I found the key to beating this level was tenacity.. you really gotta take bonuses and wear down the AI armies while slowly expanding. Some points I was letting huge armies wreak havoc across my "land" without even trying to stop them so I could secure other bonuses or take theirs
I beat it by expanding as fast as possible in every possible direction each turn. I made special effort to cut off computer bonuses, and tried to assist my ally in doing the same.
I concur, level 4 wasn't very hard, but the levels aren't supposed to be. I found having an AI ally the most difficult part of the setup. The challenges, now those were made hard for a reason.
I eventually beat level 4 in 34 turns, but it took me about 8 tries.
As Emperor B pointed out, the key is to throw LOTS of armies at your ally to keep him from getting blown out. I sent ALL of my reinforcements for the first 3-4 turns from Scotland to Norway so my ally could repel the inevitable invasion from Denmark, and then sent the first 200 airlift reinforcements to support him in places where he was getting into trouble (but not hopelessly outnumbered). My own expansion was calculated to grab France and Germany as quickly as possible, then to expand broadly with an emphasis on denying the enemy reinforcements by taking bits of regions as quickly as possible.
And this is probably obvious, but don't waste time conquering worthless territories (Spain, Italy, etc.) until you've secured the good ones and are in mop-up mode.
Hmm. I tried this again and (after two false starts) won in 26 turns. I hadn't previously realized that AI allies will forgive any transgression. Abuse them as you see fit.
The key is first taking bonuses away from the enemy and second bolstering your own income. The key to using you ally Is reinforcing him (airlift mostly) such that the computer AI can't control bonuses. If your AI partner were smart he would try to keep bonuses too, but alas, he cannot. Of course, you do need to secure yourself with a decent income before worrying about taking away too many enemy bonuses. The wildcard is that the enemy AI does choose to try to attack or defend its territory in different places if you play the map more than once (I was in mop up and accidentally hit the back button on my mouse, so I had to restart the level once).
I've only done it once, but manage to win in 29 turns. I went the way of Potato on this one as well. I reinforced my ally a bit, but used all the bonus armies for myself. I took a large counter-clockwise loop around the map. Spain and Portugal are actually good bonuses to take since they are pretty easy to defend and fairly quick to conquer. I used my bonus armies to head off any large armies the opponent was throwing down and looped around through Italy before pushing through the heart Germany. The middle countries on this map can be hard to hold a bonus in until you have a solid amount of armies, which is why I avoided them until I had a good amount of reinforcements coming every turn.
Got it in 19 after a couple dozen retries and with a good bit of luck. Used a wall of about 10 against the enemy AI, and airlifted a wall in front of their massive armies when it was obvious where they would move. Captured France, Spanish peninsula, then spearheaded into the rest reinforcing and expanding behind.
I noticed the card distribution and airlifted armies increased about a month ago, but I wish they hadn't.
Good luck.
Mor has a record of 15 turns for level 4.
http://www.warlight.net/Profile.aspx?p=87496906 He tends to replay the levels/challenges until he has a low score. He usually manages to get the record for each.
i'm with the original post, i've tried a dozen different ways to beat this one and i can't figure it out. Are you supposed to just airlift your whole army to the russians? i can't take france because i'm only resupplied 13 armies compared to the germans getting what, 50? 60? each turn? i don't get this level because there seems to be no way to counter their advantage in resupply, they mass significantly larger armies in france then we're given to start the game. i get to the shore of the Mediterranean and then the germans have 80 armies on corsicia? i don't see how wining in 20-something tries is feasible. Any strategies, aside from 'take france first' because i can't do that either...
I found it fairly easy, but I did fail my first two tries for two specific reasons before I beat it on my 3rd try. The first try I failed miserably because I didn't notice that in relation to the Europe map the bonuses are all custom. Look at the values of the bonuses and you will see the relevant ones and others made mostly irrelevant as far as income goes. The second time I failed because I gave no armies to my ally because the AI's are generally stupid, although as I quickly realized not useless in this case.
I think the important thing to realize is that you start with a stack of armies and an income advantage. Whenever that is the case it's usually best to be very aggressive and take advantage of your army stacks before the opponent is able to catch up with their higher income.
I think with those tips you should find it easier.
