Even if playtesting was shoddy, it’s really hard to say that Germany could be screwed because testing, setup, and rules were all done without rail movement. I don’t see why Germany would be any more screwed without rail movement than with it; the quality of the testing is what really determines whether they are screwed or not.
One the other hand, single-round combat could really make the dice much more important that we are used to.
O.K. we’ll see how it plays out.
But don’t say you weren’t warned.
I think it’ll be o.k. It doesn’t look like France has very little artillery to start off with so they won’t be making sweeps into the Ruhr or Alsace right out of the gates and Germany will have a bigger economy than France. Plus when Russia gets out of the game, Germany will have all the reinforcements coming in from the east.
Maybe something like:
After all combat is concluded, any units still in your capital may be moved by rail to any area you or your Allies control.
Perhaps also:
Any units (after combat) may be railed BACK to the capital to replenish the reserve. You cannot abandon areas.
So, you can choose to keep units in the capital as a “mobile reserve”.
This is before placement of new units.
And consider this:
A large German army finally marches through the streets of Moscow having secured victory on the Eastern Front. Fine.
It now takes this army SEVEN TURNS to march all the way to the Western Front, by which time they find themselves confronted by a large American army idly sampling the fleshpots of gay Paris. They’ll be lucky if they don’t find them hanging out in Berlin.
GERMANY
NEEDS
TRAINS
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In the absence of rails I intend to buy transports (at least one on G1). Transports provide flexibility. If the western Allies goof, you hit them. If the Russians goof, you hit them. If neither of them goof, you grab Norway, Sweden, and Finland for their resources.
Can Germany afford to add that many enemy units?
Attacking a 2 IPC neutral adds 13 IPC’s worth of enemy units, so you have to hold the tt for SEVEN TURNS to show a profit. Meanwhile your own forces are more widely spread and vulnerable, and if the enemy captures the tt its income goes to them.
You have to think very carefully before invading non-aligned neutrals - perhaps Holland is worth taking for the strategic position; the Scandinavian trio may be more trouble than they’re worth.
It might depend of if Allies are allowed to invade neutrals (I think they will, but don’t think they should be).
Well judging by larrys first reports powers start with HUGE manpower reserves….that will dwindle out later.
If you are going to attack a neutral, do it early while you have the numbers, and so you have a lot of turns to collect income from it.
Can Germany afford to add that many enemy units?
Attacking a 2 IPC neutral adds 13 IPC’s worth of enemy units, so you have to hold the tt for SEVEN TURNS to show a profit. Meanwhile your own forces are more widely spread and vulnerable, and if the enemy captures the tt its income goes to them.
You have to think very carefully before invading non-aligned neutrals - perhaps Holland is worth taking for the strategic position; the Scandinavian trio may be more trouble than they’re worth.
It might depend of if Allies are allowed to invade neutrals (I think they will, but don’t think they should be).
Maybe I misread, but doesn’t Germany only have to make up its IPC losses in terms of casualties? If they lost 2 inf, which would be expected if they bring enough to wipe out in 1 round (and maybe they can’t), that’s really only 3 rounds of make-up.
Flashman,
I realize you are a huge advocate of rail movement, but wouldn’t the advantage be too great for the Central Powers? As in, all the CP armies could be at one end of the continent and then the other on a different turn? That would be a huge headache for the Allies. You’d have to let the Allies have rail movement too- It take France and England two turns to get to the original front (vice Germany’s 3).
Also, do you advocate changing every Axis & Allies game? None of them have rail movement, and hence have the same problem you are describing as AA1914. I’m playing a 1940 game right now where Germany can’t magically move its victorious West Front Army to the East in one turn- thank god or Russia would be dead!
GERMANY
NEEDS
TRAINS
Again, putting aside the fact the I like the idea of rail movement, playtesting would have to comically atrocious for this to be true.
Well its either the game is playtested properly or its not and movement needs a boost. I hardly think Larry would let yet another game come out where the game is basically broken due to limited playtesting.
There is no need for these house rules till we get more info on the game. Something so simple like movement issues would have been addressed before during development.
Flash and Oz you’re both pushing similar rules/idea’s of units just miraculously showing up near the front or in remote areas that won’t be in the game. It would be nearly impossible to balance it IMO.
Flash I like the idea of a rail rule (maybe even just as a house rule), but as I see it, if rail was involved at any capacity then we would have seen evidence of it in one of the 3 reports we got.
Oz, same thing, if there was a rule to allow a power to mobilize or recruit units other then in their capital in a territory based on IPC value we would have got a glimpse of that by now. Other then the possibility of Bombay being able to mobilize ground units at some level (we’ll see when UKs turn rolls around if there is a special rule) I can’t see either of these being in the game.
You’re going to have to rely on transports, and/or a steady slow moving line of reinforcements constantly moving forward from your central industrial power plants (capitals).
Flash, you’re right to a point that w/o rail, or the ability for extra moves when staying with-in your controlled territories the CP will be hard pressed keeping a steady flow of units moving to the trenches, but it could also be to much of a benefit to them if they could move even double time when not engaging the enemy. It will take looking a couple turns into the future to decide which direction for German units to head leaving Berlin.
Larry also said that the German starting force is large enough to move into any of the neighboring enemy territory and either take it, or not fear the counter attack. I know this can’t last more then a couple turns because they will be facing multiple enemies in France (including Italy), so they are going to need that steady flow of units to recoup losses. The French will be losing ground or territories will become contested (income), and although they can build right at the front, they will be coming in lesser numbers. The UK will still need to transport units over to the French coast, then move them into position (will take 2-3 turns to get units over from London to the trenches), or try to establish a beach head in Belg or Hol which will be overwhelmed by German reinforcements moving up.
