Posts made by Black_Elk

Nice

Thanks for sharing :-)

There is no such thing as an “Unbeatable Allied strategy” in the Revised game, and if there is one, it certainly doesn’t involve purchasing bombers.

The only time you should ever even think about buying a new bomber is when the game is so far skewed in favor of one side already, that it really doesn’t matter what you buy anyway. Veteran players avoid SBR like the plague, and will only risk a bomber against an AA gun, if it has absolutely nothing else to do that round.

Rolling for Heavy Bombers is considered bad form by most players, because it is widely acknowledged that this particular tech is hopelessly broken under the standard Revised rules (and not much better under the LHTR rules.) Nobody who is serious about the game will respect a strategy built around strategic bombing. Its too unpredictable.

Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea
It plainly marques four my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.

Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a weigh.

As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the error rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.

Eye have run this poem threw it
I am shore your pleased two no
Its letter perfect awl the weigh
My chequer tolled me sew.

That one was just for you Italiansarecoming  :-D

On a more serious note though, this discussion about Navies, while fascinating, is still beside the point.
I mean, you don’t honestly think that the unit numbers in the game, have anything to do with the real world numbers do you? If so, again I would ask, who can’t point to where the numbers are coming from?

They are hazzy abstractions, just like the IPC values are hazzy abstractions, and the problem right now, is that the abstracted numbers we’ve been using have failed to produce a two front war.

Who cares about all the other stuff if we can’t even get a two front war going? What difference does it make if the IPC and unit ratios are accurate to Nth degree, if that’s just going to produce an unbalanced game?
You see what I’m driving at here…

Believe me, I’m just as in favor of historical realism as the next guy, but I think we’ve been approaching the issue in a backwards sort of way. You have to start with the gameplay, and understand what players are actual doing with these rules and conditions we’ve set up, before you can even begin to ask questions like “are the numbers accurate to the real world?” The first priority has to be given to the gameplay mechanics, and setting them up in such a way that the Japanese and Americans actually have a reason to fight over the Pacific. If you don’t do that first, then relative accuracy with all the other stuff is pretty much pointless, because the basic game still won’t look anything like the real War.

I never purchase destroyers in Revised regardless of which team I’m playing, or what kind of strategy it is. If you’re going to spend money on anything other than transports, it should be carriers and fighters. The DD is a busted unit in Revised, too expensive for its value. I never see anyone buy them, just like I never see anyone buy a new battleship. Its too bad really, but hopefully this will be fixed in AA50.

Also for a stall/kill Japan strategy, I will always send the British fighter with the destroyer against the Kwangtung transport and land in Bury, over the sub-attack/land on US carrier move. Pearl is almost always a lost cause if the Japs really want it, but Bury combined with a successfull Borneo attack and carrier block at Philippines will force a much tougher decision on the Japanese player. Especially if you land your British bomber in the right place, and properly back India with the Russians (eg 3 tanks place in Caucasus). In some cases you can save the US carrier anyway, because the Japs have too much else to worry about.

:)

See here’s the rub though…

In the real war the acquisition of industrialized territories did not have the same kind of relevance to the patterns of conflict as they do in the board game. The strategic significance of Midway or Wake in a military sense, completely trumped any discussion of their latent industry. I mean, we’re talking about guano fertilizer and coaling stations here for industry significance, compared to airbases, and communications hubs, and the prestige elements that all factored into their total ‘value’ during the actual War. The game doesn’t really account for this (well ok National Objectives are going to try) but I mean, the strategic significance of these territories is not going to play a factor in determining the IPC distribution. It should though, because the IPC scheme is what rules this game. Its the only resource we have to work with, and I think it should represent “value” in a more wholistic way. IPCs are the easiest thing to explain, and the most basic way to indicate overall value on the game board.

I wish they had been called Strategic-Industrial Production Certificates or something similarly broad, so that we could use them more effectively. I see no inherent value to the IPC scheme from an educational standpoint, if doesn’t also encourage some reasonably historical patterns of conflict. Where is Nimitz in A&A Revised? Its like he never even existed for most players. No one is going to start island hopping unless the islands are worth something, and 1 ipc is just chump change for most people. They’ll maybe take it on an opportunity kill, but nobody is going to launch into a major Pacific campaign for a bunch of islands at 1 or 0 IPCs. If they were worth 2 it would change the gameplay completely. Especially with Australia at 3

In the real War it came down to more than just industry, but in this game industry is the only measure. It seems unbalanced to me, and it produces a fundamentally ahistorical style of gameplay (at least among people who are out to win.) I know that you can achieve an excellent game if both players commit to the Pacific, but that doesn’t happen when people are going for the jugular. If we tweaked the IPCs up, then we would draw this part of the board into play, even for experts.

