@Stucifer said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
I used the “save game at this point (beta)” feature to save the game at the start of round 3 and will play out round 3 and post it.
I tried to open one of the saves you posted, but it gave me an error, saying that it was made in a newer version of TripleA… but when I followed the link to download the new version, I’m pretty sure it led me to the same version I already have.
TripleA in a nutshell, am I right? 🙃
@Stucifer said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
Round 2 - moved 7 units into Holland belgium to retake it from 1 artillery. Should have been 1 inf, 1 artillery, if you want more % use a mech that can move fast afterwards.
[…]
The 3 infantry in W Germany should have moved to Germany. on NCM. Shouldn’t have built in France, it’s another turn away from the front.
What you’re saying all makes sense in the context of the pieces actually in play; I guess I would say that I did these sorts of moves under the assumption that I would have to leave more units in these areas for defense, if I was playing against a tougher opponent/I’m also working from the assumption that Ai Italy won’t have my back at all, and therefore I basically always need to be producing a few units in France, so that I can react to landings in the area.
Part of the reasoning is that in previous games, I’ve had West Germany’s industry get bombed into smithereens for the entire game, and I never felt like I should bother spending the money to repair it; I just assumed from that experience that I’d need to be building in France and “convoying” defensive units out to West Germany for the entire game.
…
I agree that I definitely didn’t need to build all artillery on rd2, but I had already decided to “commit to the bit” for the sake of seeing the experiment through. I stuck with it until the US entered the war, because by then it was already obvious that I needed to switch it up.
P.S. I think with a map looking like this, the allies should just go in on the neutrals; UK is well-positioned to take out Turkey (if they wanted) and then continue on through the Balkans, and the Americans (as always) can easily stomp down Spain. Even the remaining USSR forces are insulating Sweden from being used by the Germans.
@Stucifer said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
@The-Janus I actually meant the territory labeled France, so Normandy and Southern France both go to Italy. Plus Yugo & Greece. Bulgaria goes to Germany for the extra infantry to use in Russia.
Here’s my latest attempt: 2025-2-11-World-War-II-Europe-1940-2nd-Edition – Germany all artillery.tsvg
The gimmick this time is basically that I went all artillery with Germany for 3 turns, then split inf and mech the rest of the way; on rd8 Germany took Moscow, but US took Rome.
My rationale for this is kinda wild/stupid, but basically I wanted to test whether artillery had any real value; they move like infantry, cost the same as mechs, but attack better than either, and buff both. It seemed to work out OK…?
Getting the bombers to the front line ASAP so that they could be bombing Moscow seemed to help out a lot.
Germany I feel just generally needs a lot of land units in order to cover the ground they’re taking and absorb losses; artillery seems suitable for this, with the added perk of a little bit of extra offense. But once your front-line moves far enough, their speed becomes a real weakness, and you need those “fast-movers” (generally mechs, just due to budget restraints.)
I could probably continue with this game, by sweeping down into the middle east, but man… it always seems like around the time I’m in position to take Moscow, the allies just show up all over western Europe. I’m not sure how I could get Germany to finish the job any sooner than I have been (round 8, in this case.)
@Stucifer said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
I am somewhat partial to another strategy which is to give everything that is not France to Italy and have them focus on garrisoning the wall.
Is this saying to give Germany all of France and let Italy take everything in the Balkans?
@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
About the game attached:
I think you did a really great opener and your moves into the Soviet Union were probably what I would’ve done as well. Breaking out from Eastern Poland is what Cow’s G1 opener implies.
Anyhow, the AI basically handed you the game when they attacked the strict neutral.
I’m kind of stumped as to how badly the battles in France went. That genuinely seems to have taken way too long to mop up, and slowed everything else down.
My sense from the community was that France on the continent (and not just their capitol) could/should be mopped up on G1, every game, and if it takes longer than the first round, the Axis are basically cooked – but then in playing the German setup myself, I’m genuinely curious how anyone manages to put in enough force to accomplish that.
@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
is there any plausible reason to attack a major neutral except maybe USSR attacking the Arab league?
It’s kinda been theorized that USSR might want to attack China, in certain situations.
If China isn’t defending North Korea, or worse, if they’re actively letting NATO move units through their territory, the USSR might be better off attacking.
