Best posts made by Argothair

@the-janus Interesting. I’m an amateur developer and many of these changes would be relatively easy for me to code – turning off capitals is not hard, permanently awarding Chinese territories to the British is not hard, and even the diplomacy is probably doable. The nukes are probably weird and rare enough that it makes sense to just do them manually for now. I could add a ‘dummy’ nuke unit on the map that you can move around and so on, and then when you’re ready to fire it, we would just roll a die and use edit mode to resolve the effects.

If you want to send me whatever files you have and if you’d be willing to play a couple of games once the module is ready, I’ll see what I can make happen. No promises, but I think I would probably be able to hack something playable together in a month or so.

If you’re interested, send me a list of your top 10-ish highest priority changes from the Classic map/ruleset. I need a medium amount of detail, I think – like I’m not sure why China goes British, specifically, and not American. If there’s a short rulebook (<= 30 pages) that spells all this out, then send me a link and I’ll read it; otherwise I need you to tell me.

I am excited to announce the 1941 Anniversary Balanced Mod is now available as a TripleA map!

I’m still working on the automatic download, but for now, if you’re tech-savvy, you can put the objectives.properties file in world_war_ii_v3-master/map, and put the WW2v3-1941balmod file in world_war_ii_v3-master/map/games, and it should work for you. You will need to manually change the file type of the ‘objectives’ file from “objectives.txt” to “objectives.properties” because TripleA cannot handle the “.properties” file type. It is OK to replace the old objectives.properties file; I have preserved all of its old info for you. You will probably need to unzip the relevant folder (which is in C:/users/[your name]/TripleA/downloadedMaps/) in order to add the files.

WW2v3-1941balmod.xml
objectives.txt

@weddingsinger That makes sense as far as it goes, and I wouldn’t say you’re missing anything, exactly. I think the emphasis on keeping Germany out of the Baltic States is slightly mis-placed; the Baltic States is just 1 IPC. It’s Leningrad that’s the big economic swing zone, so the question is what turn will Germany arrive in Leningrad, and then ultimately in Moscow. I think you could get away with a purchase like 8 mech, 1 art on R1 and R2 against most G1/G2 openings, but if you stretch it much past that and start mixing in tanks or planes as well, then I’d be tempted (as Italy) to stop fussing with Egypt and start sending mechs and tanks for a max stack of can-openers. If you give up too many Russian hit points, then you can’t hold the territory two spaces back (e.g. Leningrad) against Germany’s fast movers, so you’ve got to hold all of the territories in the middle (e.g. Baltic States, Belorussia) firmly enough that Italy can’t can-open them, and if you never build any regular infantry, then you’ll run out of infantry to do that garrison work and you’ll start trading more expensive units. If you get forked enough times, eventually your defense might collapse and you might have to drive back to Moscow in a hurry, allowing the Germans to advance two spaces a turn and make up for some of the turns when the Germans didn’t advance any spaces in a turn.

@the-janus Unfortunately, I have gotten overscheduled with too many different board game projects, so it will be a while before I do any development on this one, but I’m still interested and I hope to come back to it someday.

For about a year now, I’ve been mulling over some ideas for a streamlined ruleset for factories, victory cities, capitals, and economies. My goal is to make the rules simpler, faster, and easier to remember without taking away from the realism and tactical challenges offered by the Global 1940 map. Anyway, I was bored at work this morning, and I think my ideas finally crystallized into something worth sharing. Please let me know what you think!

ALL FACTORIES ARE VICTORY CITIES, AND VICE VERSA

To avoid having to keep track of two separate lists of critical targets, I want to treat all territories with factories in them as victory cities, and I want to put a factory in each victory city. People naturally pay attention to factory cities, because that’s where the stream of enemy units is originating from. Instead of being forced to split your attention between factory cities and victory cities, you should be able to win the game if you capture and shut down enough of your opponents’ factories.

