"East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion

[RogerCooper]

@The-Janus said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
Have you considered the knock-on effects of changing those mechanics?
Would you want China and OAS to become active powers?
Or would they just swing all their income, units, and territories to USSR/USA in one dice roll?

I was assuming they would become active powers on their own. But that is not the only possibility. You could have them join the power recruiting them.

The problem with E&W rules for neutrals is that they are just passive sources of income, that can also be attacked. That is not very interesting.

We could also try eliminating major neutrals entirely. The major neutrals could be handled like minor neutrals and recruited through technology or events. That is arguably more realistic and probably more interesting with wars breaking out in unexpected places.

[The Janus]

@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

The problem with E&W rules for neutrals is that they are just passive sources of income, that can also be attacked. That is not very interesting.

I think you’d just be swapping one problem for another, because making them function in more “interesting” ways would throw the game balance completely out the window. Also, the USSR can attack any neutrals at any time, but NATO can only attack major neutrals, and only if they are providing their full income to the USSR. So generally speaking there isn’t a military solution to the passive income provided by major neutrals.

Without getting long-winded about it, China basically serves as a buffer for the USSR, keeping the US and UK to the perimeter; if the Americans could just land anywhere along the Pacific coast of Asia, that’s a whole different ball-game – and not in a way that’s good for the USSR.

The other function of major neutrals is to prevent the game from being bogged down with roughly double the number of minor neutrals on the map. Having them function as a bloc and then tying them into things like nuclear complications, controlling the Suez Canal, and North Korea rules are what make the system really shine. This also circles back to the rule allowing the USSR to attack neutrals; there’s more of a downside if attacking Iraq means that Syria, Jordan, et al. also turn against you. If you get rid of the Arab League as a major neutral, I imagine the USSR would start gobbling up the middle east piecemeal in probably every game. (And I have to imagine the major neutral mechanic is an outgrowth of the original designers having tested these kinds of strategies, and found them to break the game.)

If you wanna rebalance the game around an “active China” paradigm, be my guest – but depending on things like turn order, they either get dogpiled, or they win the entire continent pretty early on. These are the types of bog-standard house rules that people immediately tried once they got their hands on the game 25 odd years ago, and couldn’t get to work. I remember those discussions, trust me.

E&W is much more about ‘politics’ mechanics than any other A&A game, full stop, and basically the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If you swap out one mechanic for something you think is more interesting, that doesn’t immediately mean it’ll be better or that the game will even still function properly from a balance perspective. Trying to reinvent the China rules is probably the biggest hornet’s nest you could kick, and it’s not much less perilous to mess around with how the Arab League works, either.

Honestly, if you feel the need to strip things down, but maintain the flavour of it, I can definitely give you some suggestions in that regard – I’ve written an E&W scenario for Risk. But I’d lean more towards major neutrals not having any mechanics for getting active, than to add mechanics making that easier to do.

[RogerCooper]

@The-Janus So is there any plausible reason to attack a major neutral except maybe USSR attacking the Arab league? It sounds like there isn’t . Which is easy enough to handle in a scenario.

It seems a shame to have deployments defined for major neutrals, and not get to use them.

As always, I can have multiple scenarios which handle the major neutrals differently.

[RogerCooper]

@RogerCooper After reviewing maps, I concluded that the East & West map is closest to the TripleA Big World map, so I will implement it first on Big World and then use the actual map.

In terms of neutral handling I see the following possibilties

• Major neutrals impassable except that Russia may attack the Arab League.

• Major neutrals are fully playable and can be allied through the diplomacy technology table.

• Major neutrals can be allied through the diplomacy technology table and are absorbed into the allying power. They are impassable until then.

[The Janus]

@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

is there any plausible reason to attack a major neutral except maybe USSR attacking the Arab league?

It’s kinda been theorized that USSR might want to attack China, in certain situations.

If China isn’t defending North Korea, or worse, if they’re actively letting NATO move units through their territory, the USSR might be better off attacking.
The other thing is that the complication table is weighted more toward China’s outrage than the other 2 majors, so if the USSR has the ability to send nukes, it’s also generally assumed that they will, whereas the US is less likely to use them; in a long enough game, that will swing China towards favoring NATO, so the USSR might pre-empt that at some point.

The other option is as a game-ender, towards obtaining an economic victory. In fact, such a thing is probably pretty impossible without invading most of the neutrals on the Eurasian continent.

