G40 Redesign (currently taking suggestions)

@Black_Elk:

Personally I like the idea of no fixed timeline, just a start date. Where game time to real time is as malleable as it needs to be, with no real constraints on the imagination there. The only real hangup for this is the whole USA entry thing, where they are allowed to declare in 4th round regardless. I guess that signals the inevitability of the US becoming a belligerent, but it’s never made exclipicit that round 4 is supposed to equate to ‘such and such’ a date. Or why such a date would be particularly significant, absent a Japanese attack on pearl to drag the Americans into the fray.

There are two “desirables” here, in my opinion:

• Giving the players the freedom of action to change history if they so wish (which is desirable because it makes the game more interesting and less repetitive)

• Following the broad historical outlines of WWII (which is desirable because players have certain basic expectations about the war they’re fighting; for example, wouldn’t the Soviet player feel cheated if, in a particular game, the USSR never ended up at war with anybody?)

These two desirables aren’t mutually exclusive, but they require some creative thinking to reconcile them in a satisfactory way.

Without necessarily getting into overly-scripted games (“such-and-such MUST happen in Round X if it hasn’t already happened”) or into too many strict restrictions ("Power Y can NEVER do such-and-such), the general solution might be to have a table of incentives and disincentives, broken down by game round, which encourage each power to behave in a certain way at particular stages of the game (or discourage them from doing othewise, to view things from the opposite direction).  By “behave in a certain way,” I’m only talking about very broad and very significant actions – basically, things like declaring war.  And the round-by-round breakdown would be important: for example, a particular action might be strongly discouraged in Round 1, might be left entirely up to the player’s discretion in Round 2, and might be strongly encouraged in Round 3.  And some of the encouragement/discouragement elements might hinge not just on the game round but on actions by other players; a historical example would be that the likelihood of hostile action by the US increases if Japan occupies French Indochina.

In PTO, what seems to be the “historical event” is Pearl Harbor raid.
Can it be scripted in someway?
I’m thinking for USA of a no combat, nor naval movement as long as such specific trigger happen:
French Indochina capture and Pearl attack.
However, it might be interesting to get at least 1 less round before US goes to war (if nothing happen like USA2, so to start war on US3).
And still allows more opportunities to purchase things for US.
Does keeping pre-war minor ICs is necessary?
Is it an historical aspects which need to be kept?
While not at war, no NOs bonus might as well restrict purchase.

The general idea is to accelerate the starting pace.

Late 1940 is interesting because it still allows for a “what if” scenario for Germany:
decide to Sea Lion (if pursuing air war) instead of preparing for Barbarossa.

Taranto raid can still be on the table.
Or Greece can receive more help from UK…

@CWO:

@Baron:

Seems pretty hard to find the original intro texts written under the OOB boxes. If anyone have a link to provide.

http://www.axisandallies.org/p/axis_allies_europe_1940_preview_1_out_of_the_box/

http://www.axisandallies.org/p/image_axisallies_pacific_box_back/

Thanks CWO Marc,

Here is the transcript of both:
Pacific 1940 Box Back texts:

The year is 1940. Japan continues to flex its military might in China as political tension grips the world. In Europe, France is about to fall, and Asia braces for the impact. Holland, now occupied by Germany, is forced to leave its resource rich colonies in the Dutch East Indies vulnerable to the oil-starved Imperial Japanese Empire. French Indo-China will soon be occupied by Japanese land sea and air forces. Britain has received an ultimatum to close the Burma Road or risk war with Japan. The United States reacts with an embargo of strategic materials. The stage is set.

This point about Burma road is interesting. But it says nothing about ANZAC politics or armies / navy…
Nor UK’s Royal Navy…

Europe 1940 Box Back texts:

The year is 1940. France is about to succumb to the unstoppable German armies blitzing through Western Europe. Italy’s armies are poised to attack in North Africa, Greece, and Southern France. What remains of the British army has recently evacuated Dunkirk. This island nation is about to find itself standing alone and bracing for an invasion that could come at any moment. The United States, separated from world conflicts by two great oceans, remains neutral for the moment. The Soviet Union has concluded a secret agreement with Germany, assuring that it will remain neutral should Germany go to war in Europe. These are trying times, but all of this is merely a prelude to the greatest conflict in human history.

