Posts made by Narvik

@mattsk:

Hi,

1. what game do you suppose to play with this rule ?

2. IMHO mines should be operational even after the NB was damadged, since damadge to a NB doesnt affect mines at all.

1. Any A&A games with Naval Bases in play

2. Playability. The 1914 minefield rule is too time consuming, you have to roll a die against each ship, and only the rare 1 is a hit. Its not even historical accurate, since in real war you would clear the minefield with a sweeper, or if your first ship blow the mine, the mine is used. A mine can not re-load and blow another ship, like you can with a gun. So its better to say a minefield is one roll. If it miss, then we imagine the field got sweeped. If it hit, it sink one ship, and are used.

Because they survive one turn.

When that is said, IMHO I figure we would be better off if the resources spent on 7 different nation specific AA-guns was used on the French units, and that the old AA-gun mold was used but in nation specific colors, like they did in AA Guadalcanal. Or that the Russian battleship was given a French look and not the floating gas station look. Or the whole Russian navy was looking French. etc etc The giant Aussie look weird too.

"How many rounds to finish a game ? "

Including the new topic of cheating ?

I figure you must add half an hour for every time someone cheat.

In case you want my humble opinion, (otherwise just ignore it) I agree with CWO Marc, too much is too much. Very few people want a game in the game. No nation should get more than 3 NO,s each, or else it will be what we in Norway call putting fat on a pork. Yes, it sounds better in my language. I really dislike when an attacker receive more money out of a bombed, burned and plundered territory, than the owner can do in peacetime. Its just not that way it work in real wars. Its oil and steel that keep an army floating, not the vigor and morale booster the population get from watching propaganda movies of killed enemy children. So I love the idea of supply line NO,s

Germany should get iron ore NO from Sweden, oil NO from Romania and while at peace the Trade NO with Russia. They don’t need a carrot NO for Moscow or any other victory city, since they will attack it anyway if they want to win the game.

Russia should get 3 Lend Lease NO,s when at war. A pipeline from UK to Archangelsk, another from Persia to Stalingrad, and possible one from Alaska to Sovjet Far East, since this is the historical correct Lend Lease routes from the real war. Its just silly that Russia can get NO,s from poor Eastern Europe states, and even twice as much as the original owner. And the 10 IPC one time NO for Berlin is just derogatory bedlam.

UK should get convoy route NO. Its two ways, one for keeping the Atlantic free of subs, and another for the Med. The other way is to give UK a NO for holding a pipeline from Canada to UK, and identify a set number of seazones that have to be free of subs. I like the pipeline model better than the all Atlantic model. Then a pipeline from India to Gibraltar, or from Africa. Need some thinking. Anyway the OOB maintenance of the empire NO is silly and must go.

etc etc you get my point.

You never quit, now do you ?

But I see your point, Ge add 5 more Mechs for a possible one more hit, and UK fly in 5 more Fighters for a possible 4 more hits, and this will unbalance the 200 + units battle so much we will have to run the numbers again, from scratch. Got that.

All facilities from A&A 40 have inherent Anti-Air fire. So if you want to SBR a port, that port defend against your planes.

If you want to attack a territory with Port in the A&A 1914, your ships must cross a naval minefield.

Both A&A D-day and 1914 have Coastal Guns that fire preemptive against your landing party.

The minefield rule is too time consuming, having to roll a die to each and every attacking ship, but what if a Port had 2 naval rolls and 3 AA rolls, and not operational after 3 SBR hits ?

My suggestion
When your fleet amphibious assault a territory with a Naval Base, or attack an enemy fleet in a seazone protected by a Naval Base, the NB will roll 2 preemptive rolls, each 2 or less a hit. One roll is the minefield, the other roll is a coastal gun. If the NB got more than 3 hits from SBR, the mines and guns are no longer in function.

Now the attacker will need to add one or two extra destroyers to the fleet, to clear the minefield and the coastal gun.
But will it add to the game ?

The A&A Classic from the 80,s had a great house rule named Bridging. It had in my basement, for sure.

Lets say you have a tranny in sz 110 that was not used in combat nor has it moved. Then it can bridge 4 land units from UK to Normandy during non-combat.

The rationale is that a tranny have 4 action points. 1 embark +1 move +1 move + 1 debark = 4 points.
Now if that tranny is used for non-combat  bridging in sz 110, it will be 1 embark +1 debark + 1 embark + 1 debark = 4 points.
So far so fair.

With OOB rules, a tranny can 1>embark in EUS 2>sz 102 3>sz 103 4> sz 91 and 5>debark in Morocco = 5 action points
With OOB rules, a tranny in sz 110 is only allowed to 1>embark in UK and 2> debark in Normandy = 2 action points.