Starting Allied Victory Cities (14):
Kiev, Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, Omsk (Novosibirsk)
London, Ottawa, Calcutta, Sydney
New York, Chicago, San Francisco
Paris
Chongqing (Szechwan)

Starting Axis Victory Cities (6):
Berlin (Eastern Germany), Frankfurt (Western Germany), Prague (Greater Southern Germany)
Tokyo, Harbin (Manchuria)
Rome

The Axis need to capture a net of 6 victory cities to win, so they’re looking to get up to a total of 12 victory cities. That would often mean capturing Paris, Chongqing, Kiev, Leningrad, Stalingrad, and either Calcutta or Sydney, but there is some flexibility if the Axis want to go all-out against either Britain or Russia.

The Allies need to capture a net of 2 victory cities to win, so they’re looking to get up to a total of 16 victory cities. That could mean capturing Tokyo and Harbin while liberating France, or it could mean capturing Frankfurt and Rome while holding the line against Japan, or it could mean completely wiping out the European Axis while only losing a couple of victory cities to Japan, e.g., down Chongqing and down Sydney.

BUILD FACILITIES, NOT FACTORIES

Because factories are victory cities, they cannot be constructed, upgraded, or destroyed. Instead, players can build training camps, naval bases, and air bases as needed to try to provide better geographic coverage.

| Building | Cost | Produces | Special Abilities |
| Major Factory     | N/A | Up to 10 units | Is a Victory City |
| Training Camp     | 5 IPCs | Up to 3 infantry     | None |
| Naval Base | 8 IPCs | Up to 3 ships | +1 ship range, repairs capital ships |
| Air Base | 10 IPCs     | Up to 3 planes | +1 airplane range, scramble fighters |

Facilities stack with each other to add additional production opportunities. For example, if you have both a training camp and a naval base in Southern France, then you could build up to 3 infantry and 3 submarines there on the same turn. However, no territory, no matter what facilities it has, can ever spend more than 40 IPCs on producing new units in the same turn. Even if you have a factory, a naval base, an air base, and a training camp all on the same territory, you still can’t spend more than 40 IPCs there. If your nation is earning more than 40 IPCs per turn, then you have either save the income or spread your spending across more than one territory.

THERE ARE NO CAPITALS; INSTEAD YOU CAN LOOT ALL FACTORIES

This system doesn’t use or require capitals. There is no such thing as capitals in this ruleset. Instead, anytime you capture a factory, that factory automatically goes up to max damage (20 damage tokens), and you can steal up to 10 IPCs from the factory’s former owner. If the owner doesn’t have a full 10 IPCs, then you simply steal whatever they do have in their treasury. For example, if China only has 4 IPCs left when Japan conquers Chongqing, then Japan would steal 4 IPCs from China. On the other hand, when Germany conquers Paris, they would only steal 10 IPCs from Paris – not the full 17 IPCs that would typically be in France’s treasury.

Because there are no capitals, conquering the cities that are traditionally thought of as capitals doesn’t cripple the nation’s economy quite as badly. For example, if Germany conquers London, that’s quite bad for Britain – it means that Germany gets to steal 10 IPCs, plus collect England’s 8 IPCs, plus inflict max damage on London’s factory, plus Germany gains a victory city and is closer to victory, plus Britain may finds it harder to produce enough units in the Atlantic theater to fight back effectively. So there are plenty of reasons to try to capture the cities that are traditionally thought of as capitals. But in this ruleset, capturing those cities doesn’t completely prevent their former owners from collecting income, constructing buildings, or recruiting new units. For example,. after Germany takes Paris, Paris will still have 7 IPCs in its treasury, and it can use those IPCs to immediately build a training camp in, e.g., Algeria or French Equatorial Africa. Then, on turn 2, France would be able to recruit some infantry in its training camp.

If you conquer a city with airbases, naval bases, and/or training camps, then all of those facilities receive 5 damage at the moment you capture them. If this pushes them over the 8 damage maximum, then the facilities are destroyed.

ADJUSTMENTS TO BOMBING RULES

Both tactical bombers and strategic bombers may target any type of building for bombing damage. As per the usual rules, tactical bombers deal 1d6 damage, and strategic bombers deal 1d6+2 damage. A training camp, naval base, or air base is fully functional as long as it has 3 or less damage. A training camp, naval base, or air base is deactivated if it has between 4 and 7 damage. A training camp, naval base, or air base that accumulates 8 damage is immediately destroyed. It can be rebuilt for its full price on its owner’s turn if the owner has the cash and wishes to do so. A rebuilt facility starts off at full health.

