[Global 1940] Japanese Destroyers

@The-Captain

Finished reading it.

Looks great!

Hopefully in the future you can add Japanese impulse rounds to reflect their action in the Second Sino-Japanese War (maybe even simulate Khalkhin Gol).

@FranceNeedsMorePower

That’s a better idea, especially since Japan is usually somewhat stretched to the limits on their declaration of war on the US.

@The-Captain

Thank you for clarifying.

@FMErwinRommel I think that would be a good rule too. It makes more sense if you want to be as accurate as possible.

Don’t tempt me SS.  You know that French swear words are not included in the forum censorship.

Thanks for providing this background information, YG.  I now understand better what you’re aiming to accomplish.  I don’t have a specific solution to recommend that might work for your group, but here are a few questions you and the other people in your group might want to consider.  The answers may provide you with guidance on what kind of point-scoring system might best suit your purpose. Fundamentally, the question to consider is: what kind of accomplishments do you want to reward by awarding points?  Here are a couple of aspects of that question:

First: do you want the rewards to be incremental (round-by-round) throughout the game or do you want them to be based only on the final outcome?  Under the first option, it doesn’t matter so much whether a player controls X at the end of the game; all that matters is how often he controlled it during the game.  Under the second option, the reverse would be the case.  Each option has its upside and its downside.  For example, under a final-outcome-only system, a player who controlled X throughout the game but lost it on the last round would be in the same unhappy position as an investor whose stock portfolio did wonderfully for decade after decade but then crashed in value just before he was planning to sell it to finance his retirement.

Second: Assuming you choose an incremental system, do you want to reward consistency more (or less) than changes?  Example: Let’s say that I’m the Soviet player and that I manage to hold on to Moscow for the whole game.  Objectively, this is a desirable state of affairs (just think of what Stalin would have done to Zhukov if he’d lost Moscow in late 1941), but if the point system only rewards changes (i.e. the achievement of a defined goal), then my success in holding my capital doesn’t give me any points.  Now let’s say that I’m the Soviet player and that, in an 8-round game, I lose Moscow 4 times and regain it 4 times, and let’s say that the point system rewards gains without penalizing losses.  In that scenario, I’d gain 4 points – so I’d be further ahead point-wise than if I’d managed to successfully defend my capital from capture for the whole game.  That would sound bizarre to me.  One partial way to address this problem is by having both debits and credits: giving points for successes and deleting points for failures.  In such a system, losing Moscow 4 times and regaining it 4 times would have the same zero-sum result as simply holding Moscow.  But here we’d face a new question: should two such different situations really translate into the same number of points (in this case zero)?  Or should the point system reflect the view that one of those scenarios demonstrates superior generalship, and hence should be rewarded?  (Personally, I’d argue that the general who holds Moscow for the whole game is doing a better job than the one who keeps losing and recapturing it.)

Air Transport planes will make it so much easier to get that Egypt NO for Germany.  In a number of our games Germany never gets that one because they have no transports in the Med (actually no naval presence period) and too often the Italians are using their transports too much to keep sending troops over from Italy to Africa to keep fighting the Brits and don’t have time to ferry over any Germans.  Plus, if the Brits have fighters about, then it can be dangerous for a German land unit just sitting on an Italian transport waiting to be ferried over to Egypt.  A lot of the time Italy keeps having to replace transports because of British air power and not enough naval protection.

If Germany had an air transport plane, they could wait until Italy captured Egypt and just fly a couple of guys down there then send the plane back to Germany.

As a huge fan of Imp Games’ East & West, these kinds of games always intrigue me. It’s set in 1948, so there are some similarities to the '46 scenario.

IMHO, 1948 is sort of the high-water mark for NATO (i.e. the European empires) however, East & West is a bit non-historical in this sense.

• NATO was not formed until 1949
• Turkey and Greece did not join NATO until 1952, but are part of the Alliance in-game
• Pakistan, India, and Burma were all independent of Britain in 1948; in E&W they are still part of the empire, and a huge thorn in the side of the USSR
• The breakdown of Indonesia between Dutch-controlled areas and independent(ish) ones is not in line with history

The other high-water mark of the Cold War (based on my research) is around 1975-76. Off the top of my head:

• The Vietnam War was over; Cuba, Afghanistan, Angola, Mozambique, and Ethiopia were all ruled by communist regimes. The USSR (or Warsaw Pact) was at the height of its influence
• The Arab League had expanded across all of north Africa; the Islamic Conference also greatly increased its membership around this time
• The Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) including Turkey, Iran, and Pakistan, as well as the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) including Thailand, Philippines, Australia and New Zealand were still in existence, supported by the major NATO powers of the US, UK, and France
• China had annexed Tibet and fought a small war with India

I’ve done work on 1975-76 scenarios for both the Original A&A as well as E&W and have done a fair bit of study on the cold war era “map” so to speak. If anyone wants to discuss the subject/games here or in a PM, I’d be very happy to respond. :-)