G40 Redesign (currently taking suggestions)

[CWO Marc]

@Black_Elk:

I like a game that builds on the historical situation as opposed to an alternate history, and which mentions anything of interest in the immediate prelude. Then use that as a guide to the unit set up.
[…]
I’d think about including a special mention for each minor power. Italy China and Anzac in particular, France too (or Canada, if they make the grade.) Just so each player nation has some kind of blurb to set the scene round the globe.

Okay, that gives me a good start to work on a first draft.  I’ll aim for a text that combines a general overview of the war situation in December 1940 with some specific details about the situation on various active fronts and maybe also in areas that will see some notable action very soon (meaning in the first few months of 1941).  And for game powers that might otherwise not get mentioned because the time frame for their involvement is still too far way, I might throw in a couple of “Meanwhile, country X is watching with growing apprehension as…” types of lines.  I like your idea of mentioning each of the game powers, and it should be easy enough to do given how much was going on internationally at that time.  I’ll try to keep the text broad enough so that it won’t hinge on any specific map or set-up adjustments; if there should end up being a few such cases of local situations, however, then the two options would be to either make map/setup adjustments to fit the text or to simply edit those references out of the text.

[baron Münchhausen]

You got the honor CWO Marc, to break the 100 pages wall of this thread!!!
😆😃☺
I would really like to get a real accurate overview of major events late 1940, early 1941.
It would provide an interesting and compelling guideline for any 1941 setup.

[barney]

For ABs I’ve found using the “Limited Factory” tech gives the incentive to go after it before a regular factory. At least in UK at the start. The UK can’t build planes with an inoperative base. Raising damage from 6 to 8 would help as well.

With “Airfield M2” on there is additional incentive to go after ABs. It may not do quite what you’re looking for Elk, but it does make ABs a more attractive target

[baron Münchhausen]

@barney:

For ABs I’ve found using the “Limited Factory” tech gives the incentive to go after it before a regular factory. At least in UK at the start. The UK can’t build planes with an inoperative base. Raising damage from 6 to 8 would help as well.

With “Airfield M2” on there is additional incentive to go after ABs. It may not do quite what you’re looking for Elk, but it does make ABs a more attractive target

I thought about it, too.
IDK how hard this can be to code on XML.

If at the start of SBR, an AB is unoperative, StB damage rise to D6+2 on IC.

You can see it as part of defending planes are abstract, that way they scramble to make air interdiction.
But when inoperative, it makes easier to StBs to reach on target.

[Argothair]

If you want operational airfields to interfere with strategic bombing, I see three main options. Option one is to require an operational airfield in order to scramble fighters to defend against an SBR.  Using this option requires either (1a) per-turn repair limits, (1b) airbases that can accumulate way, way more than 6 points of damage, (1c) airbases that are destroyed and removed from the map if they take max damage, or (1d) a two-stage raid that lets you target an airbase first, and then target the factory later in the same raid, with defending fighters unable to scramble to defend the factory if the airfield was sufficiently damaged.

Option two is to treat airfields as having a built-in “garrison squadron” that automatically scrambles to defend the territory as long as the airbase is operational. So if you have an airfield with “zero” fighters left, you can still scramble one fighter as long as the airbase is operational. Again, here you would need (2a) per turn repair limits, (2b) higher damage caps on airbases, (2c) destructible airbases, or (2d) two stage raids in order for any reasonable attacker to ever consider targeting airbases.

Option three is to penalize the bombing runs of bombers flying above an operational airfield, e.g
1d6 - 2 damage on a c5 bomber, or 1d6 damage on a c12 bomber. Again, you need per turn repair limits, higher damage caps, destroyable airbases, or two stage raids to make this work.

Note that you can keep piling on extra bonuses for an operational airfield all day long, but you will still need per turn repair limits, higher damage caps, or two stage raids. To see why, imagine an airbase that gives you +5 movement, unlimited scrambles, half damage on bombing raids, required to build new planes, and a free tech roll every turn. It’s the King Emperor of all Airbases. Will German bombers target It? No, because the UK can pay $6 a turn and in practice that is the only downside you impose on your enemy. As long as players can cheaply, reliably, and quickly repair their airbases, then targeting an airbase (no matter how vital) before a factory will never be a good tactic.