Factories behave as normal – they lose one unit of production capacity for each damage up to 10 damage, and then after that they can accumulate ‘surplus’ damage up to 20 damage. Factories cannot be destroyed. If you inflict more than 20 damage on the same factory, it just gets 20 damage and stays there until its owner pays for repairs.

UNIFIED BRITISH ECONOMY

All British territories, including the UK, Canada, ANZAC, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, and South Africa, participate as part of the same unified nation and economy on the same turn. There is no more division between UK-Europe and UK-Pacific. Because no territory can produce more than 40 IPCs of units in the same turn, Britain cannot simply dump its entire economy into Calcutta or Sydney. Britain can choose to focus its efforts into the Pacific if it desires, but that is an appropriate option that should be allowed. If Britain directs all of its efforts to the Pacific theater, then Germany and Italy will rapidly get very large at Britain’s expense, reducing Britain’s total budget and making it hard or impossible for Britain to keep on cranking out units in the Pacific.

STARTING LOCATIONS FOR TRAINING CAMPS

There are no minor factories in this ruleset. This is just one possible suggestion for where the training camps might go at the start of the game. Players are free to build more, for 5 IPCs each, in any territory generating at least 1 income. There might need to be other changes to setup to make these rules work well. Naval bases and airbases would probably be placed mostly in the same starting positions as regular Global 1940.

Scotland
Southern France
Northern Italy
Finland
South Africa
New Zealand
Buryatia
Korea

@AldoRaine said in We need an allied playbook.:

The biggest problem this creates for the allies in my mind is how it gives Japan a lot of space. Which can lead to very bad things for the Allies.

I hear you, comrade! I agree that if USA puts 80%+ into killing Italy, then Italy is not going anywhere useful from this opening, and Moscow will either fall late or not fall at all, so Europe looks pretty good for the Allies – but then you have to turn around and pivot and scramble to save Sydney or whatever. Which works great for a lot of players; some people are more comfortable than I am with that kind of emergency pivot. My personal preference (so far) is to look for Allied strategies that give you a reasonable chance of more-or-less containing the Axis all over the map – halt Italy near Sudan and Jordan, halt Germany near Norway and Bryansk, halt Japan near Burma and Borneo and the Carolines. If the Axis break out a little bit somewhere, fine, figure out how to deal with that – but don’t write off a whole theater as part of your opening strategy.

@simon33 I mean, reasonable people can disagree about whether an army could have crossed the Western Sahara in the 1940s. In terms of both rainfall and population density, the Rio de Oro area is actually less desolate than northern Sudan, where the game does allow you to cross.

That said, I’m primarily relying on the TripleA map here. You can see that Rio de Oro is clearly adjacent to both Morocco and French West Africa. If the map designers want that area to be impassible, then I believe it should be marked as such in the basic map, not just after you apply the graphical overlay.

As far as your second question, I have no idea why people have stopped playing this game. I enjoy it and I plan to continue playing, even though the developers have ignored my bug reports for the last year.

Moreover, I do not agree that dividing SZ38 is a mistake. The sailing distance from Bangkok (in SZ 132) through Singapore (in SZ38) to Calcutta (in SZ40) is about 3,000 miles. This is also roughly the sailing distance from New York to France. The standard Global map models the NY-France trip as requiring a naval move of 4 spaces. I see no excuse for treating that trip as 4 spaces wide while treating the Bangkok-Calcutta route as only 2 spaces wide. Any invasion of India would have required some staging grounds on the western coast of the Malayan peninsula – it would have been totally unrealistic to try to attack India using forces based out of Bangkok or Saigon, yet this is exactly what Global encourages players to do. I am thrilled that the Path to Victory map corrects this problem; it is one of the main reasons that I find the map interesting.

LHoffman, thanks for engaging with my ideas in so much detail. It’s good to get this stuff out in the open.

I cannot speak for anyone else, but my motivation in attacking Russia with Japan is not to get money from Moscow; it is to win the game. The easiest and most reliable way for the Axis to win the game is for Germany and Japan to jointly pressure the USSR and head for Moscow. If the Axis can eliminate the most reachable major Ally, and the only one on the Euro-Asian land mass, they become very, very difficult, if not impossible for the Allies to beat.

