G40 League House Rule project

[gamerman01]

OK, added a few more things.  I like how this is going.

I don’t think the China rule placement restriction is weird.  In AA50 you couldn’t place ANY units in a territory that already had 2-3 Chinese infantry in it.  This rule of placing no more than 2 infantry in a territory at once is very attractive, I think.

Remember the rule book points out that China is in civil war.  So they should not be able to coordinate attacks and build up so easily.  I’m not even sure I’m in favor of the “flying tigers”.  That’s some serious cheese right there, isn’t it?

According to Wikipedia, the flying tigers were active from 12/20/41 to 7/14/42.  So they shouldn’t even exist at start up.  Furthermore, if there is a Chinese fighter representing the “flying tigers” they shouldn’t be able to support ground attacks of Chinese infantry.  A quick review in wikipedia reveals that the tigers were extremely successful in their campaign against Japanese aircraft.  How often does the Chinese fighter in G40 destroy a Japanese plane?  Almost never.  The flying tigers helped defend and shoot down bombers that were doing SBR’s.  So it makes more sense that the flying tigers would enter the game in round 2 or 3 or something and sit in India, defending against SBR’s as an interceptor.  So instead of a fighter piece, perhaps the Allies should have a piece similar to kamikazes that can be used against Japanese air attacks in China and South Asia and that would represent the flying tigers.

Yes, I like this idea a lot, because it is not only much more historically accurate and less cheesy, but it gives the Allies something comparable to the kamikazes.

I am strongly in favor of REPLACING the flying tigers with chits similar to kamikazes, to be used when there is a Japanese air attack.  Kind of like surprise AA guns.  Maybe 2 chits.

[gamerman01]

That quote was of myself from the cheese thread, btw

[gamerman01]

To offset taking away the Chinese fighter and the Chinese placement restriction, I am taking away 2 Japanese infantry (2 Japanese tacs also) and giving the Allies flying tiger tokens/chits.
Moving one Chinese from Sze to Yun and taking away one Japanese infantry from Kwangsi takes away the no-brainer attack on Yunnan on J1.  Note also that the NO has been reduced from 6 to 5.

Work in progress, nothing final.  Just getting my ideas on paper and tinkering at this point.

[gamerman01]

A quick rant:

This game is supposed to start in 1940 and be all wonderful because it starts earlier than previous A&A games, but I have identified (and I am sure there are many more)

unit placements at game start that represent forces that DID NOT EVEN EXIST until December 1941

Namely the flying tigers and the battleship in Z37
Also, I have researched before and found that the forces of ANZ in Australia/New Zealand are grossly overstated, and perhaps ANZ forces in North Africa are actually understated.

And don’t tell me it’s for game play - it’s not that simple.  Having a more historically accurate setup overall will actually, I’m quite sure, improve game play.

[variance]

Gamerman, for your “house league” rules, would you be willing to consider giving any techs to particular powers as National Advantages?  Perhaps time the appearance of the techs to coincide with when they appeared historically?  For instance, Germany started V1 rocket attacks against Britain in mid 1944 so maybe Germany gets rockets on turn 12 (assuming each round is 3 months?).  USA would get long range aircraft sometime late in the war.  UK might start out with Radar.  That sort of thing?

[gamerman01]

I appreciate your idea, but no, I don’t think that would be popular with enough players.

Also, I realize that for tech I will need to establish a naval pricing schedule since I’ve tweaked a couple boats’ prices

Keep those thoughts coming - thanks

[Guest]

@Gamerman01:

I appreciate your idea, but no, I don’t think that would be popular with enough players.

Also, I realize that for tech I will need to establish a naval pricing schedule since I’ve tweaked a couple boats’ prices

Keep those thoughts coming - thanks

In that case you can always develop multiple house rule variants. In which case players decide which version to play their league game.

[Major Major]

@Gamerman01:

I appreciate your idea, but no, I don’t think that would be popular with enough players.

