Argo's Middleweight Map for 1939 & 1942

@vodot Thanks! Let me know if you ever want to try a game; I think the balance still needs more playtesting from humans. :-)

Continued playtesting suggests the map is biased in favor of the Allies. To correct this, I’m thinking of making Berlin worth $10 instead of $8, adding 2 German infantry to Berlin, 1 German jeep to the Ruhr, 1 French fort to the Maginot Line, 1 Italian infantry to Rome, a Japanese carrier with 1 biplane to the Yellow Sea, and 2 Japanese commandos to the Japanese home islands. The idea is to give the Axis a bit more staying power in rounds 2-4 without unbalancing the turn 1 battles, which I am generally still happy with.

If anyone has objections or concerns, speak now or forever hold your peace! I will post an updated map file to the server in a couple of weeks.

After further thought, I have also altered the South Pacific Sea Zones, mostly for the benefit of the 1942 scenario.

The Coral Sea Zone has been split in half to make it harder for the Japanese to reach Sydney – they can still raid northern Australia and even Queensland, but now New South Wales is at its proper distance. I also added Guam, New Caledonia (a Free French Pacific colony), and Samoa to the map, along with the Polynesian Sea Zone to hold New Caledonia and Samoa. Guam and Samoa will boost the American income a bit to help even them up with Britain and Japan, and the extra $1 of French income will help give the French player more choices about what units to buy after the fall of Paris (as well as give the French the theoretical option of building a barracks in the Pacific and focusing against Japan instead of Italy). Meanwhile, the reshaped Solomon Sea Zone leads to more interesting and accurate decisions around the Guadalcanal Campaign, and Guam provides a final stop on America’s central Pacific route if they want to follow the historical strategy of island-hopping and then bombing the Japanese mainland.

Finally, we have some unit tweaks – the price of 5/4/2 battleships will drop from $16 to $13; the price of 1/2/2 carriers will drop from $14 to $11. This will help keep them competitive with the surprisingly useful 3/3/3 cruisers, which already only cost $9 and seem well-balanced there against subs and destroyers. Meanwhile, interceptor planes’ movement will be boosted from 2 to 3 to enable them to play a more relevant role at sea.

If anyone has any complaints, concerns, or feature requests, please send them in – otherwise, I will post the game to the server.

@general-6-stars The BB and AC (like all units in this game) are 1-hit, so the issue of them dropping in attack and defense when they’re damaged doesn’t come up – if they’re damaged, they’re dead.

The cruiser, unlike the destroyer, can carry a commando and/or bombard, so that’s part of what you’re getting for the extra $3 in addition to the +1 attack and +1 move.

Historically, in WWII pretty much all the ships travelled at the same speed, except for some slow merchant transports and older destroyers and escort carriers that were assigned to guard them. By giving the cruiser an extra point of move, I’m not really suggesting that it’s a separate type of ship – buying and using cruisers is more about saying “we’re just going to strike fast and hard with whichever ships are available right now, instead of waiting a few weeks or months for the entire fleet to be repaired and refueled and available.” The game turns for this map are about 5 months long, which is plenty of time for warships to sail around the world and back, so it’s all an abstraction anyway.

New version is available for download from the server! In addition to the changes discussed above (ship costs, Guam, Samoa, boost to '39 Axis starting units, etc.), I have also playtested the '42 scenario a few more times and have added additional Allied starting units in the '42 scenario, as well as a few strategy notes for that map. I believe both maps are now reasonably balanced, although as always, more human playtesting will have the final vote.

@general-6-stars Thanks for weighing in! I am potentially interested in your feedback, but if you want me to adjust stats based on your numbers, then you will need to clearly explain both what the numbers mean and how you are calculating them. For example, for the battleship, I don’t know what “1.13” or “Sh4” means.

Also, it appears that you have already changed some of my combat stats. For example, my battleship has A5, not A4. My destroyer has D3, not D2. Are those your recommended changes? If so, what is the reason behind those recommendations? Please do as much as you can to explain your logic in plain English, rather than just posting strings of abbreviations and numbers.

@general-6-stars That’s part of the answer I’m looking for, but I still don’t understand your analysis. For example, for the battleship, 5 punch divided by 13 cost is not 0.71. So where does the number 0.71 come from? Are you normalizing the punch/cost ratio against some hypothetical ideal unit that has a ratio of 1.0? If so, what is that unit? If not, what is going on?

@general-6-stars Ok, thanks for clearing that up. I’m actually in Washington DC these days; I left the west coast. I don’t plan to travel to Wisconsin, but if you’re ever in my neighborhood I’d be happy to buy you a drink and hear more about your thoughts in person.

In the meantime, please don’t post any more secret calculations on my map feedback thread. If you’re not willing to publicly explain where the numbers come from, then I don’t want the numbers on this thread.