Posts made by almashir

Chacmool,

I’m with you on Switzerland.  I don’t know that it needs to be impassable, but it shouldn’t be the preferred expressway everyone uses as a shortcut to Grandma’s house either.  It should be more of a congested toll road that’s under construction with only one toll booth open, to represent the mountains, forests, lakes, rivers, and angry Swiss with guns and fortress tunnels dug into the rocks.

I’m not sure what to do to achieve that, however.  Give the Swiss a bigger army than their economic value would indicate?  Apply an economic penalty to the attacker to represent an embargo from neutral countries whose leaders are afraid of their numbered bank accounts going away?

"Me at least. I’ve long argued for rail movement in non-combat in all Axis and Allies games; it was no less important in WWII.

Now that Larry is beginning to accept the advantages of it, I confidently expect to see it become standard, and the games improved as a result."

Agreed.  Probably the thing that bugs me the most about G40 is the 18 Soviet infantry in the Far East, with no supporting tanks, aircraft, etc.  It should be maybe 6-8 infantry, an artillery or two, plus a tank and a fighter (and maybe a minor factory).  It seems like a cheezy way to keep the Soviet-Japanese non-aggression pact in effect.  The Soviets don’t have an offensive capability (unless they are willing to take disproportionate casualties) or any way to reinforce quickly.  The Japanese are somewhat deterred because an attack would be an expensive distraction.  If there was rail movement, the forces could be more realistic, and the Soviet player would be able to shift them back and forth (to save Moscow at the last minute) in a reasonably timely manner.  The Japanese would have an incentive to try to cut the rail line.

The problem is figuring out how many units to allow each player to rail move in G40.  I’m toying with a system of maybe dividing total player income by 10, and allowing that many units to rail move.  So if you have 55 IPCs in your hand at the end of combat, you can rail move 5.5 - rounded up to 6 - units.

Edit:  My reason for linking rail movement to income is twofold.  1.  If your economy is doing better, you’d have more money to spend on maintaining rail lines, even though the cost is abstracted into the game.  2.  It might help speed up the game, as it would allow players to maintain the momentum on the offensive, as their lines of supply get extended.

Historically, the French should definitely not have more battleships than the Germans.  If you are only counting Dreadnaught class battleships and battlecruisers, the Germans had about 5 times as many as the French in 1914.  If you are lumping pre-Dreadnaught types in with them, the Germans should still have about twice as many.  Of course, if you are doing that, the British would get even more.  The Germans also had about twice as many cruisers as the French, although the French had about twice as many as anyone else (except the British and Americans - but half the US cruisers would have been in the Pacific).

I’ve been playing with fleets that are closer to historic proportions.  After much discussion on another thread, and a small amount of playtesting (I plan to do more), this is what I’ve come up with:

British:
SZ 2:  1 cruiser, 1 transport
SZ 9:  3 battleships, 4 cruisers, 1 sub, 1 transport
SZ 14:  1 cruiser
SZ 19:  2 cruisers, 1 transport
SZ 29:  1 cruiser, 1 transport
(Note:  The British should actually have more subs, but historically they used most of them defensively, since they were afraid of a German invasion.  So most of the subs are abstracted into the “minefield,” which I consider to actually represent coastal artillery, monitors, torpedo boats, and obsolete ships, as well as mines).

Germans:
SZ 5:  2 subs
SZ 7:  2 subs
SZ 22:  1 cruiser
SZ 10:  2 battleships, 3 cruisers, 1 transport

French:
SZ 15:  1 cruiser, 1 transport
SZ 16:  1 battleship, 1 cruiser, 1 transport

Russians:
SZ 12:  1 battleship
SZ 21:  1 cruiser

Ottomans:
SZ 20:  1 cruiser

Austrians, Italians, and Americans (half the US fleet is assumed to be in the Pacific) are the same as OOB.

So far, I’ve only played one partial game using the new movement of 5 sea zones for ships.  The German cruiser in SZ 22 plus one more cruiser from SZ 10 teamed up with the subs to trash the Canadian fleet in SZ 2 and the French fleet in SZ 15.  They kept everything else in SZ 10 and built 1 sub.  I’m still waiting to see if the British will brave the minefields to attack SZ 10 or go after the raiders.