All Powers are covered here, at least.

Seems a better text than the first one.

I see that ANZAC politics is not either in your text, but at least you mentioned their army.
Is there something interesting to mention about India (UKPac) and ANZAC political goal or strategic actions in Pacific?

Maybe a sentence on USA political view about Europe, England, Atlantic infested u-boats and lend-lease?

@CWO:

@CWO:

Okay, that gives me a good start to work on a first draft.  I’ll aim for a text that combines a general overview of the war situation in December 1940 with some specific details about the situation on various active fronts and maybe also in areas that will see some notable action very soon (meaning in the first few months of 1941).  And for game powers that might otherwise not get mentioned because the time frame for their involvement is still too far way, I might throw in a couple of “Meanwhile, country X is watching with growing apprehension as…” types of lines.  I like your idea of mentioning each of the game powers, and it should be easy enough to do given how much was going on internationally at that time.  I’ll try to keep the text broad enough so that it won’t hinge on any specific map or set-up adjustments; if there should end up being a few such cases of local situations, however, then the two options would be to either make map/setup adjustments to fit the text or to simply edit those references out of the text.

Here’s the first draft:

It is December 1940.  After the swift conquests of the conflict’s first year, which saw much of Europe overrun and occupied, the Second World War is turning into a grim war of attrition.  Defeated in the air during the first phases of the Battle of Britain, Germany has called off its contemplated invasion of the U.K. and, since October, has been carrying out a night bombing campaign against London and other large cities across the English Channel.  In the Atlantic, German U-Boats have enjoyed several months of exceptionally good luck in their operations against Allied convoys.  **Britain, besieged though it may be at home, is preparing to strike back against the Axis in North Africa: with Australian support, it is about to launch Operation Compass, the first major Allied offensive of the Western Desert Campaign.  The attack will be a heavy blow to Italy, whose invasion forces in Greece are at this moment being driven back into Albania by the Greek army.  **

On the other side of the world, Japan’s invasion and occupation of China has bogged down into a bloody stalemate.  Further south, Thailand has gone to war with the Vichy regime to gain control of parts of French Indochina, an area where Japan has had its own presence since September.  These developments are raising tensions between Japan and the United States, which is concerned by growing Japanese naval power in the Pacific and Japanese aggression in mainland Asia.  The Soviet Union is likewise keeping a wary eye on Japan, its opponent in several recent conflicts along the Mongolian and Manchurian borders.  In the wake of Japan’s defeat by the Soviets in the latest of these border wars, the two nations will soon establish a neutrality pact.  The accord will put Japan at greater liberty to turn its attention towards the Pacific and South-East Asia, while the leaders of the Soviet Union – having already signed a non-aggression pact with Germany the previous year – will be able to reassure themselves that their potential adversaries to the east and to the west have now been neutralized by the tools of diplomacy…

I’m still looking for other texts from AA50 or 1941 last edition.

I wonder if there was a change between 1940 first and second edition back box texts…

Not exactly. 1941 and AA50 1941 provide a setup which clearly script a light air attack on Hawaiian SZ but clearly deadzoned the SZ. So any amphibious landing or occupation of SZ usually meant a complete destruction of the IJN fleet involved.

However, it is a real challenge to recreate such thing when starting early and leaving more than set-up units to move and reinforce many locations.

To recreate such Japanese opening, on J2 or J3, US and Japan needs special incentive.

One limitation can be about keeping US BB and Sub units in Hawaiian SZ considered as frozen units because it is somehow seen as their Pacific homebase.

After that, it can be either US option to let it be sacrificed, or try to reinforce these two with additional warships and Fgs built on West Coast to land in Hawaii or moved into this SZ.

A kind of all or nothing gamble either to deter Japan from directly attacking or a huge sacrifice assuming US can rebuilt faster than Japan. Usually attacker always have the advantage because it decides which units will be part of the mission.

