The biggest mistake of the Global 1940 board

theROCmonster

The biggest mistake, IMO, is that the territory “Greater Southern Germany” doesn’t extend all the way to Switzerland.

With making GSG extend to Switzerland lowers Germany’s ability to attack the med and defend Italy. Right now it takes 5 movement spaces to get to Egypt and Alexandria from Western Germany. This makes it impossible, without expending tons of money into ships, for the allies to put any pressure on Italy. Historically UK had a fleet off Alexandria. How is it that in this game it is really difficult for the allies to have a fleet in the med?

With making the additional moving space from Western Germany to Northern Italy would Put more pressure on Germany to decide how best to defend Italy and Western Germany.

What do you guys think?

variance

You are right that GSG (i.e. Austria) should connect to Switzerland for geographical accuracy and gameplay (e.g. it would stop cheesy moves like Germany from plopping the whole luftwaffe on Italian-controlled Alexandria).

I also think z110 should be divided into two zones, with a line from Dover to where Normandy-Bordeaux borders Holland-Belgium. That would stop all kinds of bomber cheesiness and the Gibraltar-Denmark-Berlin slingshot.

theROCmonster

@variance:

You are right that GSG (i.e. Austria) should connect to Switzerland for geographical accuracy and gameplay (e.g. it would stop cheesy moves like Germany from plopping the whole luftwaffe on Italian-controlled Alexandria).

I also think z110 should be divided into two zones, with a line from Dover to where Normandy-Bordeaux borders Holland-Belgium. That would stop all kinds of bomber cheesiness and the Gibraltar-Denmark-Berlin slingshot.

100% agree!

calvinhobbesliker

What’s the Gibraltar-Denmark-Berlin slingshot?

Narvik

In case you ask me, I think the map from Europe 1999 edition had cut the Western Europe perfect. The improved 2010 edition improved (butter on pork ?) the Russian territories and the seazones, but it should have kept the western Europe borders from the 99 ed.

see pic

Witt

What you say makes total sense. However, my biggest map gripe is how much China is worth compared to other industrialised nations. Is silly, as Japan will take it anyhow!

variance

@Narvik:

In case you ask me, I think the map from Europe 1999 edition had cut the Western Europe perfect. The improved 2010 edition improved (butter on pork ?) the Russian territories and the seazones, but it should have kept the western Europe borders from the 99 ed.

see pic

Wow that’s really interesting! I wonder why they changed it?

The slingshot is when USA uses a fleet off Gibraltar to take Denmark, and then UK uses the open straight to take Berlin by amphibious assault.

aequitas-et-veritas

Correct Narvik.
I also like how the Med. was divided.
Malta was interresting back then!

oysteilo

@aequitas:

Correct Narvik.
I also like how the Med. was divided.
Malta was interresting back then!

couple of other things, it is impossible to bomb Berlin from UK, but easy to bomb London from Germany. I believe historically Berlin was bombed from 1940. I also have no idea why Finland borders the Barents sea. Norway should border Karelia

calvinhobbesliker

@oysteilo:

@aequitas:

Correct Narvik.
I also like how the Med. was divided.
Malta was interresting back then!

couple of other things, it is impossible to bomb Berlin from UK, but easy to bomb London from Germany. I believe historically Berlin was bombed from 1940. I also have no idea why Finland borders the Barents sea. Norway should border Karelia

During WW2, Norway did not border the Soviet Union, and the Finns had the port of Petsamo in the Barents.

nerquen

@theROCmonster:

The biggest mistake, IMO, is that the territory “Greater Southern Germany” doesn’t extend all the way to Switzerland.

With making GSG extend to Switzerland lowers Germany’s ability to attack the med and defend Italy. Right now it takes 5 movement spaces to get to Egypt and Alexandria from Western Germany. This makes it impossible, without expending tons of money into ships, for the allies to put any pressure on Italy. Historically UK had a fleet off Alexandria. How is it that in this game it is really difficult for the allies to have a fleet in the med?

With making the additional moving space from Western Germany to Northern Italy would Put more pressure on Germany to decide how best to defend Italy and Western Germany.

What do you guys think?

I like your idea theROCmonster and so I included the change into my house ruled version of the game. If you want to test a game with Austria and Switzerland being connected in tripleA, you can download the modified game here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/6iplovvpx8a1rvq/World War II HR.zip?dl=0 . Just unzip the downloaded zip file into maps subfolder of your tripleA installation. Once you launch tripleA select “World War II Global 1940 2nd Ed. - House Ruled” from the list of available games.

Other thing house ruled in the above file is a slight modification to strategic bombers according to this post http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=35415.msg1402633#msg1402633

aequitas-et-veritas

If I got some spare time ,I may going to test it nerquen.
Thank you for making this possible.

