I did not intend to provide a meaningless answer there, appologies if it seemed that way haha. But many ideas have been put forth at various points suggesting potential alternative systems, such as specific charts or token systems, where the game is called based on specific objectives being met by either team or by a particular nation on the team, or within a given time/round limit. Implicit here was the suggestion that these recent proposals to add more VCs, are just assuming a more general approach to Winning/Losing that we see OOB. Not trying to articulate anything radically new or unfamiliar. Basically trying to be more descriptive than prescriptive, and figuring that we are all familiar by now with how the OOB games tend to resolve. So concession or sudden death was just a shorthand.
In the OOB games, by “concession” I meant when one side is overwhelmed, economically or in total unit value or production capacity, to the point where they feel they can no longer reasonably recover or put the opponent in a similar position by continuing.
By sudden death I meant the sort of running tally of total VCs where the game ends automatically once a certain number is reached. In this case many of the considerations above for games played till concession may not be relevant, as the only thing that matters is who controls X number of VCs at the end of the game round.
Traditionally VCs have only been involved with the later sort of game. What I was trying to make clear above is that I want them to be able to play a part in the former sort of game as well. That’s why attaching an economic value to them is important, because without this I think they only support the sudden death concept and not the concession concept.
Since the introduction of VCs, the waters have become somewhat muddied relative to previous editions. Technically right now there is only one way to officially “win”, and that is the political victory you described above. In both Global and 1942.2 the situation is much the same.
“A numerical political victory in which one side controls a large number of Victory Cities”
In G40 terms, that one side is Axis, and the game comes down to whether Axis can achieve it in a reasonable amount of play time, or whether Allies can prevent this and force an effective stalemate. This creates a kind of weird hybrid situation, where only one side can make a technical sudden death win, or else the game reverts to concession.
In 1942.2 terms the situation is somewhat better, because at least here both sides have a number which can be reached for sudden death. But again with the spread being very narrow, it often amounts to the same thing, where the game reverts to a win by concession.
To me the victory by concession system, and the foundational goals involved there, are not all that complicated really. It looks pretty similar going back to Classic, and involves all those things mentioned above.
“A military victory in which the enemy forces are destroyed”
“An economic victory in which one side controls vastly more IPCs than the other”
“A territorial victory in which one side controls a vastly greater number of territories than the other”
And of course with capital capture…
“A symbolic political victory in which one side controls a few very specific but highly important Victory Cities.”
Though this last is not really symbolic, because it is so consequential for the military and economic factors just mentioned. And because controlling a capital dramatically increases your ability to expand your territory and deny it to the opponent.
What I have been trying to drive at I suppose, is just a simple way to make the “numerical political” victory, fall more in line with these others. If that makes sense?
I kind of liked the hypothetical involving San Diego, maybe because I used to live there for many years back when I was an Aztec haha.
:-D
But yeah highlights what I was trying to say about the Territory being more significant than the city, if there is only on VC per territory.
Functionally all a VC does, in gameplay terms, is to indicate the territory involved. So if, instead of Western US, you had two tiles like Northern California and Southern California, then maybe it makes sense to choose San Diego or LA for the southern one. But right now there is only one tile Western US. And there it doesn’t really matter (other than for educational purposes) whether we make the VC San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Sacramento, the San Joaquin Oil fields etc. because those all fall within the scope of the same tile.
That’s why I wanted a list focusing on Territories first rather than cities. And also why I think VT (victory territory) is a more useful shorthand.
It allows you to include for example Baku or Astrakhan, within the same VT of Caucasus, or same deal with places like Romania between the political capital and areas with natural resource concentrations, so we don’t have to split hairs. Just figure out which tiles are the most relevant to the history, without losing sight of the main purpose of including them in this first place, which is to enhance the gameplay.