[barney]

I agree the damage is too low, but targeting an AB if it’s required to build planes is better than targeting the factory. At least initially. Even if both German bombers make it through on rd1 and do max damage, at the most you’d have to pay 3 bucks. Your odds of making UK pay 3 bucks by bombing the AB, even with only 1 bomber, are better.

It would be quite easy to add a tech that increases minor base damage. 8 seems a good starting point. I also like what you said about possible destruction of base. An increase in damage and having bases be destroyed when reaching it, seems worth exploring.

[CWO Marc]

@CWO:

Okay, that gives me a good start to work on a first draft.  I’ll aim for a text that combines a general overview of the war situation in December 1940 with some specific details about the situation on various active fronts and maybe also in areas that will see some notable action very soon (meaning in the first few months of 1941).  And for game powers that might otherwise not get mentioned because the time frame for their involvement is still too far way, I might throw in a couple of “Meanwhile, country X is watching with growing apprehension as…” types of lines.  I like your idea of mentioning each of the game powers, and it should be easy enough to do given how much was going on internationally at that time.  I’ll try to keep the text broad enough so that it won’t hinge on any specific map or set-up adjustments; if there should end up being a few such cases of local situations, however, then the two options would be to either make map/setup adjustments to fit the text or to simply edit those references out of the text.

Here’s the first draft:

It is December 1940.  After the swift conquests of the conflict’s first year, which saw much of Europe overrun and occupied, the Second World War is turning into a grim war of attrition.  Defeated in the air during the first phases of the Battle of Britain, Germany has called off its contemplated invasion of the U.K. and, since October, has been carrying out a night bombing campaign against London and other large cities across the English Channel.  In the Atlantic, German U-Boats have enjoyed several months of exceptionally good luck in their operations against Allied convoys.  Britain, besieged though it may be at home, is preparing to strike back against the Axis in North Africa: with Australian support, it is about to launch Operation Compass, the first major Allied offensive of the Western Desert Campaign.  The attack will be a heavy blow to Italy, whose invasion forces in Greece are at this moment being driven back into Albania by the Greek army.

On the other side of the world, Japan’s invasion and occupation of China has bogged down into a bloody stalemate.  Further south, Thailand has gone to war with the Vichy regime to gain control of parts of French Indochina, an area where Japan has had its own presence since September.  These developments are raising tensions between Japan and the United States, which is concerned by growing Japanese naval power in the Pacific and Japanese aggression in mainland Asia.  The Soviet Union is likewise keeping a wary eye on Japan, its opponent in several recent conflicts along the Mongolian and Manchurian borders.  In the wake of Japan’s defeat by the Soviets in the latest of these border wars, the two nations will soon establish a neutrality pact.  The accord will put Japan at greater liberty to turn its attention towards the Pacific and South-East Asia, while the leaders of the Soviet Union – having already signed a non-aggression pact with Germany the previous year – will be able to reassure themselves that their potential adversaries to the east and to the west have now been neutralized by the tools of diplomacy…

[Black_Elk]

I dig it!   :-D

Seems to me that would be a pretty fun scenario to draft out, and much more straight forward.
In terms of the starting unit distribution you could basically go with a scaled back 1941. I prefer the basic thrust of Oztea’s set up, especially the way the Soviet Union was handled. But maybe with fewer units at the outset to accelerate the play pace?

[CWO Marc]

Glad you like it.  By the way, here’s something I noticed while I was researching the text, and which should perhaps be reflected in the modified Global set-up: the Flying Tiger squadron started being formed (with plane purchases and pilot training) in late 1940, and only started arriving in Asia (specifically Burma) in mid-1941.  The Flying Tigers didn’t go into combat until December 20, 1941 – two weeks after Pearl Harbor – so technically the single fighter that China is allocated in the 1940 game (from the very beginning under the OOB rules) shouldn’t be there until the game reaches the second half of 1941.