I have two questions here: (1) do we want the Axis to become virtually impossible to beat after they capture Moscow? (2) do we want there to be other ways for the Axis to become virtually impossible to beat, e.g., capturing London, or capturing India, or capturing Hawaii, or capturing Brazil?

If your answers are yes to (1) and no to (2), then the race to Moscow really is inevitable, and there’s just nothing we can do about that – if you give a player one goal that’s obviously more useful than the other goals, then of course that’s what they’ll try to do. Personally, I find having only a single major goal boring, and not worth the 10+ hour investment required to play a game like G40, but if you enjoy it, that’s fine.

If your answer is no to (1), then we need to work on giving the Allies at least one plausible base from which to fight for Eurasia that works even if Moscow falls. That could be a Russian base, like a factory and secondary capital in the Urals or Kazakhstan or Amur, or it could be a non-Russian base, like India, Persia, Egypt, Turkey, Yugoslavia, Greece, Italy, or Norway.

If your answer is yes to (2), then we need to work on giving the Axis exciting goals that can lock down the game for them other than conquering Moscow. The most obvious option is probably changing the starting units so that Germany has a chance to take and hold London if it makes that its top priority. Another option is to bring more of South America into play and providing starting naval bases in, e.g., Chile, Argentina, New Zealand, and Morocco, that shorten the width of the south Pacific (so that moving southwest into Africa / South America / ANZAC becomes a more realistic strategy for economic victory). A third option is to loosen the restrictions on building on island territories, so that if Japan takes Hawaii it has a chance to continue on to Alaska, Mexico, and Panama without losing too much momentum.

As far as France, China, and ANZAC, I think most of the boost they need is just a chance to go before their respective Axis opponents. France should go before Germany, and China and ANZAC should go before Japan.

How is this a good idea? Or historically accurate?

It’s a good idea because there’s no point in setting up the blue pieces only to mechanically wipe them off the board on turn 1 before anyone gets to move them or choose how they’re arranged. You may as well use neutral white pieces if France literally never gets to issue orders to the troops in metropolitan France. Having one turn to set up a French defense after your own stylistic preferences, even if the defense is ultimately doomed, is way more fun than having zero turns to set up the defense and watching the French pieces get picked off in exactly the same way game after game.

In terms of game balance, as we’ve discussed on other threads in House Rules recently, there’s no need to give France all of the same starting units – if you want to nerf France a bit to make up for its turn order advantage, you can. Another option is to give France only a noncombat move on its first turn, so that it can’t attack Italy. Personally, I would prefer to have Italy be neutral (!) on turn 1 and not get activated until turn 2 unless Britain or France attack it. That way, France can attack Northern Italy if it wants, but it brings Italy into the war a turn earlier, so that’s a gambit at best for the Allies.

In terms of history, check out the Saar Offensive on Wikipedia – it’s a little known fact that after Germany invaded Poland, France responded by invading Germany, without waiting for Germany or Italy to invade France. They didn’t get very far, but there’s no special reason why the French couldn’t have attacked harder or done better in their opening attack.

I understand that sometimes the historical aspect must be slightly compromised for balanced gameplay, but your reasoning is purely emotional. I would propose the ability for China to somehow obtain a second fighter if the first is destroyed. For instance, the USA or Britain flying one of theirs to China and having it then belong to China. This isn’t the same as your fun idea, but it gives China a second chance at more diverse firepower.

I’m not emotionally worked up about China having a second fighter; it’s not like I’m Chinese-American or something like that. I just think it makes for better gameplay, for the reasons Black Elk was pointing out: with 12 territories in play, it’s boring to have to pick only one of them in which to attack. I wouldn’t mind if the second Chinese fighter had to come from some kind of American lend-lease, e.g., you start with a fighter in the Philippines, and you can send it to China, where it becomes Chinese, or retreat it to Hawaii, where it remains American. However, I think restricting the gift of a second fighter to situations where the first fighter has already been killed is far too weak: the point isn’t to ensure that China keeps its fighter (generally not too hard, because the fighter can keep landing in safe territories and Japan doesn’t have many AA guns to work with in China), the point is to give China the interesting decision of whether to make one attack or two attacks per turn.

