Posts made by Black_Elk

It would make a lot more sense if you just put a “house rules” sub-forum in each category, instead of continually moving the threads around.
:-D

I can’t imagine a topic worth discussing, in any section, that isn’t going to verge on a house rule at some point. Besides the current House Rules is section is all over the place anyway, and rather hard to navigate, since stuff gets dumped their from all over the rest of the site.

Sorry if I pushed the thread in an off topic direction. I like to try to think of solutions while I gripe ;)

Yeah I never liked the Sub/Destroyer-ASW  interaction in revised because of this exact point.

The problem with Submarines in A&A, is that before you get into all the details about how their abilities could/should be countered by other units, first you need to ask: “Why should people buy Subs in the first place?” and perhaps even more important, “Why should the Germans buy them?”

Right now, I just don’t see much point in buying ships as the German player. If subs did economic damage then maybe it would be a different story, but we’ve been down that road before right…

Any thoughts Joe?

:-D

We will just get used to the idea of UK troops attacking Karelia to support Russia

I’m sick of getting used to this idea. I’ve had to get used to it in every iteration of the game since Classic.  :-D
Frankly, at this point its just boring to me, and I think it really encourages the wrong sort of play-style from UK. The British should be thinking about the Med and the Pacific and France, not stacking infantry in Northern Russia.

A factory in India or Australia shouldn’t just be ‘doable’, it should be a given. Starting ICs would ground the Pacific game, and prevent the one directional attack plan that predominates in just about every version of A&A since the original. The Russian factory might be novel, but the Allies don’t need a new factory anchor in Karelia nearly as bad as they need one in the Pacific. That’s all I’m thinking
:-)

Destroying ICs is a nice idea, but would also slow down the game which is unfortunate

Honestly I don’t think destroyable ICs would add to game length all that appreciably. They might add somewhat to the length of the endgame, but only because the match ups would be closer and more intense. In any case, the gameplay would be much more entertaining while it lasted, so its a trade off I’d be willing to make.
8-)

It stays there not doing anything.  ICs can’t be destroyed.  The Chinese can’t use it, because they don’t have IPCs, but the Japanese can’t use it either

Sounds totally ridiculous to me, complicated and unnecessary.  :-D

Everyone should just be able to destroy their own own Factories if they want to. That change alone would make the game much more enjoyable, especially towards the later rounds. We allow for the purchase of new ICs, so why shouldn’t we allow a dynamic for their removal?

The logic behind the present distribution of starting factories just doesn’t make sense to me. Why should the Russians get production in Caucasus and Karelia, but not the British in India and Australia? Its time to just embrace the fact that there is no meaningful correspondence between real world industry and the way this game is set up. As such, factories should be treated like the fun gaming abstractions that they really are, and distributed more liberally across the board. I don’t want to hear any more excuses for the current, low production model. Everyone knows that the game is more fun to play with a Factory in India and a Pacific fight, its just too expensive the way the board is currently arranged. Someone needs to get with the program, and fix the factory thing. :-)

The Soviet factories are huge problematic points that prove a weakness in the Soviet position and make it much harder to “give up land for time” because frankly nothing can stop German tanks from taking Karelia factory, while the Soviets by even trying to defend Moscow or the factories face an unmitigated task of stopping the Panzers from multiple defensive points.

This is the one thing that I find most perplexing about the new set up.

Why, of all places, did they choose Karelia as the location for the only new starting Factory in AA50?
Doesn’t this part of the map receive enough attention already?

With the production hit on Moscow (down to 6 ipcs) and the oportunity for the Axis to triple team Russia, this decision only makes the game even more dependent on direct British involvement in Russia along the northern route. We had a number of alternative locations for a new starting factory that would have been much more promising.  India, Australia, or even Hawaii (if they’d given it a boost to 2 ipcs) would have all dramatically improved the gameplay, and certainly been more interesting than Karelia. I never expected to see a starting factory at a value of 2 anyway, but now that the precedent has been established, why wouldn’t you do it for a part of the map that might really benefit from a new starting factory? I feel like some of these things are just so obvious, it makes me wonder who dropped the ball during playtesting, that they couldn’t see the Karelia thing coming. Factories should be used like anchors for parts of the map that aren’t receiving enough action already. Karelia is like the total antithesis of that, since its arguably the most active territory on the board.

