Argo's Strategic Map

Flashman

I dislike the use of titles such as Tobruk rather than Cyrenaica; be consistant with regional names. Only capitals and/or Victory cities should be named for a town.

The 1914 map is a real hotchpotch of city and regional names, mainly because they just copied the layout of Diplomacy rather than designing the map from scratch.

Argothair

Very interesting discussion on this thread – nice to have so many serious historians and cartographers!

Black_Elk, do you think my map would be significantly more appealing if I used the base tiles you most recently provided? I agree that it’s more geographically accurate, but I worry that players who are primarily familiar with A&A (and much less so with actual politics) would have difficulty recognizing some of the regions. I also am not confident of my ability to draw sea zones intelligently across the whole map – I’ve tried that before at home, and failed, even by my own standards.

CWO_Marc, what are some key changes you would make to help push back against cartographic determinism? I’m very interested in giving players as many plausible options as possible to take the war in different directions, rather than just mechanically reproducing minor variations on the historical conflicts. What territories need to be expanded (or collapsed) in order to make that happen?

Flashman, I like your labelling suggestions for Tripolitania and Indochina, and will switch them on the next draft. Do you know of another name for the area to the east of Leningrad that would be both recognizable and more accurate than “Karelia”? I’m also cautiously interested in your refactoring of India – my concern is that by splitting it up into 3 territories, you would deprive the British of a meaningful base / factory / center of operations in central Asia. We could increase New Delhi’s production to $2, but even then, the rich territory no longer borders the Indian Ocean, which stops the British from laying down ships in India – not fun for strategic game play. As a final thought, have you considered designing your own map? You always seem to have crisp illustrations ready to support your ideas – I bet if you designed a map, people would have a lot of interest in it.

CWO Marc

@Argothair:

CWO_Marc, what are some key changes you would make to help push back against cartographic determinism? I’m very interested in giving players as many plausible options as possible to take the war in different directions, rather than just mechanically reproducing minor variations on the historical conflicts. What territories need to be expanded (or collapsed) in order to make that happen?

That’s a hard question to answer because it’s not only an issue of territory sizes on the map; it also ties into other aspects of the game, such as the IPC value of territories, the political rules which govern who can go to war against whom under what circumstances, and the even larger question of victory conditions. All of these factors tend to channel the actions of the players. To mention just one example: the rules governing strict neutrals in the A&A 1940 rules are evidently meant to pressure players into staying away from the countries that remained neutral in WWII without putting an outright prohibition on invading them. The result is that players are essentially told, “yes, you can invade a strict neutral…but you’ll have to pay a stiff price for doing so,” which is a de facto restriction of their freedom of action even though it’s not a de jure one.

One way to approach this issue is from the opposite direction: by asking “Why would a player want to attack Territory X as opposed to Territory Y?”, regardless of whether one or the other was actually the site of a major historical WWII campaign. In purely abstract terms, it would be because the map and the rules and the disposition of the opposing forces on the board lead the player to conclude that it would be advantageous for him to do so – meaning that it would help advance him towards his goal of fulfilling the game’s victory conditions (whatever those happen to be), at an acceptable cost to him in casualties. So in a sense it’s a circular argument: if the goal of a player is to achieve certain victory conditions on a certain map, he will tend to do the things which the rules and the map encourage him to do. Freedom of action is, after all, a means to an end, not an end in itself; players (if they care about winning) don’t invade a particular country just for the fun of it, without giving any consideration to whether it has any value or not. To pick a deliberately extreme example: under the rules, the Soviet Union could put together a naval task force and try to launch an amphibious invasion of Peru; such a campaign would be perfectly legal, but it would be a colossal waste of time and resources, and the USSR would gain no benefits from it even if it succeeded.

In a sense, “cartographic determinism” isn’t pointless and isn’t really a bad thing because A&A does have a historical context which is an important part of the game’s appeal: the Second World War. (If A&A was set on a fictitious planet with a fictitious history, I’d personally have no interest in it no matter what the map looked like.) The A&A map and the rules should not be a straightjacket which only allow the war to be fought one way (otherwise there would be no point in playing because the game would always turn out the same), but by the same token the map and the rules should not be so open-ended that the game ends up having little or no resemblance to WWII. Most A&A players have at least a basic familiarity with the historical of WWII, and quite a few of them are outright history buffs, so it’s impossible for them to look at the A&A map without being influenced by their knowledge of what transpired at such-and-such a location. For example, the map territories of Egypt and Volgograd both have an IPC value of 2, and both contain an Allied victory city, so technically they’re equivalent…but the phrase “Cairo in WWII” does not (and should not) carry at all the same emotional weight as the phrase “Stalingrad in WWII.” So in my opinion, the right balance to try to achieve with alternate maps and alternate rules is to allow players to have fun with history while still staying recognizably within history.

