Mistakes to avoid (Turn 1)

[Protagonist]

UPDATED: Removed mistaken hint.

I wanted to make a list of the really small things that you can avoid forgetting in the first turn that would cost you. When you see the list you will understand the type of things I mean. This is not necessarily a strategic list but rather a procedural list.

GERMANY

1. If you are going to invest in SIGINT, do it before your first battle so you get the benefit of it throughout the turn.

2. Before you attack Western Poland, bring out your Transport to the Baltic Sea first. If you fail, your damaged units from East Prussia will be destroyed without a Factory link. Fail on a Western Poland attack you say! Well, it is hard to do, but you will want the Transport out there anyway for another reason to be mentioned later.

3. There is no real reason to bring your fighters into the attack on Western Poland. When facing flak, they will choose non-fighters first so you cannot bring fighters for cover (taking fire). Flak can fire at 2 aircraft per flak but only get the +2 bonus when flak outnumber aircraft, not firing capability outnumbers targets. Also, only your flak (if brought in), can fire on the bomber in Western Poland and that bomber will participate in combat if it survives past the Ground vs Air phase.

4. Make sure you have at least 1 Transport in the Baltic Sea at the end of your turn or you will not get Free Trade from Norway (if applicable), Sweden, or Finland. You do not need a Transport in Kattegat to get Free Trade from Norway, or Gulf of Finland to get Free Trade from Finland. It will all flow through Sweden if you have one in the Baltic Sea.

5. Repair the factory in Western Poland to get its use next turn. With Free Trade and the slight surplus, it is up to you whether you want to repair the resources now.

6. Move your tanks back to Eastern Germany using their second move after the battle in Western Poland if you used them there. This way they are available immediately to threaten The Low Countries, Eastern France, and defend Denmark if you took it, along with the tank built in Czechoslovakia.

7. Leave 1 supply within 1 region of Western Poland to be used up for Partisan activity.

8. If you took Denmark, Artillery, Tactical or Heavy Bombers, and AA are options to help protect it from invasion and also protect the inland waterway.

9. One early way to try and get your Heavy Fleet Veteran status is to use it on the Western Poland attack for bombardment. This also lessens casualties for the cost of 1 supply.

10. Your lone Veteran sub is heartier than you think and using it now gives it the best chance to get to Elite.



JAPAN

1. Use the supplies on the outlying islands without transport access for SIGINT/Spies/Security.

2. If you take Foochow, repair the Resource to get its use next turn.

3. You have to move a transport into the Gulf of Siam to get a chance to try to make a trade deal with Siam in the Political Status screen (5/9 chance of success).

4. Assuming you only attack one region deep with your Carrier Airgroups, use the remaining movement point to rebase on land. Remember to right click on the CA and unattach it from the CV. You can move a CV, launch the CA, have it return, move the CV, and launch again if there are remaining movement points. So you can choose whichever region you would like to base them in. The reason you may want to do this is to save supply in moving the CV next turn to get the CA in position to attack (and in the following turns maybe). It costs supply for the CV to move and supply for the CA to launch. Japan needs its supply.

5. With 10 SIGINT, Japanese units will get the SIGINT bonus 70% of the time over Chinese units (at the default Chinese security of 5). Remember to always invest in SIGINT before your battles.

6. A successful, almost always no casualty attack on Foochow includes the following:

3 CA
1 Fighter
1 Heavy Bomber
2 Veteran Infantry
2 Infantry
1 Airborne
1 Artillery
4 Heavy Fleet (bombardment)

Adjust to taste. 1-3 Veterans depending on luck.

7. When attacking Luichow (admittedly Turn 2), take out the rail first to remove the -2 penalty. If you have the SIGINT bonus, that negates the rough region penalty.



*****My biggest tip - Indirect attacks, or bombardment have their bonuses or penalties doubled. So in the above case of attacking Luichow with its rough, rail status, a -3 becomes a -6 before dice adjustment. On the other hand, if you can somehow turn that positive (say with Veteran status), you double that positive number. That is a big turnaround.

A lot of this is stuff everyone knows but some of it you have to make the mistake first to know (as in having a Transport in Baltic Sea when I made an Airfield Attack and I had the bomber from East Prussia damaged). I have so far only been playing Axis so if you guys can add Allied mistakes, that would be great.

[MrQuiet]

JAPAN

1. Move your transports only using free movement where possible. Transports take supply to move now. 1 supply to move up to 5 spaces and 2 supply for more. Pay attention to the order of movement.

I do not think that is correct. The rest of it looks good though.

