit rule.

@simon33:

SZ26 is three spaces from W USA. It’s 2 spaces from SZ10 which is not W USA.

P. 8 of the rulebook “Japan may not end the movement of its sea units within 2 sea zones of the US mainland territories (Western US and Alaska)”

@Young:

Why not converge as much Japanese navy that can reach into the Hawaii sea zone, with the American ships already there (they’re neutral powers after all). America wouldn’t be able to attack US1, the American ships wouldn’t be able to escape far, and America can only build 3 units off San Francisco US1, leaving them sitting ducks for a J2 attack (I call it a crowbar)… anyone care to do the math on that?

This actually isn’t possible. Japan can’t be within 2 spaces of Western US without declaring war and the Hawaii sea zone is 2 spaces.

I have a game at my place tomorrow and my local meta has been shaken up a great deal recently by some creative new strategies by the other players. I was hoping to get some ideas from this board about some unusual plays if anyone has them. My Germany play is a well oiled machine but it’s a pretty standard G3 declaration Moscow rush.

Thanks in advance for the ideas

Honestly, as the Germans I think the best sub strat involves gobbling up Southern France on G1 and pumping out subs into the Mediterranean from G2 onwards. I’ve had great success with that strat after trying a number of other possible solutions to help out the Italians with Germany. If you keep a couple of planes handy in Southern Italy you get even more mileage out of them.

As for deliberately going after all of the UK destroyers… I don’t really see that working out. Leaving 111 alone so that you can hit 109 just doesn’t sound that smart to me, and you can’t hit that sea zone with everything you could throw into 111 either. There’s also the problem that destroyers are among the cheapest and most effective naval units in the game, so forcing the Allies to build them isn’t exactly doing you a whole lot of favours. Just my 2 cents.

That is most definitely an Allied win, it looks like the Russians have reclaimed all of their original territories. I’m very curious what happened in the Mediterranean, Italy exploding like that is… very rare in my experience.

I’m afraid you’re not going to get much of a game from the Hard AI, I play against the computer all the time because I love the game so much but you should know that the Hard AI will ALWAYS go all in on the Atlantic from the get go no matter what you do. It’s very rare for the US to do anything in the Pacific and it pretty much hands Japan the Pacific win as nothing is done to contest Hawaii. So if your Japan is competent, you’ll manage an Axis win every time quite handily.

@wittmann:

The US is the only nation with the economic and logistic ability to produce and supply mechanised units. It annoys me that their Transports have to choose to carry a Mech  or a Tank, along with the “free” Inf unit, when their Inf Divisions in WW2 were  all Mechanised. The US’s Inf should all be mechanised, I believe (and transportable, as the Inf unit, therefore).

This is absolutely, unequivocally untrue. There were more standard infantry divisions in the US army than any other type of division, and this is true for every other nation that fought in the war as well. It would actually strike me as more odd if the US player got to use such a special rule while other nations did not.

@KurtGodel7:

Yes, but you then minimized that admission by stating that the KV series had been produced in small numbers. In 1941, the Soviet Union produced more KVs and T-34s than Germany produced total tanks. The fact that Stalin’s tank force was much stronger than Germany’s is not itself evidence of an intention to invade.

Just because the T-34 and KV series vehicles were produced in larger numbers than the German panzers does not mean that they weren’t a small portion of the Soviet tank force, which is what I originally said. I never once stated that more panzers were produced than either T-34 or KV series vehicles, just that they were definitely a minority in the Soviet armoured forces.

You’ve claimed this several times, and thus far haven’t supported your claims with evidence.

I haven’t been supporting my claims with footnotes because this is an internet forum, not a university research paper. I don’t have time to go fishing for specific quotes from texts that are sitting on my Kindle. I’ve read books by David Stahel, Antony Beevor, Lloyd Clark, David Glantz, Robert Forcyzk, and have read memoirs by Erhard Raus and Wolfgang Faust; all very well respected historians and scholars, and every single one of them paints the same picture for the Luftwaffe and the state of German logistics in general: stretched bare with never enough to go around. There is no way Kraut aircraft and artillery accounted for most of the over ten thousand T-26 tanks.

The idea that the Luftwaffe couldn’t have destroyed very many Soviet tanks because it was too busy fighting the Soviet Air Force seems far-fetched.

I never once said it was because they were too busy fighting the Soviet Air Force. Please do not put words in my mouth.

I’m rapidly losing patience with your failure to grasp the fact that in June '41, the Soviet tank force was stronger than the German

Define ‘stronger.’ If you mean it was larger, yes it was certainly stronger. However, this does not mean it was better. Throwing production numbers around is only going to get you so far in this argument, there is much more to it than raw numbers. If available models were all that mattered, it wouldn’t have taken the Russians 3 and a half years to push the Wehrhmacht all the way back to Berlin.

Repeating an unsupported assertion over and over does not make it any more convincing the fifth or tenth time than it had been the first time.

Oh this is rich. I’m not the one making the assertion, you are. YOU are the one saying that the existence of all these amphibious tanks is evidence the Russians were going to invade in 1941. By challenging you on this point, I’m not making an assertion. I’m just taking issue with yours.

