AARHE: Map files

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)

Combine Venezuela/Colombia/Ecuador, Chile/Bolivia/Peru, and Argentina/Paraguay/Uruguay together. No need to change IPC values.

From a playability standpoint it makes no sense to have 9 little countries across the continent.

I play it like this and things can get interesting.

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.

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.

@oldsalty:

Bierwagan:

How would you have played your example if it were a bomber instead of a ftr?

Moin OldSalty!

I haven’t had a lone bomber defending a territory yet.  But, it wouldn’t really change anything.  Air units only get full attack strength when coupled with ground forces on a 1-to-1 basis.

@AAHRE:

Air Supremacy
When only one side has air units at the beginning of
combat cycle, air units fight with normal combat values
when matched 1-to-1 with a friendly land unit. Excess
air units fight at combat value of 1.

So, the bomber would have Air Supremacy but would only get a parting shot at 1 (n.b., bombers don’t get to select targets it is just carpet bombing) – then it would have to withdraw due to:

@AAHRE:

Land Combat: Retreat Decision
At the end of a land combat cycle, if only one side has
land units the other side must retreat.

TTP (Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures) insight for the day!
This becomes tactically significant later on in the game when you don’t have many ground units left.  I’ve seen people attack what looks like a solid defense in Berlin by tying up all the airplanes in the sky.  Then all you have to do is blast away the few defenders on the ground and “voila!” the vaunted Luftwaffe is forced to retreat because they have no land units, giving you the country and victory!

This really causes you to re-evaluate defense on the ground.  You have to watch UK as well because normally it’s just used as a non-mobile aircraft carrier – but NO MORE!

It’s all about balance… and aircover!  IL & Tekkyy have done a wondermus job of levelling the playing field and making it a real slobberknocker of a tactical puzzle.

Enjoy the day!

AARHE stands for Axis and Allies Revised: Historical Edition.

A set of house rule with enhanced realism, to be used on top of LHTR 1.3.
Comes with historical justifications in italics for each rule.

The two stickied threads has the files.

I love copy and paste  :-).

I am a big fan of Diplomacy, but can’t imagine adding simultanious movement to A&A. First, as Imperious Leader noted, there would be a large amount of moves to write. In Diplomacy a leader has to write at most 17 orders, but will generally need to issue 5-10. In Axis and Allies both the number and the complexity of the orders increases.
Second, writing down orders will likely serve as somewhat of a deterent to inivation. For example; as Germany I draft a set of orders to strike the U.S.S.R at Causcus and Karelia. If I suddenly see a stronger strategy that involves me completely changing my orders for both countries, the time I already put in that will be lost and the time I will need to write up new orders may deter me from attempting my new course of action. Having to continuously edit a page or two of orders will be tedious.
Third, in real life military leaders would re-act to enemy movements. If as Japan I ordered my units in Kwangtung, Manchuria, and French Indochina to attack China, but was attacked by units in Soviet Far East and India my attack would not proceed. Not only that, the Manchurian units would likely be diverted to re-inforce and/or counter-attack.