The other thing is that the complication table is weighted more toward China’s outrage than the other 2 majors, so if the USSR has the ability to send nukes, it’s also generally assumed that they will, whereas the US is less likely to use them; in a long enough game, that will swing China towards favoring NATO, so the USSR might pre-empt that at some point.
The other option is as a game-ender, towards obtaining an economic victory. In fact, such a thing is probably pretty impossible without invading most of the neutrals on the Eurasian continent.
P.S. I still think modeling neutral contributions as N.O.'s is an option to keep in mind
@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
The problem with E&W rules for neutrals is that they are just passive sources of income, that can also be attacked. That is not very interesting.
I think you’d just be swapping one problem for another, because making them function in more “interesting” ways would throw the game balance completely out the window. Also, the USSR can attack any neutrals at any time, but NATO can only attack major neutrals, and only if they are providing their full income to the USSR. So generally speaking there isn’t a military solution to the passive income provided by major neutrals.
Without getting long-winded about it, China basically serves as a buffer for the USSR, keeping the US and UK to the perimeter; if the Americans could just land anywhere along the Pacific coast of Asia, that’s a whole different ball-game – and not in a way that’s good for the USSR.
The other function of major neutrals is to prevent the game from being bogged down with roughly double the number of minor neutrals on the map. Having them function as a bloc and then tying them into things like nuclear complications, controlling the Suez Canal, and North Korea rules are what make the system really shine. This also circles back to the rule allowing the USSR to attack neutrals; there’s more of a downside if attacking Iraq means that Syria, Jordan, et al. also turn against you. If you get rid of the Arab League as a major neutral, I imagine the USSR would start gobbling up the middle east piecemeal in probably every game. (And I have to imagine the major neutral mechanic is an outgrowth of the original designers having tested these kinds of strategies, and found them to break the game.)
If you wanna rebalance the game around an “active China” paradigm, be my guest – but depending on things like turn order, they either get dogpiled, or they win the entire continent pretty early on. These are the types of bog-standard house rules that people immediately tried once they got their hands on the game 25 odd years ago, and couldn’t get to work. I remember those discussions, trust me.
E&W is much more about ‘politics’ mechanics than any other A&A game, full stop, and basically the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. If you swap out one mechanic for something you think is more interesting, that doesn’t immediately mean it’ll be better or that the game will even still function properly from a balance perspective. Trying to reinvent the China rules is probably the biggest hornet’s nest you could kick, and it’s not much less perilous to mess around with how the Arab League works, either.
Honestly, if you feel the need to strip things down, but maintain the flavour of it, I can definitely give you some suggestions in that regard – I’ve written an E&W scenario for Risk. But I’d lean more towards major neutrals not having any mechanics for getting active, than to add mechanics making that easier to do.
@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
Looking at the East & West rules, it seems unlikely that you could ever bring a major neutral over. You only have a 1/6 chance to move it one step and your opponent can deploy spies to counter you.
Have you considered the knock-on effects of changing those mechanics?
Would you want China and OAS to become active powers?
Or would they just swing all their income, units, and territories to USSR/USA in one dice roll?
Genuinely curious as to what you’re thinking this implementation would look like.
@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
you either get them or you don’t
You’re going to have to unpack what you mean by that.
If China is allowed to effectively be a 16 IPC swing on a random die roll, I’m calling bullshit.
When you “get” a major neutral, would you get all of their units/territories? Or if they can still be influenced back to the other side, are you basically suggesting we compress the 9-point influence scale down to just 3 (positive, neutral, negative)?
@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
There is World at War mod for TripleA, but the map does not resemble East & West.
(Credit to @thrasher1 from his old Axis & Allies page: https://web.archive.org/web/20011122195430/http://www.wargamer.com:80/axisandallies/ce/xeno/waw/scenarios/waw_scenario_warsaw_page1.html )
I know you specified the version that’s in TripleA, but just for comparison (and since I don’t believe I’ve mentioned it in this thread before) here’s a mock-up of the W@W map, modified to include things like north/south Korea, as well as Yugoslavia/Greece:
…and here’s my edit of it in MSpaint, for a mock-up of E&W:
(For those who’ve been following the thread a while, I also brought up this exact example, outlining the similarities in our “podcast” episode, with @The_Good_Captain : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4KrQ1V9IcI )
@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
Submarine Technology
- Snorkels (subs immune to air attacks)
- Nuclear Power (subs move 3)
- Cruise Missile (subs bombard at 2)
- Receive 1 free submarine
- Receive 2 free submarines
- Receive 3 free submarines
It’d be interesting if you could also code in Nuclear Subs being able to go under the ice cap? Maybe there’s a way to model it as a strait/canal, to make that work.
