Avoiding Infantry blobs. Change their Cost to 3.2!

These house rules are meant to make the game more realistic while staying as simple as possible.

Battleships cost 14 IPCs. They cost 1 IPC to repair.

Switzerland has an IPC value of 4.

The U.K. can only produce up to 4 units per turn in India. If India is captured by the Central Powers, the Central Powers cannot produce units there.

If a capital is captured, the IPCs are discarded and not taken by the capturing power.

Neutral territories that are not home territories still get units if invaded.

Sea units, except submarines, must end their movement when they enter a sea zone with enemy mines.

Units that retreat from a contested territory cannot move into another contested territory. They may move into any adjacent friendly territory.

There is a combat move and a non-combat move. During the combat move, units can move into neutral, contested, and enemy territories. The non-combat move comes after combat. During the non-combat move, units that did not move during the combat move and did not conduct combat can move into friendly territories. Land units can move an unlimited number of territories during the non-combat move within their original territories.

Optional Manpower Rule

Keep track of the infantry that are destroyed for each power. If a power has had 2x the number of their infantry destroyed as their starting IPC value (rounded up), they may only collect half of the total IPC value of their territories when they collect income (rounded up). If a power has had 4x the number of their infantry destroyed as their starting IPC value (rounded up), they may only collect the IPC value of their capital territory when they collect income.

@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:

@barnee I will use an option on the defense strength of tanks, with a default of 3. I have started working on this for a bit every day. Right now I am adapting everything to the Big_World map. When that is done I will create a custom map for East & West.

For completeness, there are two tank types: the tank attacks at three and defends at two. The heavy tank attacks at four and defends at three. The soviets start out with access to both tank types.

@barnee re: testing

Since the Axis each have a starting income that is divisible by 3, originally I had the mechanics for merging theatres as a function of the Axis country either increasing their income by 2/3rds more than their starting income, or decreasing it by 1/3rd less than their starting income. (Which sort of dovetails into the “2 out of 3” rule for Victory Cities.)

This effectively worked out to:
Germany: +14/-7
Italy: +8/-4
Japan: +10/-5

Changing it to a uniform +10/-5 made the math a little bit more intuitive, but it also means the USSR doesn’t have to get beat up so much (down half their income, possibly even losing their capitol) before the US/UK are able to jump in and help.

In terms of territorial gains/losses, this typically works out like…
+10 Germany = Karelia, Ukraine, Caucasus, Persia
-5 Germany = Finland/Norway, Eastern Europe

+10 Italy = all of Africa, plus Brazil or Eastern Canada
-5 Italy = all of Africa (except for one territory), or losing Southern Europe

+10 Japan = all Chinese territories, plus India or Philippines
-5 Japan = Indochina/Burma, Manchuria

So, Italy probably has the toughest time (as one might expect) but none of these scenarios are completely out of the realm of possibility.

Updated. Simplified the rules more.

@GGleize:

Hello,

The only two rules changes we are still using after several battles because useful and no disadvantages noticed yet are:

The BB needs 2 hits to be destroyed but IN A ROW - So if the defender decides to take a damage on a BB > The very next hit (if any) during the battle must be one this same BB. This to avoid the 2 or 3 BB “damage shield” of 2 or 3 hits at the start of the battle. Notice that this do no weaken the big advantage of each BB to bring +1 hit point to the battle.  And for example 2xBB + 2xDD will still bring 6 targets to be destroyed by the enemy instead of 4.

We play where every other hit HAS to kill or sink something. So say you get three hits on your navy. The first hit you can take free on your BB, but the second hit you have to sink the BB or a different smaller vessel, or lose a plane. Then the third hit you can take free on a different battleship, etc. Works good for us!

@Black_Elk:

This thread has too much good information to let it sit for an entire year without comment.
:-D

Right now my group doesn’t play with escort/intercept rules, because it just doesn’t seem worth the risk to the fighters (in either role). So when the rules are in effect it mainly serves to discourage bombing altogether.

With altered abilites, like the ones suggested here, I might be more inclined to play the Escort/intercept game.

I think you probably need 3 things to bring Air into balance:
a.  an improved SBR mechanic.

b. Better Anti-Aircraft Artillery units Abilities. Like one that can move in combat, with a normal attack defense value of 1, in addition to a one time opening shot vs air, or something along those lines.

c. Some form of naval AA-fire.

I think you have touched on all the essentials here. And have brought up the others before. In addition to working out a dogfight system. The stats in thread are compelling and demonstrate how the first aspect “improved sbr” might be approached.

Nice work, as always

Thank you very much.
I forgot this thread, I will probably use some stats into my Summary thread under construction about various SBRs.

Nonetheless, it needs full focus to really weight all the aspects of SBR with all these numbers.
I can easily understand you need to be in a certain “vibe” to read this kind of posts, hence it was quite dusty.

Besides, I agree on your analysis of these 3 points a, b, c. They need to be coordinate to get a better game.
I made a lot of posts on these points over months.
Need to find the good angle to get a fresh start on these.

that would be cool :-D

You could use the same general rules for AA50, but you would have to pick one of the AA 50 setups (1941 or 1942) then add up the total cost of starting units to get the starting cash for each country. For one thing, I think there are less starting pieces for all the nations because AA 50 has a smaller map than the 1940 games so there are less pieces. Another thing is I think the prices are a little different in AA50 than in the 1940 games, plus you won’t have Tac Bombers or Mechanized Infantry as those units didn’t come out until the 1940 games.
Also, I’m not sure how you would handle China, since in AA50 they don’t actually get IPCs but rather 1 infantry for every 2 Chinese territories still under Chinese control at the beginning of their turn.
Other than a few small changes though, I think you could still adapt this idea to AA50.