-MrQuiet

[JanSorensen]

Transporters are definitely not intended to use supply. If they do its a bug.

[Protagonist]

Yes, I was told this by someone else I was corresponding with (that they don't use supply).

Here is where I was misled:

12.4.2 SEA UNITS
A surface Fleet unit (Heavy Fleet, Carrier Fleet, Light Fleet, or Transport Fleet), is allowed to move up to five Movement Points and will only spend one Supply Point.

However, if a surface fleet Fleet moves further it will expend additional Supply Points as described in 7.1.6

From pp. 123-124.

Note: 7.1.6 does not mention Transport Fleets. Yes, Transports do not use supply for either normal or extended movement (I just checked in game). I will remove it from the list. The next version of the manual should remove Transport Fleet from 12.4.2 though.

[christian brown]

Russian Mistakes to avoid:

Repair the rail in Eastern Poland before you invest in Spies/Sigint/Intel, forgetting to do so may leave you without the ability to make a move here with your infantry..

The same goes for supplying China, move the supply adjacent to China first (and don´t forget it´s there!)

Western Allied Mistakes:

Keep a minimum of 25 supply available for turn 2 in case the Germans attack the Low Countries and leave Western Germany vulnerable to a counterattack, without supply to do anything about it, the German gets free reign (for free!)

Keep a minimum of 2 RPs unspent on turn one in order to start increasing your ASW attributes for LFs and one other unit type.

[Rabbitman]

Sorry I offended Gkar.

[GKar]

ORIGINAL: Rabbitman

Never boast about how you are going to kick someone's arse in a multiplayer game, when they are much better than you are.

I learned the hard way................

So what? This thread is not about surprise strategies, it's about sparing the one or other mistake in the first turn(s).

[rjh1971]

Tip on taking Foochow.

Attack as many times as possible only with 1 air unit and one naval unit, this way you load the chinese with suppresion, when finished with the naval and aerial bombarments bring in the infantry supported with artillery, luckily you have damaged destroyed some chinese units. [;)]

[Timmeh]

ORIGINAL: rjh1971

Tip on taking Foochow.

Attack as many times as possible only with 1 air unit and one naval unit, this way you load the chinese with suppresion, when finished with the naval and aerial bombarments bring in the infantry supported with artillery, luckily you have damaged destroyed some chinese units. [;)]

yeah, thats my approach. but I'm finding the results are started to blur as to where the advantage lies if you just go altogether at once? Both attack styles are equally capable of glory or doom it seems.

[christian brown]

Well, taking Foochow on turn 1 seems pretty basic at this point, though a rather serious supply investment is required (and you also let go of the opportunity to trap the Chinese in Liuchow by hitting rail and leaving them the option of using precious supply to move out.)  Hitting Foochow 1 at a time with air supported by heavies is certainly easily enough done, but it does just as well to use your LFs (and give them the opporunity to go vet/elite with lucky kills for later anti-sub campaigns.)  Don´t forget that you can always amphib it after at least with the Para on Formosa, that´s 2 extra warships in support!

[templeton]

Interesting about multiple attacks with single units supported by air...

Is this is a good idea elsewhere? I've always spent ages building up a huge attack stack, and usually striking on turn 2... but I guess if the Chinese are loaded up with supression, that helps with subsequent attacks.

What are the Japense losses like?


Is it worth taking too much of China, due to the huge garrison requirements...?

[Protagonist]

I used to use the one air unit + one naval unit strategy with the different bombardment rules in WaW because in that case the Naval unit always attacked the damaged unit (or got the attacked unit bonus for attack if only one air unit).

In this case, remember that the best case scenario is damage instead of destroy, which does not matter for Militia, but does matter for Infantry. If you go for a full attack with all planes and nice amphibious invasion, as well as land invasion, and bombardment, you get a similar benefit, take out all the same units (max out at 4 naval units involved usually though), and have a chance to destroy instead of just damage the Infantry, as well as taking the territory. Suppression has a cap for dice modifiers (when they fire back at you).

Taking out the rail on the other hand is an interesting tactic since taking Foochow is a foregone conclusion and taking out rail is also the best way bar none of getting your Carrier Airgroups Veteran and Elite status. The garrison requirements aren't usually the problem in taking China but rather it is the supply requirements as well as inability to move units out towards where you want them (against Russia/WA and back in to fort up against China in an easy manner because of lack of internal infrastructure). This lack of internal infrastructure also seems to hurt China. The infrastructure has changed from WaW to WaW:AWD.