Also, I realize that for tech I will need to establish a naval pricing schedule since I’ve tweaked a couple boats’ prices

Keep those thoughts coming - thanks

Gamerman,

A concept i have always thought would imrpove the game is a rule that only allows all battles to go 3rounds max and then the territory remains contested or for simplicity the attacker must retreat.  A lot more historically accurate and prevents massive unrealistic stacks.

[gamerman01]

Thanks!  It’s been awhile, but I think I had a similar thought before -

I will think about that, but I think I want to leave the basic game rules intact since this is intended for a general group of players.  Mainly trying to change setup and G40 specific rules.

Keep those cool ideas coming - I like that one!

[KionAAA]

Hello Gamerman

some ideas regarding your house rules:

• Why changing the turn order? If Italy moves before UK, it can easily defeat the allied fleets in the mediterranean sea and/or keep all its transports. This would require a massive (and in my opinion unnecessary) overhaul of the italien fleet.
• Regarding the Pacific, I share MrRobotos opinion: without stacking its troops, china is way to easy to defeat and while I like your Idea of Flying-Tigers-Kamikaze, it weakens the chinese attacks even more.
• I would introduce an easy rule to lesson convoy where it should:
    The maximum possible convoy from a territory is halfed (rounded up? down?), if a continous path from territory to capital through non-enemy territorys can be drawn.
  So if the Axis controls all of western continental europe, only 1 point of convoy can be made in SZ105, as a path via non-enemy territorys connects “Germany” and “Normandy/Bordeax”.
• I don’t think the “every neutral stands for its own” - idea would work, at least it would open a whole new set of tactics like the axis invading turkey after greece for the short path to both caucasus and middle east or the USA invading Spain for a perfect hub to take back france. This would alter the game dramatically.

That’s it for now and please do not dismiss my ideas just because its my first post in this Forum, I have played Axis and Allies several times and plan on joining the league soon.

greetings
Kion

[gamerman01]

No, I certainly won’t dismiss those and you didn’t even need to explain that you’ve played many games, because it is obvious from the quality of the content of your ideas.  Hopefully you do join the league.

Good point about Mediterranean.  As you know, I am in the infancy stage of this.  Perhaps it would be better to go all the way toward the old style turn order.

G
R
J
UK
I
US/China

Just like AA50-41, I believe

I really don’t think it will be difficult to make sure that China is of appropriate strength once a bunch of changes are implemented.  In the current game, when China survives, it can too quickly rebuild and go on the offensive.  The game rule book says China is going through civil war, in justifying some of the rules.  So it does not make sense that this huge nation could extremely efficiently place 6-8 infantry all in the same frontier territory to terrorize the Japanese, or what’s really cheesy, is placing 5-7 infantry on a territory that the USA just took.
There may be a better solution, but this is why I first came up with a limit to placement.

Maybe I didn’t say this, but I’ve been thinking it.  To compensate for every neutral standing on its own, each neutral could be given a slightly larger standing army.  If the Axis want to attack Turkey’s 10 infanty or Spain’s 8 to gain control, I think they’ve paid an appropriate price.

I agree with your thinking that convoy damage should have something to do with current supply lines, and you’ve already put more thought into that than I have.  I will study your idea more in the future and I actually anticipate incorporating something to do with supply lines into the rule, even though I hesitate to make anything more complicated.  In general, I’m actually going for LESS complicated (Going back to Alpha2 Mongolia rules is Exhibit A for this)

THANKS!!!

[gamerman01]

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhOB4pSke42ydGh6d2NwRDJRRzBteEsyU1EtNGhXVUE#gid=2
Kion, did you review my spreadsheet?  If not, please see this link to it.  There was previously discussion about this on 2 different threads, so I’m not sure what you’ve read.