Argothair

That’s my goal too! Very well put, CWO_Marc. I want “to allow players to have fun with history while still staying recognizably within history.”

One challenge I’m running into along the way is the trade-off between (1) bringing interesting detail to large territories, and (2) leaving large territories big enough to be significant.

A perfect example is India. It barely makes sense to refer to “India” in the 1940s – the subcontinent was a complicated mess of different ethnicities, languages, provinces, loyalties, and climates. India was enormous. The idea of tanks blitzing from Persia through India to Burma is a little ridiculous; there’s umpteen mountain ranges and jungles and deserts and canyons in the way. The idea of conquering all of India at once in a single campaign is also a little ridiculous; any invading army would wind up subjugating or co-opting different provinces at different times. So I have an urge to split India up into mulitple territories, like flashman suggests.

But when I split India up because it’s special, that actually lessens its strategic value: now all its territories are worth $1 or at most $2, and no one territory is essential. If the defender tries to stack up in part of India, you can probably ignore him and just move through other territories; if the attacker launches an invasion of India, it’s not going to do any real damage on the first turn. Ironically, the best way to get players to fight over India and treat it like a big deal is to leave as one territory worth $3, so that there’s no comparably good sites for a base in the region, and so that any players trying to pass through the region will need or at least really want to go through India.

The Big World map and New World Order maps solve this problem by having several hundred territories on the map – their idea for how to make India both detailed and interesting is to split India into 8 or 9 different territories, and then pick a couple of those territories to be high-income territories or victory cities or factory sites or chokepoints. I don’t like that solution for two reasons: it makes the map too dang big, and I don’t care enough about Baluchistan or Bihar province to want to fight even one whole battle over it, let alone keep trading the territory back and forth while scheming about how to win control of it once and for all.

Is there a fourth way? Does anyone have tips on how to appropriately balance these concerns when designing a map?

Flashman

I’m not in favour of India having a “factory” as such, ever. It should have a level 3 “infantry only” recruitment option.

To make it more valuable, allow both UK & Japan to recruit infantry there. I’d have several such tts; Nanking, Romania, Ukraine, possibly South Africa.

CWO Marc

@Argothair:

Is there a fourth way?

Here’s a possible idea. I haven’t tested it nor worked out any of its operational details, but it’s related to some thoughts that occured to me while I was studying the G40 map to determine whether the occupied territories shown on it correspond to what was actually the case in June 1940 and would eventually be the case by mid-1942 (the high-water mark of Axis expansion). These thoughts arose from the fact that in G40 each non-neutral territory is essentially either the property of an Allied power or of an Axis power. From a historical point of view this works fine in a lot of cases – but it doesn’t in other cases. The map territory of New Guinea is a good example: it spent quite a while with its northern half under Japanese control andf its southern half under Allied control.

A&A 1940 doesn’t really have a “partially occupied” map status for a single territory; the closest equivalent I can think of is the concept of “contested territories” used in A&A 1914. So in relation to the problem you’ve described, here’s something that might work. Rather than splitting up important territories like India into smaller units (and thus creating smaller-value subsections, which as you point out decreases their appeal as a target), how about looking at the world’s territories on the game map and deciding which ones can be conquered in a single game round and which ones need to be contested for at least two game rounds before they change ownership? Such territories would have three possible statuses during play: they are fully under Allied control, they are fully under Axis control, or they’re in an intermediate “contested” status during which both sides occupy the territory at the same time and neither side collects any IPC income from them. The territory would keep its original map size (rather than being cracked into subordinate territories) and it would retain its original IPC value (thus keeping it attractive), but an invading player would have to work harder and longer before he could collect it as a prize. India would be a good candidate for such treatement: it contributed (as I recall) a couple of million troops to the Allied war effort, it’s quite large (it was even larger during WWII than after its 1947 partial breakup), and some of its topography is challenging, so conquering it would hardly have been a one-shot cakewalk.

