Starting Techs for Nations

USSR should have advanced artillery. Italy should get war bonds. France doesn’t need a tech cuz their out round one.

USSR because they were a huge fan of large scale artillery barrages, example; in the battle of the Seelow Heights, the Russians deployed a massive 16,934 guns and mortars. this is just one (battle. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Seelow_Heights)

for Italy, in our games, it always seems that Italy could use a little help here and their, the war-bonds aspect helps a lot while keeping the game still relatively balanced

“War Bonds” could come in handy for Italy in those games where the UK stomps their fleet and kills them in Africa, basically stranding them on Europe with no way to get more money.

@Little_Boot:

I was thinking that it might be cool and historical if you gave countries the technology that they had at the start of the war. I don’t know loads of the actual history, but these make sense to me, tell me if there is a better choice.

Germany- Super Subs

Germany didn’t have any super subs at the start of the war.  The Type XXI Elektroboote and the Type XVII hydrogen peroxide Walter U-boat were both late-war developments (and even then, the Walter type boats were just experimental coastal subs).

@Little_Boot:

That’s interesting. Although, you could abstract it a little bit to represent the 'Wolf Packs" that the German subs hunted in, making them much more effective.

Germany only began using Wolfpack tactics in September and October 1940, a year after the start of the war.  These tactics were impossible to implement prior to the fall and occupation of France in June 1940 because, before that time, Germany lacked bases on the Atlantic coast, which meant that its subs (primarily Type VIIs, which lacked the true oceanic range of the larger Type IXs) had to expend a significant part of their endurance just getting from the Baltic to the Atlantic.  The tactic also required having significant numbers of boats (which Germany didn’t have at the start of the war) because at any one time only about one-third of its subs were on actual combat patrol; the remainder were either on their way to (or back from) their patrol areas, or were in dock refitting and resupplying.

@Little_Boot:

So if super subs are a no, than what technology would you suggest for Germany?

Integrated communications for their armoured forces.  The Panzer III and Panzer IV had a radio operator (who doubled as a forward machine-gunner) as part of their crews, and the Germans made good use of this in their command-and-control system.  It was an important element of Blitzkrieg tactics.

Super Subs make sense if for no other reason than they had good tactics in the war.

Improved Mech is also good for Germany.

@Little_Boot:

Last time I checked, there isn’t a technology for that one.

Ah.  I didn’t realize that you only wanted technological upgrades from the rulebook.

The suggestion I’d like to make is an overall approach you could consider for all countries, rather than a specific tech for Germany.  The suggestion would be for you to regard your special house rule as being for an alternate-history scenario – a timeline in which technology progressed a little more rapidly than it did in actual history.  That way, you can give each country whatever tech upgrades you want at the start of the game without having to worry about whether it’s historically accurate to do so.

I think this would solve the problem created by trying to give countries realistic tech upgrades at an earlier point of the game than would have been possible historically – your reason being that “it might be cool and historical” to do so.  The trouble is that premature tech upgrades are certainly cool, but they’re not historical.  Tech upgrades are, by their very nature, later improvements over less capable earlier technologies (the starting technologies at the beginning of the game).  Moving the techs from the later phases of the game to the beginning would make them the starting technologies.  This means that you wouldn’t be able to upgrade from them (since you’re already using the upgrade), but more importantly it isn’t historically accurate.  To use as an example the Type XXI Elektroboote which I mentioned: Germany didn’t use these super subs (if you want to call them that) at the beginning of the war for the simple reason that, in the real historical timeline, they didn’t exist yet.  The same problem applies to other techs too.

So the way to give tech upgrades to countries ahead of their time is simply to go for “cool” without trying to be “historical”.  Which is perfectly fine – alternate history scenarios are a lot of fun, and house rules a good way to explore them.

I think that all the tech upgrades are pretty much considered “late war” developments. I think the reason Little_Boot is calling them “historical” is because the techs that he is assigning to each country are techs that those countries would be most likely to develop, not because they were actually in use in Spring 1940.

Personally I think I may have to implement the researcher rule or make tech rolls cost less.

I have always been in favour of the incremental research system whereby each Power begins the game at some point along a ‘ladder’ in achieving a given tech. When they reach the end of that ladder, they have achieved the tech. Each tech lader would be say, 10 points (or steps) long and it would cost 5 IPCs to move your Power’s control marker one step further - but perhaps you could only attain one point per tech, per turn.

So for example, Germany may be at 7 or 8 towards Super Submarines, and maybe 6 towards Rockets, but only 3 for Heavy Bombers. And this would be based on the historical situation.

I’m sure this system has been proposed before by people but I think it needs to be raised, now and again, as a possible house rule.