Posts made by Flashman

A BGG page wouldn’t do it any harm.

That’s why I think a new version of Conquest could be great. Still a light dudes on a map game, but with just a few additions a game with real historical theme and depth.
Larry was definitely toying with this a couple of yers ago, but it got sidetracked by the new secret project.

Gun powder could be anything from Conquistadores to Civil War, but he’s not telling.

@SS:

How much are thees “loot” bonuses ?

Base value of factory

Is there any chance of a follow up to this game set in the ancient period?

I’ve been trying to goad Larry Harris into publishing a new Conquest of the Empire but he’d been working on a secret project set in the “gunpowder” era.

Apparently there’s a new version of Roots coming out soon.

Wonder if it’ll repeat the lie about white slavers “capturing” Africans, or show the reality of slavery already being big business in Africa.

Actually, the consensus is that the few coherent bits in the book were written by Hess. Whatever you think of Hitler’s world view, he was a lousy writer. In the middle of discussing the limits of Greater Germany he’ll go off on a long rant about venereal disease. Hitler was later on embarrassed by the book, though it did make him a rich man.

The majority of American colonists were against the Revolution; it was only French intervention that tipped the balance. Essentially the USA was an invention of a narrow masonic clique who’ve pretty much monopolised power ever since; most Presidents being related to each other several times over.

I refer you to my comments on the linked post.

The OP said it - virtually all adjacent industrialised areas were linked by rail. In the game, only a few routes over mountains and through jungle would not have such connections.

So the only use for markers I can see is for damaged links via interdiction i.e. bombing. Otherwise assume all tts are connected by rail. I never really understood the implication in the original game design that soldiers marched to the battle zones and that tanks drove there.

Generally I favour unlimited non-combat rail movement between friendly tts. It’s much simpler and doesn’t need counters or record keeping. One dynamic it changes is the relative value of armour, since this now travels at the same rate as infantry - the speed of the trains carrying them.

The other main counter argument is the relative movement of ships and aircraft. If a turn allow a train to rail artillery from Berlin to Moscow, how far should a ship be permitted to travel in the same turn? Should ships have any limit on their movement range? My solution is that every ship must demonstrate that it passes from, through or to a friendly port to refuel every turn. What’s to stop Japan loading up 10 transports and dropping them off in California? Why, the US Navy of course. The same thing can be applied to aircraft; rather than a maximum range peer turn, they must demonstrate fuel stops at set intervals on a turn. These idea also require more rules regarding enemy interception, radar range and so forth.

In general these rules mean many more units getting into battle per round. There is much less of units stalling in “mid move”, something that virtually ruined 1914 for the Central Powers until the revised rules came along.

I have a problem with any “liberated” power resuming normal play.

Under occupation, a country would be stripped of manufacturing facilities or have them converted for enemy use. On evacuation, the enemy would put factories beyond use or asset strip them altogether.

To take the historical example of France: when liberated in 1940 the French war industry never got going again; all new French divisions were given American and British equipment down to uniforms and kit - it was just not practical to restore the French native industries.

Soviet production was only so strong because the bulk of it was evacuated to Siberia; very little military production would have taken place in the liberated areas of Russia before the end of the war.

I would be surprised to learn of any significant war industry of co-belligerent Italy after 1943. Infantry units, yes, but heavy machinery? Tanks? Ships? Aircraft? Its a little different in that Southern Italy is not considered to have been enemy occupied as such, but in the carnage of being fought over the infrastructure of a modern economy is likely to collapse or be put out of use by one side.

I prefer to rule that a liberated county can only produce infantry units. This follows on from my rule that captured factories are always removed; the capturer gets a “loot” cash bonus, but thereafter the factory site can only be used to produce native infantry. (No new factories, natch).

Fairly good doc on the background of the Hess affair:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30bZh-rqQiE

Al in all, I think Hess was rather harshly treated. He left Germany before the Holocaust was discussed, and the evidence is that he was a somewhat restraining hand on Hitler, being one of the few people with the guts to argue with him. If it was “war crimes” (Poland?) that convicted him, then he was surely no more guilty than the Soviets who prosecuted and kept him in prison.

