I think with the split victory conditions, the Brits spending NOTHING in the Pacific would quickly lead to an Axis victory via Japan.
I dunno, to me it just feels like a ‘cheap’ way out (as in, we couldnt balance the game ‘globally’, so we put an artificial ‘crutch’ in to force the Brits to spend in the Pacific).
To me, the split money is what makes the Pacific feel more like a side-show. In AA50, every IPC that Japan took from Britain in the Pacific was one less IPC Germany/Italy had to deal with. It also meant that there was a real reason (beyond artificial VC locations) for Britain and the US to fight for those IPCs in the Pacific. I think it gave AA50 a very dynamic feeling across the globe.
Global feels more like 2 games being played simultaneously, with a lot less interaction. Western UK really couldnt care less about India UK unless Japan threatens a single-theatre win. But barring that, Britain is losing nothing by losing her colonies in the Far East (which feels wrong IMO). To me, a better solution could be found to ‘Britain dumping all it’s money into Europe’ than the artificial split. Perhaps a minimum amount has to be spent in the Pacific or something (so every IPC would still matter to the Western UK, no matter the source).
In any case, I think this split income is one of the most disappointing aspect of Global since it really creates separation between the theatres that did not exist in the earlier titles.
from your post it sounds like the Italian navy situation has a big impact on the game, which even one more plane in UK would have a big impact on in turn.
Exactly. But that’s why I think it’s important to be able to explore the various strategies and opening gambits a few times before tweaking it further. Maybe that bomber is too much, but maybe using it down there costs the Brits elsewhere. The point being, is that no one can reasonably tell after just a game or two and given the investment in time (and space) Global takes, it’s very unlikely that there will be consensus feedback any time in the near future.
So changing/tweaking/massaging the start-ups every few weeks greatly reduces the chances of actually knowing if the PREVIOUS set-up was balanced or not.
Caveat:
If Larry Harris is under some form of a timetable for a 2nd printing or something, then by all means the changes have to come fast and furious. But barring that, I’d say it’s time to let it bake for a while IMO.
Personally I think at this point it should just stand as it is for a while and let people play. I mean, it’s a LONG game and people can’t get many plays in so it’s quite possible what looks like a balance issue in one or two games might just be play-style or even bad luck, yet the people who are losing those games can quite easily report the set up as a ‘problem’.
Case in point:
We played 2 games over the holidays with the Alpha +1 set up. In the first game, the Italians overran most of the Med and had a competitive navy etc. After that game, the Brit player thought he was just overmatched in the Med and didnt like the set up.
In the 2nd game, the Brits played differently (different player as well) and Italians lost half their fleet in the first round and the other half shortly thereafter. Italy was eventually run out of Africa and was pretty much a non-entity for the majority of the game. At the conclusion of that game, the Italian player was convinced that the Brit Med set up would never allow the Italians a chance in the Med.
Now that is two COMPLETELY different sets of conclusions drawn from the exact same set up, but played differently, the game came out very differently (luck wasnt a major factor in either game).
In addition, I pointed out to the 2nd Italian player that simply moving a German plane or two down into Italy on G1 would likely be more than sufficient to keep the Italians alive on UK1. So again, ‘opinion’ around the table reversed itself back to ‘UK will be overrun’ lol.
Soooo, IMO it’s time to leave well enough alone for a while and let people try alternate strategies with the SAME SETUP. And to be honest, the tweaks being made at this point are pretty minor so I dont think +1 Inf here or +1 Fighter - 1 Tac there is going to have anywhere near as much impact as a change in strategy (or even a few dice rolls either way).
Don’t get me wrong, I think the changes made in the Alpha setup(S) have been great for the game. The new Scramble rules are fantastic and a MUCH needed change. But they also completely change the complexion of the naval war in the game and it’s going to take a fair amount of time before people are experienced enough with it to be able to draw consistent conclusions.
