Posts made by Ruanek

The problem with that is it makes it far easier for the USA for example to take South America, because no one can contest it.

Spain does seem to be a liability for the Axis.

The rule is if any of the strict neutrals are attacked by a side every other strict neutral on the board becomes pro-the-other-side.

@Commando:

Can the US land aircraft in UK or Allied territories before they’re at war?

No nation, while neutral, may enter another nation’s territory (even for friendly neutrals).

Well, right now it seems like London isn’t hard to take.

@Xandax:

@MarkHC:

Bottom line, I’ve played multiple games as the Soviet Union where I didn’t let anyone attack my units except an infantry I left as a road block.  Even when Japan invades Russia turn one/two and tries to keep pushing, it still didn’t make much difference because they can only take a territory a turn.  So when Germany finally reaches Moscow, almost every single unit I’ve built as Russia is there defending my capital.  Sure, if time weren’t a factor, it’s a bad strategy, but I know that the Allies are going to be landing in force by turn 5 or so, so the Axis is not able to deal with the Allied pressure and overcome a huge Moscow stack.

If the allies are landing in force in turn 5 Europe is lost regardless of a large stack of inf in Moscow.
Nothing is gained in the game by removing USSRs chance to defend and making a German attack on Russia go faster. On the contrary.
The huge stack isn’t an automatic win.

Well, not having the huge stack gives the Axis a bit more of a chance to blitz and take the necessary 8 victory cities quickly.

@gamerman01:

@Ruanek:

Germany could do it more easily.  And Germany could destroy the battleship and do an amphibious landing in the same turn, I think.

Not if the battleship is in 114 and the Germans are west of that, which is what I thought your situation probably was…

Wait - looks like JimmyHat, not you.

I thought transports could unload in a hostile sea zone, assuming their escorts won the naval battle?

@Commando:

The copy of the Alpha +2 rules I have don’t say the 30 IPC’s that the US originally got for being at war, were now divided between the NO’s in the Alpha +2 rules. So just wanted to make sure.

In the original OOB rules, the US gets 30 IPCs each turn as long as it holds the continental US.  It’s a NO.

In the Alpha +.2 rules, it’s similar but it’s more split up between the different US territories.

@gamerman01:

@JimmyHat:

Leningrad is always safe from the Baltic invasion when Germany attacks because you have placed your bb to block right?  So the only invasion threat would be from the Arctic.  If UK is still alive they should be able to help defend this route, and at the very least could throw in ftrs to help in defense.  Its only after that bb dies that Russia has to worry about the Baltic coast.

Can’t the Italians strike the Battleship with fighters?

Germany could do it more easily.  And Germany could destroy the battleship and do an amphibious landing in the same turn, I think.

@TheDefinitiveS:

Siege of Tobruk – In 1941, Australians successfully defended the coastal city of Tobruk for 250 days from Rommel’s attacks as he advanced towards Egypt. Rommel attacked twice and failed. The Australians then counter attacked and in doing so captured two battalions of Italians.
ANZAC artillery may defend on a 3 in the North African territories of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Tobruk, Alexandria and Egypt. Once a territory has been defended successfully, you may choose 1 attacking unit that did not survive to complement your army. This applies as long as there was defending artillery. This also applies if some attacking units retreat. This also applies if it is a multinational defence.
There must be at least one ANZAC unit (any) in the territory to receive the chosen unit in the Non Combat Move phase of the attacker.

Why would ANZAC get a free unit, potentially something as powerful as a tank or a fighter?  Is it because they captured 2 battalions of Italians (why wouldn’t have fought for them)?

There should be something to encourage Germany to go for things like rockets and super subs.  It could really use them.

Germany could get rockets when the Allies try to make a landing in Europe.  That’s around when they got them historically.

Allowing the UK to fortify Egypt and the UK more at the expense of its Atlantic fleet, or allowing it to consolidate its Atlantic fleet, or allowing it to move some to the Mediterranean to more easily sink the Italian fleet, would be really bad for the Allies.  You have to take into account the fact that a lot of that starting value, especially for Britain’s fleet, generally doesn’t last long enough to be used, but if given the chance to redistribute it becomes a lot more dangerous.

