G40 Redesign (currently taking suggestions)

[baron Münchhausen]

For my part, I prefer a much simpler scheme without any other NOs outside these:
Sphere of Influence Violations:
-5 ipcs from Russian income, if Western units in Soviet territories.
-5 ipcs from British income, if Soviet units in Western territories.
-5 ipcs from German income, if Japanese units in European Axis territories.
-5 ipcs from Japanese income, if European Axis units in Japanese territories.

Japan NAP bonus:
+5 to Japan if follows the Non-Agression Pact
-5 ipcs one time aggressor penalty if Japan is first to break the non aggression treaty.

Russia get no bonus (outside keeping intact all Eastern TTs and VCs)
But suffer no penalty from breaking it.
However, Japan bonus would remain active for all the rest of the game.

No complex things to learn and only a NAP which is beneficial to Russia and Japan.

This would be another incentive to go west for Japan, without compromising the Center Crush strategy.

---

Once this said, with option toggle switch on/off, it is still an opportunity to test NOs as a viable concept for 1942.2

However, VCs will already play a part in strategy.
I think that it must be as simple as 1 or 2 max per 5 powers, so 5 or 10 NOs at most.

For Germany, I would use a kind of Atlantic Wall for Europe and Mare Nostrum in Med.

Atlantic Wall (Fortress Europa):
+5 PUs as long as these Axis TTy were never conquered by Allies: Norway, NorthWestern Europe and France.
Once Allies take this once, no more bonus.

Mare Nostrum:
+3 PUs If all TTy bordering Med are Axis Controlled: Gibraltar, France, Italy, Southern Europe, Trans-Jordan, Egypt, Lybia, Tunisia and Morocco.

For Russia, it is difficult because VCs (with Warchest might incorporate most of Lend-Lease NOs).
If Helsinki is chosen as VCs over Archangel, then it may be possible to use:

Soviet Union: Arctic Convoy route
+5 PUs if Soviets control Archangel and no axis warship in bordering SZ 4.

United Kingdom: The British Empire western colonial resources
+5 PUs if No Axis warship in Atlantic SZ (excluding SZ5 and SZ6) and Gibraltar is an Allies TTy.

United Kingdom: The British Empire eastern colonial resources
+5 PUs if No Axis warship in SZ28, SZ33, SZ34 and SZ35 (African East Coast+ India SZ) and Suez Canal is open (Egypt and Trans-Jordan are allied TT).

Japan: Outer defence perimeter:
+5 PUs if Japan control Hawaiian Islands, Midway, Wake and Solomon Islands

Japan: The Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere-
+5 PUs if Japan control Manchuria, Kiangsu, French Indo-China, Kwantung and Burma.
+5 PUs if Japan control 1 of Eastern Australia, New Zealand or India.

(IDK which one is better for Japan)

United States: The Arsenal of Democracy-
+5 PUs for each TTy Allies control: France, Philippine Islands or Kwantung.
+1 PUs for each original Axis Pacific Island TTy owned by Allies.

Here is my first draft. 10 NOs+ NAP and Sphere of Influence Violations…

[Black_Elk]

I agree, less is more for 1942.2.

Was always resistant to NOs, even when first introduced in AA50, as being overly involved. So I like the idea of having them framed as “add ons” for a higher economy game, rather than as an indispensable part of game balance for 1942.2

Some of the other tweaks already suggested, and the material in Argos pdf will be sufficient to make that board pretty entertaining. But since we were already in an objective kind of mindset seemed like a good time to float some.

I prefer something along the lines of what you suggested, where each player nation only had 1 or 2 principle objectives. That way it’s easier to track.

AA50 had many multipart objectives, like control 3 out of 5 territories for +X, or 4 out of 6 territories for +Y. The second AA50 OOB German and Japanese NOs read this way for example. I think stuff like that is a bit too complex, and involves too much tracking for a simpler game like 1942.2.

I’d prefer bonuses that really concentrate on doing one big thing. Or a couple big things for each team. Because a lot of what we want should already be addressed somewhat by VCs and the othe4 options.

[baron Münchhausen]

Here is a few comments on NAP and penalty:
It was on BMode thread:

@Adam514:

@Baron:

@aequitas:

@Baron:

I’m really curious about what work and what doesn’t. And still on the topic of Balanced Mode.

You need to get your Hands dirty in order to wash them with the right soap :wink:
I recommend you to take the offer regularkid gave you and Play against him a BM game.

