The Map Modification Question

@cds

Here:

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/32236/oztea-s-1939-global-setup?page=1

I don’t think it says either way, which is why I have all these questions.

I think you’re asking a lot of the right questions: how to add more variety, how to make the game more truly global in scope, how to create advantages for the Allies without overcorrecting. I’m not sure how well you’ve thought through some of the specific changes that you’re recommending.

Moving the British ships from Gibraltar to east Africa does nice things for a British naval presence in the Indian Ocean, but it makes it way too easy for Germany to win the Battle of the Atlantic – Germany can now routinely take out all of Britain’s ships in the Atlantic on the first turn without taking too many risks. This means that Germany can totally evacuate France on turn 1 and probably also on turn 2, which gives Germany a big advantage against Russia.

The Sea Lion threat is probably exaggerated – sure, if you spend 100% of your economy on ships and planes for India, then London could be in trouble, but it’s pretty easy to build, say, 4 infantry in London and still have enough cash left over to place a variety of units in India. Britain starts with 43 IPCs, and London’s not that hard to garrison.

Meanwhile, Japan’s ability to take India or use it as a base to threaten Russia is almost entirely gone. One of the key threats the Japanese have in OOB Anniversary 1941 is building a factory in Indochina on turn 1, capturing Burma turn 1, and then threatening to build a factory in Burma on turn 2. If Japan pulls this off, then it doesn’t matter if Britain has a factory in India, because Japan is still outproducing Britain 4:3, and Japan will wind up with all 3 factories, which can then churn out infantry and tanks to head for Stalingrad. On the other hand, the only way Britain can prevent Japan from pulling this off is by sacrificing its entire starting force of troops from India and Persia, which is expensive and leaves Egypt vulnerable to the Italians.

In your version, Burma is only worth 1 IPC, so there’s very little point in having Japan build a factory there. Japan can’t take Bengal until at least turn 2, and the UK starts with a factory in India, so even if Japan gets a factory in Indochina right away and an eventual factory in Bengal, that’s very unlikely to be enough to deal with the forces Britain will have been accumulating in India proper. The Indian factory is almost 100% safe against anything short of a massive naval invasion – but that naval invasion is much harder to pull off assuming even a modest USA presence in the Pacific, because Britain now has two extra warships in the Indian Ocean, plus a starting factory there.

I think the dance of attacks and counter-attacks you outline in West Africa is entertaining, but unrealistic in terms of strategy – if you’re playing to win, then nobody cares enough about French West Africa to bother sending a transport there. Allied transports are much better off going to Morocco or Gibraltar, and Axis transports are much better off going to Gibraltar or Egypt.

Finally, I don’t think an Indian factory is likely to have any effect on the war on China – it’s 3 moves away from the nearest Chinese territory, and likely 4 or even 5 moves away from the Chinese front lines by the time forces actually arrive.

What all of these admittedly nitpicky corrections add up to is a sense that your changes won’t actually deliver that much variety. You get a different scenario with your changes, but it will always be the same different scenario: Germany wipes out the British Atlantic fleet and then charges hard for Moscow while Britain easily holds London and India and stalemates Japan. The USA can choose to either knock out a weakened Tokyo (and try to get to Tokyo before Germany gets to Moscow) or rush toward Paris and Rome (to try to set up a stable beachhead on the Western Front before Germany gets to Moscow). Other than the USA’s single choice of whether to go to the Atlantic or the Pacific, nobody has any interesting grand strategy decisions to make. Italy has to fight for Egypt, Germany has to fight for Moscow, Russia has to fight for Moscow, Japan has to fight just to hold onto a decent income, and Britain has to defend London, Egypt, and India. The details will vary from game to game based on tactics and dice, but I predict you’ll see a lot of the same general campaigns over and over again.

You may be interested in this earlier thread about splitting India and splitting the Indian Ocean:
https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=41826.0

Fair enough! And thanks very much for the writeup. If anyone tries this again, consider adding:

2 German subs in SZ 10 (Greenland)
2 German subs in SZ 12 (west of Morocco)
1 Japanese carrier with 1 Japanese fighter in SZ 62 (east of Tokyo)

Did some real brief digging around on the wiki and found this…

The last part seems to confirm those speculations in Reason 2 Marc mentioned aboved. Though I think there might still be enough in here to justify a starting Strat B for the Russians.

The fact that the Russians are unlikely to ever be able to afford another one would put a ceiling on it, and give a nod to the fact that the Soviet strategic bombing campaigns in WW2 were dwarfed by those of the Western Allies. The logic there I guess would be that Britain and America can readily expand their bomber arsenal through purchasing, whereas the Soviets are basically stuck using what they start out with, or risk just getting crushed in the land war haha.

