Modified production units for balance

  • Sponsor

    Seems a bit complexed, anyway it’s not that important. I took out the US rule (wow, not much text for such big changes) gonna play test this as is during my next game.

  • '17 '16

    @Young:

    Seems a bit complexed, anyway it’s not that important. I took out the US rule (wow, not much text for such big changes) gonna play test this as is during my next game.

    Have fun.
    Maybe because US can now built a Factory in Hawaïan, it can start building few more units on US2 or US3 up to when Japan declares war.
    Doing this can make US more invested in PTO.
    Don’t know if it is viable somehow…


  • Well I was with you at first with UK single economy, but I think this is just getting too complicated for me now.

  • Sponsor

    @IKE:

    Well I was with you at first with UK single economy, but I think this is just getting too complicated for me now.

    The Halifax rules you are referring to remain untouched as a sticky thread in this forum, I suppose I don’t need to hitch this wagon to Halifax, so I’ll change the name of this thread in order to avoid confusion.

    Cheers.

  • 2024 '22 '21 '19 '15 '14

    The main issue I have with production in G40, is that it just seems stuck between two competing goals. On the one hand, using production restrictions as a way to achieve game balance (by side), while on the otherhand still trying to preserve the “factory” unit as a fun purchase option in the roster.

    I guess I have become a production extremist hehe. One part of me thinks, if you want people to have fun with this unit, then it should have no restrictions on placement, it should be cheap, and it should automatically be destroyed when captured.

    If on the other hand, the goal is to use this unit as the primary means of promoting game balance by side, then we should just ditch the unit from the roster altogether, set their locations from the outset, and make them a permanent feature (impossible to buy, impossible to remove.) Trying to do both things at once, always seems to go bust along one dimension or the other.

    I just haven’t been very impressed with the new factory system OOB. It tries to do too much, and I think it was ill advised to essentially detach the production capacity of the unit from its relationship to the ipcs OOB (with the exception of “only territories worth 3, or only territories worth 2 etc.”) The whole thing about island restrictions, restrictions on “original” ownership. Basically everything about the G40 production system OOB just seems kind of lazy and stubborn, introducing all these rules and special conditions, just to avoid having to raise a couple territories by a couple IPCs on the gamemap. It took the most complicated possible conception of “factories” that I could have imagined, and made that the standard. And all to avoid having a factory on Hawaii hehe. Seriously, I sometimes think the rules read the way they do, specifically to prevent the one factory that I wanted, the one that might actually have been interesting from a gameplay standpoint. The Hawaiian factory!  :-D

    I’m being a bit coy, but still, there are all these hoops we have to jump through now, when everything would have been a lot easier if we had simply retained the old factory of Revised or AA50, and just modified the IPC values on the gamemap. In the old games, there was a hard and fast rule of thumb that everyone obeyed… A factory is not worth placing on a territory with only 1 ipc of production (because in the old games, that meant only 1 unit per round.) A territory worth 2 ipcs was viable. And wouldn’t Hawaii have been interesting at 2 ipcs? But that ship sailed, and now we’re stuck with this multiple factory system, and map values that don’t work without them and which don’t balance without NOs. So I guess given all that, I’m not opposed to exploring different ways things might be done.

    In AA50 I ended up using a hard restriction on location for factories, where all VCs had a factory and no new factories could enter play beyond those. G40 doesn’t work very well with that, mainly because there are starting factories that are not on VCs, which is problematic for the wording of rules, since you’d have to state all locations in the set up change. Still it’s conceivable that you could play G40 with all factories are set from the start of the game, and no new production introduced. Eliminate all rules regarding where they can go (as this would be irrelevant, once you take them out of the purchase roster.) Then just decide where you want them, based on whatever makes the most sense from a gameplay or historical standpoint (or some compromise between the two). The advantage here, is that players no longer have to struggle with the whole calculus of new production, when and where to purchase it, how to deal with Japan steamrolling etc. All those problems are removed. You just set it at the start, and play out those conditions.

    Here you could just handle everything through a set up change, instead of a substantial rules change. Once the unit is eliminated from the purchase roster, and all locations are set, then the only thing you have to figure out is where exactly you want them to go. Don’t want to see a factory on Philippines? Then don’t have one there. Want a factory on Hawaii, just drop it from the get go. Same deal with Romania, or Western India, Cairo, or whatever. That is an example of truly hard balancing production.

    I don’t like the “no islands” rule, mainly because it is counter intuitive when you look at the board. According the definition of an “island” in A&A, which is a territory completely encompassed by a single sea zone, Japan violates the rule from the outset! Which is just silly. Either the rule should have been worded to match the map, or the map should have been changed to match the rule. But the way it is now, the two don’t agree with the board set up, which just seems weird.

  • Sponsor

    Sounds good Black Elk, here’s my twist on your idea. Change the setup of all production units, they can never be purchased however, instead of removing them, they are downgraded by 1 level.

    Here’s my setup list…

    Industrial Complexes

    Western United States
    Eastern United States
    United Kingdom
    France
    Western Germany
    Germany
    Northern Italy
    Russia
    Japan

    Major factories

    Central United States
    Quebec
    Southern Italy
    Volgograd
    India
    Kiangsu
    Kwangtung
    Philippines
    New South Wales

    Minor Factories

    Normandy
    Southern France
    Romania
    Novgorod
    Ukraine
    Union if South Africa
    Hawaiian Islands

  • Sponsor

    Actually, scrap that… I love the simplicity of building new factories on victory cities only. However, I did use your fixed setup idea for a few things and changed how factories are downgraded, checkout the changes to the profiles in post #1.


  • #houserules

  • '17 '16

    @Young:

    Actually, scrap that… I love the simplicity of building new factories on victory cities only. However, I did use your fixed setup idea for a few things and changed how factories are downgraded, checkout the changes to the profiles in post #1.

    As far as I understand, you cannot buy any Factory.
    But, is it possible to the initial owner to upgrade an IC to his former status once it has been downgraded in a Major Factory due to an earlier conquest?
    If not, then there is no need to provide the price of any Factory, this should be deleted to avoid ambiguity.

  • Sponsor

    @Baron:

    @Young:

    Actually, scrap that… I love the simplicity of building new factories on victory cities only. However, I did use your fixed setup idea for a few things and changed how factories are downgraded, checkout the changes to the profiles in post #1.

    As far as I understand, you cannot buy any Factory.
    But, is it possible to the initial owner to upgrade an IC to his former status once it has been downgraded in a Major Factory due to an earlier conquest?
    If not, then there is no need to provide the price of any Factory, this should be deleted to avoid ambiguity.

    I have since moved this topic to house rules, there you will find an updated rule discription that will answer your questions… I’m getting very excited about this idea and I’ll be making a YouTube video this weekend explaining it.

    http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=34493.0

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