Thank you! Anyways, this is a bit redundant as I have a topic discussing a massive change to make The Captain’s house rules more historically accurate:
House Rules (Think tank)
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Anyone know how to modify the map file in battlemap so you can edit the picture and have the space usable for toolpieces?
I fixed up the 1941 map, but no idea how to fix it so you can put flags on it! ARGH!
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IL, what is your definition of national morale, because the Japanese were preparing to fight to the last man, women and child
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National resolve or morale:
The people, (not the political leadership) believing in total victory and total national commitment to achieve this aim
In Japan the Bushido concept and the military leadership combined its philosophy but did not really integrate the people into any credible war economy.
For example they didn’t have the women all working in factories, nor had early war rationing, nor employed much in the way of their population working for the war efforts.
The philosophy they employed didn’t allow women to labor, and foreigners working as slave labor on Japanese goods offended the Japanese.
Latter in the war they rationed everything, but the only fanatical resolve was the soldiers themselves. At any time the emperor could remove the leadership as it did in 1944, and the people could easily fight or not fight depending on what the emperor says. Thats not indicating they had resolve in their hearts, but rather the culture of support was entirely dependent on what the emperor says. To me this is not a high level of support.
So if you said the Japanese soldier was prepared to fight to the last man i will agree, but not the people. They just do whatever the emperor says which comes from their culture.
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If a nation is willing to do whatever their emperor says, that is high national morale. production is already represented in the game. national morale should represent the willingness of a country to continue the fight. I think Japanese would have fought just as long and hard and probalby longer and harder than any of the other powers. Sure the US is a much better system to die for, but thats all the more reason to stay home, forget Europe. It is the people of horrible countries like the Soveit Union who were willing to sacrfice everything for their nation.
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If a nation is willing to do whatever their emperor says, that is high national morale. production is already represented in the game. national morale should represent the willingness of a country to continue the fight. I think Japanese would have fought just as long and hard and probably longer and harder than any of the other powers. Sure the US is a much better system to die for, but thats all the more reason to stay home, forget Europe. It is the people of horrible countries like the Soviet Union who were willing to sacrifice everything for their nation.
The Japanese surrendered ( actually the emperor surrendered) after dropping the A-bombs
Japan surrenderd and didn’t even get invaded… thats not much for national resolve. Basically make the emperor feel bad and give him a bad hair day, and japan folds… thats not what USA would have done.
Japan would have to basically march from Los Angeles to Washington DC to force FDR to surrender.
Hitler would not surrender if he remained alive. Thats a fact., same with Churchill and Stalin
Japan had the resolve to sacrifice her soldiers to die, but when it came to the people dying… the emperor had enough.
In Hitlers and Stalin’s case they would better let everybody die fighting till the bitter end, but its less clear with Stalin because he asked for peace in Oct 41 ( secretly of course) and Hitler refused.
Any way the general pattern remains remarkably similar to the IPC levels and perhaps its a measure of assesment:
the national leader can compare his position like you may compare your position playing your nation and knowing fully well, your potential is only as good as the production of war goods to sustain the war. If its really small its easy to see your position as hopeless.
Take the poker analogy: the short stack player knows the players with more cash can bully the pots and poor players get pushed around knowing w/o the chips they have little chance to win.
This was the Italians take on the war, Duce knew he was not prepared till 43, but sided with adolf in 1940 because he figured the war was won when france fell.
Japanese strategy was nothing more than: “we are prepared to blow up the US pacific fleet and HOPE the USA will leave us Japanese alone because to fight us would not be worth it because USA has no claims in Asia. But if USA decided to try to kill us it would be unavoidable, so we are gambling on one good slug against Hawaii, so we gain a temporary advantage”
This is not the strategy of a nation with great resolve. its like a gamble in a point in time for Japan. Thus Japan didnt really believe it was better and could win, but only a chance to win. Germany believed it would win, as UK and USA
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I am not saying the US would surrender, I am saying that Americans in World War Two didnt have the gut for millions of caualties, their would have been an armistice or something besides unconditional surrender
And it wasn’t that the emperor was having a bad day, the Americans had been fire bombing Japan for awhile before they dropped the two A-bombs. Saying Japan had poor national morale becasue they surrendered when two of their cities disappeared is like saying someone is a bad swimmer becasue they lost to Michael Phelps.
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The Allies firebombed Dresden and other German cities and the Germans didn’t surrender. The Germans lost many more people in these raids over the years and they didn’t surrender. Two cities that were not really military targets got killed and Japan surrendered in a few days. Germany had to be invaded and occupied completely, while the Emperor loses 200,000 people die and no allies set foot in japan…. and they surrender.
