Yes you can
Pregame write out a mission / tactic / objective for each nation. Then refer to it each turn turn to keep you honest.
Germany could be complete sea lion
Japan could be conquer China and India
Etc etc
End game play…
-
@Young:
I would love to here opinions on my Victory Token system… what are the core reasons for not adopting it?
Victory Objectives & Victory Tokens
Once a victory objective is achieved, a victory token will be awarded, the side with the most victory tokens at the end of the day wins the game. Victory tokens are awarded immediately upon completion regardless of when, or how the objective was achieved. Also, a token can never be taken away once earned, and they may never be awarded twice for the same objective. It doesn’t matter which round the game ends, however, a win or a tie can only be declared at the end of a full game round.
Optional Rule: The first side to achieve 3 victory tokens will immediately win the game.
New Research & Development Rule:
Research rolls are no longer used to develop breakthroughs, instead, nations are awarded development rolls when victory objectives have been achieved. Once a victory token is gained, the nation with the corresponding (*) instructions listed with each objective will choose a breakthrough chart, and make a free development roll with the resulting breakthrough taking effect immediately (may not effect units already in battle during the turn in which the breakthrough was rolled). Any breakthroughs gained by the UK regardless of which side of the map a token was achieved will effect all UK purchases and all UK units on the board.
Somehow, YG, your Victory tokens provide a clear objective to judge which side is winner.
I saw that you give a tech per token.It give an additional bonus for one victory, this help swing further on one side. I see this as a way to shorten the game.
Does it really produce this effect in game?The loosing side is just in deeper problem.
In principle, it is exact contrary to what I just suggested: to increase finding Tech probability on the loosing side.
So increasing hope on the loosing side. -
I like the sudden death option.
One issue I see is that without some way to enforce when the game is called, it might encourage a player to bow out prematurely, like just quit while you’re ahead. Sort of the inverse of what we have now, which is quit when you’re clearly down haha. Might be frustrating for the underdog, who could perhaps recover if the match was extended, but gets denied when the team with more tokens decides they’ve played enough for one night. Sudden death kind of gets around that issue, by making it clear that the first to achieve 3 token will win no contest. I like that option.
Only other downside I can think of is just that it’s G40 exclusive. Would be nice to have something similar that worked for 1942.2 too, though I guess there you have the issue of no standard tech system for the smaller board that could have the victory tokens attached to it.
I’m still not sure how you really get around the main problem, which is the sense of inevitability to the win that makes the underdog feel like that game is not worth pursuing further. This predictability is sort of baked in, and what allows strategies to function in A&A on a very basic level. I think Der Kuenstler is right to be suspicious of the analogy I made earlier with risk cards. That only works in risk because the game itself is so simplistic. They offer two options for the cards, one ascending and the other with set values for the trade (the later is less extreme), but both are still random at bedrock. It’s luck of the draw there. Probably most people don’t want to see the A&A win reduced to something so capricious as a random draw that up ends all expectations haha.
That’s what I meant by saying it’s hard for me to imagine something that fits with the broader A&A model. An upset blinder that isnt all cheeseball our out of character with the rest of the game.
From an historical standpoint, the only way I see it being realistic is with tech. But the kind of techs available in A&A probably aren’t what would have won the war for Germany anyway, not at the late stage, when they were already up against the ropes… we’ll maybe rockets would have played a role, but in reality, I think the nearest the Axis could have come to forcing an end to the war (after the point when they were already losing so badly), would have been with Chemical or Biological weapons. It’s the closest they got to something strategic on the level of an A bomb. Like putting all those crazy organophosphates into a v2 warhead and hitting London or Amsterdam for the lights out Armageddon. Or using defoliants or hoof and mouth style attacks against the Soviets to induce widespread famine. But the game doesn’t go there, and probably for good reason. Nobody wants Tabun strikes in their plastic army men game. It’s just too dark, like way R rated hehe. Instead they keep things pretty conventional. For the best I’d say, so the game can still be played with the kids.
I like the idea of the convention techs becoming more common by default as the game goes on, but it would be cool if it was weighted more heavily for the underdog somehow. Even if it’s somewhat unrealistic for jets and long range delta wing bombers to make appearances in the midgame, we probably need em coming in earlier to suggest a turn on the dime where the losing side can somehow turn it around with radical new Super weapons.