P.S. I still think modeling neutral contributions as N.O.'s is an option to keep in mind

[RogerCooper]

@The-Janus said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

is there any plausible reason to attack a major neutral except maybe USSR attacking the Arab league?

It’s kinda been theorized that USSR might want to attack China, in certain situations.

If China isn’t defending North Korea, or worse, if they’re actively letting NATO move units through their territory, the USSR might be better off attacking.
The other thing is that the complication table is weighted more toward China’s outrage than the other 2 majors, so if the USSR has the ability to send nukes, it’s also generally assumed that they will, whereas the US is less likely to use them; in a long enough game, that will swing China towards favoring NATO, so the USSR might pre-empt that at some point.

The other option is as a game-ender, towards obtaining an economic victory. In fact, such a thing is probably pretty impossible without invading most of the neutrals on the Eurasian continent.

P.S. I still think modeling neutral contributions as N.O.'s is an option to keep in mind

Implementing the complication table would be difficult. The game rules already suggest dropping the complication table as an optional rule. Note that it would be possible to use having a nuclear weapon as trigger but not using a nuclear weapon. I think that in practice the high cost of nuclear weapons is more of a deterrent than the nuclear complication rules.

Using National Objectives for neutral contributions is fine.

[RogerCooper]

@RogerCooper East & West has a rule that allows tanks to move out of a territory in non-combat movement. As TripleA does not support this, should I just ignore it or increase the defense of tanks to 3 in compensation?

[The_Good_Captain]

@RogerCooper if the fighter rules can’t be changed to allow tanks to “land” in recently captured territories, I would still not change the defense value. Players can/should just use the EDIT mode in these cases.

My two cents.

[barnee]

@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

if the fighter rules can’t be changed to allow tanks to “land” in recently captured territories,

Hi Good Captain

Not sure what you mean here. Tanks can move in ncm to newly conquered TTys if they didn’t take part in combat.

But yea, edit better than hardwiring it imo as well. It becomes second nature once you start using it.

A map option to turn on or off with the tank boost can also work.

[The_Good_Captain]

@barnee In this version of Axis and Allies, tanks that fought in combat can move out of the territory during the noncombat movement phase if they have movement remaining, just like a fighter. They can also stay in the territory they just fought in.

[barnee]

@The_Good_Captain said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

tanks that fought in combat can move out of the territory during the noncombat movement phase if they have movement remaining, just like a fighter.

This would be a good Feature request. Seems as if it might not be too hard to do. Idk. My understanding of java is almost zero.

Anyway, can make a request with a git issue if you’d like.

https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea/issues

[The_Good_Captain]

@barnee I don’t think there is anyone left there to do the work even if they were interested enough to do it. That’s been my experience anyway. Sorta backed up by panther as well. Roger doing whatever he is doing for East & West right now is a random miracle imo.

[barnee]

@The_Good_Captain

Been some deveopler activity lately is why I mention it.

[RogerCooper]

@barnee I will use an option on the defense strength of tanks, with a default of 3. I have started working on this for a bit every day. Right now I am adapting everything to the Big_World map. When that is done I will create a custom map for East & West.

[The_Good_Captain]

@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@barnee I will use an option on the defense strength of tanks, with a default of 3. I have started working on this for a bit every day. Right now I am adapting everything to the Big_World map. When that is done I will create a custom map for East & West.

For completeness, there are two tank types: the tank attacks at three and defends at two. The heavy tank attacks at four and defends at three. The soviets start out with access to both tank types.

[The Janus]

@The_Good_Captain I’ve watched your first few videos about A&A: Europe (1999) and your comment about the game being a 6-round affair sort of struck a chord with me.

I think E&W is similar, except that it’s “1d6 rounds” owing mainly to how soon the USSR can get the first nuclear bomb tech. Granted, their economy needs to be strong enough that they can afford to build a bomb while maintaining parity in terms of land units.

The issue is that NATO generally can’t counter-attack anywhere on rd1; if the Soviets spread their Pacific fleet properly, they can insulate Korea as well as Kamchatka. The only place that’s usually left open is Yugoslavia. The adjunct to that is generally the USSR spends all of rd2 attacking neutrals, which NATO can do nothing about; since there is no “Pro-neutral” type of mechanic within the designs, NATO can’t lend support/deterrence to neutrals that are vulnerable to attack (i.e. on the Soviet border.)