[baron Münchhausen]

@CWO:

Glad you like it.  By the way, here’s something I noticed while I was researching the text, and which should perhaps be reflected in the modified Global set-up: the Flying Tiger squadron started being formed (with plane purchases and pilot training) in late 1940, and only started arriving in Asia (specifically Burma) in mid-1941.  The Flying Tigers didn’t go into combat until December 20, 1941 – two weeks after Pearl Harbor – so technically the single fighter that China is allocated in the 1940 game (from the very beginning under the OOB rules) shouldn’t be there until the game reaches the second half of 1941.

So, it might be possible to left China empty of Fighter on set-up but with 1 or 2 Fgs in Philippines to use the optional rule about Flying Tigers changing US Fg into Chinese Fg. So, on USA’s turn it might correspond to mid 1941 period.

[CWO Marc]

@Baron:

So, it might be possible to left China empty of Fighter on set-up but with 1 or 2 Fgs in Philippines to use the optional rule about Flying Tigers changing US Fg into Chinese Fg. So, on USA’s turn it might correspond to mid 1941 period.

I don’t think the Philippines could be used in this way.  The P-40 Warhawk used by the Flying Tigers had a range of about 650 miles, which is about the distance between the northern tip of the Philippines and the closest point of mainland China (roughly Hong Kong) – and that’s assuming the plane is flying a one-way trip, and that it would arrive over China with no fuel left for combat.  A plane could be ferried to China that way, but it couldn’t fly a Philippine-based combat mission.

[Black_Elk]

Nice catch.
Currently it works like this…

“FlyingTiger_ChangerMustActivate” Changes the US Fighter at the Philippines into a “FlyingTiger” unit. This unit may move to Dutch or UK Pacific territories during it’s ncm. When ending it’s turn in a Chinese controlled territory, it will become a Chinese unit. May not enter Chinese territories unless US is at war with Japan. Has same abilities as Fighter.

It also allows for a purchase option in the US unit roster though, so you could buy a replacement, but it still has to be flown over to China from the US somehow.

Do we know what the actual route of supply was for those Warhawks?

I think we have to assume the maximum range of all fighter aircraft is 4 spaces (regardless of the specific type), which is crazy far for the period, but I think they’d come at us with pitch forks and torches if we tried to nerf fighter movement from M4 for realism. It’s one of the few values that hasn’t changed since Classic.
:-D

Personally I just love the look of the unit. On the physical board I’m always trying to switch out my Lightnings for the 41 Warhawks, since I keep all my fighters in the same big unit tray like a madman hehe

I think Nation specific units can be confusing sometimes, but the Tiger and China are pretty weird already, so maybe it’s not a big deal. Certainly if there was no fighter in China to start, it would be nice if we had a way to include them via US purchases.

I also ment to reply to the AB stuff, but had a long night last night and a kind of rough morning haha. I’ve been trying to link up with Simon to test some stuff live, but RL getting in the way and we’re on opposite sides of the globe. Maybe tomorrow I’ll finally make my way to the lobby.

For now I think what Barney was saying about limited factories gets pretty close. That HR basically puts limits on what units can be produced at a factory depending on whether it also has operational bases. I like Args ideas too, if people wanted to up the importance of the AB, but stop short of a connection between bases and unit production. The built in scramble +1 seems like it might be fun.

I’d still like to separate the Marine unit from the warship=transporting thing. I think our current price structure for marines works well with just normal transports. So it would be nice if the warship transport idea was it’s own toggle, so you could just have normal marines if desired. I guess right now you can player enforce it (just don’t allow moving them onto Battleships etc.) For making warships more attractive I think just lowering the cost should be an option (rather than adding abilities) seems cleaner, with fewer moving parts. So instead of a BB that transports Marines or gets the AA shot or whatever, we should have a toggle that lowers its price tag to 17 or 15 or whatever.

[CWO Marc]

@Black_Elk:

Do we know what the actual route of supply was for those Warhawks?