For the Russians the factory is a liability rather than a boon, and it doesn’t do much to change the basic dynamic out of Revised. If the rationale was that the Germans needed another factory to use, then they should have put it somewhere more compelling, like Poland or Romania. But forget about reworking the Eastern Front, we’ve been down that road twice now. Instead, we need to focus on the South Pacific and India. It doesn’t matter how many new territories or factories we put in Russia, if the Pacific remains inactive, we’re still going to see the same patterns all over again.

Suggestions:

Minor:
-Allow Factories to be destroyed by their current owner at the end of the Mobilize Units phase (“scorched earth”).
-Lower the cost of new Factories to 12 ipcs

Major:
-Increase the production value of each Capital by 2 ipcs, increase every other territory by 1 ipc.
-add 3 more Victory Cities in contested areas of the map!

I think if you did that the core game would be much improved. The first minor adjustment alone, would allow for a much more interesting endgame. :)

How about nerfing America instead of Russia for once?

Slowing down America is bad for gameplay. It  makes the pacing drag really hard.
They are so slow on the uptake, and if you knocked them out of the fight for the first two rounds they would be even more boring to play than they already are.

We experimented with an idea like that using a couple of different house mods and design strategies at TripleA. Wandering Heads Big World 1942 was probably the most popular, but I think it really proves that a weak America makes for a rather drull, and highly Euro-centric gameplay dynamic. If anything we should be giving the USA more money, and more starting units. Maybe then they’d actually try to fight a two front War, instead of just throwing everything in one direction, because they’re so strapped for cash. I actually would have been happier in AA50 if China was just under full USA control like it was in Revised. I think Wandering Head made the same mistake when he changed BigWorld 1942 from the original set up, to the one that included China as a playable faction. It just makes the US less relevant, and takes another KJF option off the table.

Unfortunately, an accurate historical simulation can be just as mind-numbingly boring and irritating, as a wildly inaccurate one, so a compromise will probably always be necessary. I would like to see more effort designing factions that can fight a forward game though, instead of always designing them to defend/collapse. I would say that the current model is predicated on the consistant collapse of China/Russia, where the only real factor is time.

All we need to do is rule out any Russian-Japanese attacks until a capitol falls.

For a long time I used to suggest a similar house rule in Revised, where No Jap troops could attack into a starting Red Territory, and no Soviets could attack into a starting Yellow Territory, until India and Sinkiang where under Jap control. Combined with the house rule of No Western ground units in Red Territories, it had a certain charm. Much of the basic JTDTM remained in place though, it was just delayed by 3-4 rounds. I don’t think we can fix the Russo-Japanese dynamic with NAP rules alone. What we need are some realistic targets for Japan, and a plan for Axis victory that doesn’t involve Moscow. Right now I don’t really see any

I think my image links went down when the site was switched over, but I think you can still read the discussion.

Triplelk’s House Rule for Revised
http://www.tripleadev.org/forum/viewtopic.php?showtopic=8174&page=1#8174

Also, you can combine the house rule posted above with the Colonial Garrison NA and No Axis bid, for a different type of game than the standard 8-9 ipc Axis pre-placement bid.

Well right now its hard for me to see a good reason not to attack the Soviet Far east with Japan. Just to park the bombers in Yakut alone would make it worth it, but you can still grab 6 ipcs from the Russians without having to worry about anyone putting up much of a defense. It would have made more sense to me if China was a full player, and the Soviet Far East did some sort of non-aggression pact/valueless territories/infantry popping thing. Right now I don’t see China as a very strong deterrent to the invasion of Russia. You just knock them out in the first round, and start sending troops and bombers against Moscow.

Every version of AA since Classic has catered to this same scenario with a premature conflict between the Soviets and Japanese, at the expense of pretty much everything else. At least a China sink hole would be somewhat accurate to the history. I also think its odd how quick we are to marginalize the Chinese contribution to the Allied War effort. Just because Western war planners didn’t care much about Chinese casualties, and western historians have typically downplayed the Second Sino-Japanese war in favor of the broader global/European conflict, doesn’t mean that it was just a sideshow of little consequence. They way AA plays out, its as though the Japanese war plan in 37 had been perfectly executed according to their expectations: when the reality was more like a decade of intestine warfare and a total logistics nightmare. If it weren’t for all those dead Chinese people, maybe operation Impala would have actually been successful. Or maybe they would have invaded Australia instead, or hit Panama.

I feel like AA50 is getting closer to the mark, but its still not there yet. The Chinese need a little more fight to them, so that the rest of the Pacific/Asia will fall into the right balance.