I would like to have such time on my hand to play a G40.
I would be seriously beaten up for sure but it is really about useful analysis I’m actually looking for.
And I’m pretty sure between obvious aspects and aberrations there is way for experienced players to share their opinions and feedbacks.
I was just pointing some possible BMode topics to comment.

I think you and the Redesign team are going about it in the wrong way. First of all, the chances of landing in the range of reasonable game balance with everything you are planning on changing with no playtesting whatsoever is extremely low. There may be no theoretical limit to theorizing about changes and their effect on balance, but in practice and with so many changes you would save a huge amount of time by playtesting them as you go along, or you’ll be left with an unbalanced game at the end of your redesign, and balancing that will take more effort than putting the whole thing together.

Second of all, you do not seem to have very experienced players as part of your Redesign team. I’ve skimmed through the thread and most of you are worried about outdated Axis tactics, saying for example that the Central Crush is the best/only way to go as Axis to win the game, and hence your efforts are concentrated on making other strategies more viable. While the Central Crush theory might have been the norm a few years ago, it isn’t at all anymore and the Axis have much better strategies than that. That’s why you need a few people in the Redesign team with at least 100 games completed, and who are knowledgeable about the current meta and what works and doesn’t work.

Lastly, there will inevitably be problems you haven’t foreseen and inconsistencies, and these issues are identified and corrected with playtesting. Something might sound good in theory, but applying it is another story. For example, you have an income penalty for whoever declares first between Russia and Japan, but this is easily taken advantage of by simply declaring war when you are about to lose your capital in order to reduce the plunder, which is gamey.

Good luck to the Redesign team, but at the very least don’t try to change 2 different maps with the same concepts. Focus on 1 map at a time.

[Argothair]

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.

[Black_Elk]

I take the criticism, and admit I do feel somewhat deflated by it.

On the other hand, even within that modification, ideas are already being used which would not exist if people hadn’t first done a fair amount of theorizing. So I still take a certain pride in tossing out ideas, and rambling endlessly about these games in a more general way.
:-D

I think the difference is that, once you set a clear foundation to build on, you can’t really go back and revise that foundation too much, without tanking all the various balance adjustments that have been made along the way. Balanced Mod is already established by now. So whatever tweaks remain to be made there, are unlikely to include more new ideas that diverge substantially from what is going on with the latest iteration. The priority goal for anything with “Balance” in the name, is clearly to make it balanced by sides (ie no further adjustments needed.) They are basically in Beta mode right now, where the parameters are more or less set, and they are trying to fine tune.

Like would they want to add more VCs at this point? Or new units? My guess is no. Kid laid out his priorities there a while back, that the mod would have a particular scope in that area, using C5 Marines and Vichy and some other select modifications at the foundation, but otherwise keeping the flavor of map as much like OOB as possible, and then drive with a more lazer like focus towards balancing those materials.

This is a rather different aim than what I was hoping we might provide for tripleA here, which is not a mod focused on balance, but is essentially a kind of HR tool kit that mirrors the table top experience, allowing players to adopt HRs for the official games in a simpler way on the fly. Instead of hacking xml files, importing graphics, designing new triggers and all the rest, instead they’d have a set of standardized options to pick and choose from a la carte.

Just as a quick example. Say a player wants to use Vichy rules but not Marines or vice versa. That’s not possible right now unless you create a new gamefile. Or similarly if you want to add any other unit concept that players might be interested in, or things like adding VCs etc. In practical terms it is not possible to balance for all these things at once. So I would make no claims there. All I’m shooting for is to put more options on the table, and increase the modular flexibility.

His point about the Violations is a good one. It’s true I had not anticipated how a malus removing ipcs for something the player chooses to do, might be abused to reduce their treasury before capital capture. Same deal with what Arg just mentioned regarding 1942.2

That idea was very recent, so its no surprise if it may prove unworkable. Part of the reason that deliberation can sometimes be a good thing. So there is plenty of time to shut it down before the reactor blows.
:-D

So yeah, maybe axe those. I also like that last idea of Arg’s to start bullet’ng it out.

[Black_Elk]

Just thinking more on Adam’s point, is there any kind of NAP that actually works in A&A, without totally hamstring’ng the gameplay in the process, or which isn’t so weak that it’s inevitably broken as a matter of course? I mean I’ve looked at many of the BM saves in the league thread since it launched, and the Russia/Japan situation seems to still deteriorate pretty regularly. It’s obviously not as bad as OOB, because of other things going on, but still see similar breakdown develop in the midgame. Certainly the OOB NAP is nowhere near strong enough to deter Russia from saying “screw it” right out the gate.