Black_Elk

The point about the difficulties in dividing up India resonates for me. I helped to make a few of the larger scale maps for tripleA, and there is definitely a point at which dividing stuff up delivers ever diminishing returns. Not only does it stall the pace of the gameplay, and result in unit crowding, but it also has a way of making each space of the map seem less significant. It becomes like a Hex Map, where every tile is the same, and you start to lose the strategic variety of having uniquely significant spaces/connections on the map.

For a good example of this in the OOB games, just take a look at Australia. In Classic and up through AA50, this territory was a single space worth 2 ipcs. Although comparatively low value, and strategically out of the way, its value as a target territory for Japan was much greater than the same region in 1942.2, which has Australia divided into 2 spaces.

As a single territory in the earlier games, it had a potential value as a factory location (though almost no one would use it this way). At least it was an option for the cash grab. Sure, you had to go out of position for a round, but you picked up 2 ipcs in the process.

Global which took the Australia thing even further (and basically broke with any pretense that the IPC values of specific regions need to be consistent board to board) jumped the regional value of Australia to 7 ipcs!

Can you just imagine how important Australia would be in a game like 1942.2 if it was worth 7 ipcs in a single territory?

Granted in Global the income boost to Australia is undercut by the fact that Anzac is a separate nation, but can you imagine if it was under UK control, with the full weight of the British purse directed there? The territory would be absolutely critical.

It would make Australia a true Pacific prize that both Japan and America would definitely fight over. Even if you split that value over 2 territories (one worth 3 and the other worth 4) the strategic value of Australia would be major, and it could then serve as a springboard for all sorts of different Pac strategies.

But with two Australian territory tiles worth only 1 ipcs, is it any wonder that everyone just ignores these spaces in favor of India?

I’m not saying make Australia worth 7 ipcs, you don’t have to go that far, but I’m saying you could go higher than 2 ipcs haha.

In global India is given a total regional value of 5 ipcs. That is less than the regional value of Australia in the same game. This really turns the normal situation on its head, when you compare Global to the earlier A&A boards, where India’s regional value always exceeded that of Australia.

My point here is pretty simple, that IPC values are fairly arbitrary, and as such, I think you should use them in whatever ways would seem to encourage the most fun from a gameplay perspective.

When in doubt, I say go little higher, by like +1 ipc. Instead of having a territory be worth 1 ipc, go up to 2 ipcs. Instead of 2 ipcs go up to 3 etc. If you don’t want a territory to just be a “speed bump on the way to somewhere more important” or just be “a distraction from the real goal” there are a lot of ways to accomplish this. First you can use starting factories as anchors for the fighting. 1942.2 does not handle this particularly well (in the case of India/Karelia) because while they do include the starting factories, the players who control them don’t really have the income necessary to defend them as choke points.

Its important to recall that every A&A game I’ve ever played, builds itself out around a Japanese expansion that goes well beyond anything that happened in the real war. So either you have to just suspend the disbelief, or I guess (if something more accurate was your aim) then you need to find other ways for Japan “to win” that don’t require a Godzilla globe trot.

Personally I don’t mind the Godzilla model, but the problem is that it always goes in the same direction (e.g Towards the Center, India, Suez Canal, Moscow.) What I would like to see is an attack route that brings Japan more into conflict with North America, rather than Russia. To achieve that I think you basically need two things…

1. more production value spread out across the Pacific (so Japan has some way to springboard over there, and pick up cash in the process, otherwise they’ll just ignore the area).

2. A sea zone design that allows Japan to shuck units in range of W. USA, along the southern route. Right now they only have the Northern Route, which although interesting is universally acknowledged to have a very low pay off, for the units required. At best its a stall tactic into Alaska, that never gets much farther than that, before turning around to dump units into the Soviet far east again.

Now imagine India as a single territory worth 5 or 6 ipcs, on par with France, rather than being all broken up into a bunch of useless 1 ipc territories. Now its a real anchor, a do-or-die type tile, where if Allies lose control of it, they’re basically losing the War. I think this could work, but only if Australia is of comparable importance. In Global, Anzac can’t really do anything, even if Allies are kicking ass, beyond just spamming aircraft. The region has IPCs, but they’re too split up to be of much use.