I predict that China gets trounced every time, unless the rule is modified to 1 inf per territory (with no upwards cap at 3 total, or anything weird like that.) As it stands, once China is done, seems like its going to be Jap tanks on India and the Russians as usual.

The Chinese just shouldn’t fold this easily. They had the second highest military casualties of any nation after the Soviet Union, and tied down hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers for the durration. It should be a lot harder for the Japs to take Sikang and Ningxia. The British and Russians should be encouraged to reinforce and defend China, instead of just totally ignoring it as irrelevant after the first round.

Need to get beyond this scripted collapse of China that we’ve had going back to Classic, and replace it with something a bit more dynamic.

I find the heavy reliance on SBR a little discouraging. German and Russian production is already so low, and I’m also worried that SBR combined with a cost at 15, will just make new factories more trouble than they’re worth. I also don’t think the Russian NO is going to change the dynamic out of the White Sea, since a steady stack of UK troops up north, totally trumps the 5 ipcs you’d get with no troops in Archangel.

So much of it is going to come down to the bombers though, its hard to even think beyond them. You can’t pass up that kind of power projection for 12 ipcs… especially USA, which is so slow on the uptake, but really its a similar situation for everyone. The balance of power in the east seems precarious. My biggest concern right now, is that Germany and Russia will decide the game before the Western Allies can really get into the fight, making the early bombing results even more critical. I don’t know though, its still too soon to tell. We’ll have a much better feel for the pattern a couple months from now.

If the Allies end up needing a bid, maybe we should think about just giving the British some starting factories in India and Australia. That alone might be enough to draw down a real Pacific game, since USA would be much more likely to invest in their defense. The way things look right now, I don’t think an India IC is a particularly smart round 1 purchase for UK, so unless we give it to them for free (Colonial Garrison style) then we might not see it very often.

I’d much prefer a standard bid for a pre-placement factory in India, to a pre-placement bid of inf and tanks like you typically see in Revised. If it even works that is. Having the starting IC is sort of a double edged sword, since you’d have to defend it once its there, but at least it would encourage a more Pacific oriented style of play from the Allies.

I think submarines are causing way more confusion to rules/gameplay then they are worth.

My first reaction to the new rule, is that it just seems to make submarines an even more marginal unit than they were before. The inability to take hits on submarines that are part of a fleet (from attacking enemy air), makes airpower even more significant than it was in Revised, since now you can just trade fighters for capital ships.

For submarines to be relevant to the gameplay, they should really be designed to inflict economic damage. As a combat unit they’re pretty underwhelming.

I think its very difficult to play a winning game with German naval builds, but if nothing else they can be fun for a change of pace.

I think if you’re going to go to through the effort though, you need to go heavy on the transports so that you can actually threaten London effectively and force the British into making ground purchases rather than ships. I don’t know that I would ever buy another destroyer, when carriers offer so much more on defense, but I could maybe see the rationale in the first round, if you were going to build a carrier in the second.

Well strat bombing is going to cause problems no matter what we do, but at least at 6 they could afford to place  enough units to be compelling as a player. And just because the Japanese could potentially bomb them to a value of 12, that doesn’t guarantee it will happen. Maybe the Japanese player rolls a 1, or the Chinese AA gun hits. In any case, the value of the capital needs to be high enough to support a full player. Otherwise you’d have to spread the income around, which would likely favor Japan (for factory purchases.) Have it concentrated in Sikang would make the defense easier to manage. Italy starts with 10, but they have more opportunities for expansion, and more NAs. Why bother bringing the Chinese into the fight unless, they’re strong enough to put up a decent fight?

I think Sikang at 6 would be fine, maybe down to 5, but even that feels low for a Capital.

Well the history lesson is all well and good, but my beef with the Karelia/Archangel stack, has more to do with the gameplay mechanics, than with the history.

Its generally safer to stack and shuffle troops to Russia, then it is to confront G in France, so many players have adopted this kind of strategy as a matter of course. The new Russian National Objectives are good step in the right direction, since they provide an incentive for the Allies not to do this sort of move.

I worry that it won’t be enough though. Compare the extra 5 IPCs per round from the NO, to more than 24 ipc worth of units that the British can park into Archangel. This might be one of those National Objectives that gets trumped by the need for boots on the ground.

