Thanks for the feedback.
- Well, we couldn’t decide that either. 5 IPCs isn’t really that much, but it can certainly bite into your budget. We found that Germany, France and Britain would usually spend 5 IPCs per turn + the regular free one they got, as the norm, for two dice. Once more money started coming in (especially for Germany) then they started spending 10 to 15 IPCs plus the freebie, so 3 to 4 dice per turn. They ended up getting four technologies pretty quickly and started moving on to the 2nd Tier (because the rules state that once four tier 1 techs are obstained then tier 2 is also 5 IPCs). The game ended shortly afterwards though because of time constraints. At one point Britain was getting enough money and everyone else was doing all the nasty business of dying, that they were able to skip to some tier 2 dice. Of course luck determines whether that is a waste of money or not. :|
That said, I did write down a note for 3 IPCs/die for tier 1 chart, and 6 IPCs/die for tier 2 tech. We haven’t tried that yet though. 5 IPCs/die is the Global 1940 standard, but I think on average there seems to be much more income in that game so yeah, it might need to be less. Please experiment and let me know if 3/6 is better. Another idea though was to give 2 free 5 IPC dice to those nations mentioned in the rules, instead of 1. Lots of options here.
Also, keep in mind that Tier 2 is supposed to be 2x expensive to make it more of a gamble, and to have it mostly be a sort of progression, so that it isn’t likely that someone will end up with Assault Infantry, Rolling Barrages and tanks until later on (and when they do, they will probably just have just two of these tier 2 techs, which was intentional).
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You mentioned that you have to research ALL tier 1 before going to tier 2 but that is incorrect. The rules state you have to have 4 of 6 before all tier 2 dice become 5 IPCs. That said, perhaps instead of 4 of 6 it should be 3 of 6 like you mention. Interesting, this is the same number that I mentioned above that we cannot decide on our research dice. Perhaps 3 and 6 are magic numbers for both cases. I will consider that in our next play.
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Hmm, try that out and see if you like it that way. We played it as says (1 free infantry per 5), and it wasn’t bad since everyone usually seems to buy 5 infantry at a time anyway. I just wanted to be cautious about overloading Africa – in the game we just played it felt just right, but perhaps it influenced an infantry centric game because of that. The Germans were placing the free troops in East Africa and the British were moving troops from India to deal with them. The French were also putting their colonials in Africa as well and it was pretty tense at times. Eventually, maybe turn 6 or so, the Germans were eradicated, but it took some effort.
So yes, I might try it as 3 : 1 next time and see how that works.
- Yes indeed. The reason for this is the historical movement of German troops through Austria-Hungary. This happened at least four of five times. Once when Austria-Hungary couldn’t deal with Serbia (1915). Again when Romania was invaded and conquered (1916, von Mackensen’s lighting campaign). Again when the Germans sent any army to help the Austrians in Galicia offensives (actual several times here I think) and again when the Germans sent an army to help with Italy in 1917 or 1918 – I don’t recall exactly. Of course the Germans also sent some units to help the Ottomans as well. Given how the game works, it would take about 5 or 6 or more turns to get to any of these places, so this just simply isn’t practical nor possible.
Also, the idea is that a nation can basically send a contingent of troops on a one way trip to assist, because they can’t quickly move back to their homeland the same way (which provides a realistic penalty – since that is more or less how it all worked; the trains had to be specifically assigned and organized to the task, away from their normal mobilization and supply duties).
Now the question here for me was, the rail movement limit of 5 units was really just a number pulled out of a hat. I didn’t want it to be too high or too low, but it could have very well been 6 or 8 units also. I may change that, but 5 seemed to work well in our game.
Thanks again for the info. Tinker with it and see if any good or bad comes from it and let me know. I will do the same and report back after our next game. :)