This is not fair. It takes 14 days and a lot of fuel to cross the Atlantic, but only 4 hours to cross the Channel.

My question is, should non-combat bridging need a Port ?
Both UK and Normandy have ports, and Germany bridging from WG to Norway is ok, but what about bridging units from Norway to WG, should it be allowed ?

@Alfalfa29:

What if the Germans waged a war only against the Soviet Union, perhaps by baiting the aggressive Russians into initiating the combat to avoid British/French intervention? If victorious, they would solidly establish themselves as the dominant power in all of the Eurasian continent, and in an exceptional position for a later war.

That is exactly what Hitler tried to do, he even wrote about it in Mein Kampf, and had Lebensraum in the East as political goal when he was elected. Too bad Poland ruined his great plans. Yes, if Poland had voluntarily just submitted to the Great Reich, then the Brits would have no reason to start another world war. But to put Sovjet union into submission is another thing. King Winter is a formidable opponent, he stopped the Swedes in 1700, Napoleon in 1812, Britain, France and Turkey in 1850, the Germans in WWI and the coalition of USA, Britain, France and the Whites in the Civil war 1919, and the Germans again in 1940. And USA did not dare to even try during the Cold War.

@Shin:

I would think using a BC along with a timed turn or whatever would seem to be the best of both worlds.  So you’d still have the option, but it couldn’t completely drain the game’s momentum.

I totally agree. Use a timer like in chess. Real life commanders do have a lot of time pressure, and if they wait too long, the window of opportunity will pass. Why should a wannabe A&A general Rommel have the luxury of spending the time it takes to sit back in his armchair and let the BC do the math ? The real Rommel slept in a tent, got bit by mosquitos and starved like his men, and he had to attack in a hurry before the Brits attacked him.

@ItIsILeClerc:

Now consider a more unclear situation, where Russia has 100units in Moscow and Germany has 95units to attack with. This can be a huge victory for Germany (winning with ~25 units) but only if it has enough combat factors. And… what is enough ;-). I have yet to meet the person who can tell me that, so untill then I’keep using a BC for those situations.

I agree this situation can look unclear first time, but after a few games you must have noticed that this situation do happen in every game from turn 6 and onwards. So you only need a BC the first 10 times, after that you can tell by experience.

Just to briefly stay on topic. After 8 turns you can pretty much tell if the Axis will win or lose, but it takes like 10 more turns to wrap it up. We are talking two days play time.

BC is cheating. Do you have a military power fantasy and want to be a conqueror, or are you a office clerk that prefer to analyze stuff ?

axisandaliesplayer, I never said 3 to 1 in men, I said in firepower. And this is just a rule of thumb. Surprise, morale, skill, terrain, weather, bad luck miracles and hundred other not calculated issues will make an influence. But when I was a platoon leader in a rifle coy back at the 80,s, they told us that to make a successful attack against another platoon, we must attack with 3 platoons. And if we want to attack a coy, we need to use 3 coys. But this is against an equal opponent, with equal morale, training and weapons. Indirect art support or ground support from aircrafts don’t count, and remember a well placed single cluster mine has the same firepower as a rifle coy. This goes for WWII too.

For home study , look up  http://www.dupuyinstitute.org and read the TDI reports about Combat effectiveness during WWII.

During WWII the Germans could attack 1 to 1 and win with few losses, because their training, skill and tactics were better than the opponent. Russians used human waves 10 to 1 and still lost with huge casualties. USA could attack 1 to 1 and win because of strong air support and twice the heavy artillery than any other force. Then we have the odd battles. One single man with a machine gun made a last stand battle and killed hundreds or thousands of enemies. This happened on a bridge in WWI and a hill in Korea. And then we have a modern unit against local or native milits. Roarks Drift come to mind, 37 Brits with rifles defend against 5000 Zulu warriors, and win.

But in 99 % of the cases, 3 platoons will win against 1 platoon.

Oh, and don’t compare a consim with a real war. And as far as modern wars is concerned, that is button pushing.

@ABWorsham:

Germany could have won an enlarged European War, but not a World War.

Why not ?

The poor little British island once made an empire that ruled half the world. Why should the Huns be lesser men ?

Lets just agree that the world have seen a lot of poor generals, and that real life calculations of weather forecast, terrain, supply chains, morale, fighting spirit, surprise, Medevac, taking prisoners etc cant be compared to the luck of rolling dice. In real life you calculate you need 3 to 1 in firepower for a successful attack, with modifiers for terrain and flank protection, and if your initial attack run bad with too high casualty rate, you just abort. In a huge inf stack A&A battle you are pretty much stuck to the dice rolls. The defender cant even retreat.