DessertFox599

Guys the biggest problem with the map isn’t Europe but the US. Compare the us in Europe to the us in the pacific. The pacific is too high!!!

barney

Nice job on the map adjustment nerquen. And oh Tampa bay scores! Anyway good work!

barney

Hi nerquen

Could you upload your mods here:

http://www.sendspace.com/

I’m having trouble jumping through the hoops on dropbox.

Thanks

Black_Elk

I agree there were a lot of things about Europe 99 that I miss. One interesting comparison to make beyond the map divisions, are the relative IPC values of specific territories or regions, and how those changed from the Europe 99 board, to the current Europe 1940.

This stuff makes me feel that the value of 1 ipc in A&A does not really correspond to anything concrete at the low end, at least in terms of the abstract “industry” its meant to represent.

So for example the region corresponding to “Germany” on the Europe 99 board is worth 6 ipcs, this same region is worth 10 ipcs in 1940. Romania was worth 1 ipc in Europe 99, but 3 ipcs in Europe 1940 etc.

But then you have other territories like Poland, E. Poland and Baltic states that remain at the same value, despite the supposed increase in economic scale. Basically the give and take at 1 ipc seems flexible, sometimes increased sometimes lowered.

So in addition to the actual territory divisions, I think you could make a case for more tweaking of the ipc values.

Greater Southern Germany always struck me as a rather weird name. Why give Tyrol/Innsbruck to West Germany anyway? Seems like it would have been easier to just have Austria as a complete territory running all the way to Switz, as pointed out above, for the gameplay vs the med. The 110 split is also an interesting idea

CWO Marc

@Black_Elk:

Greater Southern Germany always struck me as a rather weird name. Why give Tyrol/Innsbruck to West Germany anyway? Seems like it would have been easier to just have Austria as a complete territory running all the way to Switz, as pointed out above, for the gameplay vs the med.

I agree that the name is bizarre and not historically accurate. The area in question represents collectively the annexed countries of Austria (called Ostmark during the Nazi era) and Czechoslovakia (minus the bits that were given to Germany’s Axis partners in the region).

CWO Marc

@DessertFox599:

Guys the biggest problem with the map isn’t Europe but the US. Compare the us in Europe to the us in the pacific.Â The pacific is too high!!!

Or to put it another way, the two map panels are drawn on a different scale, with the right-side panel of the Pacific game being on a smaller scale than the left-side panel of the Europe game. If you look at this thread…

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=32700.0

…you’ll see these two pictures…

5 Connector Panel.jpg
6 Europe Left Panel.jpg

…which show the strips of electical tape I used to connect the two sides of the map to create an artificial wrap-around. The strips have to flare outward on the left side and converge inward on the right side (a bit like the > symbol) to accommodate the differences in scale. In fairness, this design feature of the maps was probably hard to avoid because the Pacific Ocean is an awfully large place (“A very considerable body of water” as narrator Robert Montgomery called it in the WWII docu-drama The Fighting Lady).

ItIsILeClerc

I thought a gameturn was about 6 months?
Anyway, let’s say a gameturn equals anything in between 3 to 6 months.

No matter how long a gameturn is supposed to be, German bombers could not reach Gibraltar, not even if based on Sardinia (which is about as close to Gibraltar as it gets). Let alone attack a fleet there and then land in Morocco. Named German bombers had an action radius of 1500km, but those were very few and they were Naval Bombers. German Strategical bombers had a smaller action radious (about 1200km). So how about German FTR/TAC that also can attack a fleet at Gibrlatar if Italy takes Morocco? They had an action radius of only 200-400km… Humbug ;-).
Same story for allied aircraft, although a little bit different: allied aircraft were designed for long range, German aircraft were designed for ‘air-artillery role’. Ridiculously short ranged, very effective against land units and much less so against naval forces (IF they could ever get to attack them, as it was very easy to stay out of their range).

Now for Naval Units. What could they do back in those days, assuming >3 months of time…
It depended a bit on the speed of the ship. A slow transportship could sail from South Africa, load in Plymouth, Liverpool, London, etc., and be part of an invasion of Norway. Battleships, which were a bit faster, could even leave port in Singapore and be part of that same invasion of Norway. The much faster Cruisers and destroyers are the cream of the crop: they could even start in Sydney, sail around South Africa and be part of an invasion of Norway >3 months later.
CV are a bit more difficult to catch, because they differed much from Major Power to Major Power. The US and Japanese ones were very fast and could very easily move from Sydney to Norway in 3 months. UK ones were much slower and would have to start in South Africa if they were expected to show up during the now famous invasion of Norway ;-).

ItIsILeClerc

Well said hAwk,
though I don’t know how much of us here seem to be interested in more historical accuracy with less historical ‘abominations’ :lol:.
But we can’t have it all I guess, since more historical accuracy will come with more rules. And how much rules do we want for an A&A game, maybe that’s an underlying question ;-).

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