Maybe US naval movement may be restricted to end either in Hawaii, an Alaskan SZ, USWest coast or Panama’s SZ.

A real challenge to built however.

1. UK (+Anzac, UKP, Canada or whatever)/China

2. Japan

3. USA/Russia

4. Germany/Italy

I prefer this one because you can start with a blazing Taranto raid and also simulate the Greek repelling Italian forces.
Also, I learned it was an inspiration for Pearl Harbor raid.
So, both big warships battle might be interesting to mark the beginning of EuropeTO first turn and the US starting war event for PacificTO.

And as you said, it would be original:

In either case, you’d have a G40 style game that was pretty distinct from OOB, since Axis would be closing the game round instead of Allies, something that hasn’t really been tried before.

On Vichy, this time each country and armies can be distributed according to history.
Makes Vichy pro-axis neutral kind of (IDK) and other France units be part of Allies (kind of pro-Allies neutral) once a British or US enter their TT.
Instead of a separate power, merging it with the other?

Without changing anything to setup you mentioned about start date. You’d have to go with this some what.

Turn 1 -  1940 = Summer - Winter
              1941 = Spring - Summer - Winter
Turn 2 -  1942 = Spring
Turn 3 -  1942 = Summer
Turn 4 -  1942 = Winter

Something to this affect. May have to adjust to see US goes to War on a certain turn.
Just give all the countries there normal moves on first turn to keep in time ?

@Black_Elk:

Here is a two block XML file for G40 to mess around with (same one I threw together for blueiguana in the other thread). It can be used with the Global 40 HouseRules files linked above earlier.

I also have a gamesave attached below, where I just edited out every combat unit on the entire board. It has the OOB bases and factories but nothing else.

You could use this save adjust territory possession or the starting unit distribution on the fly to be whatever. And then use the save as a draft guide for coding the xml for an actual modification, designed to use a collapsed all vs all turn sequence.

Not sure by your comment if you’re aware of this or not Elk, but once you edit all the units how you want and make a save, you can use that save to create a new xml that will do all the placing for you. Saves a lot of time.

I’ve never done it and don’t remember the specifics of how you do. I ran across it while searching the triplea forum for something else. It seemed relatively straight forward from what I remember

On the subject of Vichy France, would it be worth considering making Corsica it’s own territory? On the board it would be a simple fix of starting with a French control marker.

The implication of having Corsica would encourage the German player to push for an armistice with the new puppet state so that the UK could not use the island as a landing spot for an alternate raid on SZ 85. It’s not game breaking but it would give the UK player another option.

I think consolidating all the various British players makes sense – if you’re profoundly concerned about making sure that India’s resources don’t get siphoned off to build 6 fighters in London (or vice versa) then just have a player enforced rule to cap production at any given British factory at 40 IPCs per turn, or something like that.

For the Winter 1940 setup, I would not even bother having a separate French nation – just code the Vichy French territories as pro-Axis neutrals!

Thanks for the tip about generating .xml via a setup … looks like you can access that option from the “Game” menu on the menu bar at the top of the tripleA screen. It’s marked as “Beta”, but it would be really cool if it works! I’ll try it out this week.

IDK if it can be workable.
All this discussion makes me thing about a kind of more or less powers according to the number of players.

There is still a minimum number of 5 power (as 1942.2): US+China / Russia/ UK (Euro+Pac+ANZAC+Canada)(+France outside Europe and North Africa)  / Germany+Italy+Vichy (Europe+North Africa) / Japan

2 Axis player: (Germany & Italy merged) and Japan
3 Axis player : G, Italy, Japan

3 Allies player or less: UK, USA+China, Russia

If we start with UK, it allows to merge Italy and Germany more easily than if Germany play first, then Allies, then Italy.
The idea is to create a 1942.2 kind of setup at the Global scale.
It is a way to limit time consuming purchase decision, collecting IPCs and special turn for minor power if not needed.