All I’m saying is, its only 2 ipcs
What’s 2 ipcs from a gameplay standpoint?
What’s 2 ipcs really from the educational standpoint?

Isn’t it better to have the kids fighting over spaces like Iwo Jima and Okinawa, and actually remembering the names because they’re now worth something in gameplay terms? Because the alternative I see is people just ignoring the islands altogether (and the Pacific theater in general), like they’ve been doing for a while now.

I, for one, would be dead set against boosting ANY Pacific island group to 2, and I am not thrilled with giving most of them even one

Why?

(sorry had to)  :-D

Seriously though, you can’t sit there and honestly tell me that the numbers in A&A correlate to real world industry in any meaningful way. If they do, then who can point to where the actual numbers are coming from?

Its totally arbitrary for the most part, but the only time anyone raises an eyebrow is when the South Pacific comes up. Take the Unites States for instance, we jumped the total value of North America by almost 1/3 in Revised by including the Central USA space. But what did we get for it in terms of gameplay? Nothing basically. I don’t understand it at all…

The distribution of “game resources” (IPCs) is what determines the course of the game. It doesn’t matter how big the US navy is, if there’s no advantage to invading the Caroline Islands then its never going to happen. Only a fool or a show off tries to take Wake in A&ARevised for example. Its just ridiculous in my view. Why even bother putting a territory on the map, if you’re not going to give it a value? I just can’t see why anyone would be dead set against doing something about this problem. It has persisted through 3 versions of the game now, and every time people complain that there is not enough action in the Pacific. If it happens again in AA50 I’ll be disappointed, but I can’t say I’ll be surprised. Additional Japanese income in contested areas would help, additional Allied income in contested areas would help even more.

If I felt like the numbers were accurate and consistant to begin with, then maybe I could buy the argument for leaving things alone, but Larry has already proven that this is not really the case by making alterations to the IPC values of existing territories and by adding new territories out of the old ones. I’m already blown away about territories at 5 ipcs. Here I was thinking all this time, that there was some logic to keeping all the territories at 2 and 3 ipcs. But then Revised came out, and we starting throwing 4s into the mix, and switching other things around.

At this point, I can no longer recognize any meaningful pattern or underlying framework to the distribution scheme. Certainly nothing worth hanging onto just for dogmatic purposes. Having the Pacific islands at 0 or 1 ipc, sucks for the gameplay. Its been tested and proven twice now, and pretty much everyone is in agreement that there is a serious problem with the Pacific theater both in Classic and Revised A&A. To me the problem and the solution seem so obvious, just fix the territory values and you’ll fix the game.

Now, I can’t speak for Larry, but that is why I believe they use the term Industrial Production Certificates (IPCs) rather than just Dollars.  The increased production from taking territories goes beyond just the infrastructure of the territory being taken over. Taking territories is generally a sign of the war going well, which translates into increased support for the war at home (increased morale, increased productivity, increased purchase of war bonds, etc.)

If this is true then why can’t we just make Hawaii worth 3 ipcs already?  :-D

Honestly though, I tend to agree with all the sentiments expressed here. The thing I don’t understand is, if IPCs are already such a sketchy concept, why don’t we just ditch the ‘industry’ part altogether, and start treating them like the gameplay abstractions that they really are?

The territory trading issue is just another indication of underlying problems with the current IPC system. I know AA50 is already finished, and we can’t do anything about it now except complain or maybe introduce house rules or something, but I really hope the next game takes the basic resources in a different direction. The analogy to real world industry always falls apart, so why not just make the definition itself more broad ranging? I think its at least as important to consider this possibility, as it is to go altering the unit costs, or introducing new victory conditions and combat rules, or any of the other things that we’ve done to change the gameplay since Classic. We should try to address the IPC thing directly, and not just with a house ruleset either, but with a serious, concensus petition for Larry to fix the problem next time.