My experience is that whenever you see massive naval ‘Mexican stand-offs’ on the board like that, one side or the other is being screwed pretty heavily buy it. Having that much hardware just sitting looking at each other is generally a serious waste of resources for someone.
My guess is that one side (can’t really tell which without knowing the full game situation that led up to this) is perfectly happy to stand off the other and perpetuate the stalemate but the other side is being pressed by their allies to DO SOMETHING! ;)
I think the US has too much income before war, but then again, her fleet is much smaller than it really was (compared to other nations…I mean, RUSSIA has a BB and the US only has ONE?).
Of course the US also lost a lot of at surface power at Pearl which will likely not happen in A&A so I guess the trade-off is that they start with less power, but get the money to build it. This means it’s likely not going to be deployed forward in attack position like it would be if they actually started with their historical forces.
But if anything, the US ‘at war’ income is LOW compared to reality. I agree though that giving the US their ‘real’ income would be a game-ender. Really as of Dec 7, 1941, WW2 was no longer in doubt…it was just a matter of time from there.
In the game, I think 52+30 is a decent compromise. Compared to other nations, that is not really that much higher and as was pointed out above, the US has a ‘shipping fee’ on nearly everything they want to send to war. I think this keeps the US from getting out of hand.
Thanks for reposting it here. Sifting through 80+ pages in that other thread to find the updates is a bit on the tedious side. ;)
What about with the new ‘Alpha Setup’? Same dead? Three TRs and attack?
Personally I dont think that’ll work quite as well anymore, but I could be wrong.
The thing is, that if someone is winning by getting lucky on tech, they could just as easily be winning by getting lucky on the combat dice.
But unlike combat dice, tech is a bigger risk/reward. If you get lucky by spending 5 IPCs and getting something good, that’s worth quite a lot of good luck in combat. Conversely, if you get hosed and spend 40+ IPCs and dont get a tech, you are likely dooming yourself far worse than simply rolling bad in a battle here and there (depending on the scale of the battle).
I agree with allweneedislove in that if you play the averages, tech is probably not worth it. But that’s not what tech is about in the standard rules. Tech IS about ‘keeping your opponent honest’ because that investment COULD pay off into something really dangerous and that affects his planning (or should). And for that, the tech cost MIGHT be worth it with average luck.
So from a ‘balance’ standpoint, using the AA50 tech tokens might actually bring the tech back to cost effectiveness rather than making it ‘overpowered’ due to the higher incomes?
Dont need the AA. Each ‘Facility’ has inherent AA capability which, IMO, makes bombing them not the best use of resources…
To me tech tokens mostly just helped flatten the luck out. When we used to play as kids, one friend would just buy 1 die/turn as the US or Germany and damned if he didnt end up with an awful lot of tech. Another friend spend 10-15 here and there are rarely got anything. We eventually just ended up removing tech altogether since it was such a game changer on a VERY few number of dice.
I just wonder if they experimented with the tokens and decided they didnt fit (as per gamerman’s post above) or if they just decided they were going to back to the ‘all or nothing’ rule for some other reason (including not wanting to provide the components).
So do we know why tech tokens arent part of this set of rules? I really liked the effect in AA50, but even there we didnt use techs due to some of the more ridiculously unbalancing ones.
The techs in AAE40/G seem much more balanced, but the way you GET the techs is back to the single-turn crapshoot.
I’m very much in favor of just going back and using the tech tokens from AA50 but I’m a little concerned that they might have been removed for balance reasons or somesuch. If that is the case, then I’d likely have to make other adjustments. But if it was just something stupid like not wanting to include the extra counter sheet or something, then I’d definitely start using the rule in our next game.
Sooo, has anyone heard the reason why the tech was moved back to the crapshoot from the tech tokens?
Thanks!
