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.