@Pvt.Ryan:

Funny  Ifind this interesting. It truly acts just like the real war. But hey thats just me.

That’s the point.:)  Two countries start out not at war: the USA and Russia.  Logically both of them should get an IPC boost when at war due to their shifting to a war economy.  But Russia can do well with its economy already, so to replicate the wartime boost its peacetime economy should be a bit weaker.  And that makes it harder for Russia to turtle.

Another idea I had was to make the USA automatically enter the war later (turn 4 or 5) unless attacked or London falls.  Same for Russia, though that’s not as much of an issue because Germany needs to attack Russia anyway.  But it doesn’t make sense for them to enter the war so early, especially Russia (who wanted to stay out of the war altogether).  Something like that, though, would have bigger ramifications and would thus be harder to balance.

Doing something to make the USA have to build a bit of a navy in that Atlantic could help, too (divert a bit of attention from Japan, let Germany do a bit of convoy raiding, especially if this weakened the USA’s lend-lease economy help to Russia described above).  Like maybe giving Germany 1 free sub per turn in the Baltic as long as the Axis controls France and the USA is in the war or something similar.  That, also, is harder to balance, because it’s giving free units.

Maybe I should have named this thread “Balance Suggestions”.:)

I think triple A has one.

Otto von Bismarck and Napoleon Bonaparte each left a huge mark on Europe.  They’d be up there in terms of most influential.

Karl Marx , Queen Victoria, and Abraham Lincoln were certainly also influential.

I’d consider the US to be more of a regional power/great power than a superpower pre-WWII.

Yeah, the general definition of superpower is to have the ability to direct force/influence around the world.  The USA could probably do that in the late 19th century.  But I’d also think it requires a desire to be able to do so, and the USA was too isolationist outside its regions of interest (North America, Carribean, Pacific).  Plus, being a superpower implies some sort of dominance globally, and again the USA was too isolationist.  Too many other great powers that wouldn’t back US policy.  That’s all completely different during and after WWII.

I wouldn’t consider the US to be anywhere near superpower status until its economy passed the British economy (1880’s, I think).  Before then it was too focused internally, and after that is when it really started to build up its navy, which is key to being a superpower (or at least the American method for being one).

For the War of 1812: the USA lost that war in several ways.  The only reason it didn’t lose anything was Britain was too focused on Napoleon.  It certainly contributed to great power status, though (being able to go toe to toe with the British Empire and come out ok).

I intended this to be a balancing suggestion for A&A, not a house rule.  Can it be moved back?

@Xandax:

I don’t think the issue with AAG40 is that Germany can’t take Russia “fast enough” or “without difficulty”.
The issue is that Axis really have to move fast because otherwise USA becomes too much of a factor.

I don’t want it to be easier to take Russia even if Russia turtles all troops into Moscow - it would make for a much more one-strategy type game making Barbarossa the only choice the Axis have and making it way too fast.

This games issue is the massive economy the USA can get going and the undivided focus they can have. That is very difficult competing with for Axis and means that the Allied basically can go all out defensive and win once USA becomes “big enough”.
The issue with the turtle strategy therefore isn’t that it makes it too difficult to take the capitals/cities - but that it is viable due to the size of the USA economy.

If the USA economy had been less of a factor, turtleing would not be as viable a strategy because the huge stack would be whittled away over time. It is just that the “time” isn’t there to do so.

So if making alterations - I’d rather treat the cause and not the symptom.

Well, the only country that can really turtle is Russia.  And if you weaken the US economy you make it harder to contain Japan in the Pacific.  I don’t think the US economy is going to get that much of a downgrade.  And the whole point of this was to serve as an alternative to other balancing suggestions.

