AARHE: Phase 3: land Combat

@general-6-stars Yes, I would like to see that.

I’m glad I cleared your principle concern and I do take your point with regards to world-wide naval redeployments. I think, from a purely historical perspective, I do have to concede that what I am proposing does require a suspension of disbelief. Even today, that sort of operation is incredibly difficult to plan for, let alone execute, (although it is only a concern for the USA at the time of writing).

If I may touch on your examples, my limited understanding is that thanks to the Dogger Bank incident, the British closed the Suez Canal to the Russian fleet, which they were hoping to do anyway. The Brits had recently signed treaties with Japan against Russia, so Dogger Bank just gave them a pretext, which has always made me wonder if the British had something to do with the whole mess. So, on top of the two other major problems you previously mentioned, the required transit distance was increased by thousands of kilometres. Had that not happened, I still think the Japanese would have just as easily and completely annihilated the Russian fleet, but every little helps.

The Great White Fleet and Force Z are good examples too, although Force Z was defeated largely by lack of air cover, not so much to do with logistical challenges, again, as far as I am aware. I agree that this sort of thing is likely done in stages, as you mentioned in your last paragraph, not as one trip only stopping for food and fuel, but I did consider that for the House Rule.

As for the colossal US naval builds and deployments, again I think you are correct. In GW36, to build cruisers and light carriers takes 18 months and battleships and fleet carriers take 2 years, that is, 3 and 4 game rounds respectively, so that aspect doesn’t detract from reality when taking my House Rule into account, IMO.

Ultimately, I do agree that the whole thing is a little hard to swallow, but a ship can travel from Liverpool to Bombay, through the Med, and it still takes 1 year in game time. I think if each nation gets 1 Naval Redeployment per turn, things become much less fantastic. I had to try to balance realism with the in game mechanics to address something that I felt was a bit odd, and it can’t be 100% believable, but we are talking about a board game that has to make it at least feasible for the Axis to win the Second World War, which I believe to be a total impossibility.

Do or die?  :-D haha

I guess it’d be rather like Classic then, where you had to save to invade neutrals, except in this case you’d be saving ipcs to have the option to retreat! Might be fun. I could see a way that might be worked in if the players were agreeable.

As for the standard bonus, depending on which board you wanted to try it on, the influx of cash can definitely make purchasing strategy more interesting out of the second round and on. I’ve tried it on Revised, 41, 42.2, AA50 etc as my most basic cash bonus and people seem to enjoy it. Makes the land grab and combats just that much more intense, since you always have the bonus buck in the back of your mind

that would be cool :-D

So when they get dropped in an area with 1 enemy infantry, how do they fight anybody?

Didn’t think of this happening. :| I guess you’d just have to have at least 1 defending unit fighting at any one time, regardless of the amount of paras.

Airborne can be considered “elite” troops however, but to mix them like this is not realistic.
Marines are special troops trained for sea invasions and are also “elite” but not in the same task as above.

I admit that realism is compromised here, but if elite infantry are allowed to fill all these roles, it will mean less unit types and therefore less compexity. Believe me when I say I’m still all for historical accuracy and realism, this is just my take on things.

So, DD & SS are separated out from the rest combat and this warfare is accomplished first.  Then Air Combat.  Then fleet warfare.

yes and its on your naval combat sequence player aid.  sub interaction,then survivors allocate air units and they fight concurrently with ongoing naval actions.

yeah not much to be said here
nothing “new”

Along the lines of what you have proposed:
I am not sure about the suitability of having ports have any defense, but rather coming up with a unit that can adress a number of characteristics of a fortified territory (think maginot defenses).

REPAIR DAMAGED BATTLESHIPS
Battleships are powerful units. A damaged battleship may be repaired if it is in a sea zone adjacent to a territory with an IC controlled by its country. The repair costs are equal to the roll of one d6. The battleship may not move or participate in combat during the turn of repair. The repair is complete at the end of the players turn.

Fortresses
These units can be added to any controlled territory for the cost of 10 IP and can defend only with two rolls each combat round with a defense value of 3/3.They “protect” the defending units from direct attack. The units inside the fortress cannot be affected by attacking combat rolls until the fortress is destroyed by a roll of 1 only. Once built they cannot move and if destroyed cannot be reused by enemy forces. The maximum number of fortresses is limited to the IP value of the territory and in the case of China is limited to one.