My guess would be that the planes were shipped to Burma disassembled (in crates), then forwarded to China via the Burma Road or put together in Burma and flown over the Himalayas to China.  The whole Flying Tiger squadron concept was basically a clandestine operation of the Roosevelt administration, which wanted to help China without overtly violating the peacetime status of the US, so they had to use discretion.  Flying combat planes to China from the Phillipines would have been too blatant, and would have upset both Congress and the Japanese.  In the context of A&A, it might even be considered an act of war.  My feeling is that the simplest method would simply be to give China its Flying Tiger unit at the proper phase of the game by adding it to the map as a new unit, not by transferring an existing fighter that’s already on the board.  This would replicate the idea that these fighters were sent to China covertly rather than overtly.  Also, it would agree with the White House’s fiction that the pilots in question we “civilian volunteers” and that the planes were part of the Chinese Air Force – an illusion that would have been shattered if the US had transferred US Army Air Corps planes to China, flown by American uniformed servicemen.

[baron Münchhausen]

@CWO:

@Black_Elk:

Do we know what the actual route of supply was for those Warhawks?

My guess would be that the planes were shipped to Burma disassembled (in crates), then forwarded to China via the Burma Road or put together in Burma and flown over the Himalayas to China.  The whole Flying Tiger squadron concept was basically a clandestine operation of the Roosevelt administration, which wanted to help China without overtly violating the peacetime status of the US, so they had to use discretion.  Flying combat planes to China from the Phillipines would have been too blatant, and would have upset both Congress and the Japanese.  In the context of A&A, it might even be considered an act of war.  My feeling is that the simplest method would simply be to give China its Flying Tiger unit at the proper phase of the game by adding it to the map as a new unit, not by transferring an existing fighter that’s already on the board.  This would replicate the idea that these fighters were sent to China covertly rather than overtly.  Also, it would agree with the White House’s fiction that the pilots in question we “civilian volunteers” and that the planes were part of the Chinese Air Force – an illusion that would have been shattered if the US had transferred US Army Air Corps planes to China, flown by American uniformed servicemen.

If China is considered the last power to play, it might not be that far stretch to put on set-up and out of position a Chinese aircraft, which might be considered the Flying tiger.

Or, giving an initial 10 IPCs bonus to allow Chinese player to built a one time single Fighter.
So, it will only appear on units placement phase.

[baron Münchhausen]

@CWO:

@CWO:

Okay, that gives me a good start to work on a first draft.  I’ll aim for a text that combines a general overview of the war situation in December 1940 with some specific details about the situation on various active fronts and maybe also in areas that will see some notable action very soon (meaning in the first few months of 1941).  And for game powers that might otherwise not get mentioned because the time frame for their involvement is still too far way, I might throw in a couple of “Meanwhile, country X is watching with growing apprehension as…” types of lines.  I like your idea of mentioning each of the game powers, and it should be easy enough to do given how much was going on internationally at that time.  I’ll try to keep the text broad enough so that it won’t hinge on any specific map or set-up adjustments; if there should end up being a few such cases of local situations, however, then the two options would be to either make map/setup adjustments to fit the text or to simply edit those references out of the text.

Here’s the first draft:

It is December 1940.  After the swift conquests of the conflict’s first year, which saw much of Europe overrun and occupied, the Second World War is turning into a grim war of attrition.  Defeated in the air during the first phases of the Battle of Britain, Germany has called off its contemplated invasion of the U.K. and, since October, has been carrying out a night bombing campaign against London and other large cities across the English Channel.  In the Atlantic, German U-Boats have enjoyed several months of exceptionally good luck in their operations against Allied convoys.  **Britain, besieged though it may be at home, is preparing to strike back against the Axis in North Africa: with Australian support, it is about to launch Operation Compass, the first major Allied offensive of the Western Desert Campaign.  The attack will be a heavy blow to Italy, whose invasion forces in Greece are at this moment being driven back into Albania by the Greek army.  **