Flashman,

I had similar fears of how the game might be distorted, but your explanation of super stacks gives a concrete demonstration of what I was afraid of.  I will try a system similar to what you are suggesting.

1.  Allow rail movement through allied terrritories.

2.  No rail movement through contested territories.  However, I think I’ll allow movement into and out of contested territories, provided they were already contested - and the player had at least one unit present - at the beginning of his turn.  The logic being that if they have been fighting there since last turn, they’ve had time to change the gauge of the tracks on their own side of the trenches.

3.  Any unit that moved or engaged in combat earlier in the player’s turn is ineligible for rail movement.

4.  With the restrictions in 2 and 3 above, I think I’ll allow any number of eligible units from as many territories as the player desires to use rail movement.

5.  I’m still up in the air on allowing newly mobilized units to rail move.  I’ll try it both ways.

Edit:  It just occurred to me that I didn’t cover railing into territories the player invaded this turn, but captured them outright instead of just contesting them.  I guess you could say they haven’t yet had time to change the gauge on the tracks.  On the other hand, if they overcame enemy resistance that quickly, maybe they did.  It would also reward players for invading with enough force to win in one round.  If you allow this, I guess you also have to allow rail into minor powers that have just been mobilized to your side (like Russia moving one unit into Rumania at the beginning of its turn, and then reinforcing by rail).

“Seems like this proposed additional rule is abandoning the essence he was trying to capture? Anyone else think so?”

Sort of.  I haven’t had a chance to play it out yet with strategic movement, but wouldn’t it also help defenders reinforce critical areas, evening things out?

I’m not sure I see a problem with Italian units moving by rail to reinforce Paris, or British units reinforcing Rome after landing in Brest.  How would this break anything?  I know it didn’t happen historically (at least not in any major way).  But I think that was more a matter of Italy not being able to spare any troops, and Britain and France being similarly unable to divert anything from the Western Front meat grinder.  I don’t think it had anything to do with a lack of roads, rail lines, and ferries being available between France and Italy.

So one of the issues here is that a player can leave a single infantry in a contested territory as a rear guard, holding up the advance of, say, 20 infantry and 10 artillery for an entire turn.  Well, here’s a possibility:

If combat takes place in a contested territory, and the player whose turn it is scores enough hits to kill each defending unit at least 3 times, that player can advance any or all of his victorious units into a new enemy controlled territory, initiating a new combat.

Okay, so it’s a matter of what the proper scale should be.  Are we all agreed on the following?

1.  The British should have more battleships than the Germans - roughly 50% more if you are ignoring pre-DNs, and maybe 60-70% more if you aren’t.  All the British DNs were stationed near the British Isles, and since these would have comprised the vast majority of ships involved in a Jutland-style scenario, the 2-3 German-British ratio should hold in sea zones 9 and 10.  As for the British pre-DNs in the Med, they could perhaps be represented by a cruiser, if that is necessary for balance and/or historical aesthetics.  :-D

2.  The Germans should have at least one more battleship than the French.

3.  Everyone (except Turkey) should have at least one battleship.

4.  The Germans had more cruisers than anyone except the British, and the British had about 3 times as many as the Germans.  The French had about half as many as the Germans, but about twice as much as anyone else (except the US, although half the US cruisers would be in the Pacific).

Okay, so let’s work on the ratios.  Turkey gets one cruiser.  Assume Russia, Austria, Italy, and USA each get 1 battleship and 1 cruiser.  France would then get 1 battleship and two cruisers.

So this means Germany gets 2 battleships and 3-4 cruisers (with one of the cruisers starting in the South Atlantic).  Let’s call it 3 for now.  So in Sea Zone 10, Germany has 2 battleships and two cruisers, with another cruiser in Sea Zone 22, 23, or 24.