What if the DoW phase occurred before unit purchase?

Then the violator of the NAP could get hit with a penalty at purchase rather than collect income. Would that solve the issue of having the penalty gamed before capital collapse?

Seems like a lot, just to get one thing working correctly, but if it doesn’t impact the game substantially in any other way, maybe it works? Similar to switching the combat movement phase to be before purchase/combat proper with no real effect.

[Argothair]

That would solve the don’t-get-looted exploit, and having the penalty be more “immediate” might help motivate players to take the penalty more seriously. Neuroscience says that people care more about small, immediate penalties than they do about large, distant penalties.

I still say a financial penalty of any kind is the wrong tool to keep russia and japan away from each other. If I wanted to try to keep russia and japan off of each other’s backs, I would severely limit Japan’s unit caps relative to its total income. For example, in 1942.2, Japan has $30 of starting income, and 8 unit slots to build each turn. After a few turns, when Japan has built a factory, that often rises to something like $40 of income with 10 build slots. Either way, you’re roughly in the $4 per unit range, which means that you have the option to build plenty of infantry and artillery as Japan.

In real life, Japan’s manpower was tapped out – by spring 1943, after the Japanese Army bogged down in China, Burma, and New Guinea, Japan had almost no able-bodied soldiers left to draft. They had enough industry to continue building more planes, tanks, ships, etc., which acted as force multipliers, but they if they needed to field another army of 200,000 infantry, they simply had no way to do that.

I think this is a major reason why Japan chose not to invade Russia in the 1940s! Invading northern Asia would have required another army of 200,000 infantry that Japan simply didn’t have. You can’t invade a vast land mass with nothing but tanks; at some point you also need boots on the ground.

So, suppose you reduce the value of the Japanese home territory from $8 to $5, and suppose you reduce the value of Manchuria from $3 to $2. You can increase the value of some of the islands from $0 to $1 so that Japan’s total income stays the same. Now Japan is collecting $30 income with only 5 build slots, and later in the game they’ll collect $40 income with $7 build slots – closer to $6 per unit. At $6 per unit, you want to build a lot of ships and tanks and planes to multiply your firepower. You might build one or two infantry each round, but you’ll be chronically short of infantry, so invading the (low-value) territories of Siberia will naturally be much less attractive. You won’t have to bribe the Japanese to leave the Russians alone – they’ll do it anyway, because that’s their natural incentive from that starting position.

Meanwhile, concentrate the bulk of the starting Russian infantry closer to Yakut and Evenki, rather than in the Soviet Far East and Buryatia. The Russians will then cheerfully and gratefully migrate any surplus infantry westward to Moscow and Archangel – they certainly will not go picking a fight with the Japanese.

---

Another, altogether different option is to trigger some American lend-lease if and when Japan invades Moscow. If Japan breaks the non-aggression pact first, then America can make a one time cash transfer of up to $16 from the US treasury to the Russian treasury. That at least simulates real diplomacy – the Western Allies are pissed that Japan is making a surprise attack against their alliance partner, so they send the partner some extra cash by way of retaliation.

[barney]

@Black_Elk:

…What if the DoW phase occurred before unit purchase?..

Why not ? already games with combat before purchase

[baron Münchhausen]

@Argothair:

That would solve the don’t-get-looted exploit, and having the penalty be more “immediate” might help motivate players to take the penalty more seriously. Neuroscience says that people care more about small, immediate penalties than they do about large, distant penalties.

I still say a financial penalty of any kind is the wrong tool to keep russia and japan away from each other. If I wanted to try to keep russia and japan off of each other’s backs, I would severely limit Japan’s unit caps relative to its total income. For example, in 1942.2, Japan has $30 of starting income, and 8 unit slots to build each turn. After a few turns, when Japan has built a factory, that often rises to something like $40 of income with 10 build slots. Either way, you’re roughly in the $4 per unit range, which means that you have the option to build plenty of infantry and artillery as Japan.

In real life, Japan’s manpower was tapped out – by spring 1943, after the Japanese Army bogged down in China, Burma, and New Guinea, Japan had almost no able-bodied soldiers left to draft. They had enough industry to continue building more planes, tanks, ships, etc., which acted as force multipliers, but they if they needed to field another army of 200,000 infantry, they simply had no way to do that.