I agree with you about not having Italy go before UK and I didn’t have a really great reason for putting USA after Japan except that that prevents UK can openers.  So I have switched US and UK in the turn order to match basically all previous A&A games.  However, I think we may have an issue with UK can opening in the Pacific for the USA.  Of course, this may not be bad.  If China indeed is weakened by my version, this may be made up for by the fact that US threat is greatly strengthened by very viable can opener opportunities (single destroyer blocks will not be safe), and also give the USA more incentive to go Pacific.  Especially because the victory conditions will NOT include a 6 city win for Japan (one of the top things I aimed to get rid of)

[Major Major]

idea on vc conditions.
same as now except…

AXIS;
europe 8vc but axis 12 globally.
pacific 6vc but axis 12 globally.

ALLIES;
2 axis capitols.

[Major Major]

gamer,
you haveme down a s a loss on your spreadsheet against arathorn, but the game is still being played.

[Hank13]

@Gamerman01:

Maybe I didn’t say this, but I’ve been thinking it.  To compensate for every neutral standing on its own, each neutral could be given a slightly larger standing army.  If the Axis want to attack Turkey’s 10 infanty or Spain’s 8 to gain control, I think they’ve paid an appropriate price.

I’m coming a bit late to this it seems, and I apologize if you have already discussed this.

A house rule AWN and I use for the neutrals is to treat them as regional allies. This means that if Spain is attacked, only European neutrals becoming friendly to the non-aggressor but everyone else stays true neutral.

That way you don’t get silly situations like Afghanistan going to war because the US invaded Portugal. (I have yet to see any rationale for Argentina going to war because someone invaded Mongolia :))

[Major Major]

Hank,
I came up with something quite awhile back that tied any attack on Spain (true neutral or opposing neutral)triggering the europe, south america, and africa block, and tied attacking Turkey similarly into the middle east, africa and europe block.  Everything else is in its own block and only influences that block. 
In that way if germany attacks Sweden only it invites the allies to walk into Spain or Turkey without penalty which isn’t wise.

[gamerman01]

@Infrastructure:

gamer,
you haveme down a s a loss on your spreadsheet against arathorn, but the game is still being played.

I’m sorry, that was unintentional and I will fix it immediately.  Thanks for pointing it out.  I apparently forgot to undo it after his claiming the win was reversed.

[gamerman01]

@Infrastructure:

Hank,
I came up with something quite awhile back that tied any attack on Spain (true neutral or opposing neutral)triggering the europe, south america, and africa block, and tied attacking Turkey similarly into the middle east, africa and europe block.  Everything else is in its own block and only influences that block.   
In that way if germany attacks Sweden only it invites the allies to walk into Spain or Turkey without penalty which isn’t wise.

This is brilliant.  I like this a lot.
I initially went to every neutral on its own because I don’t think Spain, Sweden, and Turkey should be tied together.  I’m sure this would just give the Axis the great incentive to invade all 3 of them almost every game.
But tying Spain to South America and Turkey to Middle East is brilliant.

[Hank13]

@Gamerman01:

@Infrastructure:

Hank,
I came up with something quite awhile back that tied any attack on Spain (true neutral or opposing neutral)triggering the europe, south america, and africa block, and tied attacking Turkey similarly into the middle east, africa and europe block.  Everything else is in its own block and only influences that block.   
In that way if germany attacks Sweden only it invites the allies to walk into Spain or Turkey without penalty which isn’t wise.

This is brilliant.  I like this a lot.
I initially went to every neutral on its own because I don’t think Spain, Sweden, and Turkey should be tied together.  I’m sure this would just give the Axis the great incentive to invade all 3 of them almost every game.
But tying Spain to South America and Turkey to Middle East is brilliant.

Agreed. I like that there is some strong incentive for the axis to attack, but still some incentive to keep them neutral. It also avoids the ridiculous situations like the ones I noted before.

[gamerman01]

Updated my spreadsheet.
Currently I have Spain, Portugal, NW Africa and South America together
Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan together
Switzerland completely out of play
Sweden, Mozamb and Angola stand alone
Mongolia tied together

I think that’s everybody.
This rule change alone would make this game so much better  :-)

Still a lot of work to do on all the other rules…