The Map Modification Question

Yup! Scale was perfect for the map…the infantry are too large to fit comfortably in Belorussia or West Russia, but they fit great in France, Italy, Africa, and China! Quality is 3.5/5 stars. Some of the infantry didn’t detach cleanly from the sprue, and the modeling is slightly chunky, but overall the pieces are durable, handsome, and clearly distinguishable.

Thanks! I mostly agree with your comment about per-dice research efficiency; the only reason I didn’t include additional penalties for triple-stacking your scientists is for the sake of simplicity. If you want to play with a -3 penalty, or (even better) a -4 penalty that rounds up to a -3 penalty if you roll three 1’s, then go right ahead!

Giving each Axis nation 3 tokens and each Allied nation 2 tokens tends to give the Axis an early edge in research (they will manage their first couple of breakthroughs earlier than the Allies will), but then the Allies will start to catch up and then overtake the Axis later in the war, because the Axis scientists (on average) will be more “crowded” and will take more stacking penalties.

You could bump Radar to 14 pts. or even to 16 pts. if you really want to, but there are limited opportunities to make full use of the potential synergy. E.g., suppose Germany is using a “Dark Skies” approach to ward off Allied fleets with its enormous Nazi bomber squadrons. Britain might want both Radar and Anti-Aircraft Cruisers to help protect its fleet. Russia, on the other hand, only needs Radar – they’re not going to build any cruisers. Similarly, Russia doesn’t have much use for Jet Fighters, since if it’s suffering from a strategic bombing campaign, it won’t be able to afford much in the way of extra fighters. There’s also the concern that “Heavy Bombers” has always been an overpowered technology in every version of Axis & Allies that had tech. I tried to err in the opposite direction by making the anti-aircraft techs roughly as powerful as the aircraft-enhancement techs!

There is an “Improved Artillery” tech in some of the OOB versions of Axis & Allies, and I’ve never seen anyone buy it, except maybe Russia, who really does have to count every dollar and might not be able to afford enough artillery to fully power its infantry stacks. It is really challenging to fully exploit the advantage of 2:1 artillery support is that it’s really hard to maintain the desired ratio. E.g. if I have a stack of 10 infantry and 5 artillery, then after one round of combat, I probably have something like 2 infantry and 5 artillery, and the extra artillery support becomes moot. It stays moot on defense, too, when those artillery try to hold the ground they just captured. But if I have a stack of 20 infantry and 5 artillery instead, then my army is hugely inefficient – even with 2:1 artillery support, I’m only generating 40 pips of punch on 25 units, so I’m going to give you multiple rounds of combat in which to score hits and wear down my army.

You get the same problem in reverse if you want to only boost the artillery’s native attack power. With a stack of, e.g., 8 infantry and 3 artillery, the tech would only give you +3 pips of punch – it’s just not very exciting. You could try attacking with a stack of all artillery, e.g., 10 artillery for $40, but that just seems weird and un-thematic.

Anyway, let me know if you try out the rules, with or without some modifications! I’d be curious to see how they work in live play. I’m defending my rules so you have the benefit of my opinions, but they’re just opinions, and ultimately the house rules are there for everyone to enjoy however they like…if you think you’ll have more fun tweaking the costs or nerfing a couple of the techs, then go with what seems fun! :-)

I played another game with India at 5, but I played against myself instead of the AI (first time doing that!).

Russia got absolutely diced in the heavy Ukraine strafe, and so West Russia was abandoned R2 and with no fighter support (Iceland gone G1, no other good routes) Germany rolled over them on turn G5.

Once the fighter route was gone I went heavy tanks in India, hoping to swing out against the Japanese and provide defence for Moscow.  I did have 8 UK tanks about to rush in to Moscow for defence (on UK6), but that would have exposed India on J6 AND Japanese tanks were closing in on Moscow as well, so it would have been a 1 or 2 turn delay at most.  Japan had the luxury of building a factory in Manchuria for north route tanks and just stacking Yunnan with art and inf (with their fleet in the adjacent SZ) and deadzone Burma, so the UK troop buildup in India couldn’t really pivot out of India as much as I thought.  Any foray out of India, and the 5 IPC factory would be gone, so the two armies stayed in the gravitational pull of one another.

