First of all, we never changed the setup from the OOB setup. All we changed were the land movement rules to allow two moves into a friendly or already contested space as the second space, and the extended 3-move sea movement from friendly sea bases. And we added in the economic and political collapse rules.
What that led to was a series of games where one side would engage in cheap moves, like dropping one Italian guy in Smyrna to help push the Ottomans into collapse. It was making the game stupid so we altered the rules to have the effects of political collapse kick in at the end of the turn, and if out of economic collapse the country could collect money. This in turn unbalanced the game the other way, by creating situations where Germany was in economic collapse at the beginning of every turn but out at the end of every turn, and so it kept collecting money and had something like 110 IPCs when it got lucky and started its turn able to buy about 3 rounds later.
It also led to situations where countries were in political collapse for three or four turns and then managed to turn things around by getting out before the end of that country’s turn each round of game play.
As a result, we think we hit on the right balance: (1) at the beginning of a country’s turn, before purchasing, it must check for collapse. If it is in economic collapse, it loses all its money. If it is also in political collapse, it may only conduct moves that are into spaces that would allow it to stop that collapse in addition to losing all its money. Then check again at the end of the turn. If it is still in political collapse, it is out of the game. If it is still in economic collapse, it collects no money. If it is out of both, it collects money. (2) In the event that a country starts its own turn in political collapse twice in a row, it immediately, at the beginning of its turn, is out of the game.
These changes to the rules, based on our playtesting, seem to fix the crazy/“cheap” moves and balance the game better.