On the other side of the world, Japan’s invasion and occupation of China has bogged down into a bloody stalemate.  Further south, Thailand has gone to war with the Vichy regime to gain control of parts of French Indochina, an area where Japan has had its own presence since September.  These developments are raising tensions between Japan and the United States, which is concerned by growing Japanese naval power in the Pacific and Japanese aggression in mainland Asia.  The Soviet Union is likewise keeping a wary eye on Japan, its opponent in several recent conflicts along the Mongolian and Manchurian borders.  In the wake of Japan’s defeat by the Soviets in the latest of these border wars, the two nations will soon establish a neutrality pact.  The accord will put Japan at greater liberty to turn its attention towards the Pacific and South-East Asia, while the leaders of the Soviet Union – having already signed a non-aggression pact with Germany the previous year – will be able to reassure themselves that their potential adversaries to the east and to the west have now been neutralized by the tools of diplomacy…

On various challenge about where to start a 1941 set-up to make it interesting here is a quote from AA50:

Why not have a new starting date for the game? Avalon Hill brand manager Brian Hart and I discussed a 1939 scenario. This idea came with many undesirable problems, however. The game would automatically be much longer to play. The United States would not participate in the game for the first three or four turns. The game would suffer from a rather slow and very predictable start. This, and several other issues, would prove to be too problematic from a game point of view. The war did not become truly global until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. We finally decided that this infamous date would be our starting point . . . well almost. As it turned out, by way of some serious lobbying from one of my playtest groups, we concluded that turn one would include both the japanese attack at Pearl Harbor as well as the German attack on Russia (Operation Barbarossa). This would really start the game off with a bang.

It seems they made an historical anachronism to get an interesting moment on Eastern Front…

From 1942 Revised intro, but not a word on Japan expansionism or German’s soldier diehard winter battle hardened:

Spring 1942: The fleet at Pearl Harbor rebuilds from the ruins. Britons stare across the Channel to an occupied France. West of Moscow, Soviet troops dig out from a brutal winter on the Russian front. Greenhorn American soldiers leave their birthplaces for the first time, unclear whether they’ll see the homefires burn again. They face a world at war.

Seems pretty hard to find the original intro texts written under the OOB boxes. If anyone have a link to provide.

This late 1940 date for set-up makes me wonder about Taranto raid. Maybe it can still be part of the first round action on UKE1?
Can this be UK the opening Power in this 1940-1941 scenario?

Pacific 1940 Box Back texts:

The year is 1940. Japan continues to flex its military might in China as political tension grips the world. In Europe, France is about to fall, and Asia braces for the impact. Holland, now occupied by Germany, is forced to leave its resource rich colonies in the Dutch East Indies vulnerable to the oil-starved Imperial Japanese Empire. French Indo-China will soon be occupied by Japanese land sea and air forces. Britain has received an ultimatum to close the Burma Road or risk war with Japan. The United States reacts with an embargo of strategic materials. The stage is set.

Europe 1940 Box Back texts:

The year is 1940. France is about to succumb to the unstoppable German armies blitzing through Western Europe. Italy’s armies are poised to attack in North Africa, Greece, and Southern France. What remains of the British army has recently evacuated Dunkirk. This island nation is about to find itself standing alone and bracing for an invasion that could come at any moment. The United States, separated from world conflicts by two great oceans, remains neutral for the moment. The Soviet Union has concluded a secret agreement with Germany, assuring that it will remain neutral should Germany go to war in Europe. These are trying times, but all of this is merely a prelude to the greatest conflict in human history.

Pacific 1940, first edition Larry Harris intro in rulebook

What if . . . What if the Japanese attacked the United States in 1940 instead of on December 7th, 1941?
We, as players of this game, are about to explore that possibility. The war in Europe has already begun and the German blitzkrieg is presently underway in France. The collapse of several European colonial powers has created large power vacuums in Asia and in the Pacific. Japan is anxious to fill these vacuums. To do so, it will most certainly have to go to war with the other Pacific powers notably the United States. As the game opens, clearly Japan is the dominant military power. The U.S. is in no mood for foreign military adventures, and with a strong isolationist movement in the country, it’s desperately trying to stay out of the war in Europe and avoid one in the Pacific. With this backdrop, the United States consequently cannot and will not make any moves against Japan. Japan, on the other hand, has all its options open. As Japan sees it, war with the United States and the European powers in the Pacific is all but inevitable.