King George and wife were against the war - remember the hero’s welcome at Buckingham palace for Chamberlain after Munich. Of course this has been airbrushed from history. The Duke of Windsor effectively deserted his command in France and should have been shot, unthinkable for royalty, hence the exile in the Caribbean.

The body Duke of Kent was found with a stash of Swedish bank notes, suggesting he was on the way to Sweden to negotiate a peace deal when his plane “crashed into a hillside”.

http://spartacus-educational.com/2WWkentD.htm

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/10003-winston-churchill-and-the-death-of-prince-george-duke-of-kent/

Kent was also offered the throne of Poland by his pal General Sikorski - another “accident” victim.

Did a bit deeper into Hess’s imprisonment and you’ll find it was the British who blocked his release; they didn’t want him spilling the beans. Certainly the Russians treated him more harshly in Spandau, but they thawed towards the end of Communism and would have given in, hence the Brits had him finished off.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/adolf-hitlers-nazi-deputy-rudolf-hess-murdered-by-british-agents-to-stop-him-spilling-wartime-8802603.html

Really proves that by 1939 the battleship was redundant. If Axis and Allies was accurate, nobody would even think of buying a BB.

The current trend towards “Right-Wing” politics is largely a reaction to the Anti-racist cult. In fact it is not extremist but an attempt to restore a natural medium ground between the true extremes of conservative global capitalism and “liberal” internationalism, which has of course become anything but liberal.
Nationalism is the true basis of democracy and by deliberately eroding the nation state the left are creating chaos and anarchy and calling it “freedom”.  They ignore the obvious parallels with the fall of the Roman Empire as if a thousand year dark age was a good thing.

That said, Mein Kampf is unreadable drivel.

But what is does reveal is that the aims of Nazism were always international, and are basically the same as the EU - create a highly centralised United States of Europe under German direction and expand into the east in order to create new markets and a source of cheap migrant labour.

Double Standards

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Double-Standards-Rudolf-Hess-Cover-Up/dp/0751532207/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1485112901&sr=8-2&keywords=double+standards

Based around Rudolph Hess’s flight to Scotland in an attempt to broker a peace deal.

Examines the theory that Hess had contacts with a group in Britain hostile to the war and that included the Royal Family, hence the subsequent murder of the Duke of Kent disguised, like all royal murders, as an “accident”.

Also discusses the theory that Churchill had Hess shot and replaced with a Doppleganger. The real Hess knew too much, hence he (or the double) was never released despite having no part in war crimes, and was probably murdered in Spandau by the British secret services when the Russians finally agreed to his release.

Personally I cannot buy the idea that Hess was not Hess, but the fact that he refused to see his family for 24 years is highly suspicious.

Pretty accurate. Moldavia/Bessarabia are the same thing, border is post 1945. Volgograd was not so named until after Stalin’d death (Tzaritsyn).

Rio de Oro is just desert, not worth 1 IPC.

Monopoly was ruined when they added hotels. The pure version is all about trading the limited number of houses - hence monopoly.

I did an Axis and Allies Monopoly board once. Never got beyond that.

By gum, that CIA poison takes it’s time.

One option is to randomise when Italy declares war, e.g. toss a coin at the start of each Italian turn. This might deter an Austrian attack, since it may never have to fight Italy at all.

Maybe give Italy the option of regarding sea movement of Austrian navy as hostile and intercept.

Situation of Albania in 1914 is complicated, I wouldn’t say it was an Italian colony at this stage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_protectorate_over_Albania

I had to borrow extra US ships from another game until I got the extra pieces.

You’ll find the western front tts get very crowded with units; my solution is to convert every land unit into chips bar the infantry toppers, using a different coloured chip for each unit type. This at least restricts it to one stack per power per tt.

grey/white - infantry
green - tanks
red - artillery
blue - aircraft

yellow is reserved for cavalry; black for bombers

Historically Italy should not be considered at war until the start of I1, although A-H will probably decide to attack it anyway.