Even after Hitler dies, the Germans fight for 2 weeks. The emperor has breakfast, surrenders and by afternoon hes drinking tea and the people receive the Missouri with open arms. That is not the sign of “fighting to the death” only a week before.
In addition: Japanese military planners knew precisely that the entire undertaking against the American people was a gambit of sorts and it would take a miricle to win. But it was a desperate gamble calculated based on that point in time. Even the war leader of the navy Yamamoto only believed that within 6 months the Japanese power would be eclipsed and japan would be doomed.
So lastly, your only left with 2 models to represent the national resolve:
IPC- which indicates conquests
or
Victory Cities- which additional centers need to be added to the map to make it even reasonable to work with, because the one listed on the map were only designed for game balance and very limited political objectives or economic centers.
I think w/o having to mark up the game map its easier to indicate the accumulation of Morale points based on the conquest of territories indicated by IPC.
What idea you have that may model this more accurately?
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First I think alot of people would disagree with you besides me.
Second even in Japan and the Soveit Union had weak “national morale” you are still discounting the effect caualties have.
You must agree that Americans could not have had the will to fight if it took millions of their dead soldeirs to do it. Dosen’t that show week morale when compared to the millions of Soveits and Japanese killed. and how about the Japanese soldeirs we kept finding in pacific who thought the war was still going up until the 70s. The Japanese people had never heard the Emperoprs voice until he announced their surrender on the radio. He was God. Surrender was the ultimate shame for them, if the emperor had not told them to do it, their would have been unbeleivable bloodshed on both sides
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I must say that if the Japanese attack on pearl had destroyed the American Carriers (which at the time were on practice runs in the South pacific) then that would have been one more card out of FDRs hand,as well if the Battlewagons that were sunk in the harbour could not be resurfaced then the odds for japanese victory would have been greater.
With out the carriers the battle of Midway would prolly not have taken place which means the Japanese would still have all of theres.
just my 2bits
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i have been working on an idea for the use of an event card deck in the game,
at the beginning of a round, a player would draw a card from the event deck, could be a 100 card deck, with event’s ranging from, diplomacy card’s, oil supply shortage, i.e only half of the force’s attack from one of your territories , national uncertainty, a patriotism card that could get free infantry, spy card’s, and severe weather card’s
there would be about 10-15 event’s, and some non-event card’s
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You must agree that Americans could not have had the will to fight if it took millions of their dead soldiers to do it. Doesn’t that show week morale when compared to the millions of Soviets and Japanese killed.
Your talking about soldiers and we are talking about what the average people thought about how they helped their nation win the war by various means and how they accepted or did not accept defeat.
and how about the Japanese soldeirs we kept finding in pacific who thought the war was still going up until the 70s.
The japanese SOLDIERS were the most tenacious, while the Japanese average citizen was not. I am only talking about national resolve or morale being the population and not the army.
The Japanese people had never heard the Emperors voice until he announced their surrender on the radio. He was God. Surrender was the ultimate shame for them, if the emperor had not told them to do it, their would have been unbelievable bloodshed on both sides
That demonstrates that the population just follows what its told and the military controls the decisions. So the population wasn’t not involved in the war effort or would fight to the death because they were not down with Bushido, but just living day to day. Even the top military didn’t believe in victory, but kept fighting in the hope that the Giant American arsenal would tire of fighting a little fish across the pacific.
If the japanese invaded California and FDR said “we surrender”, the American people would never surrender and fight on
If the a bomb got dropped on Germany, Hitler would say “thanks for helping Minister Speer on his scorched Earth policy”
If the same got dropped on Russia, Stalin would say “well we still got people left…keep fighting”
If the British got a bomb dropping, they would flee to Canada or somewhere and continue the fight
If Il Duce saw the bomber coming her would surrender as soon as he found out it was on its way, or the king would fire him like he did, effectually ending his rule.
But if the Emperor said “hey i had enough” the japanese people would welcome the Missouri in Tokyo Bay. If the Japanese had any resolve they would have made trouble in the post war period. Instead they took up baseball and made plastic toys for the next 25 years till the automotive industry got retooled.
