Advice to Renegade! What is on your top 10 for adjustments to G40 3rd edition?

The rules concerning Air Fleet Commander has been clarified & updated with the following:

“An Air Fleet can only attack from or defend in a territory or an island.”

The map in playtest 9°

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I recommend using Charles de Gaulle’s neutral setup with this!

CWO Marc I am not talking the Tech, but rather the availability of Sonar for ASW on ships designed for ASW and not the U boat threat but rather U boats attacking in unison.
Another factor with historically accurate concepts has to be playability without getting overly complicated.

IE German assault guns over tanks was lack of resources….and the availability of chassis from outdated tanks like the PZ ll and PZ 38t to create a need in Self propelled Artillery and Anti-Tank vehicles. I assure you that the Tanks were preferred over assault guns. This concept has morphed in house rules to what these assault guns were actually intended to do. A Panzer Division commander would rather be supplied Panthers over JagdPanthers

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.

It’s cool, I have come up against resistance to the city bonuses idea virtually every time I try to persuade people of its merits, despite its evident superiority to me hehe.  :-D

I made my case against National Objectives pretty clear when Larry and others originally proposed them for AA50. I still believe now, as I did then, that NOs are way more complicated and numerous than they need to be, and that there are better, easier, and more consistent ways to introduce money into the game. Moreover, I feel quite strongly that National Objectives (if they are included in a game) should be strictly optional, they shouldn’t be a requirement for game balance.

I also still believe, as I did when Revised came out, that absent some real in-game economic draw, VCs are pretty ineffective at influencing the way players approach the endgame.

Many players (the ones I play with anyway) simply do not find VC victory conditions satisfying, perhaps in much the same way that they did not find the Economic victory conditions in Classic satisfying. Outside of tournaments, I expect that many players will continue to ignore VCs, in favor of capital capture, because capital capture has an in game economic influence which is decisive during the endgame. You can state the official VC Victory Conditions as flatly as you like, by the book 100% (with “Axis need X” and “Allies need Y” and all the rest), and you will still see players ignoring VCs, or subordinating them to Capitals, because a VC win is like winning on a technicality. Often both the Victor and the Vanquished both go home feeling like the VC game lacks the sort of climax they desire. If the VC conditions are such that a capital must be taken regardless (to satisfy the total requirements) then VCs just seem redundant, or secondary at best.

What most people want out of the VC system is instead, a way for Axis to “Win” that does not require Moscow. A narrow win game, absent the capital capture dynamic, but this almost never pans out, because there are not enough VCs on the map…

And also (perhaps more importantly) because there is no strong mechanism in place to encourage vigilant tracking of “VCs controlled” in a given round by the players who are actually playing.

That is essentially what it comes down to right there, its a player tracking problem, not a systemic problem or a problem with the concept of the VC itself. The lack of diligent tracking comes from the fact that (in real game_play_ terms) VCs don’t do anything inside the game, but are used only to determine when its supposed to end.

I believe that by attaching bonuses directly to VCs controlled, you can start to get a game where VC tracking is imperative, and all players will pay closer attention to them.  This mitigates the feeling of “losing or winning” on a technicality, because one or the other player got so caught up in everything else that needs to be tracked that they neglected to track the VCs! In TripleA for example almost everyone I know “unchecks” the victory by VCs in the game options, because of how annoying it is to see a multi-round game just get torpedoed right before achieving climax, after several hours invested, on a VC technical win.

My hope would be that, once you get players used to the notion that VCs have value (real value in terms of the games underlying framework of IPCs) then you could potentially use them to replace the capital capture dynamic.
But again, I don’t expect everyone to just hop on board with this idea because I say it’s great. Some players seem to rather enjoy having 28 complex rules for income bonuses, which are unavoidable, and which complicate the game’s economy in various ways. I’m just not really one of them haha.  :wink:

I will play Halifax using the City Objective bonuses and report back with my findings on overall balance by side.

I think G40, like most A&A games lately doesn’t give players enough cash in hand to overcome game breaking exploits or a single bad roll of the dice. For a game that takes nearly an hour to set up, there is very little margin for error when you’re actually playing, almost no room for recovery, because the unit replacement cost is so high relative to the economy. I believe this a problem which can be solved by adding more cash into equation. And that this actually accelerates game resolution rather than drawing it out, under the general principle that players are willing to risk more, when they have more.

NOs try to achieve the same, but they do so in way which is very rules intensive. In Global there are so many NOs, and they have such a huge influence on the gameplay… Such an overwhelmingly dramatic influence on the basic strategies at work, that the map itself, (and all the ipc values and information written on it) ceases to communicate the situation in a particularly meaningful way to players. You cannot survey it at a glance, but instead you have to be aware of all the NOs and all the stuff behind the scenes. OOB these are not presented as optional, and in gameplay terms they are basically mandatory. The game doesn’t balance well at all without them.

So that is the way I see it. To me a VC bonus scheme handles two separate issues with one simple mechanic. It makes VCs relevant, gets the money into play, and restores the map itself (over the NO page in the manual) as the primary way players evaluate their standing and situation vis a vis their opponent.

About cost balance of Elite/Marines, here is a first point:

The 4 IPCs and 7 IPCs Marines unit transportation cost is relatively balance on the long run, when a player can use for a second time some transports.
After the first travel, where it is better for Marines unit, the transportation ratio is reversing toward regular units.

FIRST TRAVEL                                                        / SECOND TRAVEL, same transport
Cost ratio for Regular unit transportation:
3 (transport + Inf + Inf)                                                 3 (Inf + Inf)
3 (7+3+3) = 39 IPCs /6 grounds = 6.5 IPCs/unit  /  3(3+3)= 18 IPCs +39 = 57 IPCs/12= 4.75 IPCs/unit

2 (transport + Inf + Tnk) + 1 (transport + Inf + Inf)        (4 Inf + 2 Tnk)
2*(7+3+6) + 1*(7+3+3)= 45 /6 units = 7.5 IPCs/unit  /  12 + 12 = 24 IPCs + 45 = 69 IPCs /12 = 5.75 IPCs/unit

Cost ratio for Marines unit transportation:
2 (transport + Inf + Inf + Inf)                                        2 (Inf + Inf + Inf)
2*(7+4+4+4)= 38 /6 units = 6.33 IPCs/unit             /      2*(4+4+4)= 24 IPCs + 38 = 62 IPCs /12 = 5.167 IPCs/unit

2 (transport + Inf + Inf+ Tnk)                                       2 (Inf + Inf + Tnk)
2*(7+4+4+7)= 44 / 6 units = 7.33 IPcs/unit            /      2*(4+4+7)= 30 IPCs + 44 = 74 IPCs /12 = 6.167 IPCs/unit

So, after a second travel, with the same 12 units the transportation ratio is improving for regular units compared to Marines ones:

for 12 Infs vs 12 Marines Infs =  4.75 vs 5.167 IPCs/unit.

for 8 Infs+ 4 Tnks vs 8 Marines Infs + 4 Marines Tnks = 5.75 vs 6.167 IPCs/unit.

Perhaps thinking about this long enough helped… Always on would mean the AA fires during all movement, not just combat movement?