Balancing Cruiser (CL) and Battleship (BB) units with other A&A units

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in [Global 1940] Balance idea for the Allies:

Give all the technologies of one row (the Allied player(s) chooses) to one Allied power (Allied player(s) choose), free of charge. These technologies apply at the beginning of the game on Germany’s very first turn for those powers. These powers cannot research further. Other powers research normally.

Do this twice with two different Allied powers.

If the Allied player(s) cannot make a decision the Axis player(s) choose (s).

For example, the Soviet Union chooses the first row and therefore has the technologies Rockets, War Bonds, Improved Mechanized Infantry, Advanced Artillery, Paratroopers, and Increased Factory Production, at the start of the game, and the US chooses the second row and gets the technologies Improved Shipyards, Super Submarines, Radar, Jet Fighters, Long Range Aircraft, and Heavy Bombers.

I think this can balance the game significantly for the Allies instead of a bid. If the game still isn’t balanced enough, do this with more Allied powers.

My contention is that Global 1940 is NOT a World War 2 game without technology. It is stuck in 1940l

@baron-Münchhausen

Thanks for telling me. I’ll try it sometime.

@Argothair:

Should it take more turns, in general, to move a basic unit by land, by sea, or by air? Why?

For whatever it’s worth, sea transporation and land transportation and air transportation in the real world exist on a continuum in which speed is inversely proportional to tonnage.  Shipping by sea is (and has been since ancient times) the cheapest way to move vast quantities of goods over great distances, giant supertankers being a good example of this principle, but it has the disadvantage of being slow and (for obvious reasons) of being limited to oceans and seas and coastlines and certain rivers.  Shipping by air is the fastest method, but it’s expensive and it involves much smaller payloads; it also has limitations imposed by landing strip requirements.  Helicopters are more flexible in this regard than fixed-wing aircraft, but they have terrible fuel consumption, a short range, high maintenance costs and small payload capacities.  Transporation by land is roughly half-way between those two extremes.  Of the two land options, rail shipping is in many ways superior because combines fairly high speed with low fuel consumption and large payload capacity, but it’s limited to places where rail lines exist.  Trucking is more versatile because there are more roads in more places than rail lines, and in a pinch some trucks can operate off-road, but they’re not as efficient at moving tonnage than trains.

I’ve always thought about making essentially everything worth at least 1 IPC anyways, hoping that that if nothing else would get some fighting. Maybe you’re right and pushing a couple IPC’s for each might do the trick as well!

I’ll have to try it out and will let you know how it does. May try the prerequisites that were mentioned as well. Always wanted to do that with the Med as well (Allies must control Sicily before they can attack mainland Italy), so I may expand that and see if it brings some of those small territories into it. A Midway battle would be pretty sweet!  :-)

Thanks for the feedback.

Native infantry were not supplied with much in the way of heavy equipment such as machine-guns. They were dependent on European leadership, hence they cannot operate or hold tt on their own. Their loyalty to colonial rulers was questionable. I wanted to represent that the war in Africa was on a much smaller scale than in Europe, but give the region more flexibility by having more units. I wanted them to be recruited only in original tts, so that there would be an incentive to defend your own colonies rather than just march around in circles.

If we restrict Askaris to sub-Saharan Africa it balance in that starting armies qualifying would be 4-4 and could be given 2 Askaris ech to begin viz:

Togoland, Kamerun, SWA, GEA

FWA, BEA, Rhodesia, Somaliland.

South Africa did not think much of arming natives…

Bombers caused a profound effect on populations, their morale damage was considered 20 times the material harm they ever did. The large late war planes were a generation on from early war aircraft, the German Gothas had a larger wingspan than any operational Luftwaffe plane of WWII.

By “movable” mines I meant mines that can be built and placed wherever required; assume that each NB has its attached mines to begin, but allow ships to lay mines in other SZs; as mentioned destroyers would have a mine sweeping role…

I prefer simplicity. I prefer to have them operate like minor ICs except their bonus is one research die per turn instead of producing units. (when not damaged). I’m okay with a cap of 1 tech per turn. I’ll pass on the captured technology raid rule. I think having your enemy capture your research facility (and the free roll each turn after that) is reward enough.

Having them operate like minor ICs let’s you build them on 2 iPc territories, which is necessary if someone like Anzac hopes to ever acquire any technology.

Overall it’s a great concept.

Attached are the D12 Unit Rules and National Advantages I use for a 1941 set up of HBG’s 1939 MAP.

National Advantages are a combination of good ideas from this forum over the years.

Unit Stats Global Map D12.xls

I like the BOTB syle mech infantry with the truck peice. A Truck unit can be bought for 4IPC. It than can carry 2inf or 1inf and 1Art or just 1Art Like a “land” transport. It has know attack or defense value itself. We already have them for U.S. and Germany if you have BOTB. That only leaves USSR and U.K. and Japan. Just paint the U.S. truck U.K. and Russia colors because the U.S. provided many trucks to those countries anyway. Japan never really had much mech inf anyway but you could paint the German one Jap Orange or Jap Red whatever you prefer.