Well players may decide to call the game early, and I see that happen all the time, but its still a decision made with reference to one of the Capitals.
The Allies might decide to give up the ghost, because Moscow is hopeless, and they can see that its only a matter of time before the Panzers prevail, but they’re still calculating their chances of victory/recovery in terms of the Capital dynamic. Personally I think its bad form to concede prematurely, especially with standard dice, but I don’t hold everyone else to that. For me the endgame is often the most interesting, and anything can happen with a lucky roll, so even if I’m getting ruthlessly spanked I still try to play it out until the outcome is clear. Others might prefer quicker games and that’s cool, but even the people who quit in the first round are still probably thinking about the Capitals when they do so.
When one side gives up early, its almost always because of some logistics issue pertaining to a capital. For example, say the Axis player realizes that he won’t have a shot on Moscow for at least 5 rounds, and he knows that by then it will be totally impregnable. Even though there is no immediate danger of losing Berlin, the Axis may throw in the towel anyway, because even though they haven’t necessarily lost, they also can’t really win.
I think that’s a perfectly understandable decision for the Axis player to make, but it has everything to do with Capital’s falling. We call the game, because one side can’t take their target capital, or because their own capital is indefensible long term.
What I would like to see is a situation more like what Romulus is suggesting, with bonuses or penalties for individual VCs. Turning VCs into mini-capitals, of a sort. They are already indicated on the map, and it would be much easier to explain to the newbie, than many of these National Objectives. Something basic and easy to understand, like a bonus of +3 or +5 ipcs taken from the enemy’s cash reserves, if you take a VC from him. The specifics are of course debatable, but its the principle of giving the VCs some real in game consequences and associations. Otherwise, I really don’t think players will use them to determine Victory. Instead I think they’ll just fall back on the more familiar method of determining Victory based something more tangeable, like how much money you have in the war chest, or the number of units you have bearing down on an enemy capital.