Contrary to the subject, I don’t want to weaken the total Russian economy.  But from my experience and what I’ve read (particularly in the Huge Russian Stack of Infantry Problem thread) Germany really has trouble taking out Russia.  Moscow is a minimum of four moves away from Germany’s starting eastern front, and Germany generally isn’t in a good position to attack for the first couple of turns anyway.  This gives Russia generally at least 5 or 6 turns to build up its defenses.  It can easily have several dozen infantry in Moscow by the time the Germans can attack it.  Even if Russia follows a different strategy it is still hard for Germany to beat it quickly.

I know that if Russia does this, Germany can circle around and take the rest of Russia.  But that doesn’t help them meet their victory city requirement, and for the Axis especially time is of the essence and fortifying Moscow makes it that much harder to take it before American intervention diverts German attention.

My suggestion, therefore, is that the Russian economy be weakened when not at war.  They, like the US, start out neutral and don’t see a need to operate under full military capacity until later.  The Non-Aggression Pact between Germany and Russia exemplifies this, and there’s evidence to suggest that Stalin wasn’t prepared for the German attack.  So it makes some sense from a historical perspective.

I don’t really know how much money Russia should lose when not at war, because I’m not too great at balancing things.  But I’d suggest something around 10-12 IPCs.

Perhaps to balance it out if that’s too much of a disadvantage, the USA could be allowed to transfer money to Russia when they’re both at war and the Allies have achieved some form of naval supremacy in the Atlantic (perhaps 5 IPCs a turn, with 5 more if there’s no Axis presence in the Atlantic).  This would show the importance of the USA’s economic aid and the power of U-boat interdiction.

@knp7765:

I don’t think the US income should be taken down farther.  I like the way they did the NOs, spreading them out instead of one big one for holding the continental US territories.  Now at least the Axis has the chance to chip away at the US income.  Before it was almost impossible to affect the US income.
I am starting to think that the Alpha +2 setup may favor the Axis too much.  In the past few games my group has played, the Axis win most of them.  I think one reason is the victory city conditions, where the axis only have to win on one side or the other.  Of course, that does make for somewhat shorter games (ours average 7-9 rounds) but it doesn’t seem right to have the Japanese or the European Axis totally getting stomped while the other side gets it’s required cities and the whole game is considered an Axis victory.

From what I can tell, the game seems to favor the Allies.:)

It does make sense for the Axis to win even if they lose on one side - the goal of the Allies is to stop both Germany and Japan.  If they stop one and not the other, they’ve failed.

Plus, it’s not like Japan or Germany can support each other much.  If they didn’t have the split victory condition the Allies could just focus on one enemy and destroy them while letting the other one do well because the Axis still couldn’t win.

@JeffM:

@ozimek1:

@JeffM:

I know that there has been some debate on the board about whether it is worthwhile to attack Russia with the Japanese; however, if the Russian player is adopting a total turtle strategy I say hit them from the East.

If they are truly turtling 100% in Moscow then the Germans can also race past Moscow with a handful of tanks to grab territories. This is assuming the Russians pulled back the far east troops as well.

A smart Russian player will fall back slowly and stay one territory away from the main German stack.  As they fall back to Moscow, they will leave one inf behind in each territory, forcing the Germans to engage combat in each territory and effectively taking away the blitz.  While the Germans may eventually be able to blitz around Moscow and head east, I don’t think that it would be possible to pull this off before turn 7 or 8 at the earliest.

That’s exactly what I did as Russia.  The problem is Italy can easily negate a lot of that by destroying the 1 inf forces, allowing German tank and Mech. Infantry to go further.

@goalievogel:

@kcdzim:

No.  UK India has separate National Objectives that they collect independently in their own theatre economy.  UK India can never collect income from European theatre British territories or Objectives.
The only time that UK pac and UK Eur incomes interact is in payment for tech rolls (some or all can be paid by either or both and benefit the UK as a whole).

Can you tell me where it specifically says that in the rulebook? This question came up in our game and British India took the extra 5 IPCS for two turns. I didn’t think they could do this but the rules do not seem clear. Have a page number I can refer too?

It may not be in the rulebook - it could have been added in the Alpha.

Link