This means Britain gets 3 battleships in Sea Zone 9.  At a 3-to-1 ratio to German cruisers, this would mean 9 British cruisers.  For the moment, let’s call the British pre-DNs in the Med a cruiser instead of a BB.  So that makes 10 cruisers.  Now it’s just a matter of where to put them.  Maybe:

Sea Zone 9:  3 battleships, 4 cruisers, and 1 sub
Sea Zone 19:  3 cruisers
Sea Zone 29:  2 cruisers
Sea Zone 2:  1 cruiser

I would also cut the German subs down to 2-3.  The British started with more than twice as many subs as the Germans had.  However, I only gave them 1 sub because of the paragraph below.

http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/british_submarines_and_the_.htm
“Nine submarine flotillas were established in 1914 and based on the east coast of Britain. Four of these flotillas were patrol flotillas while the other five were used for coastal defence. Out of Britain’s 86 submarines at the start of World War One, 76 were used for coastal defence (including a number built specifically for overseas ventures). That they stayed as coastal protection vessels was an indication of just how much the powers that be both in the Royal Navy and the government feared invasion.”

"Britain did not have twice as many Dreadnaughts as Germany.

Kim"

Hi, Kim,

Yes, that’s true. It was more like 3-2 in August 1914 (34-21).  But they had almost twice as many pre-Dreadnaught battleships (41-22).  It all depends on how much you want to weigh pre-DN vs. post-DN for combat power.  I arbitrarily assumed a pre-DN to be about 60% as effective as a post-DN.

Don’t the minefield rules already effectively protect ships next to their home port?  Or do you think a 1 in 6 chance of losing a ship during movement is an insufficient deterrent?  I suppose you could also give ships “in port” a defensive bonus or some sort.  Maybe defending cruisers take two hits to destroy, and battleships three?  Or, if that is too powerful, perhaps the port acts as a naval version of a tank, and the first hit each round of combat against the defender is ignored?

I was thinking something along the lines of this.  Note that I cut the number of German subs in half (They had less than 30 when the war started).  I also put one of their cruisers off the coast of Africa (This represents ships they had there plus the West Indies, as well as the Far East Squadron, which historically made its way to the Atlantic to cause mischief).  I also gave the Germans a transport, because it seems implausible they wouldn’t have one.  I did not do likewise for the US, since they would not yet have paid the cost of diverting civlian ships to military use.  I also subtracted 1 British cruiser and half the US Navy to represent units assigned to the Pacific.  Does anyone see any obvious game breakers here?

Austria-Hungary
• Sea Zone 18: 1 Battleship, 1 Cruiser, 1 Transport
Russian Empire
• Sea Zone 12: 1 Battleship
• Sea Zone 21: 1 Cruiser
Germany
• Sea Zone 5: 1 Submarine
• Sea Zone 7: 1 Submarine
• Sea Zone 10: 3 Battleships, 2 Cruisers, 1 Transport
• Sea Zone 24:  1 Cruiser
France
• Sea Zone 15: 1 Cruiser, 1 Transport
• Sea Zone 16: 1 Battleship, 1 Cruiser, 2 Transports
British Empire
• Sea Zone 2: 1 Cruiser, 1 Transport
• Sea Zone 9: 4 Battleships, 3 Cruisers, 1 Transport
• Sea Zone 19: 2 Battleship, 1 Cruiser, 1 Transport
• Sea Zone 29: 1 Cruiser, 1 Transport
Ottoman Empire
• Sea Zone 20: 1 Cruiser
Italy
• Sea Zone 17: 1 Battleship, 1 Cruiser, 1 Transport
United States
• Sea Zone 1: 1 Battleship, 1 Cruiser

http://www.gwpda.org/naval/fdrn0002.htm

Royal Navy ships stationed outside of Home Fleet or the Mediterranean in August, 1914.
NB: this includes ships of the Royal Australian and Royal Canadian Navies.

Summarized below:

Australia/New Zealand/China/East Indies:  1 battlecruiser, 14 cruisers

South America:  1 cruiser

North America:  7 cruisers

So that would leave about 80 cruisers between the Home Fleet and the Med.  The vast majority (pretty much all) of the British battleships were stationed with the Home Fleet or in the Med, with all the Dreadnaughts operating from the British Isles.  This made sense, given the size and relative quality of the German fleet in the Baltic.  The construction of the German fleet was one of the causes of the war.  The British saw it as a direct challenge to their naval supremacy, which they relied upon to maintain their far-flung empire.  Germany (and Italy) were not unified until late in the 19th Century.  So they were late to the colonial conquest game.  It was assumed Gemany wanted to acquire an empire, but with all the most lucrative and strategically located colonies in Africa and Asia already taken, the only way to achieve this would be to grab some colonies from Britain, France, Belgium, Holland, etc.  This made the British (and everyone else with colonies) nervous.