To wrap this up, I guess its ok to use a BC when playing online tournaments and you really want to win, and time is not an issue. But I say, when you sit in your basement with 4 beer drinking friends, and you got less than 10 hours to spend, its pretty bad taste to spend half the time doing computer calculations. And with bad dice luck on the first round, you will have to do a new half hour calculations just to decide to retreat or stay in battle. Now that is what I call a nice buddy

The most silly NO is when Russia get a one time pay out for taking Berlin. If you play with rational people, the game is usually abandoned when this happen. There are very few people in the world that bother to spend one more day kicking a dead horse, which is basically what you do when playing until Tokyo is taken.

@cyanight:

• +5 for UK if no subs in the Atlantic

Even if I agree with Flying Tiger that the NOs is a pain to keep track off, and need to be trimmed down, this is one NO I want to see in the game. I don’t think the convoy zones do the job properly. The UK convoys are too easy to protect, forcing Germany to buy anything but subs. Funny enough, Germany is the big shipping nation in this game, with convoy zones at every coastline, making it easy for UK to starve them out with some subs. I figure the Huns should have spend more resources on railways.

So my suggestion is switch the lame UK empire maintenance NO with the no subs in Atlantic NO. Lets say every seazone above 86 87 and the Med and the Baltic is not part of the Atlantic of course. Now Germany will have a reason to buy subs, and UK a reason to buy navy.

As for some of the other NOs, I think it is lame that an attacker can collect more money from a burned down, bombed and plundered territory than the owner can in peacetime. I guess the designer did it this way because he wanted a scripted game, and did not trust the players would follow the historical correct path without some bait. So lets just ditch all territory based NOs.

For Germany I love the Swedish Iron ore NO, and the Russian Trade NO. Even if the name National Objective is a misfit, this is what NOs were made for, casual income that is hard to track in other ways. So I would ditch the Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad NOs, because Germany don’t need a carrot to attack this places. But keep the Caucasus, Iraq and Iran oil NOs. Since oil is not printed on the map, then NOs is a good way to model it. Oil is what keep an army floating, not the vigor the population get from burning down Stalingrad.

I would even give Russia a 3 IPC trade NO when at peace with Germany. Trade would benefit both. Then skip the silly Commy propaganda NO for occupying some poor eastern Europe territory.

Just saying

@axisandalliesplayer:

He DID make the best plans he could before a battle based on the information he knew about his forces and also on what he THOUGHT he knew about the enemy.

Now if that is true, how come he ran out of supply ? When I went to military academy, they told us that only amateurs talk tactics, real officers talk supply. And would a skilled general disobey orders twice ? Arras was ugly, because the Brits could have cut him off, and he was saved only by luck. North Africa is where he failed. He got orders to protect western Libya, and supply enough to that job, not for a personal ego drive trough the Middle East and into India. Lucky to him, AH was an amateur. Now if I had done something like that, they would hang me for sure. A soldiers first job is to follow orders

@rjkesq82:

What is your average game length (by round but feel free to include time as well if you wish)?

Give me the shortest game you’ve played (by round), longest game you’ve played (by round), and what you’d say the average game takes.

We played two so far:

First) 14 hours (Saturday and Sunday) 6 rounds
Second) 7 hours (Saturday) 4 Rounds

So it looks like we got a little quicker our second game. Lol. Our third game is tomorrow which is why I ask. We are going to try out younggrasshoppers block strategy for timing reasons.

I say the first turn take the longest time, since the big players Germany and Japan need to do a lot of figuring and decisions. Experience and favorite openings will speed up the pace. After turn 3 a turn should not take more than one hour. 2 dedicated players play faster than 6 casual players. To the Axis speed is everything, and if you don’t get Moscow and India before turn 8, the Allies will win in the long run. And remember the only losers are the quitters, so if you cant commit the whole weekend, then this game is not for you. Then try A&A 1942, now that’s a quick game, man

@axisandalliesplayer:

. I’ve never used it at the table though as I think it’s a crutch and detracts from the fun of the game if you calc at the table like you would online.

I totally agree, man. To put the computer in the driving seat takes away the fun. Besides, the game will take forever. Like in chess, one need to make a big mistake for the other to win. Tournament play online is ugly. If you want a game of A&A to be a real challenge like mountain climbing, racing cars or bull fighting, then ditch your BC and let your gut feeling do the decisions, the way the generals do it in the real wars. You didn’t see Patton or Rommel running the numbers before they attacked, now did you ?

I just hope they make that film