-
The problem with radical new super weapons is that it can take a balanced game and turn it in favour of one side on the roll of one lucky dice. If one side is losing it’s probably because they are getting beat honestly and turning the tide without earning it just for the sake of prolonging the game is wrong. That breaks the game in my opinion. Honestly, if you just tried my R&D rules you would see that it takes skill to develop weapons and share them and that having that many weapons in the game can increase the possibilities that each side can be capable of. The weapons themselves can be tweaked to whatever you want them to be but if you don’t have a way to put them in the hands of the players they are useless.
-
I suggest a different approach for Techs.
More like: leading powers don’t need to invest in these crapy unreliable inventions.
While loosing sides is so desperate that they try everything to change the tide of war.However, you are right HandGrenade about superweapons. Techs should be just as powerful to tip balance from a lost to a draw.
And with luck and a good strategy, from a draw to a win.On the reverse, when the leading is loosing ground, it also gains more access to Tech to switch the game toward them.
So, it becomes a race for tech, too.
-
All of the research tokens in my rules are snatched up and developed in the first 4 turns or so. After that it comes down to sharing tech and whether or not that’s a good idea. One way to turn the tide would be to abandon a losing strategy and focus instead on taking out one nation and stealing the 2 or 3 (or 4) tokens they have in their possession that can be shared now on the other side. It depends on what tokens they have and whether or not they can help turn the tide of the war. That’s why you may not choose to share all of your tech with Italy or ANZAC if you think they might be vulnerable in that game.
-
Can we get a link to your R&D rules, General Hand?
-
-
Young Grasshopper, I respect the work you put into creating a well-balanced set of victory token objectives, but I don’t like the system for the same reason I don’t like Twilight Imperium 3: when I play a game as long and intense as Axis & Allies, I don’t want it end because my opponents reached an arbitrary target before I did. World War 2 isn’t a horse race; it’s a wrestling match. I want one side to have to force the other to submit in order to score a win. If I understand your victory tokens correctly, if the Allies have 2 tokens and are one territory away from earning a third token when the Axis collect their third token, then you end the game immediately and the Axis totally win the entire game, just as if the Axis were comfortably occupying London and Moscow and Washington all at once. That doesn’t seem either fair or interesting to me.
General Hand Grenade, your R&D tokens are an interesting way to put new areas of the board into play, and there’s some cool drama in trying to share or rescue or capture an R&D token as it moves toward a weaker ally, but I don’t see that system as a real solution to DK’s original complaint about how hard it is to get people to engage in end game play. If you happen to have a killer tech that can be shared with the right ally at the right time in a way that will actually turn the tide of battle, OK, fine, maybe you play on. If you happen to be able to capture an enemy capital that is rich in tech and then safely return the looted tech tokens to your capital, despite the fact that you’re steadily losing the game, then, OK, fine, that’s an interesting comeback mechanic. My first impression is that these scenarios are very unlikely, though – most games won’t even appear to have a plausible tech-based comeback, and so people will still want to quit once they start to fall behind.
Black Elk, the “ascending cards” mechanic in RISK is an interesting parallel. Sure, there’s way too much luck involved in whether you draw the card you need (infantry/artillery/cavalry) to complete your set, but if you zoom out, you can think of the mechanic as “the longer the game goes on, the more violently a pendulum swings back and forth based on cashing in cards, and the less it matters who controls a given continent.” So there’s kind of an inherent timer in the game; yes, you want to (1) control continents/territories in RISK, but you also want to (2) make sure to collect a card every turn and to preserve your armies; the longer the game goes on, the more important Goal 2 becomes and the less important Goal 1 becomes.
I think Axis & Allies actually has a decent natural timer built in based on the completion of the Allied fleets. In the beginning of an Axis & Allies game, position and momentum are the most important thing – the Axis are trying to penetrate to London and/or Moscow before the Allied fleets can arrive to provide reinforcements, and the Allies are trying to slow them down. It’s OK to take fairly large losses in order to gain one extra space as the Axis or in order to deny one space to the Axis. Later in an Axis & Allies game, territory control and preserving armies are the most important thing – if the capital hasn’t fallen yet, then it’s probably not going to fall anytime soon, so the only way to win is by outproducing your opponent and trading your armies more efficiently so that your armies gradually get larger than your opponent’s armies over many turns.
The difference between the two timers is that the RISK timer is chaotic/divergent, in that it rapidly destabilizes the game, whereas the A&A timer is orderly/convergent, in that it gradually stabilizes and freezes the game. Stabilizing the game to the point where the fronts are practically locked in place has the disadvantage of being anti-climactic and of not technically triggering any end-of-game conditions, but it has the advantage of being fair and predictable; instead of winning because you happened to be on the last “upswing” of the pendulum that mattered, you win because the game stabilized at 130 to 110 IPCs in your favor, instead of the other way around.
