Hello all.

It took some time but I finally came up with my guide to house rules and variants for AAA1914.

Unofficial-AAA1914-House-Rules-Variants.pdf

This guide contains a number of ideas for players to tweak their game in order to make it more fun and more replayable.

A series of successful unit value changes as well as a new set of major overhauls for the existing units.
A series of possible new units to add to the game.
And, for the most dedicated players, a series of 15 scenarios and variants, ranging from game mechanic changes to new starting conditions to geopolitical shifts that depict a series of interesting “what if” scenarios. From simple additions to complex ones, you’ll be guaranteed to find something that tickles your fancy for the next time you decide to square off with your friends in an epic battle for world domination !

@nolimit
Lmao! 🤪🎲

I should also add that for a “bid”, we give the US “improved shipyards” and that seems to balance things out.

Yeah that makes sense

@doomer1940 I agree with you I’m working on fixing it

Research is super fun, but can seriously unbalance the game if a player gets lucky with their first couple rolls. Therefore, we play that the player chooses which tech to research, however better techs have a lower chance of being successfully researched.

The mechanism of researching is the same, you buy research tokens (dice rolls), roll for success, if none hit the tokens are banked for next turn and can roll again at no cost, if successful the tech is gained and the tokens are removed and must be rebought to do more research . The cost of each token (die roll) is increased to 8 IPC (normally is 5). But, tier 1 techs will be successfully researched with a roll of 3 or lower, tier 2 with roll of 2 or lower, and tier 3 with roll of 1:

(3/6 chance) 1. adv artillery, inc factory prod . || mech infantry, war bonds
(2/6 chance) 2. long-range aircraft, radar . . . . || paratroopers, rockets
(1/6 chance) 3. heavy bombers, super subs . . || jet fighters, improved shipyards

To balance out how multiple techs are gained, we separated complimentary tech into opposing groups to prevent them from easily being researched too quickly back-back and becoming OP. To research a tier 2 or 3 tech at least one tech from the tier below must be already obtained from WITHIN the branch. Note, the techs are separated into left and right branches.

So to get heavy bombers (left, tier 3), you could research adv artillery or factory prod (left, tier 1) then radar or long-range air (left, tier 2). Then, to get jet fighters (right, tier 3), you’d have to also research 2 corresponding lower tier techs in the right branch, because adv artillery/radar/etc. don’t count towards the necessary lower tier techs for the right branch.

Thoughts?

@ everyone

After thinking about this on and off for months I have come up with an idea that introduces zero new components!

No changing costs or stats. Instead change the casualties.

When picking casualties, you cannot pick the same unit type 3 times in a row. So instead of killing 3 inf you would kill 2 and the 3rd would have to be something else. And if no other units are left then u kill 2 inf on the 3rd hit every 3rd hit

These house rules are meant to make the game more realistic while staying as simple as possible.

Battleships cost 14 IPCs. They cost 1 IPC to repair.

Switzerland has an IPC value of 4.

The U.K. can only produce up to 4 units per turn in India. If India is captured by the Central Powers, the Central Powers cannot produce units there.

If a capital is captured, the IPCs are discarded and not taken by the capturing power.

Neutral territories that are not home territories still get units if invaded.

Sea units, except submarines, must end their movement when they enter a sea zone with enemy mines.

Units that retreat from a contested territory cannot move into another contested territory. They may move into any adjacent friendly territory.

There is a combat move and a non-combat move. During the combat move, units can move into neutral, contested, and enemy territories. The non-combat move comes after combat. During the non-combat move, units that did not move during the combat move and did not conduct combat can move into friendly territories. Land units can move an unlimited number of territories during the non-combat move within their original territories.

Optional Manpower Rule

Keep track of the infantry that are destroyed for each power. If a power has had 2x the number of their infantry destroyed as their starting IPC value (rounded up), they may only collect half of the total IPC value of their territories when they collect income (rounded up). If a power has had 4x the number of their infantry destroyed as their starting IPC value (rounded up), they may only collect the IPC value of their capital territory when they collect income.