I’ve never really done a KJF, but I think that might work a lot better with 5 IPC India.  I might read some KJF strategies and try it out.  So far, 5 IPC India is a failure, haha.

But how would you know how many IPC Ottomans would have if you didn’t do any study on the economic capabilities of the other nations relating to 31 IPC? How would you know how many infantry they would have in each area if you didn’t study where they even had armies in 1914?

You need to just draw a map with territory borders that allows good player options and is realistic. Don’t redo 1914, that’s garbage. This is redesign, not use what you got

This is not checkers my friend.

The Allies may indeed have problems getting numbers of units into Europe and Asia, but the whole reason they need to do this in the first place is because Russia has such woefully inadequate starting attack power!

The Soviets can barely trade with Germany or Japan for 2 territories a turn, before they start hemorrhaging ground units in the process, forced to make terrible trades at a loss just to prevent Axis blitz paths or landing spots. This means that the Germans can advanced along a broad front, with only modest sized stacks, and Russia is totally unable to contest them.

Instead, because they cant attack on their own, the Soviets are almost completely reliant on UK/USA to run direct counter attacks for them, against a relentless Axis advance. And this all happens in their own backyard, right in their own core Russian territories!

And its not as if Russia collapses only when they receive zero aid from the West (which might be understandable) but they collapse when they don’t receive the full maximum aid. Like literally almost all the UK/US ipcs from the early rounds dedicated just to holding the center.

The western Allies routinely send dozens of fighters and as many ground units as they can to prop up Moscow. And even then Moscow gets hammered.

Honestly if I was designing this thing from the ground up, I’d give Russia an airforce on par with the other powers. Like 3 fighters AND a bomber. Or hell even 4 fighters AND a bomber!

They’d still have the weakest starting airforce on the board.

I just think its rather lame, that the Russians are so nerfed in A&A. It feels totally ahistorical.

They had superior tanks to the Germans, even by the time this game is supposed to start, and yet it is the Germans who always tank drive. They had some the best fighter aircraft in the world by the time this game is supposed to start, and yet it is the Luftwaffe that always crushes. They had the numbers, and yet it is Germany who always pushes the massive ground stacks.

It just doesn’t look like World War 2.

The way the Royal Air Force is always camped out in Russia, and Monty is taking his tank columns on escapades through the Caucasus. For real?

If you want their income so low, they should have starting TUV. Or conversely, if you want them to have low starting TUV, then give them more income. But if you shaft them in both areas, then the game turns into this weird deal, with the western Allies running the show in Red territories.

The Russia design is just silly OOB. They have low income and as such will buy infantry and artillery as a matter of course, almost exclusively. They don’t need more inf, what they need is air power, so they can trade that infantry effectively, the way the other player nations do.

I think a single additional Russian bomber is a decidedly modest expansion compared to what they should really have, if you want to reflect their historical position during this period.

I assume you are asking about a land territory. The answer would be no. When you attack a land territory, you attack all country’s units that are in that land territory. So if Russia attacks an Italian territory that has German units in it, then Russia just declared war on Germany.
Sea zones are different. In a sea zone, you can attack one power’s units while other “neutral” power’s ships will simply sit there.

UPDATE: Screenshot & TripleA save game file!

Note that both the map and the saved game are missing the neutral units (including French & Dutch), because the WW2v5 map in TripleA doesn’t allow for neutral units, but this should still save you a lot of setup time if you’re interested in playtesting the 1939 scenario.

AAA screenshot 1939.png
Argo 1939.tsvg

Yeah, I’m not crazy about low luck myself. Sure, it can be a time saver with a lot less dice rolling. In some battles with certain numbers and types of units involved, you wouldn’t have to roll at all, just remove automatic hits. Eg: You attack 3 infantry with 6 tanks. The 6 tanks automatically get 3 hits which wipes the infantry out and the 3 infantry automatically get 1 hit so you remove 1 tank. You don’t even need a battle strip for that.
I still like the chance and surprise you can get from rolling dice for each unit. I will never forget the one game in which I was Germany and had 5 infantry involved in a certain attack. These were regular infantry, not artillery-supported, so they attacked @ 1. I rolled my 5 dice and what do you know? FIVE German crosses pretty as you please. Doubt that will ever happen again, but it was sure cool at the time.