The problem that immediately jumps off the page to me, is that you couldn’t throw the two types of A-bombs into a tech pool, and have it work out with just random rolling; I assume that might tie into this comment?
I would implement nuclear weapons using the rules from the “The Grand War”.
I’m not familiar with how that game does it. I also would have to assume that the nuclear complication table is off the… well, table.
Spies would be implemented as a technology list. The diplomacy would have all 3 major neutrals and the 14 minor neutrals. If you receive that “tech”, you gain control of the neutral (as long as it still is neutral).
From my experience with Europe 1940, I think you would have to treat each major neutral similarly to how the “true neutrals” are modeled, in that game i.e. declaring war on one declares war on all. Activating the neutral units properly RAW is going to be the real problem, I’d imagine – just based on how in A&A games everything is dependent on moving units into those territories, whereas in E&W it’s not. The other thing you could maybe do is represent the income provided by the major neutrals as “National Objectives” that you achieve through spying… assuming there’d be a way to code those two systems to interact together.
@RogerCooper said in "East & West" by Imp Games - Discussion:
My plan is to starting by implemented East & West rules on an existing map and then using the East & West map, thereby creating two mods. I see people have tried the Classic, Revised and Global maps. I was thinking of the Anniversary map or the Big World map from TripleA.
As was mentioned here and there a few times, it appears to me that the map most closely resembles Xeno Games’ World at War (particularly the delineation of sea zones); if a map and/or module exists somewhere for that game, that would probably be the best place to start. Otherwise, of the A&A maps I’m familiar with, I’d say Revised is probably the closest; the ruleset obviously most closely resembles Classic, but there are also a few W@W-isms.
My hunch is that some of the technologies (and maybe the spying) will be the hardest to implement; the other hang-ups (also mentioned earlier in this thread) would be not allowing allies to land planes in newly-captured territories, as well as the ‘universal’ infantry placement rule. Also, tanks being able to move on non-combat and combat movement is pretty unique, for A&A; the submarine rules were also a bit of a stumbling block, since they’re not entirely clear.
Were there any specific rules questions you had about E&W?
@Myygames said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
Check out these strategy articles:
Probably worth mentioning at this point, that I did do a quick skim of the first few introductory posts in this thread.
It’s a lot easier to do in East & West, but what that game taught me is to never endanger any offensive units. For example, you should only really leave tanks on the front line if they add enough defense that whatever attack your opponent could put together won’t be enough to kill them. (Artillery I feel are kind of borderline-expendable; they cost the same as mechs and they don’t pack nearly the same punch as tanks, despite being just as vulnerable. I don’t go out of my way to waste them, but I am more likely to gamble with them.)
With a combination of units and can-opening tactics and such within USSR territories, you can do moves where you hit the back-line with mechs and aircraft and let the infantry and tanks hit the front line – because the first attack insulates them from being hit back. I think the ability to pair tactical bombers with fighters or tanks potentially gives the Germans some interesting options; in my 2nd game I shipped a tank up to Finland, which is a theatre I feel you’ll end up doing strafe attacks a lot. Sending a tac up there to assist seemed to give me a lot of flexibility.
I can definitely see the necessity of “fast-movers” for Germany – and if they had income numbers comparable to the US, it’d easily be tanks instead of mechs the majority of the time. I think the necessity of sea movement and transport capabilities means that the US is always going to cap out at 50% tanks; not to say that Germany doesn’t need a ton of infantry, but I could definitely see them going higher than that 50% threshold w/r/t fighting the USSR (if they had the income for it).
The problem I’ve run into in my 2 Germany games so far is that by about round 10, the Germans have nowhere near enough production/output to deal with a war on two fronts. I think Italy was reasonably well-played by my Ai sidekick in the 2nd game, but I still ended up with just a massive wave of US units on the western front, and not enough units to stop them – particularly because my offense was still almost entirely tied up in the east.