I don’t think I would change anything about the A&A endgame except maybe to put a hard deadline in somewhere around round 12 – if you can’t win by the end of round 12, the game is a draw. That will encourage at least some players to fight on when they’re slightly behind, and it will encourage strong players to take the occasional risk instead of only attacking when the expected profit is guaranteed positive (cough Marine_Iguana cough), and it will help players agree on how to “score” a game when one side has only a very slight advantage, and it’s not clear whether that advantage will definitely lead to victory.
That said, if you’re specifically looking to explore situations from 1944, 1945, or after because you find those situations interesting, why not play a scenario? There’s nothing wrong with setting up a position where the Axis (or the Allies!) are doomed to lose, where the object of the game is simply to last for X turns without being defeated. There’s also nothing wrong with starting the game from a balanced position that’s much later in the game, e.g., US has conquered Tokyo and Germany has conquered Moscow, or even an early Cold War type scenario, with the USA in West Germany/Tokyo and their ex-ally Russia in East Germany/Manchuria.
-
Argothair, if you read the original post he says that he wants to keep his players interested in the game, not necessarily to come back for a win. I agree that it would be a rare situation in which you could come back from certain defeat even using my rules, but at least it gives a side something to try for rather than just rolling out an inevitable defeat. Good observations though.
I like YG’s method of victory token objectives. If all players are aware of what those objectives are before the game begins then they can play to either achieve them or prevent the opposition from achieving their objectives. Most of the objectives are not easy to achieve so it isn’t like you haven’t accomplished anything. There are just more ways of rewarding teams rather than simply capturing capitals or victory cities. In reality, there was more to winning wars than capturing cities.
Or…you could just give the American player atomic bombs at the end of the 12th turn and let him drop them on Japan. I hear that works like a charm when you want to end a world war.
-
I am testing my game with tech and with NAs with event cards. We all know a lot of games start out the same, but with my stuff in game, it changes some moves do to NAs and if u get the good tech for your country early.
Each deck of cards have 10 good and 10 bad cards. In each deck for all countries there are Get 1 free tech, 2 research tokens (u roll for free) and spy steals a enemy’s tech. Plus you also can buy up to 2 research tokens per turn. Tokens carry over to next turn. If you roll a breakthrough then u lose all tokens. If u roll 3 die and get 3 6s u only get to roll 1 die for tech chart. I know some will disagree but I’m trying to put in tech so u have a chance of getting ave of 2 to 3 techs a game but not make it over powering. If u get all useless tech oh well at least the games will play different. But u also have the chance to get a couple of techs later in game that may change the tide.
So for my end game I have it were Axis must control 15 victory city’s at the end of turn 10. That’s it no chasing pieces around and waiting for total destruction.
Until you play test your theory’s then what ever you suggest may work or not.
I will know if mine work soon. I’ll tell you this it’s funny because the guys can’t wait to draw there event card to see if they get anything good.
At least this game has more Pazazz in it Each game plays a bit different at least too. -
You could add a Axis victory condition that provides a game endpoint if the Allies request a ceasefire. This ceasefire would occur if war is not going well for the Allies, and unrest, cost, and weariness back home cause the Allies to look for a way to stop the war. CONDITION: IF France and Moscow have fallen, and there are no US forces on the continent (except Italy), Germany retains all of their home territories, PLUS there has been an invasion by the Allies that has failed, then the Allies have 2 turns to capture any victory city to re-bolster morale, otherwise the Allies sue for peace and the war ends.
-
Young Grasshopper, I respect the work you put into creating a well-balanced set of victory token objectives.
Thank you Argothair, I really appreciate your comments, and the time you took to address each of us.
I don’t like the system for the same reason I don’t like Twilight Imperium 3
I’ve played TI3 and I don’t like it either, mostly because TI3 creates a different victory condition during each different game when factions pull a random card from a deck of many which is kept hidden from all others. However, on the other hand… A&A victory objectives are always the same for every game, they are exposed for all to achieve or prevent, and strategies to do this can be planned before each game (which is not the case with TI3).
I want one side to have to force the other to submit in order to score a win.
I’ve had many types of A&A players at my house over the years, and I can say undoubtedly that some players are so delusional as to what the board is truly saying about who won… that I no longer depend on one to surrender when they so obviously should.
