Great New Tactic as Axis (by Louis)

[julyderek]

Hi,

I am playing Louis (Axis). While I was busy defending Belgium & Holland against his Axis armies, and was getting very happy holding out both countries turn after turn, Louis was merrily destroying the UK Navy ship-by-ship till the proud English Navy was in tatters.

Louis has yet to take Belgium & France and will probably do it by the end of 1940 or if I am lucky, a bit later, but my problem is that the Allies have no Navy anymore !!

What do you think of this (I think) brilliant tactics? How do the Allies counter this ? Not only will his Navy prevent the Allies from landings on the continent or North Africa but he will destroy all the convoys !

Derek

[KingHunter3059]

Derek - You may be in a spot of trouble, or not. You can still overwhelm him. He cannot continue to build only subs, if he does then he will be weak somewhere else.

Jay

[jjdenver]

Ah well I personally am very conservative about sailing the British navy to defend the continent in 1940. On rare occasion I might sail a single BB to do shore bombardment but usually I leave that to the French navy. if the Germans spend oil, air missions, and air steps to bomb the French navy I'm fine w/ that.

[OzHawkeye2]

I'm with JJ. If the Krauts can take out the RN early on, then the Battle of the Atlantic almost defaults in their favour and that's a huge blow to the UK, at a minimum preventing them from helping in much of any way in Overlord (thus significantly delaying any hope of it) or at worse, leading to the Germans successfully carrying out Operation Sealion.

In this game, the French are entirely expendable, with no real hope (under almost all normal circumstances) of surviving, so it's their Navy that goes into harms way early on. I use the RN to re-act if I think I can profitably do so, but usually beyond that it's on home defense.

[julyderek]

Derek - You may be in a spot of trouble, or not. You can still overwhelm him. He cannot continue to build only subs, if he does then he will be weak somewhere else.

Jay

Not many subs. He used Aircraft and Units on shore to destroy my ships which were adjacent to the shore-line.

He has a massive advantage with the Atlantic being now entirely under his control and also the Mediterranean Sea. I think its a winning strategy. Lets see what I can conjure up against this.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

I have never seen this happening in the BJR-mod. A house rule in the mod means that ships in port are safe from naval attacks (except one sub attack per turn) and max 2 air attacks per turn. If the British place their navy in ports outside of German air range then only one sub per turn can attack each naval unit.
Sub attacks vs ports often means that the subs take almost the same amount of losses. So it usually happens to finish off very depleted ships.

Since the navy is a bit vulnerable early in the war and the convoys are rather small then it can be a good idea to not send the escorts out into the Atlantic as sub hunters. Keep the fleet in port to protect against Sealion.

So if the entire Royal Navy is eliminated in 1940 then I expect the Allied player "helped" to make it happening by trying to kill subs in areas within range of the Axis airforce. As a rule of thumb you never move the Royal Navy within range of the Luftwaffe unless it's absolutely vital (e. g. to stop Sealion).

If the Germans build a lot of subs instead of taking out France then they will probably have big problems with France. Garrisons cost only 15 PP's and it means France can place a lot of garrisons in France before the Germans are ready to move towards Paris. A late 1940 conquest of France is probably the earliest time. Then it's winter and you can't invade Britain until March 1941. That means you can't use your naval superiority to capture Britain. Barbarossa will be much weaker as well.

It's more usual to see subs strike at British CV's to sink THEM (but not the entire Royal Navy). Losing CV's hurt a lot for the British and that's a more realistic target. This is why I always protect my CV's better than convoys when I send the Royal Navy to sea.My CV's are always inside a screen of BB's and DD's.

Losing the Royal Navy is less of a problem than losing Britain for the British player. You can easily recover from that problem by building many new DD's. BB's and CV's can come a bit later. They're rather cheap and you can challenge the subs again.