Even though Axis and Allies G40 technically has 9 or 10 independently playable powers does not mean that they all should be played independently or that they should be played with the expectation of having similar amounts of action or import to gameplay.

I strongly disagree. If you don’t want 9+ playable powers, don’t have them: nothing wrong with a game that has Germany, Italy, Japan, USSR, UK, USA, and a bunch of neutrals. If you treat the Australians and the Chinese as pro-Allied neutrals, the game can work just fine. On the other hand, if you have 9+ playable powers, you have to make them freaking playable! Adding extra player powers that don’t actually get to play is a waste of expensive chrome, a waste of setup time, a waste of brainpower spent thinking about a more complicated turn order, and a trap for the unwary: even if you and your friends know that the minor powers aren’t supposed to be interesting, there will always be newbies who reasonably assume that the designers wouldn’t have put a country like France in the box and the rules unless France was meant to be playable, and those newbies are going to be bored stiff. As G40 stands, you could give France, China, UK Pacific, and ANZAC all to the same player, and he’d still have way less fun than the guy playing even a medium-sized power like UK Europe. That’s crazy.

I am just against a secondary capital rule as a general practice. To me, it would make the game a little more convoluted and, ultimately, I don’t think it would mean very much. Once you go to a secondary capital your whole objective will still be to re-take your original capital. Being able to collect your remaining income and spend it (if able) will likely just delay the inevitable (defeat) in many cases.

I don’t see why everyone working out of a secondary capital will be obsessed with recapturing their original capital. As, e.g., the Free French, I might be perfectly willing to work on retaking French North Africa, or Trans-Jordan, or just on supporting an attack on Italy. As a British player operating out of Ottawa or Calcutta, I might be perfectly willing to let the Germans hang on to London for a few turns in favor of a strategic bombing campaign that helps the Russians take Berlin.

Also, I think having a meaningful ability to build units after the fall of your capital will change the point at which players abandon their capitals. Right now, players hold on to their capitals until it becomes abundantly clear that their entire army will be handily wiped out if they try to hold it. By the time Germany has 60+ troops adjacent to Moscow, the Russians barely have any territories left besides Moscow, so the best the Russians can hope for is a wandering nomadic horde that holds one territory at a time. On the other hand, if Russia had the option to fall back to a more defensible position, maybe they would take advantage of that opportunity and therefore be able to trade/hold more territory. A Russian stack holding at Omsk could reunite the Siberian and European armies faster and would be stronger relative to the invading German and Japanese forces. A Russian capital at Omsk wouldn’t have a huge income, but it could reasonably trade and deadzone for 15+ IPCs for a few turns, which could be interesting. I don’t see that as “delaying the inevitable defeat,” because if the Germans or the Japanese have to pull their stack back to defend their own capital, then the Russians could increase their income and sustain themselves indefinitely, whether or not they recapture Moscow.

That said, I’m not wedded to the idea of secondary capitals per se – what’s important to me is that powers have a way to place units after their original capital is lost. I could live with the infantry-spawn idea.

I think if we’re sticking closely to the theme of a “playbook” then it is not really worthwhile to debate the relative priority of the UK’s tasks – instead the thing to do is to just name the UK’s tasks, and briefly explain what the Allies need to get done, and then suggest some of the tactics that can work, either individually or as a package, to accomplish some of those tasks.

For example, let’s say for the sake of argument that we all think that the UK wants to defend London, push Germany out of the Atlantic, and defend Egypt in the opening. Fine! We don’t need to rank the importance of those tasks. Instead we can discuss the Taranto Raid, and the Gibraltar Stack, and the Tobruk Attack, and the Ethiopia Attack, and the Middle Earth setup, and advise our readers on how well each of those openings will serve each of the UK’s goals. That way readers can decide for themselves what goals they want to prioritize and then pick an opening that will help achieve their goals.

Karl7 (Axis +0) defeats Argothair (Allies) at BM3 with an effective Sea Lion after American reinforcements charge to Iceland to prepare to liberate London…and then realize they don’t have quite enough to get the job done and go back to Canada. London was finally liberated on round 11, but by then it was too late for the Allies, and Argothair surrendered. Rumors that the Allied High Command was bribed by an offer of a rematch at Axis +6 are merely enemy propaganda and should be entirely discounted.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/33561/g40bml-argothair-allies-vs-karl7/141

The question gets a little weird because if you send the entire starting Allied air force directly to Moscow, then you could wind up losing some of London, Gibraltar, Cairo, etc. in ways that make it harder to build more fighters or get them to Moscow before G5 / G6.

