• Sponsor

    Hey Black Elk, are those screen shots of some kind of triple A game with modifications to play Halifax rules? Forgive my ignorance to the online gaming portion of this website.

  • Sponsor

    Quote from Black Elk…
    Also, to Young Grasshopper: There is a fighter in Ontario added to the setup, correct? I know you’re probably used to playing with it by now, but it’s not in the setup modifications section of the original post. Neither is all Major ICs (except India) becoming Industrial Complexes, but that’s more intuitive

    I added a fighter to Ontario as part of my own Halifax expasion, but removed it from the Generic rules posted in the first reply of this thread. The reason being is that the Generic Halifax rules should only contain modifications absolutly necessary for the game mechanics to play a single UK economy, the new Commonwealth, and the new Production units. Therefore, the added fighter in Ontario is a personal preference and belongs in my own Halifax expansion rather than the Generic rules. I believe that the setup modification to replace all minor ICs with major factories is mentioned.

    Cheers.


  • #houserules

  • Sponsor

    Halifax Rules are now at…

    +21

  • Sponsor

    After a game we had on the weekend in which two players suggested that Halifax Rules may be hurting the Allies chances to win, I added some optional national objectives to the first post of this thread which I recommend for balance.

  • '17 '16

    @Imperious:

    #houserules

    Please do not put this jewel into the wormhole vortex of Houserules.:cry:
    At least, keep it stickied amongst the first threads of Houserules’ forum.
    Thanks,

  • Customizer

    Congrats on the sticky for all of you folks who worked on this! I haven’t played this as I am teaching new players the OOB Basics right now, but I think this maybe something that’s going to be good down the road.

  • 2024 '22 '21 '19 '15 '14

    Oh fantastic!  I was wondering where this thread had gone, now I see it got a sticky! Genius.

    Oh colonelcarter, great work! I was really hoping someone would put that file together,  since I’ve been so busy with my day job lately. This is great! Now we can play for real!

    To YG, that’s correct dude, Halifax is now playable on tripleA. :)

    I would definitely encourage everyone to check it out and gather some hard data from playtesting. Especially as regards things like balance by sides (allied advantage, disadvantage etc.) Often times the anecdotal experience of players in a face to face game can seem very compelling,  but it can just as easily lead to over compensation. I would suggest that right now we are no where near enough games played to determine the overall balance of the set up. This requires at bare minimum at least 100 games played, at a reasonably high level of skill, before I would start suggesting set up alterations. This is because each alteration requires a pretty strong control group of tests to measure against, so we can see how alterations are affecting things. I’m excited that we now have a legit gamefile for these purposes.  It will speed us along considerably :)

    Again great work guys!


  • I do not like the NO’s being given to the UK and US for strategic bombing. Feels forced.

    I also don’t like the taking away of the USSR communism bonus, when you could have just changed it to make sense rather than abolish it. This would be changing it to “+3 IPCs for control of any orginal Axis, Pro-axis, or Neutral territory with a printed IPC value of ‘1’ or more”. So no more world tours for soviet troops to get that 3 ipcs for Sardinia etc.

  • Sponsor

    @oztea:

    I do not like the NO’s being given to the UK and US for strategic bombing. Feels forced.

    These are optional, not required to play the Halifax Rule set.

    @oztea:

    I also don’t like the taking away of the USSR communism bonus, when you could have just changed it to make sense rather than abolish it. This would be changing it to “+3 IPCs for control of any orginal Axis, Pro-axis, or Neutral territory with a printed IPC value of ‘1’ or more”. So no more world tours for soviet troops to get that 3 ipcs for Sardinia etc.

    The Communist bonus has not been removed, the National Pride has been split into two… and that is also optional.


  • YGH, you got my thumb up as well. I just noticed this topic now, and I really like the commonwealth setup idea. I will try to bring this to my gamegroup.

    PS: If I were to make an houserule to the game, I’d change the mediterranean sea zones, add few zones in order to make it so that Italy and UK can’t attack in 1 move gibraltar/italy/egypt. Just because the mediterranean battle is terribly one-sided. Either Italy is annihilated or it dominates. I’d like a more balanced approach.

  • Sponsor

    I have removed the following national objective suggestions as to keep the base Halifax Rules pure, however, in our playtest games we have found that extra national objectives are necessary for balance.

