Various house rule pieces ( and where to find them)

Mr. Piscolar;

the fortress idea is OK, but it seems OP when you can build them to defend key VC strongholds like Moscow.  Your point about inactivating them is interesting, but that’s not how the rules for Airbases work, you can’t disable them right before the scramble.  It is sort of interesting to imagine a fighter intercept/bomber part of that transaction, but at some point you simply need all your planes in order to overwhelm, you can’t split them off to wrack the forts first, or the defense becomes too favorable (because you have increased defensive power by +1 or reserved the planes for this task, either outcome increases the defense vs offense pretty dramatically).  When you are talking about potentially adding +1 defense to 40+ units, it becomes OP.

Actual fortresses are not realistic in WW2, as they were captured by paratroops, reduced by bombing, surrounded and besieged, or simply bypassed and ignored.

Your ANZAC idea is fun and interesting, but unless ANZAC takes the risk of moving its assets to Brazil, there wont be much coordination there.  Not sure why you would cleave off a second grey team.  Why not just clarify your original idea by making the ANZAC team better (by giving them Canada and 1-2 ships 1-2 units) at the expense of UK Atl.?  UK isn’t really a viable team at that point but neither is a 7 income independent team with split forces…

I like the special NOs from Balanced mod, but I’m not sure why you’ve added NOs that are active based on what teams already pretty much have or go for from the get-go.  NOs should draw the players into an unexpected alignment to incentivize new play, not reward them for doing what they were already going to do.

Adding German Units seems very odd since they are usually getting a bid of 20+ against them, now the required bid would be even higher.  You have offset some of the Axis advantage with other NOs, but I wouldn’t make the Germany start position even more advantageous its extremely powerful as is.

You also added several Axis NOs for just being Axis, these aren’t necessary to bolster their already dominating economic position and they aren’t dependent on what the Axis choose to do.  Giving Japan an NO for attacking allied zero $ islands or for Germany to attack Iceland are some examples of encouraging the player to do something that otherwise he would rarely or never choose to do.

the VC condition is messed up OOB, good effort on trying to change it

Tech/Cruisers/Bombers; these are similar to other suggestions, I think the tech doesn’t need new incentives to go after it, several of them are awesome and the rest are junk.  Unless you nerf the good ones and improve (all) the bad ones, making them easier to get doesn’t really balance anything.  Smart to reshuffle the Charts, but the “Land” one is packed with junk.

Crusiers are OP if they are 10 AND AAA.

Bombers are OP at 12, but if they cost 14, SB isn’t viable and buying them in bulk isn’t either.

These are just a ton of interesting extra rules, which are all fun and creative but they don’t seem to balance Axis vs Allies any better than standard rules.

There’s no official answer that I know of.  A&A is such an abstracted game that, in one sense, it would be meaningless to say that game unit X corresponds to real-world military (or naval) formation Y.  Given the scope of A&A Global 1940, however, the various unit types on the map would roughly correspond to large formations if we were to assume that the allocation of units in the rules corresponds to real WWII numbers.  As an example, Germany’s invasion of the USSR was carried out with over 150 divisions – so from that perspective, the small number of sculpts on the actual board could at best only correspond to army groups.  At that level, it shouldn’t even be possible to differentiate between the components of the army groups, nor even of their consitutent armies or corps; the highest-level tank formations in WWII were, I think, armoured divisions and (one level further down) tank brigades.  So one way to look at the game would be to imagine that we’re not actually seeing the military formations themselves, but rather a patchwork picture showing some of the elements of those formations, with some of these elements being high-level ones and others being lower-level ones (like tank brigades).

Here is the latest revision (yet to be tested) of my house rule set for E&W.
If anyone is familiar with the game and would like to test it, any feedback would be appreciated.
New to east & west? Check the Imp Games website, or ask me here on in a PM! :-)

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Round Zero

Breakthroughs:
Diplomacy -> shift China 1 step toward the USSR, or shift the other Neutral Alliances any combination of 2 steps towards the USSR
Technology -> USSR gains 2 full-steps at Submarines, or a total of 2 half-steps at any other technology trees
Counter-Intelligence -> the USSR may make 1 free attempt, which carries over to Round 1 if successful

Purchase Units: (choose one of the following options)
a) Spend up to 48 IPCs on naval units only. Any remaining IPCs cannot be saved for use in later rounds.
b) Save 24 IPCs

Combat Movement: (choose one of the following options)
a) Conduct combat movement using infantry, armor, and heavy armor only
b) Conduct combat movement using aircraft and naval units only

Resolve Combat:
The attack value of all aircraft and naval units is increased by 2, for Round Zero combat only.

Non-Combat Movement:
You may not move infantry, armor, or heavy armor in this phase.

Place Units:
Your Industrial Complexes can each produce 2 additional units, on Round Zero only.

Collect Income:
The USSR collects 48 IPCs at the end of Round Zero.

Breakthroughs

This phase replaces the Spying and Technology phases of the turn.
Each country can make a number of free Breakthrough rolls per turn, as follows:
• USSR: 3
• WE: 1
• UK: 1
• USA: 2

Each country may also purchase a number of additional Breakthrough rolls up to double their number of free attempts, each round on the Breakthrough phase of their turn. Free Breakthroughs may be rolled before deciding to purchase additional Breakthroughs; you may also purchase and then roll extra Breakthroughs one at a time, up to your country’s maximum. Each additional breakthrough roll costs the same number of IPCs as an infantry; 2 for the USSR or 3 for NATO countries.

On a Breakthrough roll of 1, you may choose to gain either a Diplomatic Breakthrough with a Neutral Alliance, or a full-step in any technology tree. On a Breakthrough roll of 2, you may choose to gain either a Diplomatic Breakthrough with a Minor Neutral, or a half-step in any technology tree. You cannot gain more than one full-step in each technology tree on a single Breakthrough phase; Neutral Alliances can be influenced a maximum 1 step on each Breakthrough phase.

Faction-specific Breakthrough Rules:
The USSR may make 1 free Counter-Intelligence roll during their Breakthrough phase; a roll of 1 or 2 foils a NATO Breakthrough roll of 1 or 2 (respectively) on that round only. The USSR may choose which Breakthrough roll to affect with their Counter-Intelligence roll, however successful rolls do not carry over to later rounds if saved and not used. The USSR may purchase up to 2 additional Counter-Intelligence rolls on their Breakthrough phase, for 2 IPCs each.

When a NATO country uses a Breakthrough roll of 1 to gain a technology, they may choose to grant any other NATO countries (who are at the same point or lower down on that technology tree) a free half-step in that tree.

Optional Rules:
• NATO countries cannot gain the benefit of shared advancement in the Nuclear Weapons technology tree.
• The USSR may influence China using a Breakthrough roll of 2.

Yea thats where i started using a timer, The CD-Rom had it right. The low tech way is to buy an sand timer for like $1.50 that has a 3-4 minute sand reservoir. Of course i got plenty of Chess clocks of all types as well.

I was referring to sun tzu’s comments and land battles, sorry for any confusion

How many threads do we need on this subject ?

@timerover51:

Hmmm, that would be a reasonable approach as well.

I was merely making an observation that each bombardment ship supporting each infantry +1 on 1-to-1 basis…is the same as rolling one bombardment die per infantry at 1 and not preemptive

like you can arrange the rules to appear as only a minimal rule change, and then people are less resistive