Possible to win without FTRs?

[JanSorensen]

I am wondering - would it be possible to win the game without producing a single FTR (nor CAG) as Germany? This includes not repairing the ones you start out with if they get damaged.

Say
- Arsenal of Democracy scenario
- Challenging AI level
- AI controls Japan and all the Allies.
- No production of FTR/CAG not even repairing damaged ones.
- You must decline Spain joining (in particular till the patch fixes the Spanish coup issue)

Could you still achieve victory as Germany - and how? Conjecture is welcome but actually going ahead and proving its possible is obviously more impressive.

[christian brown]

I tried this one day but forgot to set it to Arsenal of Democracy so it probably does not count.
Interestingly enough, the WA did not bomb me to smithers, perhaps this is because I had 4-6 flaks in all regions within range of their HBs (plus I kept them busy chasing copious subs around the Atlantic.)  I had 79 VPs for quite a few turns yet AV did not kick in[&:], I wound up winning a time Victory in Fall 1946-the Allies had still not touched either Japan nor I, in fact Russia was still scrambling to defend Moscow.
Anyway, clearly I spent a lot on flak but aso really beefed up the TACair, to the point where I cold make strikes against fighter defended regions. I think they were at speed 4, EV8, AA5 and LA 8 by the time the game ended.  It appeared that the AI simply did not capitalize on this weakness....

[MrLongleg]

My impression is, that the AI is quite weak anyway. It is not aggressive enough and does not exploit mistakes in a sufficientg way. That is why I stopped playing against the AI. In one game the AI even gave up Gibraltar without any visible reason.
 
On the other hand I must admit, that it is quite a challenge to write a good AI for a game of this complexity level. I am living from software development and I think that you problably would need something like a very flexible rule engine. The rules should be scriptable so that you could experiment with different rule sets.
 
 

[GKar]

Yes, the AI is good for learning the game basics, but once you played a few PBEMs you wonder how it could ever have posed a problem. Quite usual for games with this complexity though...

[JanSorensen]

Ahh, a couple of replies after a while. I played the game without FTRs myself and won by AV in early 1943. Its very doable.