Splitting the UK into 2 nations

Argothair

Part of the weirdness of UK accounting in Global 1940 is that the historical flexibility of the UK economy was halfway between “London is the capital, if it falls you’re screwed” and “whatever; we can fight equally well using any of our colonies as a base of operations.”

Like, if the Axis had sacked Capetown, Sydney, Singapore, and Cairo, then the UK’s colonial empire would have ceased to generate any income at all for London, even if Calcutta and wide swaths of the African interior and Western Australia were still under British control. On the other hand, if the Axis had sacked Calcutta alone, with no other conquests, then the UK would have found some other regional capital, and everything would have hummed along with minimal disruption. Basically, the British Empire was in a position to absorb some shock, but too much shock would have brought it down.

I’m really not sure how to model this in terms of A&A gameplay. Losing an IC seems like too light of a penalty for losing a regional capital, but losing your income for an entire half of the board seems too heavy. One option would be to say that each time an Axis power captures Ottawa, Capetown, Cairo, Sydney, Singapore, or Calcutta, then it gets to loot 15 IPCs from the British treasury, or 25 IPCs for capturing London, but British income/production are otherwise unaffected. I like the UK Europe / UK Pacific divide as as way of speeding up the game, and with the new, more generous capital-sack rules, you don’t run into problems where London is Axis-occupied and so West India is somehow incapable of being administered at all even though Calcutta and Cairo are holding just fine.

The NOs as written already incentivize Britain to try to maintain the territorial integrity of regions like Australia, and you could tweak the NOs even further in that direction if you wanted to. Similarly, the 3 unit/turn cap on minor ICs help incentivize Britain to spread its purchases out across the globe, although with naval units, that cap is less important.

General 6 Stars

I voted 5. I wanted to vote for 1,2,4,and 5. I like them all. I do have 1,2,4 and 5 in 39 games
already. This still would be good for G40.
London falls, Ottawa the new UK capital, And Calcutta the capital for Union Jack.

CWO Marc

Here’s an interesting item which YG might want to consider as he contemplates alternate ways of splitting the UK economy. According to this BBC article (published today) about the 1.3 million Indian soldiers who served in the First World War…

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-33317368

…Britain raised men and money from India in exchange for a promise to deliver progressive self-rule to India at the end of the war (a promise which Indian nationalists understood to mean that India would receive Dominion status). Britain in fact broke its promise once the fighting was over – but let’s imagine for a moment that it has stayed true to its word and that, in the 1931 Statute of Westminster, it had declared India to be a self-governing Dominion on an equal footing with Canada, Newfoundland, Eire, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand. This could make an interesting Commonwealth Dominion power block in Global 1940 – essentially a variation on YG’s UK Option #3 (“You like the idea of a commonwealth nation separate from the UK turn sequence. All Canadian and ANZAC territories combine to form a Commonweath national income separate from the UK who’s income has now been reduced.”)

Narvik

Backstabbing Brits, cant trust them

Young Grasshopper

After play testing the heck out of Halifax rules and splitting the UK into a commonwealth, I personally found that it really hurt the Allies. It basically guaranteed that UK money would be spent away (territorially) from the fighting. Instead of money going into London or Calcutta, money was being forced to the outside ICs in Canada, South Africa, and Sydney. The suggestion to add India to this Commonwealth would put London in even more of a difficult position and will have very few purchasing options. I had the idea to combine India with all ANZAC territories making a large UK Pacific nation, and I feel there is still a lot of value in that option, but I have come to prefer the simplicity of just detaching the India capital from the London capital and placing this new UK Pacific nation between Italy and ANZAC in the order of play. I’m glad to see this option has pulled into a 3 way tie for 2nd, even though it requires adding a whole new set of sculpts.

CWO Marc

@Young:

After play testing the heck out of Halifax rules and splitting the UK into a commonwealth, I personally found that it really hurt the Allies. It basically guaranteed that UK money would be spent away (territorially) from the fighting. Instead of money going into London or Calcutta, money was being forced to the outside ICs in Canada, South America, and Sydney. The suggestion to add India to this Commonwealth would put London in even more of a difficult position and will have very few purchasing options. I had the idea to combine India with all ANZAC territories making a large UK Pacific nation, and I feel there is still a lot of value in that option, but I have come to prefer the simplicity of just detaching the India capital from the London capital and placing this new UK Pacific nation between Italy and ANZAC in the order of play. I’m glad to see this option has pulled into a 3 way tie for 2nd, even though it requires adding a whole new set of sculpts. ï¿½

Fair enough. As a theoretical exercise, I’ve just looked into what this split-off “UK Pacific Nation” could plausibly be called because in reality, of course, the British Empire never consisted of two separate “nations” between which the western and eastern halves of the world were divided. I think your best bet would be use the A&A Global 1940 precedent of ANZAC (which strictly speaking refers to a two-nation military force rather than to a nation) and to identifiy the split-off Pacific half of the UK economy as SEAC, which stands for South East Asia Command. It’s not a perfect match, but it’s what overlaps best with what you have in mind. The key points of resemblance are that it was British-led, that it was headquartered in British Ceylon, and that it covered a large geographic area (Burma, India, Thailand, French Indochina, British Malaya, Singapore, Ceylon and the Dutch East Indies) which included most of the UK territories on the Pacific 1940 map. As an added bonus, its flag was basically the Union Jack (the roundel you want to use), with a slight modification in the centre. There are a few elements which don’t fit very well – the fact that it was only set up in 1943, the fact that it also included non-British forces, and the fact that a few British territories on the G40 map are outside its scope – but on the whole it comes close to matching your concept while still being more historically accurate than the concept of a UK Pacific Nation (for which some sort of name would have to be found, since “UK Pacific Nation” is a little vague).

Young Grasshopper

SEAC…

That’s perfect, thanks CWO Marc.

CWO Marc

@Young:

SEAC…

That’s perfect, thanks CWO Marc.

Here are some graphics of the SEAC flag, in case they’re useful for your Cliffside Bunker laminated reference cards:

http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/gb_mtbtn.html
http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/images/g/gb^sacsea.gif
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Flag_of_the_South_East_Asia_Command.svg

Young Grasshopper

Those are really good, but I think we will just stick with the simple union jack flag (like on the HBG roundels).

SEP

We have a G40 game kicking off at noon today. We’re going to implement option #4 above (U.K Pacific and ANZAC combine into one power, India is the major IC and we’ll use ANZAC grey (because it is very close to A&A Classic German grey so I have a plethora of pieces).

I’ll report back how it went for us.

BTW, why does G.B. Pacific start at 17IPC? I only count 16 IPC worth of territory. What am I missing?

Witt

In Global, you swap West India (2), not on Pacific map, for Western Canada (1IPC), which is.
UK Europe drops one IPC from 29 to 28.
It makes more sense to keep India together and Canada ( part of Europe) together.

SEP

Thank you sir, that clears that up :-)

So far the game is going smoothly wit SEAC in place. This may become a standard HR for us.

Charles de Gaulle

For me I like to split up and encourage exiled governments. It makes game play more fun IMO and adds a nice historical flavor. Generals in London should not have to think about vesting supplies to China…Canada would never have surrendered it Germany made a successful toad over of London…ANZAC was its own country by then. I like having three portions of the British Empire and making Candace and UOSA continue the fight.

Charles de Gaulle

Can anyone think of a balanced way to make Canada its own power without connecting it with Anzac?

Splitting the UK into 2 nations

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