Surely if France can produce 12 ipcs in a single round, then the Solomon Islands should be able to produce 2. The disparity between the South Pacific and Europe is so dramatic, I just don’t see the logic from a gameplay standpoint.

Well I was hoping to raise a more general discussion about IPCs and their role in the game, but since we’re in the house rules section now I guess I should propose something resembling a rule. How’s this then…

An extra 5-10 ipcs/production distributed across the neglected territories (eg the Pacific islands.)

Without changing anything else about the AA50 game, I think we could get a two front war going. It would also be nice to have starting factories in Hawaii and India as well, but I’m not sure you’d even need them. Perhaps you could just say 1 extra factory for everyone, to place wherever they think best as part of an opening bid. Then you could see how china holds up. If they fold too easily you could double the count to 1 inf per 1 territory, or consider other tweaks as necessary.

:-)

I’ve been playing and contributing at the tripleA site for about 4 years now, and the main reason why I like it is its ease of use. By that I mean that you can take a new person, who’s never played A&A (or maybe they’ve only played a few times), and its relatively easy to teach them the broad strokes. The computer does all the stats tracking, so all the player needs to think about are things like purchasing strategies, and combat tactics. Just earlier tonight for example, I was coaching two newbies on some of the standard openings, and even though neither of them had played Revised online before, they were both able to pick up on the basic principles and strategies right away. After one practice round, and some minimal explanation and discussion, they were able to launch into a pretty effective game against each other afterwards. I think that’s one of the things you can do in tripleA thats sort of tricky to do via email, or on a forums posting.

The problems as far as I’m concerned are mainly with the user interface being a little cumbersome (right click drag to scroll, unit selection etc.) and to a lesser extent the lack of good path finding logic.  Many people prefer LL to dice, which isn’t really my style, but I’ve also met a lot of people who enjoy the same type of gameplay that I do. For the most part it works pretty well, and now that you can edit mistakes, corrections or house rules, it has a lot more functionality than it used to. Also, I’ll admit, I do like watching the colors change on the map. :)

Anyway, I guess that’s chiefly why I use tripleA. Its not particularly convenient to install or customize, and harder still to set up your router and such, but once you get it working its pretty simple to manage. Also its nice to just find a quick pick up game in the lobby. I get in a good 3-4 games a week if I’m having a solid run, and its still pretty easy to find a multi game with a decent crowd even at obscure hours of the morning.  :-D

I haven’t used tripleA for PBEM play in a while though, not for any of the official A&A games anyway. I find Revised a little slow going PBEM and much prefer to play in real time, with the ability to chat or talk strategy. I feel its a little closer to the boardgame in that respect. I don’t have much experience with Abattlemap though. How do you guys set up games usually? Is it like in a IRC chat room, and email style?  If its PBEM exclusive, then I don’t think you can really make a comparison. TripleA can handle PBEM play reasonably well, but its definitely geared more towards games in real time. If you prefer email play, then the other things that set tripleA apart probably won’t matter as much to you.

I’ll likely stick with TripleA for now, at least until someone makes an official game engine for A&A that has more functionality and a larger player base.

I never see Tokyo fall against an experience Revised player.

Actually let me rephrase that; I’ve never seen a game where the Allies managed to take Tokyo, without also losing Moscow in the process. If you stick around to finish off Japan, then the Germans will almost always break Russia. This throws you into the typical KJF endgame of a super-Germany (Eurasia) vs. a super-USA (Pacific). With income roughly split between Germany and the remaining Allies, it turns into a production/logistics game which tends to favor the Axis.

This is why many people think that KJF (‘kill Japan first’) is a misnomer, because if you actually invest the resources to kill off the home island it invariably comes back to screw the Allies during endgame. Instead what you will usually see (if anything) is a quick smash and grab maneuver, with the Allies just beating Japan into a position where they can be contained, before redirecting all resources to the defense of Moscow. The strategy is all about ‘timing’, and more specifically ‘keeping time on your side’, because you don’t have to take Berlin to win this game, you just have to prevent Moscow from being captured.

If you removed the production limit on Tokyo, I think it would make a KJF strategy even more difficult than it already is, because the Jap player could just start inf stacking the home island. By the time the USA built up enough production to match Japan’s, chances are the German tanks will already be sweeping down from Moscow to recover the Axis position in Asia. If you removed the production limit on all starting factories (and not just the capitals), I think it would also give a strong advantage to the Russians, since they could drop 8-10 units a turn into Caucasus, which would be a total nightmare for the Axis.