I like it when each nation has like 3 possible attack routes, where they could pick a focus, but only if they give ground somewhere else. I think the game works best when its possible to go maybe 2 out of 3 directions on the split purchase, but not all 3. And that if you ignore 2 directions to focus on just 1, then there should be definite cascading consequences along the other fronts, that way you can play the rush game where both sides have a chance to spin it their way. Just as an example, right now Japan has basically 1 route that can return victory (towards the center.) Even in Global with all the promise of the Pacific win, that still usually means making a B line towards India and the money islands. I think it would be cool if going towards Australia or North America could actually work sometimes instead of just being a “losing” strategy, that only beginners would adopt.

Taking it back down to a 1942.2 playscale, I’d say Australia as a single territory should have a minimum value of 3 ipcs (the replacement cost of a single infantry unit) and a starting factory to anchor it as a contested region. I think you could go up to 4 ipcs, and it’d still work fine.

As for trading territories back and forth, I kind of look at it like France. Say W. Europe is trading hands every round, I kind of interpret this as one side or the other “gaining the upper hand” in a region that’s being contested.

The early stuff is like Dunkirk, where UK is trying to hold onto a sliver of the coast. Then first time Allies take France in force with American boots on the ground, that is D-Day, But after this, if the Allies get ejected from France by the Germans a round or two later, I tend to look at that, not as “the Allies were driven back into the sea!” but rather, “ok now it’s the Battle of the Bulge, and Germany is kicking ass again, so France is up for grabs once more!” The ownership roundel at any given point, just indicates who is “winning” in that territory currently. Or at least that’s how I work it out in my imagination, when trying to come up with a narrative that makes sense. Otherwise the regions change hands too often to resemble anything like the campaigns of the actual war. Sure in the game it’s an all or nothing, winner takes the whole pie type scenario, but how you interpret what’s going on from a story telling dimension leaves you with a lot more flexibility.
:-D

Flashman

Japanese-Soviet non-aggression pact changes the dynamic.

Japan can still aim at mainland VCs - India, China; but forget Moscow. You have to attack in the Pacific to take US attention away from Europe.

Without the pact, the games always default towards everyone piling units into Moscow, which can change hands 3 or 4 times a round!

Argothair

All right, here’s another attempt at some of the same ideas, this time using the more realistic “Jason Clark” base tiles. My big innovation here is that all bold circles are victory cities, and vice versa – that way you can tell at a glance who’s winning and where your targets are, instead of having to squint to find the little red VC markers underneath your troops.

Note that all victory cities contain starting factories, which are not separately shown on the map. Some non-VC territories also have starting factories, which are shown on the 1939 map.

When conquering a territory with a factory, the factory is automatically destroyed, however, you are free to rebuild the factory on your next turn if you still control the city. Turn 1 Conquest, Turn 2 Build Factory, Turn 3 Recruit new units. That way there’s a bit of a delay in the city becoming 100% yours without the need for an extended ruleset about contested territories.

As always, let me know what you think!

Argothair

The 1942 map.

CWO Marc

Nice graphics, and the new VC circles are certainly easier to see than the traditional dots or squares. It looks a little odd to me, however, that Juno, Alaska, is a victory city whereas Washington, D.C. (unlike every other major-power capital) doesn’t even appear on the map.

Black_Elk

Cool concept for the 39 map.

Just one thing to note, from Manchuria to Moscow there are only 4 spaces along the northern route.

A Japanese tank column blitzing from Manchuria to Novosibirsk has the direct line on the Russian capital in just 2 turns. One turn to land/build tanks in Manchuria, one turn to move them to Novosibirsk, and the Soviet purse is under threat.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, because it also means the Russian armor could do the same thing in reverse to screw Japan.

Here the thing that matters most is whether you give the Russians enough units to sustain a far eastern front. If the set up is designed for Soviet collapse in the east (e.g. the usual model of, “rush the infantry home! to defend Moscow”) then this sort of territory design would encourage the Japanese tank drive to Moscow. Basically Russia needs to have enough income/units in place to fight rather than fold, otherwise it would be pretty easy for Japan to overwhelm them along the northern route.

Frederick II

Wow! Your getting better at this. :-D This looks great. Also what CWO Marc said that there’s no Washington D.C. did you like forget about that?