“Okay, here is something I don’t get. You divided total battleships by 10 to get roughly what should be in the game setup, yet you divided the total cruisers by 15. Why the different numbers for the two types of ship?”

Well, mostly to keep it close to OOB, and because of the limited number of playing pieces included with the game.  You could just as well divide by 10 instead of 15 if you want.  For cruisers, you’d come up with:

Britain:  10.2 (10)
Germany:  4.7 (5)
France:  2.4 (2)
Austria:  1.1 (1)
Italy:  0.8 (1)
Russia:  1.4 (1)
USA:  3.3 (3)
Turkey:  0.4 (rounded up to 1 by tossing in their single DN and 4 PDNs)

Assuming you have enough playing pieces, there is some benefit, IMO, to increasing the raw numbers, while keeping the ratios between nations the same.  For one thing, it allows tactical flexibility.  You can split off task forces to cover more threats, instead of having to keep all your eggs in one basket.  Also, if you end up with a grand Jutland-style slugfest, having more ships present means rolling more dice.  The more dice that are rolled, the closer the results will be to the statistical average.  Games are less fun (to me, at least) if they are largely decided by a few lucky dice rolls, as opposed to deliberate strategy and tactics.

In case anyone was interested in tweaking the comparative naval strengths of the various nations, based on what they had historically, I’ve done a bit of research. Â

First, here’s a brief description of what was implied by the terms “cruiser” and “battleship.”  Ships of this era typically had three different sizes of guns – primary, secondary, and tertiary.  For battleships, the primary guns were usually 10”–12”, the secondary battery was 6”- 9”, and the tertiary battery was 3”-5”.   Cruisers would go down a notch, with their main guns being 6”-9”, and secondary/tertiary armament in the 3”-5” range.

To complicate matters a bit, there were two distinct types of battleships:  Dreadnaught and pre-Dreadnaught.  (I’ll abbreviate Dreadnaught as DN, and pre-Dreadnaught as PDN).  Prior to the launch of HMS Dreadnaught in 1906, a typical battleship would have one primary gun turret forward, and one aft, with 1-2 guns per turret.  Their secondary/tertiary armament was arranged in broadsides of 4-6 guns of each type per side.  DN class battleships, on the other hand, usually had 8-12 guns of the primary caliber, in forward/aft turrets, meaning they could bring most or all of them to bear in a broadside to either starboard or port.  DNs also tended to be bigger, faster, and more heavily armored (except for battlecruisers, which sacrificed armor for even greater speed).

Okay, here’s my best estimate of how many of each type of ship each nation had (read DN/PDN/Cruiser):

Britain:  34/41/102
Germany:  21/22/47
France:  4/15/24
Austria:  4/9/11
Italy:  6/10/8
Russia:  4/9/14
USA:  10/21/33
Turkey:  1/2/4

The one Turkish DN is actually the German battlecruiser Goeben, which was trapped in the Black Sea when the war began, and “loaned” to the Turks.  I already subtracted this from the German totals.  I did not include any ships that entered service in 1915 or later.  Also, some of the USA ships were in “reserve” status at the beginning of the war, but were reactivated by the time the US entered in 1917.

Okay, now to get these down to ratios that are more in line with the scale of A&A.  I assigned each DN a value of 1, and each PDN a value of 0.6.  I then divided the result by 10, to yield battleships:

Britain:  6
Germany:  3
France:  2
Austria:  1
Italy:  1
Russia:  1
USA:  2
Turkey:  0

For cruisers, I just divided by 15 to get:

Britain:  7
Germany:  3
France:  2
Austria:  1
Italy:  1
Russia:  1
USA:  2
Turkey: 1 (had to fudge a bit to give them a navy at all)

Now, if you want, you can cut the US Navy in half, since about half was usually deployed in the Pacific.  You could also cut down the British fleet slightly, since they had to maintain a presence in the Pacific as well.

“So are we thinking that the red disks are 1’s? That’s what I thought but i’m not used to it.”

Well, there are dark red and light red, and dark blue and light blue.  So maybe light red/blue for one unit, and dark red/blue for 5?  It looks like the Allies use blue, and the Central Powers use red.  Except that the Italian and American units have red chips under them.  Maybe because they are still neutral at this point, and neutrals used CP chips for some reason?