I say if you’re going to go through the trouble of modding in a 7th player, you might as well get rid of the confusing China specific rules while you’re at it. There are no IPC values written in the China spaces, so you could easily get away with reworking them for a Capital. Otherwise the mechanics are rather boring for a full player. No money to manage, no capital to defend, not even a second fighter to launch two attacks in a single round. Who would even want to bother? China as a full player is easy enough to pull off, they just need an IC in Sikang (for the wartime capital at Chunking) and a few more units to toy around with.

National Objective 1 “Second Unified Front” - control all of the starting Chinese territories + 5 ipcs.
National Objective 2 “Greater China” - control of Manchuria and Kiansu + 5 ipcs.
National Objective 3 “Burma Road” - if Allies control Burma +5 ipcs.

Here, you can use this for their Marker. I made the PNG at 1 inch square, 300 dpi so you can print it out easily. You should just be able to save the image below and print at whichever size you prefer.

Have fun playing, and let us know how it turns out. :)

Easy

Just give them an income of  1 ipc for each starting territory and a capital in Sikang worth 6.

That would give the Chinese a total of 12 ipcs, to start.
You could also give them a 5 ipc bonus National Objective, for controlling all their starting territories.
And another bonus of 5 ipcs, if they can take Kiangsu and Munchuria.
That would allow for an average of 12-18 ipcs, with a possible shot at 29 total ipcs in range, if you include all the bonus cash, and French Indo China, which should be more than enough to entertain a full player.

You’d have to give them some more units to make it interesting though, otherwise I can’t imagine anyone wanting to play. Probably 2 fighters, 1 aa gun, 1 art, and some extra inf at the capital would be enough to make things pretty entertaining.

in times such as this i say……my god people…its just a game!

I know its just a game. That doesn’t mean it can’t be improved.  :-)

Central USA was a ‘road apple’ to force a decision on Infantry shuck from placement on west or east coast.

All it did was force the shuck north through Canada, while at the same time making it essentially impossible for the USA to switch fronts rapidly. I feel it hurts the Pacific game more than any other single change that was made from Classic to Revised.

I could maybe see some argument for Central US, as an obstacle to recovering W. US, if the Japs manage to take it, but that circumstance is so rare that it hardly justifies the change from Classic. I preferred the older dynamic, where USA could feint Pacific or Atlantic, and then double back the other way at the last second if need be. Central US and Panama both contribute to making KGF more attractive.

If the map did not wrap at the edges, the problem with shucks between W. USA, and E. USA wouldn’t exist anymore, and the Allies would be forced to use their Pacific units in the Pacific. Japan conquering W. USA would be a major game changing event (much more than it is under the traditional situation) since USA could not retake it with tanks out of E. USA. Whether or not that is realistic shouldn’t matter, because all the other effects on the gameplay taken together would be so dramatic and beneficial. USA would have every reason to fight on two fronts, because losing W. USA to sustained attack by Japan would be an unthinkable. Japan would have a reason to press the fight, since a capture of W. USA would solidly cover their eastern flank.

In my dream universe, they would just wise up and split the map already! e.g. No connections from the right side of the board to the left! That change alone, would be enough to ensure some sort of Pacific fight. :)

Panama has never done anything good for us. It just encourages one directional gameplay, and distorts the  basic patterns of conflict with an “all or nothing” purchasing strategy.

I wish the Central USA IPCs had been distributed in more active areas of the map. But since it’s here, shouldn’t this region correspond to places like Michigan and Illinois, or Ohio and the Gulf Coast? 6 ipcs seems kind of ridiculous, if you look at a map of the real world and then compare that to the A&A map. Central USA as currently drawn, is basically places like New Mexico, W. Texas, Oklahoma, and the Dakotas. Not exactly the industrial heartland. The city of Chicago, would be in Eastern USA (as currently drawn) if we went by geographical accuracy.

Yes, I do assume you have read the rules before playing the game.

However, if you do not wish to read the rules, you can always get a copy of Iron Blitz and Axis and Allies from Hasbro, there are plenty of copies for sale on eBay I’m sure.

And hey, they’re much prettier! :P

Well I already own both of those. But they have not supported online play for over 5 years now. Plus, both those CDs were hacked and broken a long time ago, so they’re not very reliable for Multi-player games. In fact the decision to pull the Hasbro CD from Gamespy, is arguably the reason why TripleA even exists in the first place.

There was no online alternative for real time MP play, so we built one. Well, Sean and Logan built it, but it has since been added to by other people. It might not be the prettiest thing around, but that’s because it was put together by a bunch of non-professionals, as a volunteer effort.