You can also lose the game on victory cities with Germany controlling London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw, Cairo, Leningrad, and Stalingrad – no Moscow conquest required.

I still think it’s an interesting question, but the answer isn’t as simple as just saying “fly every fighter on the map to Moscow and then Moscow won’t fall and then the Allies win.”

@vodot Looks fabulous, well done! This map would be much more fun to play on than the standard Anniversary.

If you’re looking for still yet more improvements, here are some thoughts I’ve had over the last couple of years after reading up on more WW2 history:

• Oil was more important to everyone’s war effort than is really appreciated on the A&A maps. In particular, valuing Trans-Jordan (Basra/Kuwait) and Persia (Bandar Abbas) at only 1 IPC each is a huge underestimate. I would want to bump Trans-Jordan to at least $2 and Persia to at least $3. However, they don’t make good factory sites, because despite the important oil production, they weren’t really industrialized and they weren’t places where it was easy to recruit infantry. So, possibly this is something that needs to be handled through national objectives rather than just adding IPCs on the map.
• Along similar lines, Rumania needs to be worth more than just 2 IPCs for Germany. I would probably just make Poland worth $2 and Rumania worth $3. Rumania is a perfectly reasonable place to build a factory because the Rumanians did send their own armies, tanks, and planes into battle on behalf of the Axis.
• Ukraine and Eastern Ukraine were hugely important to the Russian economy in terms of their industrial and agricultural production. I would probably bump them to $3 and $2.
• The Chinese map is still set up to allow the Japanese to quickly and reliably conquer all of China – there’s just not quite enough defensive depth. Everything except Chinghai is 2 spaces away from Shanghai, and if all you’ve got left is Chinghai then the Chinese have no income. I’m not sure of quite the right solution, but I guess I’d ideally like to see three ‘corners’ for the Chinese to hide and regroup in, each of which requires a separate angle of attack for the Japanese – a northern region that the Russians can easily reinforce, a southern region that the British can easily reinforce, and a western region where the Chinese themselves can generate their own units that won’t be immediately blown up. Part of the answer here might be to get away from the “every Chinese territory is worth $1” setup. E.g. if you add a Chungking region worth $3 in the far southwest, and bump Ningxia to $2 and add a buffer territory to the east of Ningxia? There’s still the question of how to physically get Russian troops into China; right now Ningxia is at least 3 moves away from the nearest Russian factory, yet only 2 moves away from a hypothetical Japanese factory in Manchuria. Somehow that ratio needs to be reversed.

Finally, I’d love to see victory cities in South Africa and Brazil – less because of history and more because it’s nice to have that region of the world acknowledged as part of the game. It takes a long time for the Axis to penetrate that deeply into the Allied south/west, which means that if we’re playing for any reasonable number of turns, there won’t be enough time to build up forces, take those territories, profit from the extra IPCs, turn those IPCs into new units, and use those new units to seize a victory city. Unless we’re literally playing to concession, I probably have to ignore those regions of the map to focus on victory cities, which is less fun. The map is there to be played on; I don’t want to ignore any part of it! :-)

So the problem I’m having with this “pick x of 5 cities to save” discussion is that it matters a lot when the cities fall. London falls on turn 3? Not a problem if you’ve done the Taranto raid and killed some German planes; Russia can just swoop in and occupy eastern Europe, America can liberate London at its leisure, and you’re looking at an Allied win.

London falls on turn 7? You’re pretty much screwed in most cases.

Flipping that around, if Calcutta falls on turn 3? That’s pretty bad; the Japanese have enough time to pivot over to Australia or Honolulu and force America to ignore the Atlantic, or they might even be able to build a factory in West India and crank out 6 fast movers a turn (9 if they get Persia, 12 if they get Iraq, etc.) to seize the middle east and mess up moscow’s southern front.

On the other hand, if Calcutta falls on turn 7? That’s totally fine; in most cases, if Japan is only reaching Calcutta by turn 7 that means Japan is more-or-less contained, and by the time Japan can use the Indian bases to seriously threaten Cairo or Moscow, the game will be over.