[rjh1971]

Original: Templeton

Is it worth taking too much of China, due to the huge garrison requirements...?

IMHO, in the early stages of the game, definitely not for several reasons:

First, as you said, you have to garrison those new territories not only with units but also you also got to have them supplied.

Second, everytime you conquer a Chinese region USA WR increases randomly by 1 or 2

Third, once you conquer a Chinese inland region you loose the 5 resources points given by the USA. you will eventually stop receiving them by summer 41 but is it worth it to loose them before that date.

Fourth, better to reduce China's economy and railway to stoneage and then go for it.

Also keep in mind that an all attack to China requires huge amounts of supplies and that chinese militia is created automatically, it would be best to have the jap infantry evasion upgraded to lessen cassualties, when you go for it be sure you're going to succeed otherwise you might be opening a can of worms.

When should you try an inland invasion?, imo when you're close to AV, those 3 points are like honey to flies, and also if you're trying to go for India by ground and not amphibiously. Nonetheless if you feel you can tame China, don't let the chance slip away and hit her hard when you do.

[pap1723]

Also, if you do not hit China early, be sure to keep decent troops in the already occupied lands. I have found that when I pull some troops out of China to make an assault into India, the Chinese have more than enough units to take over at least 1 of the provinces taken from them earlier. This can cut off the supply and resources from India and can essentially lose you the game.

[christian brown]

Original: Protaganist
In this case, remember that the best case scenario is damage instead of destroy, which does not matter for Militia, but does matter for Infantry. If you go for a full attack with all planes and nice amphibious invasion, as well as land invasion, and bombardment, you get a similar benefit, take out all the same units (max out at 4 naval units involved usually though), and have a chance to destroy instead of just damage the Infantry, as well as taking the territory. Suppression has a cap for dice modifiers (when they fire back at you)

Well, I beg to differ:
1) If you bomb the cr*p out of the Chinese factories (remember to start increasing HB LA on turn 1) the damaged units will never reappear (unless the Russian is happy to part with supply, which is far from certain, and even then if the Nihonzin/Nihongin damage the factories on the production turn, all is lost anyway.)
2) A damage is just as good as a kill as far as exp level goes....
3) Friendly Casualties can be kept to zero using this tactic and the 1 RP gained by turn 2 pays for 5 supply....a nice offset, especially when you consider that the Nihon naval forces will already have been moved in place for a cheap supply run for turn 1 of the DEI takeover......move them just South of Foochow, it costs the same!

PS: Never penetrate inland in China unless:
1) You have already lost the US gift
2) You are specifically going for the SPs in China
3) You are using the no PH/DEI strat on purpose.....

"Irashai, rashai, rashai"  to those who disagree....

[christian brown]

Japan:
turn 1 mistake: Failing to repair the resource in Foochow on turn one (this can actually happen through thoughtlessness/overemphasis on amphib ops using faraway troops.)
Be sure to move in the garrison supply requirement throughout China and an additional 10 supply before shifting TFs.....
Remember that you also must have 1 TF sitting of Siam in the Gulf of Tonkin in order to reap the potential RP there....
Easily said, slightly tricky to get down pat...

[christian brown]

Keep a minimum of 25 supply available for turn 2 in case the Germans attack the Low Countries and leave Western Germany vulnerable to a counterattack, without supply to do anything about it, the German gets free reign (for free!)

Keep a minimum of 2 RPs unspent on turn one in order to start increasing your ASW attributes for LFs and one other unit type.

This really ought to be added to the top, it appears EVERY smart German player goes for TLC in Fall......also, the hazards of not increasing ASW capability against the Germans is too dangerous to tempt.......

[Forwarn45]

ORIGINAL: christian brown
it appears EVERY smart German player goes for TLC in Fall......

I'm not convinced of this. I think there are some advantages to waiting until Winter - depending on Allied deployment.

[GKar]

ORIGINAL: Forwarn45

ORIGINAL: christian brown
it appears EVERY smart German player goes for TLC in Fall......

I'm not convinced of this. I think there are some advantages to waiting until Winter - depending on Allied deployment.

Agreed. Waiting until Winter to attack TLC will give you the winter defense bonus in case of an Allied counterattack on Germany. I tried that once and failed utterly - note to self: Never forget auto-militias popping up.

[christian brown]

What the F are you guys talking about?
Where is the disadvantage?  Taking out Francde in Winter robs them of:
5 PPs
and leaves them open to a grab of E france which (I do not need to tell you) is totally to the advantage of Germany (early attacks on Yugo, activation of Italy; etc..)