    The following are optional national objectives recommended for balance:

    United Kingdom

    3 IPCs if the United Kingdom has conducted a successful SBR on a German production facility this round
    3 IPCs if the Allies (not including Dutch) control Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and Celebes

    Germany

    5 IPCs if Germany controls London

    Soviet Union

    Remove the Russian national objective “National Prestige” and use the following two NOs instead:

    5 IPCs If the Allies control Archangel, and there are no Axis warships in sea zone 125
    5 IPCs If there are no Allied units on any original Soviet Union territories

    Japan

    5 IPCs If Japan controls all original Chinese territories

    United States

    3 IPCs If the United States has conducted a successful SBR on a German production facility this round
    3 IPCs If the Allies (not including Dutch) control Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and Celebes

    China

    Modify the Chinese national objective “Burma Road” to the following:

    2 Free artillery units if the Allies control all territories connecting the Burma road

    Setup Modifications

    • The major industrial complex in India now becomes a major factory
    • All minor industrial complexes now become major factories
  • 2024 '22 '21 '19 '15 '14

    @ColonelCarter:

    @Black_Elk:

    Next step for us would be to make the full xml gamefile (rather than just an edited saved game), with the full faction name Commonwealth, a chosen color for territories and units, and a Roundel. A new gamefile is also necessary to get all 3 production facility types available. But until then you can still play around with the savegame if you like, just load it into your saved game folder in tripleA to see the core changes under Halifax.

    Wait no longer! I made a gamefile for both Option 1 and 2 Halifax rules. It’s just ANZAC colored for now, but that is a simple change if a general consensus prefers a different color. TripleA even comes with a Commonwealth Roundel in the default game files, so that choice was simple. The only new rules that must be player enforced are the restriction on building units costing more than 10 from minor factories, as well as the Commonwealth having two capitals. (I just made Ottowa the Commonwealth capital, because how often does it really get taken?)

    Here is a mediafire link since the forum won’t allow attachment of this size:

    http://www.mediafire.com/download/fp2z76r282ukq8d/World_War_II_Global.zip

    Note to Users: I highly recommend saving a backup of the original World War II Global.zip file somewhere so you have something to restore to if something somehow goes wrong in the transfer. Other than that, all you have to do is replace the normal .zip file with the one linked and the maps should show up in your game list the next time you start TripleA.

    Also, to Young Grasshopper: There is a fighter in Ontario added to the setup, correct? I know you’re probably used to playing with it by now, but it’s not in the setup modifications section of the original post. Neither is all Major ICs (except India) becoming Industrial Complexes, but that’s more intuitive.

    And, some pics of the new game.

    I wanted to thank ColonelCarter again for putting these gamefiles together.

    I have asked Veq to review it and to consider adding the Halifax mod to the next build of tripleA. But for the time being this gamefile works as an alternative, just be sure to save your G40 gamefiles under a different name for backup purposes ex. “World War II Global Original” or something along those lines, before you add the new gamefiles to your mapfolder. Also, if you do not use a Mac, you may find some of the files in Carters zip redundant. This may require you to unzip the file after download to get at the necessary materials.

    The only request I made in addition to including this stuff in tripleA, is a way to make National Obectives for G40 optional. Right now they are part of the game, which means they are counted and added in automatically. For my purposes this is kind of annoying since I really don’t like National Objectives, and my game group does not use them in G40. But other than that, this gamefile at least provides a functional way to play Halifax in tripleA. I have to admit, I rather wish the names of option 1 and 2 were reversed, since I much prefer the latter, and I think it definitely makes a difference on game balance, but that’s not so big a deal. I would say however, that we should probably try to settle on which variants of this ruleset we really want to playtest in earnest, especially if Veq puts it up on tripleA. Its all well and good to have many options, and a bunch of specialized versions of the ruleset if you play Face to Face, but for the purposes of playtesting with TripleA it would be nice to fully explore one set up, before altering the conditions.

  • 2024 '22 '21 '19 '15 '14

    Why test Halifax using TripleA?

    Basically because I don’t trust anecdotal evidence when it comes to Axis and Allies anymore. Especially when the issue concerns overall set-up and game balance. Before making a serious judgment about anything, I would want to see hard data, and the only data that is reliable for me right now is the data gathered during TripleA playtesting. Why?

    Well, essentially what it comes down to is a complete lack of confidence, on my part, in the playtesting methods used for the Official A&A Games. Put simply, I am not convinced that the OOB games are being properly playtested before they are released.