By the way, I’m still waiting for an explanation as to how the Red Army was going to invade in the middle of their herculean reorganization and refitting efforts taking place in 1941.

@KurtGodel7:

Not everything I’ve written in the last few posts was intended as a counterpoint. Suvorov painted a clear picture of a Soviet Union preparing for the invasion and subjugation of Europe, and presented large amounts of data in support of that picture. My intention here had been to give people a glimpse of that picture; a task which seemed more worthwhile than getting into a nitpicky, point-by-point argument with someone who hasn’t yet read Suvorov’s book.

An admirable intention, but I don’t think you realize how unconvincing your arguments are. Most of your posting so far has contained irrelevant information on the specifications of the Soviet Union’s armoured vehicles, as if these alone are proof that Stalin was planning to invade in 1941. Several posts later, you still haven’t once addressed my counterpoint that an invasion would have been practically impossible amidst the refit and reorganization of the Red Army.

I must also take issue with the assertion that the Soviets started the war with better tanks.

The Soviet Union’s best tanks (KV series) were much, much better than Germany’s best tanks (Panzer IVs). An argument could be made that in 1941, a KV-1 or KV-2 was worth about ten German tanks. The Soviets’ production of 1300 KV-1/KV-2 tanks in 1941 could have balanced out a total German tank production of 13,000 for 1941. Germany produced 3,600 tanks in 1941, which means that Soviets’ KV production for 1941, alone, provided about 3.5x the combat value of Germany’s total tank production for that year.

This is exactly what I’m talking about. My VERY NEXT SENTENCE after the one you quoted above was an admission that the T-34 and KV series tanks were objectively better vehicles, and for some reason you decided to spew out 4 paragraphs saying how much better they were and talking about production numbers. This kind of selective quoting and response is generally looked down on in discussion forums, you shouldn’t do it.

Rather than idly speculating on whether I’d “misrepresented” that or any other source, you should have clicked on the link (which I’d provided) to see for yourself what the source had indicated. Had you done so, you would have seen that I’d simply copied and pasted a sentence from the Wikipedia article; and that the surrounding context did not negate the clear and obvious meaning of the sentence in question.

I didn’t click your link because I’ve read enough scholarly work and memoirs on this subject to know that your assertion was erroneous. Wikipedia is notorious for unreliable information, it is by no means a gold standard to hang up your argument.

On June 22 1941, the Soviet Union had 13,500 military aircraft near the Nazi-Soviet front, as opposed to 4,400 for Germany. During the ensuing months, the Soviets would lose 21,000 military aircraft, as opposed to 3,800 for Germany

This is not a counterpoint. Nothing in the above two sentences contradicts the fact that the Luftwaffe was spread incredibly thin on the Eastern Front and was only capable of local air supremacy. It absolutely could not be responsible for destroying the vast bulk of the T-26 series tanks as you earlier stated.

Had both sides’ aircraft, artillery, anti-tank weapons, and other non-tanks somehow been excluded from the eastern front, the Soviets’ tanks would have annihilated the Germans’. The T-26 was not a great tank, but neither was it horrible. The main gun of a T-26 could penetrate 35 mm of vertical armor from a distance of 1000 meters. The main gun of a Panzer III could penetrate 44 mm of vertical armor from a distance of 1000 meters. The Panzer III had significantly thicker armor than the T-26. (As one would expect, given that the Panzer III was a medium tank, and the T-26 was a light tank.) I’m not trying to suggest that a somewhat older Soviet light tank, like the T-26, was the equivalent of a German medium tank like the Panzer III. (It wasn’t.) But the fact that the (light tank) T-26’s armament was 80% as good as the (medium tank) Panzer III’s suggests that even the Soviet Union’s least powerful, light tanks were still pretty good.

Who cares what would have happened if both sides were missing their aircraft, artillery, and anti-tank weapons? That’s not relevant to our discussion at all, and there is no way for you to know what would have happened had they been absent. The fact that you believe the Soviets would have walked through the Germans without these shows how elementary your understanding of the Eastern Front really is. The technical fallout rate of the Soviet vehicles was astronomically large, and German success in Barbarossa had just as much to do with poor Soviet leadership and training as it did with the professionalism and skill of the Wehrmacht. These very large and substantial factors to the outcome of the fighting in 1941 are not at all affected by some absurd hypothetical where aircraft, artillery, and field guns are missing.

I had to read a very big chunk of Suvorov’s book before becoming convinced Stalin had planned to invade Germany in '41. Light, amphibious tanks were far better-suited to offense than defense. In '41, the Soviet Union had more light, amphibious tanks than Germany had total tanks.

Again you’re harping on the amphibious tanks. The existence of these vehicles is not evidence of a Soviet invasion in 1941. I don’t know how many times i’m going to have to say that.

@Zooey72:

Not counting the atomic bomb, this is the weapon.  Jets, rockets, and big tanks may be sexy; but at leasting doubling the combat capacity of every soldier is a war winner.  The USSR would have surrendered in 1941 IMO, and that would have pretty much ended the war.

