@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
Here’s what he said about strict neutrals (while this is about Global 1940, 90% of strict neutrals are located on the Europe map, so it mostly applies):
@AndrewAAGamer said in Violate a true neutrals?:
I ran a game recently, where I ended up declaring on the neutrals, as the Allies. The circumstances were as such:
The German counter-attack in Spain got “diced” (only managing to clear the territory but not take it) and they managed to wipe out the UK navy that took Norway – but rather than rebuild it, I had the UK put down factories in Greece, Turkey, Iraq, and (ultimately, the least-needed) Norway. Combined with shipping guys from South Africa directly to Iraq, the constant pipeline was too much, in the end.
It’s interesting how Iraq + Turkey forms a wall, insulating Africa and essentially steering any Axis attack towards India – a dead end in the corner of the board. But I had been funneling enough units into Kazakhstan, that the push into the Caucasus by the Axis never made it into the middle east.
Source: Zero loss British opener - F18 .tsvg
As the file name suggests, I also had no losses on my UK1 turn – which was mostly my standard moves, particularly in Africa and the Med.
(By the end, I was just screwing around and trying to give France territory, as I usually do.)
Some thoughts (sorry it took so long, I’ve been busy over the past month:
I generally agree about the superiority of battleships versus carriers in Europe.
I looked through the game. While your situation was certainly ideal for attacking the strict neutrals, I think you probably would’ve won without it (I’m not saying you implied that, I’m just adding on).
Getting back to the topic of mechanics, I think the politics side of Europe 1940 is pretty broken.
The USSR remains fairly weak (relative to the Germans) until they’re at war, but basically the Germans have full control over when that war starts. To the point, the USSR cannot benefit from any of their N.O.'s unless they are at war… so even if they’re given the full 3 rounds to build up, those are done under the circumstance where they’re the weakest.
Germany doesn’t need 3 turns to mop up France, Yugoslavia, and Greece, so the extra money/units they produce over that time is just gratuitous, relative to what they actually require in order to pound the USSR into dust. The fact that there’s a German N.O. for not being at war with the USSR just adds more fuel to the fire.
Another mechanical complaint I have is around scrambling. From a balance perspective, it seems like something where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; from an actual procedural/gameplay perspective, it also slows down the flow of the game. Everything has to grind to a halt so that the players can decide whether or not to scramble, and how much. I think as a general observation, Axis&Allies needs less of these sort of mechanics; the game greatly benefits when automation can speed up the rate of play, and this kind of thing has the opposite effect.
Like sure, you can put in orders ahead of time, like “only scramble X if Y” but the game doesn’t need that level of fiddly-ness.
It’s probably true that the politics feature heavily favors the Axis. I’m supportive of rebalancing measures that don’t involve bids. Maybe all national objectives (except the Lend-Lease one) should be available before a power is at war? This will massively buff up the US (which isn’t inaccurate given that they already starting building up their military by a huge amount before 1941).
My take is more that the N.O.'s are being used incorrectly in this game, from a design perspective.
For context, I would say that in Revised, they generally do reward you for pathing a certain way (potentially sub-optimal ways) but were generally just a nice bonus – the cherry on top.
In 1940, the entire economic viability of nations such as Italy relies entirely on “off-map” income, whereby (effectively) territories are worth more or less depending on which side controls them… only with more steps. So in addition to being unintuitive, it’s also clunky and poorly implemented.
The German N.O. for “Swedish Iron Ore” feels like nostalgia bait, to anyone who was longing for World At War to make a return. Other A&A versions don’t have this sort of rule, so why is it “”“necessary”“” here?
Basically, I’d like to see a better “minor power” structure, in this sort of game. Rather than buffing Italy to the moon with fake economics, maybe the solution is to just let them attack together, with Germany. (Same with ANZAC – they’re not a real country, and certainly not without eating all the Dutch islands, which won’t ever happen in a “J1 attack” meta.)
Like I said, a country’s entire economic viability shouldn’t be based off of their Objectives, they should be a nice bonus – perhaps even something that pushes things to the brink, once they’re past a tipping point.