    I regard pretty much all playtesting evidence from Face to Face games as anecdotal. That’s not to say its irrelevant or that its not useful in other ways, but when it comes to actually breaking the set-up and finding out where it tilts one way or the other on balance, the issue is quantity as much as quality. An FtF game can still be a lot of fun and tell you whether a game can be entertaining, even a hopelessly unbalanced one, but they are also harder to organize. It takes longer to play FtF, and when you are playing everything happens in tunnel vision. You can’t step outside the game to really analyse a specific roll, or see why such and such a buy went wrong, or how exactly a single battle in the second round altered the course of everything. Because then your turn comes up and you have to roll, and who has time for all that analysis when the rolls are up? While you are inside the game, its the play that’s important, and the analysis often falls by the wayside. Even for people who write things down, and who approach it more analytically, while the game is going on its the flow that captures all the attention. That’s cool when you’re playing the game, but not as much for trying to parse it out and scrutinize it for balance. Here’s the hitch with FtF…

    Not only is there no way to confirm that a game was actually played (unless you witness it firsthand), but there is also no strong way to verify or track what actually happened in that game, after the fact. Even with a really dedicated group of playtesters, taking diligent notes, with video or photographs, even then, the best FtF playtesters still can’t give us the level of detail that tripleA testing can, not at anything like the same speed at any rate.  In tripleA each phase, of each turn, of each game round is tracked, and recorded in the game history.

    This makes it possible to review each test game, to go back and look at what actually happened in exacting detail. So for example, if I tell you “The Axis are unstoppable for reasons X, Y, or Z!” or “The Allies always do A, B, and C!” you don’t have to take my word for it. You can actually go back and look at the gamesave, check the history and see for yourself. It would be impossible to overstate how valuable this is from a playtesting perspective. Not only can you track everything and review it after the fact, but you can also view critical statistics at a glance for every round of gameplay. You can check the odds on every first round battle, both under normal Dice and Low Luck conditions, and you can verify whether the game is actually being played at a high level of skill, (e.g. whether the buys and battles are expert, or middling, or beginner.) What’s more, you can test how any potential future set up change will effect the first round odds on any given battle or strat. And on top of all this, you can dramatically increase the number of games playtested in a given amount of time.

    I have been trying since 2004 to persuade Larry and others of the merits of going digital for playtesting, using a platform like tripleA, for all the reasons listed above. To my knowledge this approach has not been adopted, and the result, so far as I can see, is a series of OOB games (rather poorly balanced by sides= bids or HRS necessary for balance) being released for sale to the general public before they are fully cooked.

    I think if we are serious about creating a G40 mod that is “balanced”, then playtesting on the tripleA platform is the obvious way forward. Now that we have a gamefile for our set-up, it is time to invite our best players to try and break it against each other! If imbalances are discovered, and changes are made, at least we will have evidence to back them up. Make sense?

  • '17 '16 '15 '14 '12

    I have now read through this entire thread and the Halifax Rules are pretty awesome.  For playtesting, I wonder if you could recruit a few of the really good online players (i.e. League tier 1 or 2) to run a few scenarios online with triplea.  They would have to use edits to change Canadian units and territories to ANZAC, and respect the production limits etc. but it should still be playable.  I would volunteer to play but I’m just not a very good player; you need the heavy players to test it.

    There are a lot of unanswered questions.  First and foremost, what are the chances that Germany can do a sealion and what does UK/commonwealth need to do to prevent it (and what does sealion prevent mean for other things down the road like Taranto and the Med, flying fighters to reinforce Moscow, Middle East shenanigans, etc.).  On the other side, does India crush still work?  Is J1 DOW still playable?  What happens in China?  What happens in the Philippines?

    We are all excited to see how this one works out.  A+ YG et al.

    I wonder if there might be any interest among the heavy hitters in a HALIFAX RULES ONLINE TOURNAMENT?

  • Sponsor

    Thank you Black Elk for all the amazing work you have done in tripleA.

    I don’t mean to be a sour puss, but the 5 Halifax games we have played have all ended in pretty big Axis wins (maybe we’re not doing it right). Anyway’s, I don’t mean to throw knp under the bus (it being his mid level IC rule and all), but I’ve come up with some changes to production units that might help. We don’t need it to be a part of Halifax for our group to use it, but I would highly suggest these changes if play testing Halifax in the forum gets the same results we’ve had.

    Production Unit Profiles:

    Industrial Complex:
    Produces up to 10 units
    Maximum damage of 20
    Unoperational at 10 damage
    May never be purchased
    Immediately downgraded to a major factory once captured

    Major Factory:
    Produces up to 5 units
    Maximum damage of 10
    Unoperational at 5 damage
    May never be purchased
    Immediately downgraded to a minor factory once captured

    Minor Factory:
    Produces up to 3 units
    Maximum damage of 6
    Unoperational at 3 damage
    May be purchased at a cost of 12 IPCs
    May only be placed on territories with a victory city
    Immediately removed from the board once captured

    Production Unit Rules:

    • Only territories with production units that have been captured (not liberated) must downgrade their facility by one level.

    • Production units on territories that have been liberated must be relinquished to the territory’s original owner.

    • Nations may only purchase and place a minor factory on the board if they are at war.