I don’t see the need for sticking out tongues though. Did I say something that upset you or something?
I was asking a serious question, when I asked what it means to map. :)
Is that like when you use the gameboard, and the map utility simultaneously, like in chess by mail? I could see the allure of something like that, but its not the way I play.

I don’t generally use TripleA in conjunction with the physical board, though I sometimes have the board set up in the computer room while I play online, just to look at it. When I use TripleA, its normally for quick games with minimal set up and instant gratification. If I have to email someone, or post the results on a forum between turns, the whole thing loses its luster for me. Basically I try to use the computer to recreate something of the Face-to-Face experience.

The only advantage TripleA has is when you have two or more players unfamiliar with any of the dice rolling utilities out there.  Then you have TripleA roll the dice for you.

However, this is easier to deal with at FoE, AAMC, AA.org, Frood and any number of random dice generator sites.  Therefore, there is no need to bundle this software into the mapping utility.

Now, if you just wanted to map with TripleA, then I would suggest that it is horribly more labor intensive to use TripleA to map than any other mapping utility out there including setting up the physical board yourself!

Well here’s the issue as I see it: When you use a program like Battlemap, you have to know how to play the game already. You need to be familiar with the rules, the dice rolling utilites, and the dynamics of exchanging information with other players (either via email, or forums or whatever.) In the beginning, you have to have someone around to show you how to use the program to play the game, because its not exactly very intuitive.

There is a big difference between a functioning stand alone game, and a map/board tracking utility. I would argue that the latter requires a lot more overhead to opperate, especially for the new player.

I’m not sure what you mean when you use the word map as a verb. What does it mean “to map”?

The advantage of TripleA in my view, is that you don’t need to know the rules, or the board set up, or the various protocols related to PBEM or PBF style gameplay to use it. Its basically all self contained, with a relatively simple user interface, and a way to meet other people online via the Lobby. I don’t see any of the other programs (with the possible exception of gametable) even coming close to providing something like that.

TripleA is not just a map utility with a built in dice roller. If you’re judging it like that, then I think you’re being a little unfair in your assessment. There is also a bunch of java code and under-the-surface stuff going on, that allows TripleA to support real time gameplay, live over the internet, which simply does not exist in these other programs to which its constantly being compared.

I don’t see how triple a can be the standard if it does not allow you to play by the rules.
see my question in another thread.
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=12377.0.

TripleA has been problematic with Carriers/Fighters in the past, mainly because the standard rules governing them and Submarines are rather complicated. In other A&A programs this isn’t an issue, because other programs don’t track the rules for you the way TripleA does. In ABattlemap for example, you could move the fighters anywhere you wanted to, because Battlemap doesn’t track this kind of information, it just provides a graphical display for players to use however they want. Your fighters can move as they please, and unless someone was there to tell you its against the rules, the program would allow it.

TripleA is a little different, because its designed to track the rules that govern unit interaction. According to the logic of the TripleA program, fighters get to move 4 spaces and must have somewhere to land at the end of the phase. With land territories this is simple, but with carriers its harder because they can move around, and you can’t always tell where they will end up. In the situation you cited above, the problem stems from the quirky airstrike/submerge rules for Subs, more than anything else. The only reason why its legal, is because you know for sure that the sub can’t fire back, and that you will have freedom of movement once its under water or dead. 98% of the time the fighter-carrier dynamic works as it should, its only in these types of odd situations where you have subs/carriers/fighters working together in concert that you might run into a snag.

In any case, you can easily fix this situation, by just selecting “Kamikaze” fighters in the game options, or through the use of the edit mode. The guy you were playing with just didn’t understand the rules of the game, and would probably have be an even more hopeless opponent if you were using a program that didn’t keep track of the rules for him. Next time just use “Kamikaze” fighters, or the edit mode, and if there are any doubts refer him to this thread.

In the future you will probably find a speedier resolution to your problem if you post the issue on the TripleA dev boards rather than here, since there’s no guarantee that the code guys are going to be browsing A&A.org to catch stuff like this. Perhaps Kevin could recode the Carriers (yet again) so that fighters can move based on all possible landing options during Non-Com, though I’m sure you can imagine how that would get complicated, when you have to factor in things like submerging subs as well. Its usually just easier to allow a fix by player edit, which is essentially what the other programs do too, they just don’t call it an Edit, since all the rules have to be tracked by players anyway.