Tech/Spying revamp: Breakthroughs

Coming back to this, the 2nd half of my previous house rule thread outlines what I call the “breakthrough” system; this replaces both the spying and technology phases.

Each nation can make a number of free breakthrough rolls equal to:

the number of free tech rolls they get, under the baseline rules + the maximum number of spies they can have on the board at a time, under the baseline rules

This gives us the following numbers:

USSR: 3 WE: 1 UK: 1 US: 2

Each nation may also purchase a number of additional breakthrough rolls on their turn, up to the number of free breakthroughs roll they can make; the cost of an additional breakthrough roll is equal to the cost of an infantry, for that nation (2 for USSR, or 3 for any of the NATO powers.) Being that E&W is fundamentally still an IPM game, this is intended to make purchasing breakthroughs competitive with purchasing infantry.

Breakthrough results:
on a roll of 1, you may do one of the following:

gain a diplomatic success at a neutral alliance (OAS, Arab League, or China) gain a full step in one technology tree

on a roll of 2, you may do one of the following:

gain a diplomatic success at any minor/independent neutral gain a half-step in one technology tree

You may only apply one breakthrough to any tech tree, per turn.

Optional rules:

The USSR may use a 2 to influence China (revised NATO tech sharing) If a NATO partner uses a 1 to gain a technological advancement, both other NATO partners may each gain a half-step in that same tech tree. This is still not allowed for the nuclear weapons tech tree. (revised USSR counter-intelligence) The USSR may make one free counter-intelligence roll on their turn; if the result is a 1 or 2, this roll can be used to foil a matching NATO breakthrough on the same round, only. The USSR may also purchase 1 additional counter-intelligence breakthrough on each of their turns.

These optional rules combined, would in theory make it easier for the USSR to keep China in the fold, since it also encourages NATO to use their 1s on technology rather than diplomacy.

Essentially, I’ve come to the conclusion lately that nuclear tech is supremely important for the USSR, and the only viable NATO counter is diplomacy. The problem is that the USSR gets free tech rolls AND free rolls to foil NATO’s spies (i.e. their attempts at diplomacy.) In my opinion, this is where the late-game imbalance lies, and short of just completely removing tech/spying from the game (or imposing nerfs on the USSR) the only other real fix is to move towards something where all sides can make any type of rolls they want (i.e. in the base game, US having a free tech roll when they really need a free diplomacy roll, IMO.) Allowing for more rolls overall, should also decrease the randomness by flattening the bell curve. It’s also just fun (in my experience) to get to see more techs in play by more countries, and more neutrals getting active – and allowing that to play into your strategies more reliably.

@barnee re: testing

Since the Axis each have a starting income that is divisible by 3, originally I had the mechanics for merging theatres as a function of the Axis country either increasing their income by 2/3rds more than their starting income, or decreasing it by 1/3rd less than their starting income. (Which sort of dovetails into the “2 out of 3” rule for Victory Cities.)

This effectively worked out to:
Germany: +14/-7
Italy: +8/-4
Japan: +10/-5

Changing it to a uniform +10/-5 made the math a little bit more intuitive, but it also means the USSR doesn’t have to get beat up so much (down half their income, possibly even losing their capitol) before the US/UK are able to jump in and help.

In terms of territorial gains/losses, this typically works out like…
+10 Germany = Karelia, Ukraine, Caucasus, Persia
-5 Germany = Finland/Norway, Eastern Europe

+10 Italy = all of Africa, plus Brazil or Eastern Canada
-5 Italy = all of Africa (except for one territory), or losing Southern Europe

+10 Japan = all Chinese territories, plus India or Philippines
-5 Japan = Indochina/Burma, Manchuria

So, Italy probably has the toughest time (as one might expect) but none of these scenarios are completely out of the realm of possibility.

Updated. Simplified the rules more.