I think this is a major reason why Japan chose not to invade Russia in the 1940s! Invading northern Asia would have required another army of 200,000 infantry that Japan simply didn’t have. You can’t invade a vast land mass with nothing but tanks; at some point you also need boots on the ground.

So, suppose you reduce the value of the Japanese home territory from $8 to $5, and suppose you reduce the value of Manchuria from $3 to $2. You can increase the value of some of the islands from $0 to $1 so that Japan’s total income stays the same. Now Japan is collecting $30 income with only 5 build slots, and later in the game they’ll collect $40 income with $7 build slots – closer to $6 per unit. At $6 per unit, you want to build a lot of ships and tanks and planes to multiply your firepower. You might build one or two infantry each round, but you’ll be chronically short of infantry, so invading the (low-value) territories of Siberia will naturally be much less attractive. You won’t have to bribe the Japanese to leave the Russians alone – they’ll do it anyway, because that’s their natural incentive from that starting position.

Meanwhile, concentrate the bulk of the starting Russian infantry closer to Yakut and Evenki, rather than in the Soviet Far East and Buryatia. The Russians will then cheerfully and gratefully migrate any surplus infantry westward to Moscow and Archangel – they certainly will not go picking a fight with the Japanese.

---

Another, altogether different option is to trigger some American lend-lease if and when Japan invades Moscow. If Japan breaks the non-aggression pact first, then America can make a one time cash transfer of up to $16 from the US treasury to the Russian treasury. That at least simulates real diplomacy – the Western Allies are pissed that Japan is making a surprise attack against their alliance partner, so they send the partner some extra cash by way of retaliation.

Your idea is very out of sand box but it needs to be explored.
A 5 IPCs Japan but 3 IPCs Manchuria can it work?
Can it have an IC on set-up? (Allowing a lot of boats in SZ and keeping the same 8 units max.)
And UK can get 3 more ICs in South (WAus, EAus and NZ) to compensate.

With such low production it can somehow reduced the turtle effect when Allies fleet may attack Japan.
A 37.5% drop of Infantry  (8 to 5) may make it within a possible KJF finishing by a Tokyo invasion.
Okinawa, Iwo Jima (or Carolines Islands) and Formosa can all get 1 IPC value.

For NAP penalty, you can say that all Warchest is going to Russia, or Japan according to who break it.

Maybe Japan can lower to 4 (same  as caucasus TT), and gets +1 in all four TTs above.
Might create an interesting pattern of purchase and prod.

[Argothair]

Yeah, I think you could do this with a variety of IPC values! The dynamic could work with Tokyo at anywhere between 4 and 6 IPCs, and Manchuria with either 2 or 3 IPCs, depending on how much the new British factories are actually pressuring Japan. I like Baron’s point that a lower-valued Tokyo would also make it easier for the Allies to go in for the kill in a Kill Japan First opening.

Note that if you start Japan off with a factory in a 3-IPC Manchuria alongside a 5-IPC Tokyo, you are almost reproducing the OOB status quo; Japan still starts with 8 build slots at game start, and can immediately expand to 10 build slots by purchasing a factory in, e.g., Kwangtung. So I don’t think that particular setup would work well to create Russo-Japanese non-aggression.

Also, I would not give the entire Warchest (i.e., including enemy dollars) to the victim of whoever breaks the non-aggression pact. That is just a disguised way of taking cash from the aggressor and giving cash to the victim. I cannot even begin to imagine what historical force or scenario that rule could possibly be supposed to represent. I don’t know why this idea is so popular. I think maybe human beings are hard-wired by evolution to enjoy seeing “cheaters” and “sneaks” be fairly punished. That’s a healthy instinct; it’s helped us build a decent civilization, but in the particular case of Axis & Allies, I think it’s extremely counter-productive. If Russia and Japan are each other’s enemies, then the rules of the game should reward them for launching a surprise attack against each other, because surprise attacks are a useful and effective tactic.

Saying that Japan should get an in-game penalty for attacking Russia is just as silly as saying that Japan should get -1 dice in combat if it attacks Pearl Harbor on the first turn because the poor Americans weren’t expecting the attack, and the Japanese were too sneaky so they have to be punished. That’s just not how it works. If you sneak up on someone, then you get a bonus to your fighting ability, not a penalty.