If I understand your victory tokens correctly, if the Allies have 2 tokens and are one territory away from earning a third token when the Axis collect their third token, then you end the game immediately and the Axis totally win the entire game, just as if the Axis were comfortably occupying London and Moscow and Washington all at once. That doesn’t seem either fair or interesting to me.
The 3 token immediate win is stated on the document as an Optional Rule, which is good for games with time restraints… besides that another optional rule could be a total domination of all tokens needed.
Thanks again for all your comments.
-
What’s cool about the tech sharing/stealing idea, is that it fits pretty well with the actual spoils of war that the winners were after. Like there’s a reason to fight longer just to deny the enemy your research, or I guess to put your research into the right hands when all else is lost. Since that’s what happened anyway when the curtain was drawing on the war.
In a multi, you maybe have the advantage of getting to try and screw over one player on the winning team more than another by denying them your choice research and scientists haha. Or put the plans on a sub and make a last ditch effort to get your super weapons to a buddy who might still fight on.
It would be fun, though perhaps impractical from a gameplay standpoint, if the game had more of the post war dissolution of the winning alliances built into it. Like racing to paperclip up the best tech, before the other guy on your team steals it out from under you. But there’s no real backstabbing or alliance switching in the normal formula of A&A, since the game doesn’t really model any kind of post war order as part of the victory conditions, and the Alliances are totally fixed for the duration OOB. Probably since it is such a complex game it’s still oriented towards the 1v1.
For a multi the deep endgame and ultimate victory tally might entail an eventual split of the winning team into two waring factions. Like Anglo-Americans vs Soviets or Germany vs Japan. Some kind of side switching at the end, could allow for a dramatic reset, or way to keep the underdogs engaged, as they angle for a better position in the aftermath, or try to back one horse over the other among their enemies. A&A has never really modelled that type of situation though. The co-location of friendly units kind of works against it. I often wondered what the game might look like if Russia switched sides after Berlin fell, and all Anglo American units on Russian tiles just became Soviet. Then at least for the Allies you’d have a way for the winning players to remain invested in the final slog, even if the losing players get picked off. But the OOB team structure doesn’t really accomodate a shift in the politics like that for the endgame.
Basically a workaround like, ‘ok, if there isn’t much you can do to prevent the weak links from bowing out early, you at least have a way to let the two strongest links continue on and duke it out during the final stretch.’ The vanquished go home, while the victors stick around till 3 am to see who really wins heheh. I don’t know, that’s one of the features risk has, that A&A doesn’t, owing to the FFA character of the simpler game vs the team oriented character of the more complex one. I’ve never really seen a good way to implement such a breakdown of victor alliances in A&A, since it would require a multi, and because the early and midgame require such a total commitment to coordinating with and propping up the friendlies on your team. Whereas the real war was almost entirely about determining the post war order among “friends”, and not just defeating the bad guys by any means. Tech sharing would be a really cool feature of the ultimate endgame and true victory status, if it could somehow be worked into a system where the dissolution of the winning side was an inevitability in every game. Probably only work well for a 2v2 match, but would still be nice to have some rules in place, for a play group that regularly has 4 or more players per game.
-
Two thoughts:
-
If you are fascinated by jockeying for position in a post-war order, Churchill is a fantastic new board game that directly and successfully addresses that issue. You play with 3 players: Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, and you fight against two “scripted” Axis opponents that behave the same way given the same circumstances and the same dice rolls. You get a few victory points for winning the war harder and faster than your opponents (e.g. if the Soviets make it to Manchuria and Kyushu before the Americans even make it back to the Philippines, that’s worth some VP for Stalin), but mostly the victory points come from technology, politics, and setting up friendly puppet regimes in the countries that used to be occupied by the Axis.
-
If you’re willing to take the time to get the balance right, you could actually use the fact that Anglo units in red territories become Soviet after a German collapse to properly incentivize Anglo players not to deploy units to the USSR unless the situation is truly desperate. Like, right now that’s handled by a National Objective that says “no Allied soldiers in Russian territories,” which is kind of weird. But if the Western Allies know that they’ll eventually lose whatever they put into Russia, then they’ll be motivated to put in only just enough direct reinforcements to hold Moscow, and to open a second front as fast as possible as an alternative (i.e., safer!) way of relieving pressure on Moscow.
