Wow. Never heard that before.
I’ve never played any other Axis and Allies game with national objectives.
I think what you wrote can be distilled down to 3 complaints:
There’s not much of a historical reason for this. There’s not much of a game design reason for them.On historical accuracy, most Axis and Allies games aren’t too good in this category, and I don’t think they’re particularly egregious in this regard.
The second complaint deserves a longer comment.
I think national objectives should be important to economies. What’s the point of them if they’re all just extra IPCs powers don’t really need? That seems like
complexity for the sake of complexity
to me (it’s why I think the 10 IPC bonus for the Soviets capturing Berlin is pointless-the game’s already over and the German capital is already important enough, why add that to the rules?).
Making them actually crucial to economies more powerfully incentivizes the actions the game wants you to do. I don’t see what’s
@The-Janus said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
unintuitive… also clunky and poorly implemented
about that. I also don’t see why a logical reason why
a country’s entire economic viability shouldn’t be based off of their Objectives
should be a guiding principle in game design.
And I don’t understand why minor powers should be allowed to attack with other powers. What’s the point of them being independent in that case anyway (other than capital-threatening shenanigans)?
I also don’t see what’s wrong with certain territories being worth more to certain powers than others. Sure it’s more complex, but it’s historically true that some territories were worth more to some powers than others. For example, the Dutch East Indies weren’t worth that much to the US or the British/ANZAC-they had more than enough oil. They were absolutely crucial for the Japanese though, since they were their only source of oil.
I also think National Objectives capture an important of the real-world:
Economies of scale (kind of). Some territories are probably worth more together than they are individually. For example, the industry of the US was probably distributed all over the country, mostly depending on local economic conditions, as there was a lot of free trade within the US. Therefore, for American industry to achieve its maximum potential, the Eastern, Central, and Western parts of the lower 48 all need to be controlled by the US, which is why they get a 10 IPC bonus for controlling all 3.
The incentives for avoiding war, while toothless, are good in theory (J1 generally just needs to be much less rewarding).
As for the Swedish iron ore, it’s pretty obvious the desginers were just trying to have Sweden’s role in the game match its historical role. While Global 1940 is still pretty inaccurate, adding that national objective probably made slightly more historically accurate.
And to me at least, double printing territories seems more confusing, not less.
And I don’t think the game’s egregious imbalance is the result of national objectives, but rather the Allies having far too few starting units or the Axis having too many (that, or Soviet territory needing to be worth way more).
None of this is to say the game’s national objectives are perfect. There doesn’t seem to be much of a reason why Egypt is economically worth twice as much as it’s actual value to Germany just because it has a land unit there, for example.