Another one I have a problem with is the Soviet objective for taking any German, Pro-Axis, or Italian territory. This effectively doubles the IPC value of capturing those territories, as long as the USSR is the ally who does it. Ok, but why? Is this meant to encourage the other allies to just juice up the USSR and let Italy run roughshod over Africa…? For what reason? If anything, why is this not limited to only German territories?
Like, if US territories just need to be worth double for the US compared to what they’re worth to everyone else, and German territories need to be worth double to the USSR what they are to everyone else…? then just put that in the rules, and maybe print two values on each territory, as needed.
Again, this all just feels like useless chrome.
It’s change for the sake of change, complexity for the sake of complexity – and game balance is completely in the toilet.
Wow. Never heard that before.
I’ve never played any other Axis and Allies game with national objectives.
I think what you wrote can be distilled down to 3 complaints:
On historical accuracy, most Axis and Allies games aren’t too good in this category, and I don’t think they’re particularly egregious in this regard.
The second complaint deserves a longer comment.
I think national objectives should be important to economies. What’s the point of them if they’re all just extra IPCs powers don’t really need? That seems like
complexity for the sake of complexity
to me (it’s why I think the 10 IPC bonus for the Soviets capturing Berlin is pointless-the game’s already over and the German capital is already important enough, why add that to the rules?).
Making them actually crucial to economies more powerfully incentivizes the actions the game wants you to do. I don’t see what’s
@The-Janus said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
unintuitive… also clunky and poorly implemented
about that. I also don’t see why a logical reason why
a country’s entire economic viability shouldn’t be based off of their Objectives
should be a guiding principle in game design.
And I don’t understand why minor powers should be allowed to attack with other powers. What’s the point of them being independent in that case anyway (other than capital-threatening shenanigans)?
I also don’t see what’s wrong with certain territories being worth more to certain powers than others. Sure it’s more complex, but it’s historically true that some territories were worth more to some powers than others. For example, the Dutch East Indies weren’t worth that much to the US or the British/ANZAC-they had more than enough oil. They were absolutely crucial for the Japanese though, since they were their only source of oil.
I also think National Objectives capture an important of the real-world:
Economies of scale (kind of). Some territories are probably worth more together than they are individually. For example, the industry of the US was probably distributed all over the country, mostly depending on local economic conditions, as there was a lot of free trade within the US. Therefore, for American industry to achieve its maximum potential, the Eastern, Central, and Western parts of the lower 48 all need to be controlled by the US, which is why they get a 10 IPC bonus for controlling all 3.
The incentives for avoiding war, while toothless, are good in theory (J1 generally just needs to be much less rewarding).
As for the Swedish iron ore, it’s pretty obvious the desginers were just trying to have Sweden’s role in the game match its historical role. While Global 1940 is still pretty inaccurate, adding that national objective probably made slightly more historically accurate.
And to me at least, double printing territories seems more confusing, not less.
And I don’t think the game’s egregious imbalance is the result of national objectives, but rather the Allies having far too few starting units or the Axis having too many (that, or Soviet territory needing to be worth way more).
None of this is to say the game’s national objectives are perfect. There doesn’t seem to be much of a reason why Egypt is economically worth twice as much as it’s actual value to Germany just because it has a land unit there, for example.
@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
I think what you wrote can be distilled down to 3 complaints:
There’s not much of a historical reason for this.
There’s not much of a game design reason for them.
I think this is where you’re fundamentally misreading me.
I care almost not at all about adding mechanics for historical reasons; if adding historical realism reduces balance, get rid of it.
I think that N.O.'s are a mechanic that imbalances the game – historical or not, is irrelevant. It’s the Occam’s razor approach, that I take. If something isn’t making the game better, find a way to get rid of it. Simplify.
That’s the thing-I don’t think national objectives imbalance the game, especially in the Europe version where the Soviets are almost guaranteed to get 9 IPCs a turn after going to war.
2025-8-5-World-War-II-Europe-1940-2nd-Edition.tsvg
As you can see, the Germans still took Moscow on turn 6 and on their way to Egypt (Italy’s looking in pretty good shape too).