Part of the reason why real governments don’t make sneak attacks on each other in the 21st century is that it ruins your reputation, and makes other countries less likely to trust you and trade with you and do you favors. But who, exactly, was Japan trading with in 1941? Nobody. They’d already been completely cut off from the international economy. That was the whole point; that was why the Pacific War started in the first place. Once the unrestricted submarine warfare got going in the Pacific, that made the mutual embargos that much tighter.

If you want to say that a Japanese attack on Russia motivates the US/UK to send Russia more direct aid, fine. But if you want to say that a Japanese attack on Russia motivates Japan itself to send Russia direct aid, or that a Japanese attack on Russia somehow magically makes more Russian troops appear from nowhere, then I just have no idea where you’re coming from.

Sorry if I’m getting emotional here, but I’m feel frustrated about not having been able to clearly communicate this thought to you all.

[Black_Elk]

No worries, I understand clearly everything you are saying. Short answer is basically, ‘no the NAP is not workable in A&A.’

Basically no simple carrot or stick is large enough to do the trick, and even of it was, it would be too hard to justify the abstraction in a satisfying way.

If going for a dramatic redesign of the Japanese production spread on the game map as a way to achieve the desired aim, then in tripleA terms I’m not sure we could really still call it 1942.2 or Global etc. It would probably be more appropriate to use a different name to describe a map with adjusted base ipc values. Like “catchy name” v5. I’d say once we go that route, there is really no reason to restrict adjustments elsewhere. Anyone who wanted to use the physical gameboard would need a way to indicate the adjustment in a more permanent way, like with a number token. It’s a pretty significant break from the boxed game. But its not much different than adding VCs, except that visually it is more of an eyesore. But if doing this, what of the OOB game do you preserve? Unit set up charts and territory division remain the same, and only map values change?

Or do you mean a single change, just to the Japanese home island (Tokyo) and nothing else? If it was only one territory on the map (or say just a few associated Japanese territories) being adjusted this way, then perhaps we can get away with it, and don’t have to open the flood gates completely.

Let’s say for example that Japan is reduced to 6, and Okinawa and Carolines are raised to 1 as an offset. Maybe that is acceptable, since it only requires 3 marker changes. Not too crazy.

But I think if we go too far in this direction, you will end up with a base map that starts looking pretty different, recommending unit set up changes too and starting cash adjustments to make it work, which basically means tossing out the set up cards. Not trying to go too slippery slope here, but if you have several changes to map values, and different set up cards, it’s basically a new game at that point. I’m not opposed to making a new game on a v5 scale, though at some point I’d say why use 1942.2 at all haha. I mean, of all the A&A maps, this one is probably my least favorite to begin with from a design standpoint.

For that kind of investment in time, I’d rather print out a new map FtF, or work with a tripleA map that actually looks clean. Instead of the old Revised baseline, with all its blobs.
:-D

Perhaps this is a better approach?

That seems to be what CWO suggested early on, that we just make something from scratch. And recent exchanges with other members here have me thinking that redesign efforts for the OOB global game aren’t much appreciated anyway.

If you really want to do this, I will draw you a baseline for use in tripleA on the scale of v5, but with the territory divisions you want to explore. So you can plug in the desired prosuction numbers.

It’s been a while, but I’ve done this many times before. Integrating the map file and drafting the basic connections in xml is what takes the longest.

If going through the trouble to create a new world projection at the scale of v5, it would probably be best to make a map which actually works for v5 too. It has always bugged me that 1942.2 uses the same baseline in tripleA as Revised and Spring 1942 v4, when the OOB map is clearly different. It’s not really a second edition in map terms, it’s a new edition. The only reason it doesn’t have a new default map in tripleA is because it was easier to hack v4 than create a new map, and because I was taking a break from tripleA when Veq threw it together, and so I wasn’t around to press for a new baseline.

ps. like if I was to try for it, I would probably use the AA50 baseline, but remove unnecessary tiles. Compress Spain and tweak Gibraltar so it aligns a bit better than the AA50 baseline. Here is a garish draft from a while back, with hard and fast paint fill, and some shoddy text thrown in. Its a bit jpeggy, but you get the general sense haha. I can’t remember what idea I was trying to explore at the time, probably something with starting factories or Russia (since it has way more TTs than necessary), or maybe the v5 sea zones since I see a bunch of tweaks over AA50 there? But anyway, I think if you created a new baseline for use with v5, then it would be a lot simpler to include an extra gamefile on the v5 scale, but which included things of interest like adjusted ipc values or more VCs or whatever. Is that more what you were thinking?

