I think that the victory conditions in Global are fundamentally wrong because it should be the Axis that needs to win on both maps while the Allies should only need to win on one map. Historically, the Allies pursued a kill Germany first strategy and Japan surrendered a ‘turn’ after Germany was knocked out. Could switching the victory conditions solve the Axis bias in the game?

@M36 Not really because in a typical game France, USSR and India get knocked out by turn 7 or 8 making it 3 v 3 (plus or minus China) and by then one or both of the Axis are earning as much or more than the US. Generally the US can only concentrate on one map which lets the Axis win on the other.

@M36 Not really because in a typical game France, USSR and India get knocked out by turn 7 or 8 making it 3 v 3 (plus or minus China) and by then one or both of the Axis are earning as much or more than the US. Generally the US can only concentrate on one map which lets the Axis win on the other.

@M36 But this is what the Axis is doing to the Allies with the current victory conditions. In fact Axis players don’t have to do much more than stick to their scripts and time tables to win and if Japan migrates West and more or less ignores the Pacific it gets even cheesier.

I think that the victory conditions in Global are fundamentally wrong because it should be the Axis that needs to win on both maps while the Allies should only need to win on one map. Historically, the Allies pursued a kill Germany first strategy and Japan surrendered a ‘turn’ after Germany was knocked out. Could switching the victory conditions solve the Axis bias in the game?

@Ichabod:

I got a Sea Lion game going on right now. Russia just moved their stack back from E. Poland (R4) and won’t be getting lots of NO money anymore. Germany will secure Leningrad on round 6, and should have no problem sustaining the push while keeping the fleet reinforced underneath the w. germany air base. I had 9 tanks left on London in the Sea Lion game.

G1 purchase was:  2 bombers / 1 sub  (I got diced in the G1 opener on the UK fleets and lost 4 planes in this game). UK got too aggressive with their purchases.
G2 purchase:  8 transports / 1 destroyer
G3 purchase:  1 carrier / 1 destroyer (sz 110 placement) and a mixture of ground for Berlin.

In the game, Japan has virtually no US opposition other than a little bit that the US added to their starting fleet. All Chinese territories are gone on J4 and UK Pacific is turtling.

The onus of the race is on the US in my opinion when Sea Lion is well executed.  I am pushing Russia back now, but they were able to purchase a lot of tanks. This means that Moscow will still be safe for a long time regardless of no UK support. Therefore, I think in a Sea Lion game, the US should still continue to go after Japan to slow them down.

I really don’t understand the difficulty behind not just defending London.

Didn’t you surrender in that game around turn 11?

The best way to achieve the balance that you’re striving for is to have different combat factors for separate air to air, air-land and air-naval battles but that would transform A&A into a different game and add more complexity. Air to air combat would take place before any land or naval combat in an area. At the conclusion of the air battle phase, surviving victorious air units would be involved in the subsequent land/naval battle in the area but applying a different set of combat factors. Strategic bombing runs would be conducted as a fourth kind of combat (more or less as it already is OOB). To keep things manageable you’d need 3 different battle cards (or 4 if one is included for strategic bombing runs).
To give you something to think about I suggest the following air combat factors:
F A3 D4, TB A2 D2, SB A0 D1. In air-land battles: F A1 D4, TB A4 D2, SB A2 D1. In air-naval battles F A0 D4, TB A4 D3, SB A1 D-not applicable. Fighters are the unit of choice in air battles or defending, TB’s when attacking in air-land and air-naval and SB’s for strategic bombing runs.
Needless to say, the IPC cost of air units would need to be changed.

In a recent game as UK/India (that was a bit of a free-for-all with the true neutrals being attacked by the Axis and Japan taking on Russia) I turtled in India while removing Italy from Africa and built up a nice income from the neutrals in S. America, Africa and the Middle East. I then left Germany and Italy for Russia and the USA to deal with, started building strategic bombers every turn and sent them to India where they gradually destroyed the Japanese navy (even though I didn’t have a fleet) and every smaller stack of Japanese planes that I could target. Japan’s position collapsed and the massed SB’s were even able to eliminate the Japanese defence force in Japan. So, it seems that all you have to do to be a ‘genius’ at this game is to build loads of super bombers and there’s no question that they are over-powered in their current form. On a side note, in reality Germany didn’t have any 4-engine heavy bombers until 1943 and Japan didn’t have any at all. Could that be why they lost the war? I feel there is enough material here for another Hitler Plays A&A sketch.

Thanks for the reply but you’re wrong about the J1 declaration of war against the UK because it then enables the US to declare war on Japan in US1 (with a 30 IPC bonus). In addition by declaring war in J1 any fleet in the Hainan base could be blocked from reaching India by Allied ships before J3 and if the Allies build their Johnston-New Guinea highway the Japanese fleet (and transports) is vulnerable to the destruction shown in the J3 India-Crush crush. Also, Yunnan might be harder to capture if the UK/China turtle there. Almost all crush strategies assume a fairly passive response but a more aggressive one can turn the tables and might require abandoning the crush strategy. The Japanese player should probably have reconsidered his position when the US fleet moved to New Guinea in US2.

@Baron:

attacking SB’s cannot inflict battle casualties on fighters

Why not make it more general such as “cannot inflict battle casualties on other planes”?

That sounds even more sensible. Arguably, though,  there’s always the chance that bombers could eliminate unprepared enemy planes that are on the ground (as happened in sneak attacks like Pearl Harbour and the first few hours of Germany’s attack on Russia) but as that’s rare it’s probably best to ignore it in favour of a good general rule.

@amanntai:

There goes bombing the mainland/London to prep for an invasion…

Not really because you can do that with tactical bombers instead.

Thanks for the links, Baron. An interesting read and I’ve got a few ideas that don’t seem to have been thought of so far. In order to limit the use of SB’s in land battles, each attacking SB must be paired with an attacking land unit. This will prevent a weak land power from dominating combat with SB’s alone, stop SB’s from attacking non-front line areas and force a player to buy at least as many land units as SB’s in order to get the most out of his SB’s. Similarly, in order to attack a naval force each SB must be paired with an attacking surface warship. This will stop a weak naval power from dominating the waves with SB’s alone. SB’s can continue to attack infrastructure according to the OOB rules. The logic behind the above is that without at least some form of surface contact to pinpoint a (mobile) enemy location SB’s are blind and therefore ineffective (and it’s also good for play balance). Another idea is that attacking SB’s cannot inflict battle casualties on fighters (in a similar way to submarines being unable to hit planes). Thus if a force of attacking SB’s found itself alone in an area with fighters it would have to retreat or be eliminated. SB’s would defend against fighters as normal and hits from interception combat during a strategic bombing raid would apply as normal OOB.