I’m not sure how you would manage the team-switching in a four-player game, though…I think it might have to be a 3-player game. Otherwise you wind up with either a surplus player, or a three-way conflict. Suppose Berlin falls on round 8. The German player could take over the USA or the UK, and then you’d have someone playing the USA, someone playing the UK, someone playing the USSR…and then what happens to the Japanese player? Does Japan fight on, in a 3-way conflict? So you have Western Allies vs. Soviets vs. Japan? What are the win conditions?
-
-
Fair enough, Young Grasshopper. Your objectives are at least out there for everyone to see, so you can try to deny them to your opponents. The fact that there are three big objectives instead of ten little ones also makes the game firmer and more decisive than TI3. I’m sorry I slandered your rules by comparing them to TI3! That wasn’t deserved. :-)
Nevertheless, I think your objectives are so ‘big’ that if you fight for total domination of the objectives, you are essentially playing until surrender. If you have to take multiple capitals and have a big economic advantage and prevent your opponent from dominating any maritime region of the world to win, then you basically have to conquer the world to win.
Likewise, I think that if you want to play with the optional “sudden death” rule and say that the first player to three tokens wins, it will save time, but only by allowing for what would feel to me like a relatively artificial victory. If I’m short on time, I would rather call the game at the end of a certain round, or at the end of a certain number of hours, and assess the situation from there.
I’m sorry to hear that some of your players are delusional about when they’ve lost. I consider that poor sportsmanship. In my play group, I’m lucky enough to have players who fall over themselves to point out reasons why the other side was doing well when the game was called! If my buddies were delusional, I might want to use your victory tokens as a way of keeping score, i.e., to say “well, the Axis were ahead 4 tokens to 2 tokens when we called the game, therefore by definition the Axis were winning.”
I’m sure your victory objectives work well for a certain kind of play group, and I do not think there is anything wrong with them – the overall premise is just not to my taste.
-
Interesting discussion. Here’s a possible rewards chart I made that includes both points for wins and bonus units you can roll a D6 for at the beginning of your next game depending on your performance. The victory level is determined by how many rounds it takes you to get a victory. (For example, you get a Glorious victory if the other side surrenders in three rounds or less.)
So….if you knew you were going to eventually lose a game, would a chart like this keep you playing longer? Or would it be useless?
-
@Der:
Interesting discussion. Here’s a possible rewards chart I made that includes both points for wins and bonus units you can roll a D6 for at the beginning of your next game depending on your performance. The victory level is determined by how many rounds it takes you to get a victory. (For example, you get a Glorious victory if the other side surrenders in three rounds or less.)
So….if you knew you were going to eventually lose a game, would a chart like this keep you playing longer? Or would it be useless?
For me it would. But I don’t need much help, since I’m kind of a masochist. I enjoy the end game, even if it’s from a losing perspective.
:-DI’ve seen two really different attitudes towards playing out a likely defeat, which suggest very different ideas about game resolution etiquette. On the one hand I’ve seen players who think concession is good sportsmanship, like “let’s not drag this out any further.” And on the other hand I’ve seen players who think basically the exact opposite, that it’s the height of good form to play out the victory lap and let their opponent experience an endgame win. In both instances I’m talking about respectable players, not the kind who’d drop out or flip the board in protest haha. I guess it comes down to who you’re playing against. I have a certain respect for players who just want to grind it out till the bitter end, but others might find that annoying and just want the likely loser to “give up already, and stay down.” Some of it probably depends on how long you’ve been at it, whether a rematch is in the offing, or if a single session is all you’re going to get. I think in the latter case, I’m more inclined to play out the endgame than reset for a game that has no chance of finishing. Online play is probably a little different, than FtF here, since online players have a better chance of landing another opponent for a new game, whereas FtF it’s usually one session per night. Most of my FtF friends enjoy the deep endgame, even if they’re losing, so it hasn’t been a major issue for me really, but in tripleA I’ve seen it run both sides of the gamut.
-
Thanks Black Elk - I happened to think over the weekend - why not give the loser who holds out rewards? Thus here is a chart adaptation - a dubious loss here would actually earn you a better unit than a dubious victory, although you’ll still get less victory points.
-
I’ve seen two really different attitudes towards playing out a likely defeat, which suggest very different ideas about game resolution etiquette. On the one hand I’ve seen players who think concession is good sportsmanship, like “let’s not drag this out any further.” And on the other hand I’ve seen players who think basically the exact opposite, that it’s the height of good form to play out the victory lap and let their opponent experience an endgame win. In both instances I’m talking about respectable players, not the kind who’d drop out or flip the board in protest haha. I guess it comes down to who you’re playing against. I have a certain respect for players who just want to grind it out till the bitter end, but others might find that annoying and just want the likely loser to “give up already, and stay down.”