Are you ok with this sort of basic projection? Because I already have a few versions of that baseline at different sizes. Then it would just be a matter of compressing a couple areas, blowing out Europe for v5 scale, erasing borders until you have the basic v5 territory distribution and then adding sea zones.

If you want Europe larger the easiest way to do that is with a vertical stretch, but will quickly start to distort the med and mid east if you go too large. That’s why Africa/India always looks so weird in A&A maps. This projection was my best effort to address the compression we usually see in A&A while still trying to make a map that looks recognizable in places like China. Not sure if you’re into it.

[baron Münchhausen]

@Argothair:

Sorry if I’m getting emotional here, but I’m feel frustrated about not having been able to clearly communicate this thought to you all.

About NAP penalty, you can say that all Warchest is going to Russia, or Japan according to who break it.

Sorry Argothair, your thought was clearly understood first time. It is my intent which was not clear in my sentence. It was all Axis warchest which was going to Japan or all Allied Warchest to Russia, not both to the poor victim.
My sentence was confusing I see it clearly.
At least, it allows you to say more about your POV on NAP breaking.
  :-)

[baron Münchhausen]

do you mean a single change, just to the Japanese home island (Tokyo) and nothing else? If it was only one territory on the map (or say just a few associated Japanese territories) being adjusted this way, then perhaps we can get away with it, and don’t have to open the flood gates completely.

Let’s say for example that Japan is reduced to 6, and Okinawa and Carolines are raised to 1 as an offset. Maybe that is acceptable, since it only requires 3 marker changes. Not too crazy.

This change on Japan was exactly what was done by Phillip Swartzer  in WW2 Pacific Expansion.
It reduced Japan by 3 or 4 pts to increase Japanese Island Values on good old Classic map. At that time, I did not realized it can make an easier Japan invasion.
It provides a few Japan Control Marker with different number (1,2 or 3) on it.
For table top, we can suggest this tweak for Japan only.
More, you can use original one side white cardboard leftover from OOB to draw number on it.
What can be Japan critical initial production number to make a viable NAP?
I rather keep OOB Manchuria, there is not that much high value TTy in Asia.
Going as low as 4 Japan and 1 for Formosa, Okinawa, Iwo Jima and Carolines to keep same initial income?

About 1942.2 Map, if you have a better drawn map for Triple A, why don’t try it instead of v4 revamped?
I was not into redrawing map, but a background change may help see visually that Redesign is a new mint.

[Argothair]

It was all Axis warchest which was going to Japan or all Allied Warchest to Russia, not both to the poor victim.

Ah, OK. That makes plenty of sense.

At least, it allows you to say more about your POV on NAP breaking.

Zounds! You’ve discovered my true motives! :)

And recent exchanges with other members here have me thinking that redesign efforts for the OOB global game aren’t much appreciated anyway.

Well, there are always critics. My experience is that for everyone who bothers to tell you your idea is insane, there are a dozen who think it’s pretty neat but who just don’t bother to post most of the time. Otherwise why would our posts get up to thousands of views? Are there hundreds of people who all want to silently laugh at our dumb ideas? Or maybe there’s some weirdo out there who keeps refreshing all my posts like a maniac just to drive up my “views” count and trick me into thinking I know something…that would explain a lot, actually.

More seriously, if we want to shift gears to a brand new map on roughly the 1942.2 or AA50 scale, that’s fine, and I’m happy to help with that, including the .xml file, but I don’t think we should be pressured into doing that based on public opinion. I think the Russia vs. Japan issue can be adequately addressed without major territory value changes; putting VCs and military bases in the ANZAC region will help give Japan a reason to go south, and the combat-impassible Western China will seriously nerf the Japanese Death March to Moscow ™, and the Lend-Lease effect of the Warchest will allow Russia to resist Axis aggression much more effectively.

[baron Münchhausen]

Your probably right, we added already enough incentive VCs and Warchest (and detterent as impassable Western China) to do something else interesting than a JTDTM for Japan.
NAP and all NOs should be kept for G40.

1942.2 need to be more streamlined, less rule to remember, no DOW, just purchase, strategy, move and combat.

And there is no hurry for map changing. The actual allows already a lot of playtests.

A more accurate and useful map can be done in later stages.

[LHoffman]

For whatever it’s worth, and for those who haven’t seen, Siredblood is re-rendering the G40 map in Customizations. Obviously, this would be more for physical gameplay than TripleA, so it may not matter to you.