Anyhow, here’s quick copy paster…

"Soviet strategic bombing
See also: Shuttle bombing and Operation Frantic
The first Soviet offensive bomber campaign was directed against the Romanian oilfields in the summer of 1941.[185] In response to a German raid on Moscow on the night of 21�22 July 1941, Soviet Naval Aviation launched a series of seven raids against Germany, primarily Berlin, between the night of 7�8 August and 3�4 September. These attacks were undertaken by between four and fifteen aircraft�beginning on 11 August the new Tupolev TB-7�from the island of Saaremaa, base of the 1st Torpedo Air Regiment.[185] (At least one raid of the 81st Air Division took off from Pushkin.) Besides thirty tonnes of bombs, they also dropped leaflets with Joseph Stalin’s defiant speech of 3 July. The Soviets sent a total of 549 long-range bombers over German territory in all of 1941.[185]

In March 1942 the strategic bombing arm of the Soviet Union was reorganized as the Long Range Air Force (ADD). It raided Berlin from 26�29 August and again on the night of 9�10 September with 212 planes.[185] It raided Helsinki for the first time on 24 August, Budapest on 4�5 and 9�10 September and Bucharest on 13�14 September. The German-occupied Polish cities of Krakow and Warsaw were not exempt, but the bombers concentrated primarily on military targets.[185] There were 1,114 sorties over Germany in 1942. In March 1943 there was a strategic shift: in preparation for the Kursk Offensive, the bombers were directed against the German railroads behind the front.[185] In April the Long Range Air Force expanded to eight air corps and eleven independent divisions containing 700 planes. After the Kursk preparations, the Soviets turned their attention to administrative and industrial targets in East Prussia in April. With 920 aircraft taking part, they dropped 700 tonnes of bombs there. The largest Soviet bomb of the war, an 11,000-pound weapon, was dropped on Konigsberg during one of these raids.[185]

Throughout 1943, the Soviets attempted to give the impression of cooperation between their bombers and those of the West.[185] In February 1944 they again shifted priority, this time towards terror bombing, with the goal of knocking Finland and Hungary out of the war.[185] Helsinki was struck by 733 bombers on the night of 6�7 February, by 367 on the 15�16th and 850 on the 25�26th. A total of 2,386 tonnes of bombs were dropped.[185] Budapest was hit four straight nights from 13�20 September with a total of 8,000 tonnes by 1,129 bombers. The Soviets flew 4,466 sorties into enemy territory in the year 1944. In December the Long Range Air Force was reorganized as the 18th Air Army.[185]

The main task of the 18th Air Army was to support the final offensive against Germany, but it also undertook raids against Berlin, Breslau, Danzig and Konigsberg.[185] In total, 7,158 Soviet aircraft dropped 6,700 tonnes of bombs on Germany during the war, a modest 3.1% of Soviet bomber sorties, a mere 0.5% of all Allied “strategic” sorties against German-occupied territory and a measly 0.2% of all bombs dropped on it.[185]

After the war, Marxist historians in the Soviet Union and East Germany claimed that the Soviet strategic bombing campaign was limited by moral qualms over bombing civilian centres.[185] One early bombing theorist, Vasili Chripin, whose theories influenced the Soviet Union’s first strategic bombing guidelines (1936) and the service regulations of 26 January 1940, drew back from terror bombing as advocated by Western theorists.[185] The Spanish Civil War also convinced Soviet war planners that the air force was most effective when used in close cooperation with ground forces. Nonetheless, after the war, Marshal Vasili Sokolovsky admitted that the Soviets would have gladly launched a strategic bombing offensive had they the capability.[185] In reality, the Soviets never geared aircraft production towards long-range bombers, and so never had enough to mount an effective campaign. The land-based nature of warfare on the Eastern Front also required closer cooperation between the air forces and ground troops than did, for example, the defence of Great Britain.[185]"

That note 185 heavily referenced above shows the following as its main/only source… so there’s that too I guess. Little lackluster, but you know what they say about beggers lol

Horst Boog; Derry Cook-Radmore, trans., “Part I: The Strategic Air War in Europe and Air Defence of the Reich, 1943�44”, in Germany and the Second World War, Volume VII: The Strategic Air War in Europe and the War in the West and East Asia, 1943�44/5 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006 [Stuttgart: Deutsche Veralgs-Anstalt GmbH, 2005]), 153�58.

Expanding upon your ideas guys, I am considering using D12 dice for special units but keep D6 for standard units. Like Panthers rolling D12@7 giving them a slight edge over other medium tanks for example.

To add to you guy’s points you don’t need to use D6 with D12 dice, but the differentiation of using D12 for special units and D6 for regular units sets the special units apart IMO. It also puts a different focus on specialized units during the game.

So you really don’t need my hybrid method but I think it has potential.

So heres my latest map for A&A 1914. Includes East Prussia and all correct borders, Has some Zones for Askarideployment in Africa.

I kept Albania, neutral Greece and Moscow as Russian Capitol.

1914Balance.png

First time I did a custom map that’s exactly what I did, buy a world map and territory borders.  You could try to find an loder copy of photoshop like ps 6 or 7 for much less than the current gen.