Black Elk’s paragraph is a good description of the two basic reasons for either ending a game or prolonging it, and as he says it’s pretty much a matter of personal preference because both reasons are valid in their own ways. This thread has brought up – and has to some extent blended together – what are in fact two distinct issues. The first issue is the question of whether a game should be prolonged to the bitter end, which is what Black Elk was addressing in the above quote. And as he said, there’s no right or wrong answer to that question. The second issue has to do with a question that arises only in a situation in which the players have decided to prolong a game: how to keep the game interesting for both sides as it drags on (and therefore how to encourage the players to stick with their decision to prolong the game rather than having a change of heart and pulling the plug). The side that’s losing has to be provided with a motivation to keep fighting in the face of the discouraging prospect of probable defeat, and the side that’s winning has to be provided with a motivation to keep fighting in the face of the annoying fact that the the opponent is refusing to concede what looks like near-certain defeat.
-
Here are a few additional thoughts on this subject. The idea below is only fragmentary, but I’m posting it in case it’s of any use and in case someone can work out in detail how it would operate.
I was reading YG’s comment that “I can say undoubtedly that some players are so delusional as to what the board is truly saying about who won”, and it started me thinking about that element of the wargaming experience. I think that many A&A players find the game enjoyable because it allows them to be armchair generals and admirals for a few hours, and by extension because it gives them the opportunity to demonstrate their skills in those roles. In other words, it gives them a chance not just to play at being armchair generals and admirals but also to show that they are great generals and admirals, which is a very satisfying thing to do if you can pull off a victory. Let’s call it the “generalship factor,” for want of a better term. (And even though I’m a naval enthusiast, let’s assume for discussion purposes that “generalship” also covers naval warfare. It’s shorter than saying “generalship and admiralty,” and anyway “admiralty” doesn’t have the same sense as “generalship.”)
This then led me to think about Rommel, who was widely regarded on both sides as being a great general. I once saw a WWII documentary which made the interesting statement that (if I can remember the line accurately) “Rommel showed that he was as dangerous an opponent in retreat as he was on the attack.” The point to be taken here is that demonstrating great generalship doesn’t necessarily depend on being on the offensive or even on being the winner (though of course those things help). A related point is that, arguably, winning a war through overwhelming material superiority doesn’t necessarily mean that the winner showed great generalship (though of course great generalship combined with overwhelming material superiority is an excellent combination). This is why, incidentally, ancient fictional accounts of wars (the Chanson de Roland being a good example) sometimes show a huge numerical disparity between the two sides, with the “good guys” being the side with the small numbers and with the “bad guys” often being described as attacking “with total disregard for their own losses.” If the good guys win despite facing overwhelming numbers, it makes their victory seem all the more impressive; if the good guys lose, then there’s no shame in being crushed by overwhelming enemy numbers.
So I’m wondering if the A&A game, in addition to its normal winning conditions, should have some sort of “generalship tracker”, roughly along the lines of the income tracker. The generalship tracker would compute in some way (either after every power has played its turn, or after a full round of play by all the powers, or both) how well each power played from a generalship point of view, and would display the results on a tracking chart. I don’t know how the computations would work, but one idea would be that having superior numbers would not earn someone any generalship points in and of itself. Fighting successfully against superior enemy numbers, on the other hand, would count positively in the generalship calculation. And fighting badly even though you have superior numbers on your own side would count negatively in the generalship calculation. (For an example of this dynamic, look at the first couple of years of the American Civil War, which saw Lee’s reputation grow every time he defeated superior Union numbers, and which saw one Union general after another fired for incompetence because they lost even though they had superior numbers.)
The point of this “generalship tracker” is that it would serve as a potential counterbalance to the conventional A&A victory conditions, which to some extent do depend on superior income and superior numbers. A player could theoretically lose the game in terms of territory but still win the game in terms of generalship. And because the tracking process would be constant, the player displaying superior generalship would get constant feedback and encouragement throughout the game, which might serve an an incentive to keep playing. Also, this would serve as a partial solution to the problem raised by YG: a player who lost but who displayed superior generalship would be able to blame (or at least would have more justification to blame) his loss on something other than his own generalship.
Suggested Topics