I worry that we’d be trading one set of circumstances that favors KGF, for another set that favors KGF.

But Canuck’s point is that its the wrong historical flavor to begin with, since the only power invested in that sort of rocket program was Germany. There were no Western or Japanese parallels to the V1/V2. The Russians made use of rockets as artillery batteries, and the Anglo-Americans used them on aircraft, but only the Germans had anything like the Rocket technology we see in A&A.

National Advantages are alright, but only as an optional thing. If you need NAs to make the game balanced that’s a problem. I’d rather the vanilla game was balanced out of the box, and I think we need to get all the basics in order, before we think about technology or optional rules. That’s just me though.

Trying to achieve a balanced game by introducing new National Advantages and special rules, is like trying to fine tune a microscope with Boxing gloves on.

:-D

Also in AA50 there is need for a lot of cooperation between the allied powers. Allowing China to perform an high level strategy cooperation will seem a little bit strange. For example seeing Chinese infantry defending India or cooperating with Russian Army will be really strange. At moment I am curious to see how China works as sub-player because it seems to be more fitting  with a nation that fought a bloodly war but rarely looked over the boundaries of its country to participate in high level strategy planning.
If after several games played China will appear really weak and an easy prey for Japan then we can start to think to some home rule

I can almost guarantee, that if you included China as a full faction they would be primarily preoccupied with their own defenses. If anything it’d be Indian and Russia troops helping to defend Chungking and not the other way around. In any case, the patterns of conflict can be easily determined by the unit set up. Right now China seems hopelessly neutered, with its own confusing ‘inf pop’ status and the inability to move outside its starting territories. I really dislike this idea of a Chinese defensive wall. I would rather the territories were under USA control, or else built into a seperate faction.

Also, I’m not impressed by the argument that a Chungking factory would be of more use to Japan than the Allies. Clearly if we were going to do something along these lines then we would design China to have a fighting chance in this game, and not just get blown off the map in two or three rounds.

:-)

Man you’re really attacking the forums today Italiansarecoming… I think you bumped the whole AA50 section back a page.  :lol:

I’m going to put my general argument like this:

If it’s possible to alter the gameplay/conflict patterns in favorable directions, without introducing new rules, then that is always preferable.

My position is that most of the changes we want to see (the biggest one being a two front war Atlantic/Pacific) could be easily achieved by just increasing the IPC value of certain territories by a very small margin. This is how I tried to present the idea on Larry’s boards.

I would love to see the definition of IPC relaxed somewhat, so that we can play with the numbers a little easier. Imagine if we could make Hawaii worth 3 ipcs with a factory, what that might do for a pacific showdown? Or all the pacific islands at 2 ipcs, something to really gun for? I don’t think anyone would have a problem with something like that. I feel like with just a little more flexibility on the ipc distribution we could accomplish great things without needing to revisit the rules.

What if we just added some extra clause that says something like “Industrial Production Capacity/Commitment”

And then leave it up to the imagination, how best to interpret the “commitment” part of the idea?

Take Pearl Harbor for example, even though the industrial output of the islands was insignificant compared to production on the mainland, you could still say that much of what was produced on the mainland ended up being “committed” to the defense of Hawaii. Thereby justifying the minor increase in value. You could do something similar in other areas of the board too. Like imagine if North Africa was a few more ipcs, then the Axis might have a reason to fight for it, instead of just handing it over to the Americans. I think the Pacific is the area that needs the most rebalancing though. I would love to see a set up that forces US action in this theater. I think Hawaii at 3 with a factory would do exactly that.

I don’t see where the strong objection to such an idea would come from. We have already acknowledged that the current IPC distribution is not based on anything terribly consistent to begin with: I mean just look at Europe/Russia, the Dutch East Indies, or Central USA. These territories have all undergone dramatic alterations since Classic.  If you examine it on a regional level, almost every area of the map has seen the numbers go up, except for the south Pacific islands.

I think if we just put the islands at 2 ipcs we’d see a much more entertaining Pacific game. It seems so easy to do, I don’t see why there would be any resistance to the idea.

