I pretty much always leave the Med to Italy. Even if Germany takes S. France, it usually only uses the IC there for making infantry to protect the Atlantic coast, or maybe a couple of subs to help Italy clear out the Med right at first.
Maybe one of those German infantry will go down, catch a ride on an Italian transport and land in Egypt for that German NO there, but this only happens if Italy is doing very well down there and that usually only happens if the Germans are successful at Sealion so UK is pretty much out of the European theater. Also, the US is usually busy in the Pacific and not doing much in the Atlantic.
So, the Germans getting the “Land Unit in Egypt” NO is fairly rare.
So in our games, Germany has little to no involvement in the Med. They are either busy attacking England or going after Russia. Either of those takes too much financial commitment.
Germany and Italy and Japan vs Russia J1 - G2 "Mod This!"
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People keep focusing on unit rebalance, technology rebalance, SBR, rebalance or perhaps economic rebalance (through NOs and Vichy) but none of those things are the problem the way that I see it.
The dynamic problem is that in making the game have so many fun options and flexibility, the game designers have given the Axis too much initial advantage to work with and that Russia is too weak to withstand a focused assault
- by experienced adversaries
- and regardless of luck
- and regardless of the exact way the Allies or Axis play that assault/defense out.
If you make Russia stronger, it becomes too strong for Germany to have any options (they must attack Russia and all the Axis must help). The NO’s in Vichy mod seem to address this, but they are too generous (pushing Russia towards 50 income at japan war) and they add Vichy rules that appear to me to be a way of compensating the Axis for numerous new ways for the allies to make money and little more.
But based on our last few games, if you thought the German and Italian “can-openers” and SBRs and air stacks were too much to handle, the German and the Italian AND Japan “eastern 3 way can-opener” and “early, unstoppable, cannot be scrambled against and before and after you repair SBRs” makes the game devastating and not really capable of being “patched” in my opinion.
Thanks for reading.
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I wanna cast doubt on your initial premise here.
What are the rest of the Allies doing while the Axis is running a train on Russia?
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Hey taam, good post. I would invite you to try a game or two of g40 Balance mod (either side). Having probably played over 100 games of the mod (mostly in the triplea gaming lobby, and more recently in league), I can say that the outcomes are just about even between axis and allied victories, and the situation you describe (where all three axis team up on Russia early) is the exception not the rule. In fact, it is much more common for Japan not to declare war on Russia at all, or only after many rounds.
As for Russia being a tough nut to crack, it is, and it should be! But as the 11 axis victories (out of 20 league games played thus far) show, this is not an insurmountable hurdle. Try it out sometime :)
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@Shin:
I wanna cast doubt on your initial premise here.
What are the rest of the Allies doing while the Axis is running a train on Russia?
This is always my question. Sometimes I think people forget that the Allies get to make moves as well…
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Well, the name of the game is Axis, and Allies Don’t Get to Make Moves
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