When more players available, above 5, you can continue to allocate all specific unit and make a minor power until all players have 1 power to deal with:

6- you may split Italy from Germany (3 Axis vs 3 Allies) or UK PAC from UK Europe (2 Axis vs 4 Allies),
7- you split both (3 Axis vs 4 Allies)
8- you may either separate ANZAC from UKPac or Canada from UKEurope. (3 Axis vs 5 Allies)
9- both ANZAC and Canada (3 Axis vs 6 Allies)

3 Axis power
Allies: Russia, USA+China, Canada, ANZAC, UK Pac, UK Euro (French african TTs except North Africa),

It makes room for up to 9 players, or 10 if you split China.

And China can be given to a player playing either ANZAC only or Canada only. That way, it makes more action.

For minor powers zone of influence can be restricted, you can decide that at most 20 or 25 IPCs can be built from Italian (as German), UKPac (as UK), ANZAC (as UK), Canada (as UK) IC. And main IC from UK has a caps of 40 or 50 IPCs.

I’m wondering too about the basic rationale of this merger idea.  If I understand correctly, the idea is to take all the minor powers in Global 1940 and merge them into the major powers (so that we basically end up with five powers rather than nine), in order to make the game faster to play.  It seems to me that this is attacking the problem from the wrong direction, and that it involves using the counterintuitive solution of treating the units from Country X as if they were really part of Country Y.

Rather than artificially changing the nine-power Global 1940 game into a rather convoluted five-power game, wouldn’t it be simpler to just play 1942, which is already a five-power game?  If the basic complaint is that Global 1940 is too big, has too many powers and takes too long to play – in other words, that it’s not sufficiently like A&A 1942 – it seems to me that the obvious solution is to play the 1942 game, not to eviscerate the 1940 game of some of its fundamental characteristics.

@Black_Elk:

To clarify, I was talking about an attempt make an All Axis vs All Allies turn order functional on the G40 map. The concept is already proven on the smaller 5 man boards, but my point was that to do the same on a map the scale of G40, having 7 separate Allied turns (each with a what 7 phases?) would take like an hour to get through the Allies each round, where the Axis player is doing nothing but rolling defense.

Ah, I see.  Sorry for misunderstanding what you were referring to.

The concept is already proven on the smaller 5 man boards, but my point was that to do the same on a map the scale of G40

How was this done?

@CWO:

I’m wondering too about the basic rationale of this merger idea.  If I understand correctly, the idea is to take all the minor powers in Global 1940 and merge them into the major powers (so that we basically end up with five powers rather than nine), in order to make the game faster to play.  It seems to me that this is attacking the problem from the wrong direction, and that it involves using the counterintuitive solution of treating the units from Country X as if they were really part of Country Y.

Rather than artificially changing the nine-power Global 1940 game into a rather convoluted five-power game, wouldn’t it be simpler to just play 1942, which is already a five-power game?  If the basic complaint is that Global 1940 is too big, has too many powers and takes too long to play – in other words, that it’s not sufficiently like A&A 1942 – it seems to me that the obvious solution is to play the 1942 game, not to eviscerate the 1940 game of some of its fundamental characteristics.

IDK how far is it necessary to let some ANZAC units attack Italy and German armies by itself while UK’s units wait their turn.

Black_Elk addressed the attractiveness of Global map scale, number of units and variety.

Maybe you saw something of meaning in making each minor power playing its own turn even by the same player which have done the same for a major ones?

What I’m thinking about is units sculpts may be kept specific (cosmetic) but all specific NOs pertaining to a minor power would work for the merged major power.

For example, if Canada needs to control all his original TTs to get 5 IPCs, then UKEurope (Canada merged into) get it too.
If ANZAC gets 3 IPCs for Control of Malaya and UKPac too, then UKPac+ANZAC gets 6 IPCs if Malaya is under control.

So, in my view, the historical aspect is saved.

What is deleted is the special purchase phase, Combat move, separate combat resolve, NCM, incomes, rolling for Convoy Disruption, collect incomes.

All these specific phases would be done within the major power turn’s specific phase.

You loose the can-opener effect and tactics however…

Even on that point, it might be possible to think about special rules to allow Fgs or TcBs sculpts from minor to land in a just massively conquered TTy by major power ground units. Making only main power air units to land in already controlled TTs.