I think it would have been interesting if Northwestern Europe was more defensible and included all of the territory west of the Rhine (down to and including the Black Forest.) That way instead of having Germany border France we would have had a 1-2 step for the Allies: First to France, then Market Garden/Bulge for the Low Countries and the forests of W. Germany. If you separated Austria into a Central Europe space (Austria, Hungary, Bohemia, Slovakia etc.) then you’d always have 2 spaces between Germany and Italy in either direction, and could use it as a safe spot for the german bank account.

Or you could merge Austria, Bohemia and Bavaria, into some sort of ‘Greater Germania’ space, and leave Prussia as the name of the space with Brandenburg-Berlin etc.

One of the first acts of the victorious Allies was to punish the state of Prussia by abolishing it forever; so for the purposes of the game it would probably be fitting and would certainly make sense as a name.

The map and values are already set though, so that doesn’t really help us with AA50.
Still, it would have been nice.

:)

I think in AA50 it will turn into a deadzone as Joe suggests, because its accessible from sz 7 and an easy target for the US or Britain.

To Aldertag
I think I could go for that; sea zones with values printed on them just like land territories. I’m all in favor of convoys, but I’m not sure we necessarily need them, since we could probably achieve similar patterns of gameplay just by tweaking the island values. You could easily justify the increase by saying that the value of the land territory is meant to include the surrounding sea lanes as well. The Pacific islands at 2 ipcs is what I’m really pushing for though, since that would make factory purchases viable, and ensure a showdown between the US and Japan.

To Subotai
What I mean to discuss in this thread is not so much that particular map, or the AA50 map that will ship out in a few weeks. Rather, I’m curious to hear your thoughts about IPCs in general, and whether you think it might be worth it for us to change the definition/distribution of IPCs on the map as a way of achieving game balance, rather than what we usually do. Typically we end up introducing a bunch of nuanced rules (or exceptions to the general rules) in an attempt to persuade or force a certain style of gameplay, which the territory values alone would not necessarily recommend. I think it would just be easier to address the underlying issue.

to Italiansarecoming
That sounds like another instance of creating specific exceptions to the general rules. I think we should try to avoid things like that. Its too much to keep track of, and takes too long to explain, especially for new players. The principles/mechanics of the core game work fine already, we just need to acknolwedge IPCs and Factories for what they really are, and let the gameplay determine their distribution instead of this strict analogy to industry. Who cares about an accurate ratio of IPCs to real world industry anyway, if it just ends up pushing the game in ahistorical directions? Wouldn’t it be better to have a looser definition of IPCs/Factories, and a game that plays out more like the actual war?

:)

Just to stress again, I’m thinking more about the future here than I am about AA50. I’m not suggesting this as a way to fix problems that might come up with AA50, because I don’t even know what those are yet. Instead I’m curious to hear about everyone’s attitude towards IPCs/Factories and the way they are distributed across the gameboard.

Yeah I’m concerned about the bombing/rocket dynamics.

I agree with your statement highlighted in red Joe. This new sbr mechanic will make the game more unpredictable in some respects, but at what cost?

Jennifer is right too about Revised. In that case people usually just play with no tech to avoid the issue. But Bombing is going to be a bigger part of this game than it was in revised, just because they’re cheaper now. And we also have the graduated tech thing now for Rockets, so whereas before it was a total gamble, here the effect is cumulative.

Hey Joe  :-D

Good to see you again man.

Your VC optimism is contagious I’ll admit, but I still wish they had gone further and placed more VCs in contested areas of the board. Hopefully the 13 win will be more popular here than the 8 win was when Revised first came out. I’m still rather skeptical, but I’ll be stoked if we can somehow convince a majority of players to focus on the VC game over the Capital game.

I have no doubt though that an AA50 Enhanced will be available in short order, if any imbalances remain. Totally agree about the factory costs. I’m also still waiting on Sub raids to receive some love from the official rules. I’d happily give up the ability to submerge (with all the confusion that causes) for the ability to make economic attacks against factories. :)

To Bluestroke:
I’ve played a number of games using that house rule (going all the way back to classic) and while it seems cool at first, for areas of the map like India, its also problematic for other areas like Karelia, France, or Kwangtung. On top of that, by using the inf placement rule, you totally nerf the value of the factory unit in most games. I think it sounds good on paper, but ends up pushing the gameplay in a somewhat different direction from the original intention. I’m also not sure it would do much to promote island hoping in the Pacific, unless you removed the VC restriction on placement (and I could see that really messing with the situation on the Eastern Front.) Maybe I’ll revisit the rule in AA50 though, to see how it plays under the new arrangement. :)

To Tim and Aldertag:
I also like the idea of income related to sea zones, but since we’ve never seen convoys in the basic game (Classic/Revised) and won’t be getting them in AA50, I figured that was just off the table. Including naval income as part of a National Objectives/Bonuses scheme is cool I guess, but it adds this additional need for more stats tracking, which I feel just makes the game harder to explain to the new guys.