So, taking the question as seriously as I can:

In the opening, hold Moscow and Calcutta.
From the middlegame on, hold Moscow and London.

@vodot Sure, that all makes sense to me. There’s no in-game reason to separate the wheat and oil resources if they’re both just +1 IPC, unless you happen to have all the different resource tokens lying around and you’re looking for an excuse to play with your toys…not that there’s anything wrong with that. :)

I favor the preemptive raising of 1 chinese infantry that stops blitzes – tanks have no business blitzing through the dirt trails over the forested mountains of central China in any case. And it helps to suggest the omnipresence of chinese irregulars and partisans and half-trained regiments that were constantly rising up to resist Japanese occupation. Possibly some rejiggering of the territory borders would still be useful in addition to the guerillas; I’ll chew on it.

I think the answer to the VC issue is just to say that there’s a new threshold for Axis/Allies to win the game, and the number is not necessarily the same number. No reason you couldn’t require, e.g., 16 VP for Allied win and 12 VP for Axis win (or whatever the correct numbers turn out to be after you’ve chosen your victory cities).

If you want to link to the VC card, I’d be happy to check it out.

I think my response to that kind of strategy, assuming a G1/J1 DoW, would be to not build any factories in Egypt, Iraq, or Persia, and instead just focus all Allied efforts on taking Berlin. Don’t scramble, spend the whole UK1 buy on buffing up the fleet that Berlin didn’t sink, then buy transports UK2 after you see the G2 tank buy. If the tanks go east on G3, Western Germany should fall on UK3; the G1 strat buy won’t help defend it. Or, if Germany collects all available resources to hold Western Germany, then you should be able to snap up Norway, Normandy, and Belgium for very cheap, and then you get ready for the Denmark-Berlin punch on UK/US4. It’s totally OK to trade Moscow for Berlin!

Have you tried that already? How did it turn out?

@Azimuth My personal philosophy is that an AA50-style map should aim to incorporate additional territories if and only if they’re needed to improve the functionality of the game.

So, splitting Iraq off from Trans-Jordan to avoid blitzing from Trans-Jordan directly to India…sounds great; that’s an important change that helps provide a richer game that adequately separates the Middle East theater from the South Asian theater. Splitting Syria off as well…I don’t quite see the need. Yes, Syria is fun to have, but it is not obvious that it changes the gameplay. Sure, Syria is part of the Vichy French network, but it’s not like Vichy France becomes unplayable without Syria. You can just add a French infantry to Trans-Jordan or something like that, and you get close enough.

Similarly, splitting off Nigeria makes sense because the British really did have significant holdings in west Africa, and if you just color the entire region as French then that’s a gross oversimplification. However, splitting off Gold Coast as well adds very little additional value. It’s not worth any money. What does having a Gold Coast let the British do that they can’t already do just by having Nigeria? How does Gold Coast change the strategy of the game?

Of course it’s historically defensible to add all these extra territories in, but if you add in every historically justifiable territory then the map will wind up looking more like Global than AA50. Still potentially fun, but you’re aiming at a different target; the game ceases to function as a medium weight map. Just my two cents.

@taamvan So I think the response I’m imagining is meant to take Berlin before Germany can build with the Moscow money. If Germany is targeting a G5 Moscow attack then you can take Berlin through UK5, and Germany won’t ever be able to spend 100 IPCs.

You and I and many others agree that the Global 40 OOB is unbalanced without a bid, so we’re not necessarily talking about trying to win with no bid. But if you have either a bid or the extra cash from Balanced Mod, I think you could stack enough infantry in Moscow that Germany can’t both take Moscow G5 and hold Berlin against an all-out US+UK frontal assault on northwest Europe.