“I managed to copy and paste it into a PowerPoint, which then let me stretch the picture to fit the page.�  When I view it in slide show mode, it pretty much fills up my screen.�  It does start to get a bit blurry at that point, but you can still make out some details.�  I can’t figure out how to post it here though.”

“Is the picture you’re talking about the WotC PDF mentioned in Reply # 1 or the map shown in Reply # 35?  I’m not sure to which one you’re referring.”

Oh.  Sorry.  I meant the WOTC flyer.  And I only grabbed the little rectangle with the picture of the map, box, and playing pieces.  You can’t actually read anything printed on the map, boxes, or battle boards.  But you can tell that there are some charts and such printed on the map where the Sahara is.  Also, if this is the actual set-up in August 1914, it looks like the Russians are about the take a beating.  I see two large stacks of Austrians, and one large stack of Germans, each with about 7-8 infantry.  It looks like the Russians don’t have more than 2 infantry per territory.  So I’m guessing there must be something in the combat mechanics that prevents a blitzkrieg.

I managed to copy and paste it into a PowerPoint, which then let me stretch the picture to fit the page.  When I view it in slide show mode, it pretty much fills up my screen.  It does start to get a bit blurry at that point, but you can still make out some details.  I can’t figure out how to post it here though.

Hmm.  Maybe we’ll see something like a die roll every turn, which has the possibility of adding or subtracting from a cumulative total.  “Revolution points” start at 0.  When they reach 6, revolution occurs.  At the end of each Russian turn, roll a die, and consult the following chart:

1 or less= subtract 2 points
2= subtract 1 point
3-4= no change
5= add 1 point
6 or more= add 2 points

Cumulative points cannot be reduced below 0.  Add 1 to the die roll for each original Russian territory in enemy hands.  Subtract 1 for each original CP territory in Russian hands.

As for the results of the revolution, I don’ know.  Possibly:

1.  Maybe Russia just stops fighting.  CPs retain control of any Russian territory they already control.  Russia gives back any original CP territory it controls, and any Russian units in those territories are removed from the map.  Russia stops building, and all Russian units are frozen in place.  If CP attacks any Russian controlled territory after this point, the Revolution is cancelled, and Russia resumes play.

Or:

2.  Maybe it’s a slower death.  Roll two dice each turn and subtract that amount from Russia’s income.  Or maybe roll for each Russian controlled territory to determine if it joins the Revolution. They rebel on a roll of 1-2.  On all subsequent turns, roll again for each territory still controlled by the Tzar.  All units within a territory that rebels are now replaced with neutral units, which are at war with Russia, but not with the CP (unless attacked by the CP).  If at any point the Tzar actually ends his turn with no rebel units on the map, the revolution is considered suppressed.

I don’t like the second option as much, because it’s more complicated.  But maybe someone out there has some modifications in mind that would streamline it?

Well, as far as the win/loss ratios go, I can see a lot depending on the timing of the Russian revolution vs. the entry of the US.  The Russian revolution freed up a huge number of German troops for service on the Western front.  Unfortunately for the Germans, they couldn’t redeploy them in time to take full advantage of it before the infusion of fresh US troops cancelled out the advantage.

Also, the German fleet, though smaller than the Royal Navy, was close enough to the same size to be a credible threat.  But the addition of the US fleet pretty much shifted the odds enough to make a sortie into the Atlantic by the Kriegsmarine unfeasible.  So any attempt to use the German fleet, the very existence of which was a major contributing factor to the tensions that started the war, would have to be made early.

Yeah, cavalry wouldn’t really make much sense on the Western front.  Even on the Eastern front, while they were tactically useful for scouting, raids, and cutting rail lines, it would be hard to represent them on the strategic level.  If they don’t move faster than infantry, then what’s the point?  If they do move faster than infantry, there is a danger players will build more of them than would be historically accurate, and they might become defacto blitzkrieg machines.

The combat system that involves only one round of combat is interesting.  Given how it would tend to have the effect of preventing territories from changing hands quickly, it must somehow generate massive casualties.  Either that or the cost of new units must be relatively high compared the income available on the map.  If not, you’d end up with massive stacks of units in some of the key territories after a couple of turns.