What bothers me is that nobody complains or has any issue when we dramatically modify IPC values on parts of the map that already see heavy action (by doubling the value of Karelia say) but in areas where an IPC change might actually be useful (like in the south Pacific) suddenly it turns into this big argument about historical accuracy and the proper ratios. It just seems arbitrary, that we’d be willing to boost territories in Europe or add this whole new layer of complication with the bonuses to try and get a Pacific game going, when if you just modified the Pacific IPC values you could achieve essentially the same kind of gameplay without overburdening the rules.

IPCs are the most fundamental components of A&A. Adjusting them is the simplest and most direct way to influence the gameplay. Everyone already knows how to count IPCs, and you can see just by looking at the board which areas make the most sense to attack/defend based on their IPC value, without needing the manual out to track bonuses, or juggling Victory Cities. With IPCs its simple, because they’re already there, written down on the board for everyone to see. Its all very intuitive and easy to pick up, compared to some of these other things we end up doing.

I’ve mentioned this just about everywhere else I was able to, so I might as well voice it here as well. :D

Why are we designing China to collapse?

It makes zero sense according to the history and allows weird things to happen on the game board. China was a major theater of operations for the duration, and many historians mark the opening of WW2 in 37 with the Second Sino-Japanese War. To suggest that the Chinese contribution in the war against Japan was somehow irrelevant or insignificant to the broader global War is just totally misleading. 3,800,000 Chinese military personal died fighting in this part of the world. Compare that with the 417,000 US or 380,00 British military personal over the course of the entire conflict, and you start to get an appreciation for what I’m talking about. Its a joke for them to get crushed like they do in most games. They should at least be heavy enough on the inf to draw down some serious Jap firepower, and not just get blown off the map before the US has a chance to do anything meaningful in the Pacific.

I also dislike the idea of China as a sub player with different purchasing, placement and movement rules, distinct from everyone else. It adds to the overall complexity of the game, when we should be focusing on ease of use. In AAPacific it was different because everything was localized, and the more focused/tactical nature of the game made the inf pop rule seem less peculiar. In this case though, it just feels weird.

Also, I don’t see why everyone keeps making so much about the intestine fighting between the CPC and the KMT (even though there was a pretty stable truce in effect from 41-45). There were partisans and civil conflicts in other parts of the world during this period, which we’re perfectly happy to ignore, so why should this case be any different? The Chinese civil war did not flare up again in earnest until 46, so I don’t see why we should feel compelled to treat of it in this game.

I’ve got my fingers crossed and I’m hoping for the best out of AA50, but if we ever revisit the idea in another edition, I’d like to see a less ignominious role for China in it.

:)

I very much agree with that idea, they are already clearly abstractions.  Might as well make them abstractions that make gameplay better!

This was my thinking exactly.

I know that the original intention of the IPC distribution scheme on the gameboard was meant to create an analogy to real world industry, but I think of it like this:

First ask yourself; How important is it really, the difference between 1 ipc and 2 ipcs, from the standpoint of historical accuracy? (esp. given that the numbers are already highly abstracted anyway)

Now ask yourself instead; How important is the difference between 1 ipc and 2 ipcs, from the standpoint of the gameplay mechanics? I would argue that the difference in this case is considerable. Its the difference between a possible factory location or not, and whether or not someone is willing to risk an inf unit to nab the space. Its also significant in another more subtle way, just when casually assessing the value of different regions on the map. A territory at 1 ipc might not seem worth moving out of a more tactically advantageous position to try and acquire, but make it 2 ipcs and you suddenly see a whole different psychology at work.

Its such a simple adjustment compared to many of the others that we’ve made over the years… I’m wondering why we couldn’t just adopt something like this as a way to encourage more historical conflict patterns?