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=39013.0

I believe his goal is to leave territories and sea zones unchanged from normal, but to reshape them for larger size in well used areas. Ex… make Europe larger and Africa smaller. So far as I know, he isn’t adding any IPC values, though he may be able to make those kind of small changes to a copied version if we asked him.

[Black_Elk]

Siredbloods map looks really promising. It also shows how you can take a lot of different approaches to compression and expansion.

One thing I found when messing around with world to get it to fit the requirements of A&A, is that the two most problematic areas to scale are the Med/Africa and Central/South Asia. Depending on how extreme you go with it, basically you have to give up on having them shaped very much like the actual landmasses. This is because A&A requires more space for units in Europe and in the East Asia region.

North America and Australia and the islands are easier, because they don’t directly connect to anything, you can basically shrink or expand them to scale at whatever size is needed. But you have to do some pretty crazy stuff to get Europe and the East Asia/Pacific to be roughly 3 or 4 times the size in some places, while having Africa and Central Asia at roughly 1/2 the size

The Global Map is pretty clean in A&A terms compared to previous A&A maps, but you see it there too. Also in HBGs Global War 1936 map. Basically they give you a wild stretch at the middle. The 1942.2 map is especially rough though. All the recent maps show Africa with a warp, like you are seeing it on curved plane or globe, bending out of view at the bottom. Not a bad solution really.

My goal for the map above, was to get something close enough to reality, that it might trick someone into thinking that there is almost no distortion going on. When in fact it is heavily distorted in virtually every region. There’s basically not a spot on there that isn’t bent and twisted and pulled. But part of what helps to give you a sense of accuracy is territory divisions, because they suggest relative scale. That’s why I have so many regions in there (even if almost all of them get erased), so you can still see where say croatia might end, so that a larger Yugoslavia territory looks right, or so that an even larger Southern Europe territory might look correct, or whatever haha. It’s still not perfect though. Africa remains rather too large for A&A. You really have to bend sub saharan Africa out of shape to get the Med and Europe to align with it.

Still I’d say it’s definitely simpler to make a couple minor tweaks to Japan’s production (and use a marker or whatever) and use the existing board, if that’s all we need. Creating a whole new map projection instead of using v4 is certainly doable. Though that can go on as we work through stuff using the current tripleA or boxed maps I suppose.

Ps. I wonder if a more general production cap for Axis capitals might work on the Europe side of 1942.2 as well.

Say something like starting factories at Axis capitals are restricted to 1/2 the printed production value? This would almost grantee that Axis have a harder time turtling. Would seem to require a production purchase too. Low production combined with the same level of income encourages the purchase of heavy equipment, as we all know. So Germany would be buying a lot more tanks and fighters I would think. Japan the same, or more warships. Maybe trying to do it with G is too complicated. Japan makes sense though, and seems easier to pull off there.

Tokyo at 1/2 the printed production value?

[baron Münchhausen]

Say something like starting factories at Axis capitals are restricted to 1/2 the printed production value? This would almost grantee that Axis have a harder time turtling. Would seem to require a production purchase too. Low production combined with the same level of income encourages the purchase of heavy equipment, as we all know. So Germany would be buying a lot more tanks and fighters I would think. Japan the same, or more warships. Maybe trying to do it with G is too complicated. Japan makes sense though, and seems easier to pull off there.

Germany have to split in many directions anyway to repel Allies.
Japan may be turtling up for a while. In the few end KJF games, I saw it was nearly only delaying fatality until people called it. Per se, Japan was not conquered. The only time Japan was conquered net and clean by US, it was because my opponent was taking a risk and split IJN early while I give him a one-two punch and invade Japanese homeland around US4 or 5 at most. He took a risk and loose, but I was also lucky in my first round attacks.

A much lower Capital production combined with more money spread amongst islands will clearly put Japan on its guard: willing to protect its basic incomes, increasing the pressure to built Infantry to split and recapturing islands lost while unabling to turtle up beyond hope of an Allies conquest.

[CWO Marc]

@Black_Elk:

That seems to be what CWO suggested early on, that we just make something from scratch.

Just to expand on that a bit: one of the points I was trying to make is that there are potentially many different methods for revising a game like A&A.  And by “different methods,” I’m not referring to specific changes to specific rules or to specific map features; I’m referring to the concept of working methodologies.  Different people have different styles and priorities, so there no automatically-right or automatically-wrong ways of tackling such a project.  Black Elk, for instance, mentioned that he likes the technique of tossing ideas into the discussion (a.k.a. brainstorming), and my general impression is that many of his suggestions have used a specific existing OOB rule as a starting point from which he proposes an alternative.  Which is a perfectly valid way of working, though there are equally valid alternatives.  In my own case, for example, my general approach to problem-solving of any sort (including A&A redesign problems), is to work in the opposite direction: starting with broad concepts first, then working my way down to the specifics.