One thing I’m noticing with Germany is that the pathing seems to be such that you kind of want mechs for moving along the southern route in the USSR, but you can kinda maybe get away with standard infantry for heading north?
Specifically, it’s 2 spaces from Germany to Romania, Romania to Ukraine, and Ukraine to Volgograd (i.e. 3 turns, for mech. infantry). Whereas from Germany to Novgorod is 3 spaces (3 turns for regular infantry.)
In my 2nd game, I found myself bunching up in Eastern Poland a lot, before trying to break out in either direction.
2025-1-31-World-War-II-Europe-1940-2nd-Edition – 2nd Germany – G10.tsvg
@Stucifer said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
Also spreading those attacks leaves the British fleet in 110 alive
Hmmm… I don’t think it’s worth it to try and attack both fleets, though
I recently took my first stab at playing as the Germans, and just to make things really interesting, I declared war on the USSR immediately.
Here’s how it turned out:
2025-1-25-World-War-II-Europe-1940-2nd-Edition – 1st Germany - Fall of Moscow.tsvg
My initial impressions:
Germany feels really resource-poor; I wasn’t paying much attention to national objectives, so that might be part of it. But most turns I found myself pumping out nothing but infantry, and feeling like I was barely keeping up with the USSR. It would have been nice to mix in some mechs or tanks to get things moving a bit faster, but I felt like that was a luxury I couldn’t afford.
I was sort of at a loss as to what to do with my strategic bombers. Is it best to just bomb London until the AA blows them out of the sky?
Is there much Germany can/should do in Africa and/or the middle east?
I felt like I had more than enough planes to hold down the eastern front, so should I be putting out a few subs, in order to have my planes be a viable naval threat? The problem I find is that nowhere in France feels particularly safe to operate planes out of – particularly since I never felt I could commit land units to that area of the map.
I think just generally I felt “over my skis” the whole time, with the US (in particular) building up and building up, looming just over the horizon.
@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
In my opinion, I think a naval base in Norway is only really worth it if the Allies commit into moving forces in that direction (i.e no large amphibious war in the Mediterranean).
I think the Norway harbor provides access to more “soft targets” – which I would say is kind of the thinking behind the shuck-shuck in Classic A&A. From Gibraltar, it can be hard to crack either Southern France or Normandy-Bordeaux, most of the time; putting guys in Norway or Denmark should be a lot easier, by comparison.
Extending the “floating bridge” out to Greece can be very effective (and fun, IMO) but it’s also a big investment in time and money, since I feel like you need solid fleets on both sides of Gibraltar, in addition to one at Greece – plus, needing a harbor in Greece, too. The Norway supply line seems simpler, particularly since you only need really strong defensive fleets at Norway; the fleet off the west of Gibraltar is usually out of range of Axis planes, so as long as enemy subs are accounted for, you’re good.
@SuperbattleshipYamato said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
Egypt: I don’t find the naval base there used much after the first few turns (though if you eschew Taranto and preserve the British fleet it’ll probably see more use). Still, I find it easier to temporarily disable the Suez Canal by going after Trans-Jordan. Similar to Gibraltar though, it’s often out of the way for the Axis to have tactical bombers hit there. Unless you’re having an ongoing offensive campaign in sub-Saharan Africa or the Middle East or furiously trading North Africa, there’s not much else for a tactical bomber in Tobruk, Syria, Ethiopia or Iraq to do.
I find the harbor in Egypt to be pretty handy, if you’re planning to transport a steady flow of 2 units at a time from South Africa; TBH with the strategies I use as the British, controlling the port is more important than controlling the actual canal, most of the time.
In each case, particularly in the Pacific, tactical bombers don’t have long enough range to attack from land bases
I think this is the crux of it, and strategic bombers can do the same job better/easier. I guess it’s more the tactic of bombing harbors that I think is underappreciated, rather than it being a thing that makes tactical bombers underappreciated as a unit… if that makes sense.
@barnee said in Units, Mechanics, etc.:
Hi Janus
In case you are interested, Roger is going to mod East vs West for triplea
https://forums.triplea-game.org/topic/4059/a-new-year-and-a-new-mod/17?_=1737940118197
“East & West, a variant published in 2025” – might want to inform Roger that it’s a little older than that 😂