CWO Marc

There are several large black areas on the map. Am I correct that they represent areas which are impassable for either political reasons or for topographical reasons or for a combination of both? The area that mainly caught my attention was the one in the middle of South America. As near as I can figure it vaguely corresponds to a combination of the Amazon jungle (minus its eastern half) and the neutral country of Paraguay (plus part of Bolivia).

Argothair

CWO_Marc, yes, the black areas are impassible, mostly for topographical and political reasons, but also partly to give some structure to the map – it would have been possible for the major powers to invade Mongolia, but with Mongolia closed, Asia has a much more strategically interesting shape. If you open up too many areas then Asia and Africa just become this formless enormous mass.

Frederick, thanks for the kind words. I can see that by popular demand, I’ll have to put Washington DC back on the map, which is fine – it can fit nicely between the Northeast USA and the Southeast USA. I left it out on purpose for game balance; the Germans shouldn’t really ever have a viable attack on Washington, and so making a Washington a victory city further adds to the already high count of starting Allied victory cities. Still, I guess people like to dream – I’ll put it back in.

Black_Elk, I didn’t originally intend to have only 4 spaces between Manchuria and Moscow, but now that I’m looking at it, I think it works for me. It almost mimics the path of the Trans-Siberian Railroad – you’ve got a direct beeline across Russia’s southeast, and then lots of space to go wandering in Russia’s northeast. I absolutely would want to give Russia enough starting troops in the east to hold out against a Japanese attack, and maybe forcing Russia to hold the ‘railroad’ will help deter KGF players from just immediately marching all their Siberian soldiers west. Also note that Russia can set up a roadblock at Omsk (a factory) and Novosibirsk – if Russia can hold those two territories (or hold Omsk and trade Novosibirisk) then the tanks aren’t going to get through to Moscow on any northern route. I am a little nervous about having Manchuria connect to SZ 60 – I would rather that tanks unloaded from Tokyo be one space away from Manchuria; I didn’t realize I’d left that connection open. What do you think about extending the Korean border west so that it cuts off Manchuria’s port access?

Black_Elk

I remember making the case that having less territories in the soviet far east might actually be better for the Allies on balance than having more territories, I can’t recall the exact thread. But the idea was that more distance ends up hurting the Allies because they have no way to reinforce their line, and it makes the KJF positioning harder since you have a lot of empty worthless Russian spaces in the east. With a lot of low value territories Japan has it way easier to set up their their logistics train and Japan doesn’t need the income to be effective, whereas Russia has no incentive to stay and fight if you do it that way. I believe the original intension/argument that people made was “well, you need to stall the Japanese somehow, so lets just put more speed bumps in their way.” But I don’t think that really worked, as AA50 proved, to me at least. Better if the distance is short, so Russia can move ground units quickly.

I actually have the same view about the Pacific ocean. I prefer shorter distances, for rapid naval redirects. And instead of distance just give the two sides enough units to fight back and forth haha.

Yeah you could probably get away with having Manchuria be an inland tile, to avoid the dead drop from Tokyo.

Black_Elk

ps. on the subject of map structure and the Russia vs Japan situation, I’ve often felt that it would be very helpful if the “far eastern” front, wasn’t quite so broken up in terms of territory connections. Or at least not as broken up as the normal eastern front with Germany. Basically to tighten up the Russian line against Japan, along whatever front the JTDTM is most likely to occur.

For example, in the OOB 1942.2 map, if the territories corresponding to Novosibirsk and Kazakh were a single large territory boarding Moscow, rather than two smaller territories, it would be possible to defend the line at China, instead of having to turtle back to Moscow.

In general having more territories along a front favors the attacker over the defender, and since its always Japan attacking, and its always Russia defending along this particular front in 1942.2, I think it makes more sense to have fewer territories bordering Moscow in the East (rather than more, as seems to have been the trend over the last couple OOB boards.)

Just an idea. To a large extent your map eliminates this problem with respect to the Russian capital (since here Moscow borders only 3 territories, rather than 6 like OOB 1942.2) but you might still see a similar issue with Stalingrad or Omsk.

Still I think the best way to deter the Japanese tank drive to Moscow, has more more to do with the starting unit/production distribution than the map design per se. With enough starting units or enough income, the Soviets could likely handle a full war with Japan. It’s only when they get stuck with 24 ipcs at the start, no attack power, and a weak production spread, that the territory design of the East becomes so easy to exploit for the Japanese in the OOB game, since they have more money more starting unit attack power, more production in the area, and basically nowhere else to go, except straight at you! haha

So yeah, even at this rough draft stage, I already think the map you designed has charm.