So from that perspective, when I was talking about designing the rules from scratch, I should perhaps have phrased it in less radical terms because I didn’t literally mean starting with a blank sheet of paper.  What I meant was starting with the broadest “big picture” concepts of the game first, determining if they’re satisfactory or nor (and, if not, deciding how they could be adjusted), then using that foundation as the starting point to examine the next level of detail in the game, then validating (and if necessary adjusting) that level, and so on and so forth.

And I just want to clarify what I mean by “big picture” concepts.  I mean very basic things like: how many game powers are there?  how many types of game units are there?  in what year of WWII does the game begin?  what are the victory conditions at their most fundamental level?  should the game offer an even chance of victory to both sides or should it favour a victory by the Axis or the Allies?  And then there’s what I think is the biggest-level concept of all: the issue of exactly which game is being redesigned.

One thing I’ve found a bit confusing about this discussion thread is that (unless I’m mistaken) it covers the simultaneous revision of four separate games: 1940 as a board game, 1940 in Triple A, 1942 as a board game, and 1942 in Triple A.  My own preference when I’m solving a problem – any kind of problem – is to focus on just one problem at a time, so that I don’t feel that I’m chasing after multiple geese.

In terms of the physical board game versions of A&A (I’m leaving aside the subject of Triple A, which I’ve never used), the top-down redesign option would be to focus on 1940 first, complete its redesign, then scale down the completed redesign to adapt it to 1942, while the bottom-up redesign option would be to redesign 1942 first, then scale up the completed redesign to adapt it to 1940.  Both would be valid approaches.  But regarding the bottom-up approach, one thought to consider might be the following one. There was a comment earlier in this thread about the fact that A&A games – especially A&A Global 1940, for obvious reasons – take hours to playtest, which is quite true.  Assuming, however…

1)  that the redesign process was being done in a bottom-up way (scaling up towards 1940 rather than scaling down from it); and

2. that the redesign process starts with the validation of the game’s big-picture concepts before moving to the nitty-gritty details; and,

3. that each stage of the redesign process requires playtesting, ideally without a huge investment of time

…then would it perhaps be a good idea for some of the broad-level concepts be tried and validated using the small and simple 1941 game as a test platform (possibly with the selective importation of components – like sculpts – from the 1940 game)?  The point of this wouldn’t be to redesign 1941; the point would be to use the 1941 board as a laboratory to explore the game’s most fundamental elements without having to invest hours and hours per game in playtesting.  Once those fundamentals had been nailed down, they could be scaled up to the 1942 game; this would have the twin purposes of redesigning 1942 in its own right, and later of using the redesigned 1942 game as a testbed for the ultimate purpose of redesigning Global 1940.

As I said, we all have our own ways of working, so the ideas I mentioned above may not have any practical value for people who have different working methods.  I’m just adding them to the present discussion for whatever they might be worth, even if only to offer a different perspective on the subject.

[baron Münchhausen]

Your approach will probably be needed for the next stages of Redesign.
Basically, Barney make it way beyond mere chats and brainstorms. He created a way to make a lot of playtests  possible on Triple A platform.

It may remains as such for a while, it all depends on how many people will try and enjoyed it.

It depends on which direction Black Elk may aimed at.
Because, sooner or later, if a more unified Redesign is the objective, this question and your general directions will be helpful for selecting one thing over an other (and accept some more difficult choice) and deciding which step is next.

We are probably in the easier steps of all, except for Barney, who is working much harder.

A lot of all this is very circumstantial, who knows what other will be willing to do next month and who will be part of it.

Actually, I believe 1942.2 is better than 1941 to make proof of concept. 1941 is so scaled down and have so less rules which even actually can change the overall balance a lot. Here I’m thinking about SBR.

I played a few game of 1941 with all my main roster and lower cost structure to help buying things.
And one time or another, IC and SBR were missing. But, you are right for one point, I tried a few new interactions which was easier to observe in isolation and get a better HR when I played on 1942.2 board.

Here, time to play was my main restraint, however.
Having a whole day to play, I would went straight to 1942.2