On turn one Japan is confronted with two options: attack immediately or use this time window to better prepare for what will certainly be a massive attack that will carry them half way across the globe. With some luck and preparation, Japan can catch the U.S. Pacific fleet unprepared and strike a swift and decisive blow to the American fleet. If Japan can manage to keep the United
States on the defensive and in a weak military state, she can conquer enough resources and victory cities to win the game. One theory is that Japan can create such a strong defensive perimeter that the United States would eventually tire and negotiate a peace with a much stronger and richer Japan.

But another theory suggests that time is running out for Japan. On turn 3, due to the realities of the global situation, the United States will switch to a wartime economy. On the U.S. player’s third turn, whether attacked or not, the U.S. will boost its income by 40 IPCs per turn. The British will fill the void created by the fall of Holland and take guardianship of the rich Dutch East Indies. And so, in but a few months, Japan will no longer enjoy its military dominance in Asia, and its dreams of a greater imperial Japan will fade in the setting sun.

[CWO Marc]

@Baron:

Seems pretty hard to find the original intro texts written under the OOB boxes. If anyone have a link to provide.

http://www.axisandallies.org/p/axis_allies_europe_1940_preview_1_out_of_the_box/

http://www.axisandallies.org/p/image_axisallies_pacific_box_back/

[CWO Marc]

Incidentally, regardless of which starting date is picked, some potentially useful information for an adjusted set-up (if required) can be found in my Global 1940 map analysis…

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=36590.0

…which includes historical information (going from, about 1933 to about 1942 or 1943) on which territories were controlled by what powers at which dates.  This covers both changes of jurisdiction that resulted from wars or annexations, as well as a few game map goofs (such as depicting the Solomons as an ANZAC territory, when it should be British) that can easily be corrected by a roundel change.

[CWO Marc]

@Baron:

On various challenge about where to start a 1941 set-up to make it interesting
[…]
It seems they made an historical anachronism to get an interesting moment on Eastern Front…

All the starting dates for A&A games (the ones that have been used OOB and the potential alternatives that are available) have their own advantages and disadvantages, if we stick close to actual history, so it’s basically a matter of deciding what trade-offs work best for whatever is being aimed for.

Early June 1940, the start date for Global 1940, is also in some ways an obvious design choice, if one works from the assumption (as Larry Harris himself tacitly admits in the Europe 1940 rulebooks) that France has to be involved but also has to be eliminated quickly.  A month earlier wouldn’t have worked because France’s large military forces were still intact (and because the British Expeditionary Force was likewise at full strength).  A month later wouldn’t have worked because France had surrendered and the men of the British Expeditionary Force had been evacuated to Britain, leaving all their equipment behind at Dunkirk.  The problem with early June 1940, of course (again, as Larry himself notes), is that 60% of the major players – US, USSR and Japan – are not yet engaged (or not yet fully engaged) in the wider conflict that the war will become.  Japan is definitely at war with China – and has been since 1937 – and the USSR has gobbled up a buffer zone (on the map: Vyborg, the Baltic States, Eastern Poland and Bessarabia) between itself and Axis-dominated central Europe, but all three player power are (appropriately) still operating under partial peacetime restrictions.

The traditional mid-1942 start date that many A&A games have used is an easy design choice to understand.  All five of the main powers – US, UK, USSR, Germany and Japan – are at war by that point, so no player has to wait to get into the action.  Also, mid-1942 is arguably the point in WWII where the two sides were the most balanced.  The Axis has pretty much reached the limits of its expansion; the quick German thrusts of 1939 (Poland), 1940 (Western Europe), and 1941 (Russia), and the quick Japanese thrusts of late 1941-early 1942 (the Pacific and Southeast Asia) are over, and the war is now going to be a back-and-forth slugging match for the next twelve to eighteen months or so.  The Allies have managed to check Axis expansion, but are still a long way off from their steamroller counter-offensives of 1944 and 1945, and a long way from achieving an overwhelming material advantage.