If you seriously believe this then you have, at best, only an elementary understanding of why Germany lost the war. Having the STG44 in the hands of the Wehrhmacht in 1941 would have done nothing, absolutely nothing to address the problems Germany faced in her war with the Soviet Union. A more capable small arm would not have addressed the imbalance in wartime production between the Axis and Allied powers, would not have made Barbarossa any less of a disorganized or disjointed plan of attack, and certainly would not have rectified Germany’s crippling manpower problem that reared its head shortly after the war in the east began.

Germany was completely and totally outmatched by its adversaries, and no single innovation or change to the timeline is going to give them a chance at winning the war. Many of the problems that beset the Wehrhmacht were endemic to the Nazi regime itself, and you can’t really address those without putting someone else in charge. The problem is that you can’t really do that either, both on account of the fact that if Hitler wasn’t in charge there’s a good chance the war never would have happened and because taking him out of the picture puts leaves you with a tonne of variables that makes it impossible to sort out what could have or would have happened.

Kurt, you’re making counter-points to arguments I’m not making. I never said the German tanks in '41 were not obsolete. The Panzerwaffe had already demonstrated an alarming degree of ineffectiveness against the Char Bs and other heavy tanks during the campaign against France, they would run into the same problem in the Soviet Union against the T-34 and KV-1 series but they were fortunate enough to catch the Reds with their pants down.

I never asked for the specifications of the BT-7, so I’m not sure why those are provided. I must also take issue with the assertion that the Soviets started the war with better tanks. The T-34 and KV-1 certainly were better, but as already mentioned these were but a fraction of the Soviet tank fleet. The BT-7 and T-26 made up the great bulk of Soviet’s armoured forces, and saying that they were superior is overstating their abilities. At best, they were equally matched against the Panzer III, IV, and 38T models.

As for your Wikipedia facts, I’m not sure if you’re misrepresenting your source or if it’s flat out incorrect, but the Germans certainly did not enjoy aerial supremacy or artillery support to such an extent that they explain away most of the T-26s lost in action. The Luftwaffe was still recovering, and indeed would never recover, from the staggering losses it suffered against the British the year prior to Barbarossa. Furthermore, many pilots were still tied up in Western Europe and unavailable for service in Russia. This meant that the Germans only ever enjoyed local superiority in the air. The situation with their artillery was largely the same story, they never had enough shells to go around and were constantly undergunned in comparison to the Red Army. There is absolutely no way air attack and artillery support account for the poor performance of the T-26.

Finally, I will add that the existence of 4,000 amphibious tanks does not prove that Stalin was planning to invade Germany in the summer of '41. Nor does the existence of those tanks explain how such an invasion would be possible in the midst of the massive rearmament and reorganization being undertaken by the Red Army at the time Barbarossa occurred. I don’t know if you fully appreciate the extent of these reforms, none of them could have been accomplished in the time frame we’re talking about here. Stalin was YEARS away from invading Western Europe, not weeks.

The more I’m reading the less credible I find this Suvorov, these are very fantastic claims that completely go against the historical narrative. I may have to give his book a shot if for nothing else than to look at his sources.

Absolutely none of what you just said is a compelling argument that the Soviet Union was going to invade Germany in 1941. You are correct that no other nation had heavy tanks prior to WWII, but they made up a very small portion of Russia’s tank fleet and very few crew had been trained to operate them. I’m not sure what bearing amphibious tanks has on the discussion, but a cool factoid nonetheless. You are correct that the disparity in raw numbers was massively in favour of the Soviet side, but again this is not compelling evidence the Soviet Union was going to invade. The BT7 and T-26 series tanks were in an utterly horrific state of disrepair. Many of them had severe technical failures on the march, so bad that a great deal of them never made it to the battlefield. Their maintenance problems, along with poor leadership at every level in the Red Army, ensured that the Wehrmacht came out on top in most of the armored engagements that went down in '41. What’s more, both the BT-7 and T-26 were being phased out for the T-34 and KV-1, but this gradual replacement program was in its infancy when the Germans invaded and many Soviet tankers had little to no experience in these new vehicles. There’s just no way Stalin was planning an invasion in the middle of such a gargantuan effort to reorganize and reequip the Red Army. I just don’t buy it.

@KurtGodel7:

And he added that Hitler had had no plans to invade, until he’d gotten wind of Stalin’s plan to invade Germany

Right here is where you lost me. I could have maybe bought all the other stuff you’re telling me this Suvorov has written until I got to this sentence. There is no way anyone is going to convince me Stalin had plans to invade Germany around the time Barbarossa occurred, not with the sheer scale of the reorganization the Red Army was going through and certainly not with the gradual phasing out of the obsolete BT7 and T-26 tanks that made up the bulk of the Soviet Union’s tank fleet. It doesn’t make a single iota of sense and makes all of Suvorov’s other claims highly circumspect. I have no doubt Stalin intended to eventually invade Western Europe, but the war he wanted was years away, not weeks as your post suggests.