Anyway as far as the solution i now favor this:
+1 Morale if you capture a territory that was not your original territory
-2 if you lose an original territory
-1/2 of the IPC of your capital= lost morale points if you lose your capital… London=4 lost morale points, Berlin=5 lost morale pointstotal IPC divide by 10= accrued points ( remember the IPC is manpower to produce the war materials) if the people are not actively supporting the production of industry by building tanks and planes, then they are not making the required sacrifice ( hence morale)
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i have been working on an idea for the use of an event card deck in the game,
at the beginning of a round, a player would draw a card from the event deck, could be a 100 card deck, with event’s ranging from, diplomacy card’s, oil supply shortage, i.e only half of the force’s attack from one of your territories , national uncertainty, a patriotism card that could get free infantry, spy card’s, and severe weather card’s
there would be about 10-15 event’s, and some non-event card’s
you should make these and post.
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yeah, it could take a few day’s,
when i am sure that they are balanced i can post them
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Look into the deck that comes from Fortress America (same game designer I believe). You obviously can’t use EVERYTHING there, but it should give you some ideas.
Also, if you make some of the cards weaker in power than others, you can put more copies of them into the deck to balance out the power of some of the bigger ideas.
For instance, if you have a card that says “Recruiting exceeds Quotas this year: Add 1 Infantry to any territory you own” you could technically have 30 of them and not unbalance the deck.
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yeah thank’s, here are the card’s,
i did not make template’s for them yet, there are 145 card’s, 85 event’s, 60 non event’s,
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event card’s
severe winter ( russia, x 3, europe, x 1, china, x 1, canada, x 2, u.s. x 1, )
armor and artillery unit’s that attack a territory -1, infantry attack at half, 2 hit’s = 1 hit, fighter’s and bomber’s - 1, for one full round of play,
oil supply shortage ( x 5 )
unit’s move at -1, infantry and artillery, not affected, long range aircraft -2
spy card ( x 9 )
you may hold this card for one full round, after an opponent makes their combat move you may move any number of your unit’s from one territory to any other within range
at a cost of 1 i.p.c for every 5 unit’s
steel shortage ( x 5 )
you may spend no more than half of your i.p.c. on armor, sea unit’s, air unit’s, for this round,
national uncertainty ( x 10 )
roll 1 dice, spend that number of i.p.c.
blitz attack ( x 4 )
play this card on any round, you may conduct one round of un-contested combat in one territory that you attack
recruiting exceed’s quota ( x 10 )
you may place up to 3 infantry at a cost of 1 i.p.c.
neutral diplomacy ( x 15 )
choose a neutral nation, roll 1 dice, 4-6 the neutral nation agree’s to give you half their i.p.c. value, rounded up, every round
high sea’s ( x 15 )
place a token on the stated s.z. movement cost’s double into, out of, or through that s.z.
technological breakthrough ( x 4 )
roll 2 free tech dice
non event card’s ( x 60 )
thats just 10 ideas… way too many copies of the same idea… dont you think people will get bored of the same idea coming up again and again???
Id have at least 40 unique ideas, before repeats.
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the point of these card’s are to add an element of random strategy and fortune, good or bad,
with a deck of 40 different event card’s, and 40 different modifier’s, it could be difficult to keep track of each card and to remember the card’s that are in play,
i do not plan to use any more than 15 different event card’s, -
“Major Airlift” You may move one factory up to 2 spaces
“Holiday” all soldiers (infantry) defend on a 3 until your next turn
“President/Prime Minister Dies” All infantry defend on a 1
“Minor Airlift” If you have paratroopers, you may transport 1 infantry and 1 armor as per normal paratrooper rules, this card may be held
“Sand Storm” Any mechanized unit in the middle east is grounded (Egypt, Sudan, Jordan, Persia) No air unit or mechanized unit may drive into or out of these zones
“Hurricane” All ships in the Atlantic cannot move this turn
“Typhoon” All ships in the Pacific cannot move this turn
“Atomic Warhead” Drop from bomber, half of all units in that territory are destroyed (this card can only be played once and is immediately removed from the deck until the next game once used.) Your bomber is subject to AA Gun fire per normal rules.
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Well can we get some historical examples? I always admire ideas, but these are kinda generic (like they can be used also for an Iraq war) or “insert blank”
I will help you with graphics if you do a good job.
If everybody just posts like 10 great ideas, in 6 posts we could have something good.
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Germany
Berlin
Paris
WarsawUSSR
Moscow
Leningrad
StalingradJapan
Tokyo
ShanghaiUK
London
Ottawa
Calcutta
Hong Kong
SydneyItaly
RomeUSA
Washington
San Francisco
Manila
Honolulunow then… rank these cities for their value to national morale. Remember: the national morale of the nation that originally owns them.
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