Between June 1940 and mid-1942, the two most obvious entry points for the game are June 1941 (the German invasion of the USSR) and December 1941 (the outbreak of the war in the Pacific), both of which are self-explanatory in terms of their huge impacts.  The half-year from December 1941 to mid-1942 doesn’t offer much worthwhile maneuvering room as an alterate entry point, so I think I can be disregarded.  The half-year from June 1941 to December 1941 is likewise, I think, not particularly useful, though it perhaps has more potential than December 1941 to mid-1942.  The period from June 1940 to June 1941, which amounts to a full year, has more scope for an alternate start date.

[Black_Elk]

I think the first round is in some sense the most flexible for a timeline compression or expansion. The way things are typically worded, the opening turn of the opening round usually has an actual date/season attached to it. But after that point, how much time is considered to have elapsed in a given round of play (even the first round) becomes pretty abstract.

Just for example, in the OOB game, it’s pretty open for interpretation, if Japan does a J1DoW is it still June 1940? Or does the player see the second half of the first round as several months going by? Is a J2DoW still 1940 or perhaps further along like January 1941? It’s never made clear from the manual whether turns within a round are meant to advance the timeline, or if it is all like a snapshot frozen time, and the clock doesn’t start moving again until Germany is up.

From a gameplay standpoint, what makes 1940 interesting is I suppose the idea that the Germans or Japanese might have decided to “go to war” earlier, which immediately makes the timeline after that a departure from the historical war. In balance terms, I guess what you’d want for a historical script is a situation where Germany doesn’t declare on Russia until the second round at the earliest  (which is fairly standard OOB), and a situation where Japan doesn’t declare until the third round at the earliest  (somewhat harder to account for OOB.) But then, if you go with a strict script, it kind of begs the question, why bother having players go through the motions, if you could just advance the timeline to a total war start? It’s kind of a bind.

Personally I like the idea of no fixed timeline, just a start date. Where game time to real time is as malleable as it needs to be, with no real constraints on the imagination there. The only real hangup for this is the whole USA entry thing, where they are allowed to declare in 4th round regardless. I guess that signals the inevitability of the US becoming a belligerent, but it’s never made exclipicit that round 4 is supposed to equate to ‘such and such’ a date. Or why such a date would be particularly significant, absent a Japanese attack on pearl to drag the Americans into the fray.

I guess everyone just assumes it’s December 41 or early 42 by that point? And America would have gone to war by then no matter what?

[CWO Marc]

@Black_Elk:

Personally I like the idea of no fixed timeline, just a start date. Where game time to real time is as malleable as it needs to be, with no real constraints on the imagination there. The only real hangup for this is the whole USA entry thing, where they are allowed to declare in 4th round regardless. I guess that signals the inevitability of the US becoming a belligerent, but it’s never made exclipicit that round 4 is supposed to equate to ‘such and such’ a date. Or why such a date would be particularly significant, absent a Japanese attack on pearl to drag the Americans into the fray.

There are two “desirables” here, in my opinion:

• Giving the players the freedom of action to change history if they so wish (which is desirable because it makes the game more interesting and less repetitive)

• Following the broad historical outlines of WWII (which is desirable because players have certain basic expectations about the war they’re fighting; for example, wouldn’t the Soviet player feel cheated if, in a particular game, the USSR never ended up at war with anybody?)

These two desirables aren’t mutually exclusive, but they require some creative thinking to reconcile them in a satisfactory way.

Without necessarily getting into overly-scripted games (“such-and-such MUST happen in Round X if it hasn’t already happened”) or into too many strict restrictions ("Power Y can NEVER do such-and-such), the general solution might be to have a table of incentives and disincentives, broken down by game round, which encourage each power to behave in a certain way at particular stages of the game (or discourage them from doing othewise, to view things from the opposite direction).  By “behave in a certain way,” I’m only talking about very broad and very significant actions – basically, things like declaring war.  And the round-by-round breakdown would be important: for example, a particular action might be strongly discouraged in Round 1, might be left entirely up to the player’s discretion in Round 2, and might be strongly encouraged in Round 3.  And some of the encouragement/discouragement elements might hinge not just on the game round but on actions by other players; a historical example would be that the likelihood of hostile action by the US increases if Japan occupies French Indochina.