I’m sure Adam514’s criticisms are kindly meant, but I’m not seeing much practical, actionable advice here. If someone has played 100+ games of G40, they are probably pretty happy with G40 the way it is, and not much interested in a redesign! And, yes, of course we will have to playtest all of this, but when a game takes 8+ hours per playtest, it makes sense to invest real time in developing a promising first draft of the rules before you start playtesting.
As far as national objectives in 1942.2, my only real comment is that they need to be tailored around a specific purpose. In G40 and AA50, there are so many territories on the board that a “regional objective” that rewards players for controlling 3 out of 4 territories in a region can help to give order and shape to the map – it helps players make sense of where they’re supposed to be aiming, and how far they are meant to have penetrated by the end of the opening and by the end of the middlegame. So the purpose of the G40 / AA50 objectives is to help give shape and structure to players’ attacks.
In 1942.2, the map is small enough that every territory and every spare infantry matters. The problem isn’t that players have too many options, the problem is that the map is well-understood enough that players are often forced to stick pretty closely to an “orthodox” script if they want to be at all competitive. The OOB game revolves around France, Karelia, West Russia, the Caucasus, Egypt, Persia, and India. That’s where armies will naturally pile up and face off against each other, and in 9 out of 10 games, that’s where the game will be decided.
If you take that existing structure and add a bunch of regional National Objectives on top of it, even if you put a lot of love and care into designing the NOs, you’re likely to wind up complicating the game without really adding much fun or variety to the gameplay. You might slightly shift where players focus their energy – maybe Norway becomes the key tug-of-war point instead of Karelia – but you’re pretty much working with the same themes, only now instead of being able to see where to focus by studying the map, you have to study the map and keep glancing back at your National Objectives reference card.
A few months ago, I designed some National Objectives for the specific purpose of trying to shift energy away from the center of the map and toward the periphery (Norway, Australia, Soviet Far East, etc.). My buddies playtested them once, and they worked OK – they had some bugs, but they were interesting. But in the Redesign, I don’t think we can take it for granted that we’re going to need to shift energy away from the center. Depending on what options are selected, the game may already be balanced between the center and the periphery. E.g., with 30 VCs each giving $1 in Lend-Lease each turn on the 1942.2 map, I bet the corners of the board will be getting plenty of attention, National Objectives or no.
I dislike non-aggression pacts that pay off with a cash bonus, because they seem horribly unrealistic to me – if you make a surprise attack, it gives you an advantage, not a disadvantage. I’ve argued about that with y’all on other threads, and I think you know my point of view. It’s not a dealbreaker for me.
I am also very uneasy about the sphere of influence violation as applied to the 1942.2 map. On the 1942.2 map, beginners often fail to reinforce Moscow and West Russia appropriately – they will not send even one fighter to Moscow until it’s too late. Advanced players often develop a very rigorous schedule of reinforcement, and they will not be willing to compromise that schedule just to avoid a $5 penalty. Basically I’m not sure that a $5 penalty will wind up deterring more than a tiny fraction of 1942.2 players. There are Russian berserkers who constantly attack with Russia and don’t want any defensive help anyway, and there are Russian fortress-builders who can’t imagine playing Russia without Allied reinforcements, and there isn’t much in between, at least in my experience.
Part of the issue with the sphere of influence violation is that it’s all-or-nothing. If you have already accepted a couple of British fighters on Moscow, chances are that if you withdraw those fighters, then you’ll lose your capital. Nobody wants to risk losing their capital just to collect an extra $5 that will be promptly looted by Germany before you can spend it! But if you continue to double down on the Allied reinforcements, then there is no additional cost – you can stack 20 British infantry, 5 British tanks, and 10 British fighters all over central Russia for the same penalty you would get if you put 1 British infantry in Leningrad.
In a typical game, Russia’s power will go slowly but steadily down over the course of the game. If Russia’s power starts to noticeably increase after the opening is over, that’s usually a pretty reliable sign that the Allies are destined to win. At that point, a few extra bucks here or there isn’t going to matter; you’ve already broken the German spearhead, and the rest is just a matter of mopping up. Same thing with, e.g., Japan in a Kill Japan First opening – if the Allies all try to kill Japan, and Japan’s income dips from 30 down to 20 and then down to 15, but then rebounds back up to 25, that probably means the Axis are a few turns away from winning the game.
Consequently, there will never be a good opportunity to remove troops from a weak ally’s territory. From the moment you decide to put troops in their territory, they are only going to get weaker, and so they’re only going to have more need for your troops.
So I’m a little unsure of what the sphere of influence rule is accomplishing for us in 1942.2. Do we really imagine that in most games, Russia will be able to manage its defense without any outside aid? Are we trying to incentivize players to wait until later in the middlegame to start dropping reinforcements into Russia? What is our goal here?
In general, I think it would be useful if someone could compile a bulleted list of 1942.2 house rules that might go into the redesign, one line of text per rule, and then compile another bulleted list of design goals, one line of text per design goal. We should be trying to figure out how (and whether!) each of our proposed rules is actually furthering one of our design goals, and whether some of those rules are stepping on each other’s toes.