I’ve always enjoyed playing Japan most WW2 strategic games. I really enjoyed them in AA50. When AAP40 came out, I thought I’d really take to the expanded Pacific theatre and all of the interesting strategies that could play out. But Japan was so incredibly overdone in that version that I felt like a chump playing them. :(
But now with Global and the ‘unofficial’ fix that removes the 7 planes etc, I feel like I really want to give them a try again. :)
We’ve played one so far and it lasted about 5 hours. Germany took England on G2 and we played a few turns out past that before the Allies figured it was hopeless and surrendered.
I think the split makes Japan’s efforts against the Brits much less meaningful. In AA50, every one of those islands or territories in the Pacific that the Brits lost directly impacted their ability to fight the war against Germany/Italy. And this in turn drew US response to try and protect those Brit assets as long as possible (to keep the pressure on Germany mounting).
In Global with the split resources, the ‘Euro-Brits’ don’t give a fig about the money Japan is taking away since it doesnt impact what’s going on in Europe hardly at all. So they are less pressed to have the US protect those resources and thus the US cares a lot less about the Pacific other than making sure Japan doesnt go completely hog-wild.
It kind of feels like you’re playing the two games side by side rather than having a more integrated total war feel that AA50 had. We really enjoyed the game overall, but there was a lot less of the cross-theater assistance/interest since the two theatres have such minimal impact on each other.
Good to hear. :) I too played Italy in our Global game and I had fun with them. The Brits did not kill my fleet due to the Germans breathing down their neck in the Atlantic and I quickly dominated Africa, the Mid-East and was pressing into Russia just a bit when the Allies surrendered.
I enjoyed playing Italy in AA50 and I think they are considerably more interesting now. :)
I think if Germany ignores Normandy the first turn, they can take Paris comfortably if they use ALL available ground forces on it. This frees up the airforce to dedicate itself to fleet killing. 4 fighters, 3 tacticals and a bomber can take care of the southern french fleet and the battleship fleets with the help of the subs. It’s how I’ll try things when i get a chance to play Germany at least.
Agreed. This is how we did it too. Normandy is no threat, so there is no need to take it on G1 IMO. Better to use the German air to kill the scattered Brit fleet than send them in for overkill in Paris. You’ll never get a better chance to kill those ships otherwise.
Doing this really makes the Brits think twice about sending the last little bit of their navy into the Med to harass the Italians. Sure, you can kill their whole fleet, but the price you pay is that Germany has NOTHING to worry about for the first few turns. And if you lose the CV to a counter-attack, you’re pretty screwed in terms of building back up.
I dont see the UK attack on the IT navy as being a no-brainer or ‘broken’ at all. It represents a commitment to the Med that will cost the Brits in the Atlantic. It might be worth it, it might not be worth it. But it is certainly not some every game decision yet IMO.
Our first Global game was an Axis win. Englad got a little cute and Germany was able to pull off Sea Lion. Japan wasnt doing so hot (we use the proposed changes that took away 7 planes) but it wasnt grim.
Not a big fan of the Sea Lion thing though…seems like if it’s successful, the game is all over except for the shouting. That means an awful lot of setup/clean-up time for a game that might only make it 2 and half turns or so. We played it out for a while, but the writing was easily on the wall the minute Germany took UK’s money. I’m not quite sure why that rule exists anymore. It’s not like losing your capital and not being able to build isnt bad enough…giving the money just seems to end the game right there,
/shrug.
Anyways, at least it was a Axis win, even if it was because UK bit off more than they could chew. :)
Whereas I have not been able to look at this issue in-depth yet, I would just caution people from jumping down the throats of people who make early balance claims. :)
One of my first posts when AAP40 came out was ‘So…how do the Allies win again?’ and I claimed that Japan had a tremendous advantage. I was immediately attacked by all these people who proclaimed that I couldnt know anything that early and how we had weak Allied players or how we were making assumptions about this or that etc etc etc. Well I gave up trying to convince people and came back 3-4 months later and lo and behold…everyone was complaining about how unstoppable Japan was lol.
The point being that yes, many claims about balance will obviously be premature at this point, but it’s certainly possible to see various trends even this early in the game’s life cycle. :)