Maybe Berlin can pivot in a way that would defeat the Allies; e.g., when you see the Allies coming for Berlin, pause and build some infantry, and settle for a G6 attack on Moscow that will still have superior momentum. I’m not sure, though. I think maybe if you build almost nothing but tanks and bombers, then you set yourself up for a do-or-die on G5 where after G5 Russia has enough infantry in Moscow to hold. You have other problems, like Japan will be a monster by then, and US spending will have to shift to the Pacific to keep Sydney and Honolulu out of Japanese hands. So I’m not saying the G1 attack is a bad idea for Germany; just that there are probably some effective counters for people who are interested in thinking outside the usual confines of “rush Anglo-American reinforcements to Moscow.” I hear you that Germany is very difficult to take in a normal game, but the attack plan you’re describing doesn’t sound to me like a normal game. It sounds like Germany is diverting all of the assets that usually make Germany a tough nut to crack toward heading east with a massive, fast hammer-blow.

By analogy, usually it’s crazy to talk about Japan taking San Francisco, but if you literally send the US Pacific fleet through the Panama Canal and build nothing in the Western US, well, now it’s a serious threat.

Anyway, we can agree to disagree on all this stuff, or we could try it out in a friendly playtest on TripleA sometime.

I’m not on Facebook; I don’t like their business model. If you want to send me any of your custom stuff, I’m happy to look at it; you’ve got my e-mail. If not, that’s fine too.

Cheers,
Argo

@cloud7707 I’m glad to see ongoing interest in this mod and that you are creating your own content, but I disagree with several of your changes; I think they make the game both less fun and less historical.

• The Doolittle Raid scared the heck out of Japan very early in the war and prompted them to keep significant naval forces near the home islands for years to come. As long as you keep 3-4 units in SZ 62, it’s safe enough; fighters alone are not a great attacking unit and it will rarely pay for the US to launch a serious attack directly from SZ 56 (or vice versa). The game is already a little artificial in terms of sending everything to the front lines with zero garrisons, because there is no fog of war and no paratroopers – I would not want to move things even further in that direction by killing off the reason for US & Japan to garrison their home sea zones.

• Australia was a major contributor to the war effort, both in terms of high-quality infantry that fought in the middle east and india, and in terms of providing subs, destroyers, and cruisers that fought in the south Pacific. By making both Australian territories worth only 1 IPC, you destroy the possibility of an Australian factory – or really any south Pacific factory until the game is basically over and you are just building factories in, e.g., Borneo or the Philippines in order to ‘win more’ after Japan has already been decisively pushed back. This makes the already-weak “Kill Japan First” strategy basically impossible.

• Since each game turn represents at least four months, I see no reason why the US shouldn’t be able to transfer fighters directly between the west coast and the coast of Morocco. There are very rarely any sea battles in SZ 56 or SZ 12 once the US has carriers in play that could enable those transfers, so we’re really talking about a non-combat redeployment of forces, and four months is plenty of time to get those planes across the world even if you have to ship them in crates and reassemble them at the end.

I think the purpose of the playbook is to come up with a basic, solid overview of strategies that work in general G40 play. Discussion of how to exploit a specific bid (“Oh, man, put 3 fighters in Amur and then you can pick off Japanese transports!”) is out-of-scope because not everyone will play with a 30 IPC bid or allow the whole bid to be stacked in one territory. Discussion of how to win with the Allies given some kind of general compensation for what most (but not all) players acknowledge as the imbalance of the game – without specifying whether that compensation is a bid, or Balanced Mod, or Taamvan’s reduced Axis NOs and Tankograd, or whatever – is in-scope for this thread. It has to be! Otherwise the thread will degenerate into a debate about whether it’s “possible” to win without a bid, which isn’t nearly as interesting and which has plenty of other threads already.

With all of that in mind, taamvan raises a really good point: sometimes Germany attacks Russia G1, building tanks and bombers with the idea of conquering Moscow on G5. I’ve outlined how I would respond. How would others respond? What other defenses do the Allies have available for that opening?

OK, that’s kind of cool the way the diplomatic influence over the Free French tends to cascade and pass a tipping point – the more territories they control, the faster they gain more through diplomacy. That’s neat. I still think they’re kind of small potatoes, but they’re very fun small potatoes.

Your national advantage cards look much nicer than most professionally published game cards that I’ve seen – would you be willing to share the graphic files so I can use the graphics in my house rules? I’d love to have either a .png or .gif of a blank card, or an .svg of a filled-in card.

Also, are your frogmen actual infantry units that load and unload from a destroyer? Or are they sort of invisible ‘notional’ units that just give you an extra attack roll without using any pieces?