Oh yes, one last suggestion. It may be worth considering how many city circles you end up dropping into it right now. Save the cities for last is my recommendation, or at least after you design the sea zones.

I put a lot of city circles in my domination draft, and tried to work out sea zones at the same time, but then ended up regretting it later, as I never saved an intermediate baseline map. You know, in case I wanted to alter things later on. It’s always easier to add in a circle, than it is to take it out, and redraw the borders again. That’s my advice for staging it, to get your basic territories drawn, save it, then sea zones drawn, save it, and then add in your city circles at the last minute. This helps in case you ever want to make a map with a different timeline. And also helps if you decide you need to make the circles large/smaller at some point to accommodate more/less units.
:-D

You can see the circle thing taken to an extreme below…

And also the silly Boxer Rebellion circle that is all outsized and impractical for most maps, because the original game was supposed to be set in 1900. This was a gimmicky tile that played a role in randomizing the opening for that specific game. But clearly, its just an eyesore for a map that is set in the 1940s, or during WW1, or at any point in history, rather than one set exactly in 1900 lol. There are many circles here that don’t serve much purpose for a map outside the timeframe I was interested in at the time, which was basically the Spanish American conflict up to the Great War. And of course, any time you put in a bunch of city circles, then you get into an issue of “why a circle for city X, but not city Y?” as people have differing ideas about where to highlight things or how to justify any particular circle, once you put a whole lot down. Just some ideas.

Overall I like the basic thrust of your map! I’d be curious to see how the rules differ from OOB, as that can surely have an impact on how the map works in terms of the production spread.

Black for impassible is fine for a draft, but I’d go with something else for those territories. You don’t want it to mess with your border lines.

I think the only thing that should be black on a map, is the border. That way you can always isolate it easily in photoshop, in case you want to change the color, or expand it or whatever. A very light gray (verging on white) works well for impassible neutral tiles, and some kind of beige (even more bland than UK’s color haha) for the attackable neutrals. So it reads at a glance.

Here is the crazy city circle map…

And here is one showing an idea I had for Russia from the 1942 game map…

Not sure if this idea applies so much to a map with a new system of many new territory tiles (like the latesr one that has all the circle VCs) but I was still in a basic 1942.2 type mindframe. Basically to simplify Russia into a more Classic style formulation for the east vs Japan, but using a different system of territory connections. One that highlights Archangel in particular…

The thought was to combine the territories of Archangel and Vologda into a single space worth 3 ipc. And then combine the territories of Kazakh and Novosibirsk into another single space worth 3 ipcs. Then give them both starting factories to serve as permanent blockers, the way Caucasus functions OOB.

I think this would create a new more defensible line at the center of the game board, and a new situation where Siberia would be the key buffer space in the far east for positioning against Japan. The expanded Archangel/Volodga space would basically do the same in the North. And the Kazakh/Novos would do it for the south.

So basically taking Moscow to a 4 tile defense connection territory, rather than 6. Something along the lines of…
Western Russia
Arch + Vologda
Kazakh + Novosibirsk
and Caucasus

That was my idea anyway, for a simplified redesign of Russia on a 1942.2 scale map. Basically to give them more flexibility within their 5 tile core: Moscow and the 4 spaces surrounding it. I think you could keep them into the mid twenties on income, with perhaps a bit more power at the start, but the thought was to give them a rapid redirect option, the way Germany can redirect from Western to Eastern front. It’d be helpful if Russia could redirect from Pacific to European, fairly rapidly. Since that’s what the gameplay usually requires. Otherwise they just invariably have to turtle Moscow, and let the Axis envelope them. Here they could do more blast backs, out of Arch or Kazakh, without losing so much in defensive positioning. Not sure if those thoughts are helpful, but since we’re talking maps thought I’d toss it out there.

Larger spaces and fewer connection at the center of the gamemap, but with more production/attack projection to compensate.

Argothair

I see important pluses and minuses to your proposed 1942.2 map changes, Black_Elk.