BTW I (as many) will be messing around with house rules for this game after playing it for a while OOB. Both these ideas are very interesting. Rail would most likely help the CP more, but the ability to mobilize units based on IPC value could help the allies more (depends on values of the territories). Together they might off set each other enough to work in tandem LOL.
I haven’t just dreamed up rail movement for this game, I’ve been advocating it for years in WWII versions for precisely the same reasons.
Virtually all worthwhile variants of Axis and Allies include it in some form, usually with some restriction due to “rail points” or “rail capacity” which make it too complicated in my view.
Yes, for the CPs it is very powerful, but it is also absolutely necessary if you’re going to depict a reasonably accurate version of the strategic situation they faced in the war. They would not have fought it in the way they did, if fact would probably not have started it at all, without the prospect of being able to switch armies rapidly from front to front. Such units are not “magically appearing at the front”, they’re using the exact method that real armies used in every major war for about 100 years.
If you really believe that German units capturing Moscow should then take SEVEN TURNS to get back into the fight in the west then frankly you can’t want a game they have any chance of winning.
The most absurd aspect A&A movement is the tank drives - all-tank armies charging the enemy because they’re the only ground units that can move at a reasonable rate. In fact, tanks did not drive to the battlefronts, they took the train like every other ground unit. At least we’ll be spared that in 1914. We will, won’t we?
By all means allow the Allies to move by the same rail rules, but a look at the map tells you that they need it far less. Russia, but only when on the attack, maybe Italy need a 2-space move to reinforce Venice.
But G. & A. are doomed to fight two-front wars unlike the Allies. U.K and France can send troops to the Middle East if they want, but they can do that by sea.
Consider:
New French units can reach Bulgaria in 2 moves.
New German units can reach Bulgaria in 4 moves, or if Russia controls Galicia or Romania 5.
Even new Austrians take 3 moves to get there.
The Allies can runs rings around the CPs by moving their forces around the periphery of central Europe. In effect, they can use against the enemy the very thing that was in reality its greatest asset - the speed of its internal transport network. Not only does Germany have whole stacks sitting uselessly “in transit” every turn, but the Allies know by the second when they’ll arrive at their all-too-obvious destination.
The game can be artificially balanced by giving G. & A. large stacks of starting infantry, but if it hasn’t used them to take at least one capital by turn 4 they might as well surrender.
The Allies will have to be playing like complete puddings to lose this one.
I get what you are saying. But how can you say the CP will be easy to defeat when every A&A theatre or world game since revised have been pro-axis? They have the initiative early in the game. I bet the CP will win the majority of games in AA1914 to- Larry seems to give the German based team plenty of strength in every game.
If you want to talk about armies moving slowly through country, what about navies? You could easily make the assumption that ships should be able to move more than 2 spaces/turn. In fact, I think it should be more like 4. With rail movement how can you redeploy troops several territories away, yet it take two or three turns of sea movement to get american troops across the atlantic?
To that extent I agree that ships are rather slow too, but still way more powerful over trains than they should be.
Looking again at France on the setup - difficult to see as there seems to be a southern tt with no infantry stack - but it may be that Paris is even further away from Berlin than I’d thought:
You may be right Flashman, but it definitely distorts the map even further. Then again distorted maps are nothing new with wrong Russian capital and poland.
Before I come to any conclusions I am going to play the game.
If you want to talk about armies moving slowly through country, what about navies? You could easily make the assumption that ships should be able to move more than 2 spaces/turn. In fact, I think it should be more like 4. With rail movement how can you redeploy troops several territories away, yet it take two or three turns of sea movement to get american troops across the atlantic?
To cross the Atlantic in 1940 with a trampship would take 12 days, with a cruiser even faster, so obviously a game turn is no way equal to 6 months in real time. In fact Larry has statet that a game turn and units movement is very abstract. One turn may cover all events for a year, and the next turn may cover what happened in one week. You may also have noticed that one specific territory like Berlin cover just a very small area with lots of roads and railways, while other territories like Algeria cover huge areas of desert and wilderness, but they both count as one move for a unit. In the real world you could walk through Berlin in one day, but in Algeria that would not be very likely.
Larry big man, very smart, he designed the game this way for playability. He figured out how many spaces was needet between the opposing players to make it an even match, and later he named the spaces to make it look like a WWII map. Any serious comparison between an A&A map and a real WWII map would be very derogatory and right out bedlam, man. So just let it go, and try to enjoy the feeling of embarking men on a ship in a US port, sail them to Europe, watch them amphibious assault an imaginary fortified shore, then closing in on the enemy capital step for step, and you will get a happy life, man
Dude I am happy with A&A, I was just arguing with Flashman about Rail movement and pointing out another game mechanic that is not based on real life.
You are totally right though- The game is extremely abstracted for playability. For example - for AA1940, country incomes would be more like:
Germany: 41
Italy: 15
Japan: 19
Russia: 41
France: 16
UK: 32
USA: 94
Based roughly on GDP in 1940. Could the Axis win the war? maybe, but not very easily with a 75-183 IPC difference. And those numbers don’t account for the USA’s ramp up to roughly 150 IPCs in 1944.
Its one thing to tamper with income levels to create balance, I’ve no objection to that.
But pretending that infantry walked, and tanks drove across the world towards battle fronts is warping us into a parallel universe.
