Posts made by The Janus

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:

I think what you wrote can be distilled down to 3 complaints:

There’s not much of a historical reason for this.
There’s not much of a game design reason for them.

I think this is where you’re fundamentally misreading me.
I care almost not at all about adding mechanics for historical reasons; if adding historical realism reduces balance, get rid of it.

I think that N.O.'s are a mechanic that imbalances the game – historical or not, is irrelevant. It’s the Occam’s razor approach, that I take. If something isn’t making the game better, find a way to get rid of it. Simplify.

My take is more that the N.O.'s are being used incorrectly in this game, from a design perspective.

For context, I would say that in Revised, they generally do reward you for pathing a certain way (potentially sub-optimal ways) but were generally just a nice bonus – the cherry on top.

In 1940, the entire economic viability of nations such as Italy relies entirely on “off-map” income, whereby (effectively) territories are worth more or less depending on which side controls them… only with more steps. So in addition to being unintuitive, it’s also clunky and poorly implemented.

The German N.O. for “Swedish Iron Ore” feels like nostalgia bait, to anyone who was longing for World At War to make a return. Other A&A versions don’t have this sort of rule, so why is it “”“necessary”“” here?

Basically, I’d like to see a better “minor power” structure, in this sort of game. Rather than buffing Italy to the moon with fake economics, maybe the solution is to just let them attack together, with Germany. (Same with ANZAC – they’re not a real country, and certainly not without eating all the Dutch islands, which won’t ever happen in a “J1 attack” meta.)

Like I said, a country’s entire economic viability shouldn’t be based off of their Objectives, they should be a nice bonus – perhaps even something that pushes things to the brink, once they’re past a tipping point.

Another one I have a problem with is the Soviet objective for taking any German, Pro-Axis, or Italian territory. This effectively doubles the IPC value of capturing those territories, as long as the USSR is the ally who does it. Ok, but why? Is this meant to encourage the other allies to just juice up the USSR and let Italy run roughshod over Africa…? For what reason? If anything, why is this not limited to only German territories?

Like, if US territories just need to be worth double for the US compared to what they’re worth to everyone else, and German territories need to be worth double to the USSR what they are to everyone else…? then just put that in the rules, and maybe print two values on each territory, as needed.

Again, this all just feels like useless chrome.
It’s change for the sake of change, complexity for the sake of complexity – and game balance is completely in the toilet.

@SuperbattleshipYamato @FranceNeedsMorePower
Alright, I’m resigning from this game. Y’all can continue if you want, but I think the Allies are cooked, and I have no useful moves I can make with ANZAC, or UK for that matter.

Italy 3 is on next:

START Italy-turn-3-complete-game-32.tsvg

@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Global 1940 out of box game: SuperbattleshipYamato (Axis) vs The Janus and FranceNeedsMorePower:

@FranceNeedsMorePower

@The-Janus

Japan Scramble? 2.tsvg

You’ll have to decide whether to scramble.

OH YEAH, BROTHERRRR

we’ll scramble everything

because I name the file after whose turn is STARTING not who just finished.

Also plz ignore France, he’s just being a dunce.

ANZAC/France done:
germany-turn-3-complete-game-32.tsvg

@FranceNeedsMorePower @SuperbattleshipYamato

Italy2 is ready to go:
italy-turn-2-complete-game-32-2-1.tsvg

Hopefully my UK moves were adequate ;)

@Cornwallis said in Allied play in Europe 1940:

On G2 germany destroys cheaply the remaining UK ships and fly on to alexandria bolstering the defense.

My sense is that any opportunity to get a shot at the Luftwaffe is worth it. BUT the Allies need to have Italy effectively out of the game ASAP to really be successful, though – and I’m not convinced that can even happen in time to save the USSR.

Perhaps it’s a topic for my other thread, but I’m beginning to disagree more and more with the change in mechanics, where transports no longer have a defense value; navy costs too much, and air power is too effective for the Axis. These interacting factors seem to be what is slanting the game against the Allies.

ANZAC and France moved all of the things:
Germany-turn-2-complete-game-32.tsvg

Italy is up:
Italy1.tsvg

We’ll go with that I guess; @SuperbattleshipYamato feel free to change in edit mode afterwards.

@SuperbattleshipYamato pick some casualties:

Getting back to the topic of mechanics, I think the politics side of Europe 1940 is pretty broken.

The USSR remains fairly weak (relative to the Germans) until they’re at war, but basically the Germans have full control over when that war starts. To the point, the USSR cannot benefit from any of their N.O.'s unless they are at war… so even if they’re given the full 3 rounds to build up, those are done under the circumstance where they’re the weakest.

Germany doesn’t need 3 turns to mop up France, Yugoslavia, and Greece, so the extra money/units they produce over that time is just gratuitous, relative to what they actually require in order to pound the USSR into dust. The fact that there’s a German N.O. for not being at war with the USSR just adds more fuel to the fire.

Another mechanical complaint I have is around scrambling. From a balance perspective, it seems like something where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer; from an actual procedural/gameplay perspective, it also slows down the flow of the game. Everything has to grind to a halt so that the players can decide whether or not to scramble, and how much. I think as a general observation, Axis&Allies needs less of these sort of mechanics; the game greatly benefits when automation can speed up the rate of play, and this kind of thing has the opposite effect.
Like sure, you can put in orders ahead of time, like “only scramble X if Y” but the game doesn’t need that level of fiddly-ness.

@SuperbattleshipYamato
let me know about scrambles: UK1 Combat Move.tsvg

@FranceNeedsMorePower said in Global 1940 out of box game: SuperbattleshipYamato (Axis) vs The Janus and FranceNeedsMorePower:

Get that one?

Jokes are supposed to be funny.

Please stop talking.

I think the broader issue is whether the UK can afford to let the Italians into SZ98 completely uncontested. Egypt seems super weak in the early going, and just letting them dump 2 transport loads in for free is going to bury the UK.

USSR is basically a lost cause, so the only thing keeping the Axis from a VC win is UK holding out in Egypt, or a very early D-Day and recapture of Paris.

Having not played the Global game yet, is it generally pretty standard practice to have the UK just send all of their ships from the Pacific map over towards the Red Sea (en route to the Mediterranean)?

You do seem to use a lot of stuff from India etc. in this move, which in a Europe-only game the UK would not have at their disposal.

@Cornwallis said in France's role in Global 1940 SE:

@FranceNeedsMorePower @barnee @SuperbattleshipYamato @The-Janus

Here is the promised video of my UK1 opening:

https://youtu.be/Z4vqnXhq4pU?si=NBU4WuJVUH2WqkVP

The move to East Africa is pretty similar to what I usually do.
I tend to use the transport to pick up the tank and an infantry from Alexandria; you can also send in the mech from Egypt and infantry from Sudan, with the tac to get the boost from the tank.
This leaves the tank and the mech 2 spaces from Egypt – the problem is that Egypt is way too weak in the beginning, so pulling units out to deal with East Africa is a losing idea, it seems.