If the strongest weapon in NATO’s arsenal is the US attack in the far east (which takes til rd3 to reasonably get new transports involved in a landing) you’re at least halfway along the doomsday countdown by that point.

Even if NATO is splitting their fleets to mitigate the effects of a nuke, I think that having to rebuild, say, 3 transports in the Pacific is more cost-intensive than the USSR having to crank out another nuke – particularly if their income is anywhere in the 70 IPC range. If India is bottled up, you end up in a situation of the UK basically throwing good money after bad, just to maintain the status quo, with no real potential of ever swinging the momentum, from that position. Never mind the costs NATO is going to incur trying to keep up on spying.

I think the Kamchatka landing can absolutely work, but it’s a lot easier if NATO can sway China (hard, if not impossible) and they absolutely need to be pushing past Eastern Siberia within “1d6 rounds.” Otherwise the game just deteriorates until NATO slowly dies to nukes. Even when I’ve had NATO making grand offensives to try and keep the economics of the game from stagnating, they either can’t sustain it because the USSR absorbs and counter-attacks everything, or they’re forced to pivot off of one position to bail out another, and all momentum is lost in the process.

NATO has time in which to gamble, but they don’t have the economic edge in this game – and they have all the drawbacks of the Allies, always needing to build up their logistics chain (and spying!) before they can really even act. They’re on the back foot from the word ‘go’ and they have only a handful of rounds to do something decisive.

[RogerCooper]

@The-Janus I have almost finished, the preliminary version of East & West in TripleA.

The TripleA AI does not make good use of nukes and generally will not buy them. I do see that Russia has an advantage with its cheap infantry and central position.

[The Janus]

@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

The TripleA AI does not make good use of nukes and generally will not buy them. I do see that Russia has an advantage with its cheap infantry and central position.

Not sure how you would code it as such, but the Soviets should view the nuke as an anti-ship weapon; never mind just raw “TUV swing” numbers, but taking out 5 transports is way more valuable than only taking out 5 infantry.

As for the infantry cost and such, the start of rd2 typically should have the cash on hand as something like:

• USSR: 65 = 32 inf
• WE: 21 = 7 inf
• UK: 33 = 11 inf
• US: 41 = 13 inf

So already, the Soviets are ahead of the allies by 1 infantry – but that’s not taking into account that the US likely needs to put down about 4-5 new transports at the start of the game, as well as up to 3 spies for the NATO alliance, and as many as 3 more transports for the UK.

The rd1 attacks should more or less even out the units on the board (if it’s implemented in TripleA we can get an accurate accounting of TUV, but even a mock-up of the typical battle results would likely bare this out) so from rd2 onward, the USSR should be edging ahead. It isn’t even really advantageous for NATO to attack (in most cases) because unless they can take out planes or armor, or guarantee an infantry kill ratio of 3:2 or better, they’re just spinning their tires and likely weakening themselves in the overall calculus of the game.

In rd2, the USSR typically builds on their lead by taking Iran and Sweden, with Finland, Pakistan, often Afghanistan (and Switzerland, depending on the circumstances) falling in rd3. In that time, NATO might be able to counter-attack a weak West Germany position, and the US might start to land in Asia. But the alliance is most definitely behind the 8-ball from the outset.

[The_Good_Captain]

@RogerCooper I forgot there even was an option for AI in TripleA. I think you’re doing the lords work just to make the TripleA align with the rules. WELL DONE @RogerCooper

[The_Good_Captain]

@The-Janus I agree with about 80% of this. The rhythm and flow sound right. Where I disagree is that I think the game is significantly NATO favored pending a fairly extreme result in the spying/tech arena (which doesn’t have such cataclysmic outcomes as tech in Anniversary/Global - a plus imo). The Soviets have to really make gains early with tech/spying or the USA comes through the back door. In my experience, WE and UK can reasonably expect to hold down the fort and USA can reasonably be expected to kick in the back door via Kamchatka.

When NATO buys a nuke, the opportunity cost is 6 infantry and two IPC. When the Soviets buy a nuke, the opportunity cost is 10 infantry - that hurts. Also, if NATO is playing (imo) efficiently - they can shrug off the first nuke and lose five naval units with almost no disruption or replacements needed (losing subs, cruisers or WE transport - fodder units). To rinse and repeat as the soviets (20 infantry total now) is crippling.

I still feel this game is so solid and on point that it deserves to be considered canon and the Axis and Allies answer to a cold war variant.