The Good:
(1) It’s now much harder to overwhelm Russia by forcing it to trade for more territories than it can afford on pain of getting Moscow smashed by a Japanese tank stack in Szechuan.
(2) Russia has more tactical flexibility because it can move tanks into Greater Kazakhstan or Greater Siberia and then still use them to deadzone the Caucasus or Karelia

The Bad:
(1) There’s not much tactical flexibility left for Japanese attacks on Russia. With OOB map, sometimes it makes sense for Japan to use a pincer movement, bringing one stack counter-clockwise through Evenki and the other stack clockwise through Szechuan. Now, though, you pretty much just want to make a beeline through Kazakhstan and ignore Evenki and Yakutsk.
(2) Similarly, from the other end, there’s not much tactical flexibility left for a Russian defense of the north against Germany. It used to be that German tanks in Karelia were a serious threat, but not necessarily instant doom for the Russian economy – even if they penetrated to Archangel, there was still a chance to stop them. Now, German tanks in Karelia can reach West Russia, Caucasus, Greater Kazakhstan, Greater Siberia, and Evenki – they can basically hoover up the entire Russian economy minus Moscow, all from their navally-reinforced perch on the Baltic Sea.

The Ugly:
(1) America can now drop tanks into Greater Siberia (via SZ 4, the White Sea) that are one move away from Szechuan, in southern China. That’s wacky.
(2) Conversely, Japan can drop tanks into Yunnan (the southeastern corner of Asia) that are two moves away from Leningrad (the northwestern corner of Asia). That’s also wacky.

I like your overall approach and framework – it’s important to think logically about how defensible a region is going to be, and not just assume that more territories = better defense – but I think the map needs a little more tinkering. How can we re-jigger the territories in ways that make Moscow easier to defend without sucking all of the tactics out of that defense?

Black_Elk

I’d say the easiest way would be to just give the Russians enough starting tanks and aircraft to fight on an equal footing with Japan, and raise the ipc value of some of their territories so that they are +1 ipc in additional production value.

I’d say the main issue is that Japan has a likely 10-11 production points, and potentially more if they just spam factories all over the place, with enough income to make that production effective in combat, vs Russia’s safe 8 production points at Moscow, and an income so low they can’t even max build infantry there after the first couple rounds.

Given that kind of set up, it’s hard to imagine any conditions under which the Red Army would ever be poised to invade the Japanese home island in 1945. Even though that was basically the situation at the end of the actual war.

I think a Russian redesign is well overdue. I’ve been pushing it for a while now haha. And I know others out there find the Soviet “weak link” kind of annoying. It’s just a hold over from a more jingoistic time… the 1980s, when the game was conceived, and nobody would want to admit the western contribution in WW2 was dwarfed by that of the Soviet Union.

It’s was a game made in America after all (or at any rate made here, before it was made in China hehe) and over in the States we still like to think that D-Day and the Atomic bomb ended World War 2, and we always downplay the Russian contribution, which was decisive. Even the war in the pacific was wrapped up with a nice Red bow. So its just kind of silly that the whole game revolves around the center collapsing.

There should be other ways for the Axis “to win” and other ways for the Allies “not to lose” that don’t just involve sending a bazillion planes and ground units to the middle of the game board, to crush or prop up Russia.

If the Reds could fight on their own, and have a decent chance, players would be less inclined to make their strategies so one dimensional.

The problem really is fairly simple, Russia lacks sufficient starting attack power and income to be effective on their own.

I’m anticipating the counter argument “Well, if you make Russia stronger, then Allies will just do the same thing they always do, and then Axis will never be able to take the center.” To that I say “fine!” give the Axis something else to do in that case!
:-D

The balance should be such that if UK and USA send all their forces to Russia and turn it into an impenetrable fortress, then Axis should be able to mess with UK/USA directly, and threaten the core territories of the Western Allies (instead of Russia’s) for the Win.

I just don’t see the essential dynamic changing all that much, until Russia has more than 24 ipcs on starting income, and more than a paltry 180 in starting TUV!

That’s less than 1/6th the TUV that Axis begin play with, and less than 1/3rd of the combined Anglo-American TUV. Is it any wonder that every winning Axis strategy involves a center crush? And the Russia is always on the verge of collapse hehe

Flashman

I suggest another impassable area - the impenetrable jungle of the Congo; the dark heart of Africa.

Also the Pripet marsh in East Europe.

I find it amazing that people expect a game anything like WWII when USSR and Japan are at war from the off. This can never be other than a parallel universe unless the NA pact is enforced.

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