    • Production units may never be upgraded under any circumstances.

    • Strategic bombers conducting SBRs only receive a +2 damage bonus if they have departed from an operational air base.

    Production Unit Setup:

    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
    Novgorod
    Volgograd
    India
    New South Wales

    Minor Factories
    Normandy
    Southern France
    Ukraine
    Union of South Africa


  • United Kingdom:

    5 IPCs if the United States are at war with the Axis powers
    5 IPCs if the Allies control Gibraltar, Egypt, India, and Malaya

    The second NO, as you worded it, works even if UK is not at war with Japan yet. I don’t like it. Now UK has like zero incentives to DOW Japan first. Especially since they will also lose the “United States are at war” untill turn4 if they do so.

    Axis can’t even negate it untill Japan conquers Malaya (A decent Allies player will never lose Gibraltar and Egypt to German/Italy before US joins the war)

    I’m not sure, I really really like the Commonwealth idea, but are we sure the “balance” problem is solved by adding 20 production IPCs in order to negate NOs to the Allies?

    I mean, having Commonwealth as a new force being able to spend all the ANZAC money in South Africa isn’t enough of a boost to make Egypt and MiddleEast now -impossible- for the Allies?

    Plus India being a lot more defendible by UK herself?

    I’d play the HALIFAX as Allies like this:

    USA commits 100% Japan
    Commonwealth commits 100% Euro
    UK 80% Euro

    I already see ANZAC can opening for USA/UK vs Italy, and I’m willing to accept it, but the economy boost?

  • Sponsor

    The UK needed different NOs to reflect a global power with a single economy, and ANZAC’s NOs are obviously obsolete with the creation of the Commonwealth. So out with the old and in with the new, and I thought the new NO’s should at least match what was possible to earn even if they were easier to achieve. With that said, the NOs were created by me alone, which is good if there are better ideas out there, because I’m very fluid when it comes to changing things for the better.

  • 2024 '22 '21 '19 '15 '14

    For TripleA…

    Hey ColonelCarter, check the last post in this thread :)
    http://tripleadev.1671093.n2.nabble.com/Hey-Veq-can-you-take-a-look-Global-Variant-with-the-Commonwealth-Dominions-tp7586439.html

    As to the questions on balance and how to achieve it, I still feel pretty strongly that all balancing should be handled through income adjustment, whether this is starting incomes, or continuous bonuses to income (via NOs or whatever) that this is preferable to unit adjustment.

    I don’t mind tweaks to the production profiles, but it would be nice to just pick something and go for it. I’m not wedded to any particular idea in this thread so much that I wouldn’t consider something else, if it served the gameplay and game balance, but first you need to know the overall conditions you’re working, before you can figure out how to balance it by sides. For example, with Halifax 1 and 2, I can already tell that these conditions are going to be different on balance. I favor Halifax 2 for creating more gameplay interest for allies, but I can see why others might not dig the African can opener. Doing 2 options for production profiles will probably produce a similar situation, where it balances differently under each. There aren’t so many people adopting these rules at present that you couldn’t change things, I just think it would be nice for the purposes of putting together a tripleA version, that we settle on whatever conditions you want to explore most, and focus on those to see how they work out.

    In general I don’t like NOs, but if players are going to use NOs, then those should be the method to achieve balance by sides. Money is more flexible than units or the map itself. The specific amounts and where they are most necessary is the trick, and this requires testing first, to see. I would suggest figuring out which NOs really you want to include in the game, and then raise or lower the values of those NOs first, before adding in new ones to the already expansive list. I’d also suggest a fairly even distribution on these and a fairly simple wording. It’d be nice to know how much money is really needed, and then engineer the NOs to fit this need, rather than adding in the NOs and money first and then backing off them later. But again to do that, need to get in more test games, which is why I think tripleA is so important.

    In my face to face games I have been using only the foundational set up adjustments for Halifax 2.
    Full Commonwealth + Unified UK and the Production profile change.

    I regard everything else as optional at this point.

    In terms of game balance, I use an alternative to the NO system, since I see the G40 NOs as too complex and encumbering for game flow and my players just don’t like them. They find NOs too inconsistent and hard to memorize. This will not be the case for everyone though, and for people who do use the NO system, then I would try to balance the game just using those. I think the problem with the way they are designed right now is in the values awarded for achieving certain objectives, and whether the actual achievability of a given objective matches the income requirements of the gameplay. For example if Allies need more, then increase the likely income awarded via NOs that can be achieved. If Axis need more then up the likely income they are awarded for NOs that can be achieved.

    If any of the most common OOB NOs are unachievable, or very unlikely to be achieved at any point, or if the values they award are too small to have an appreciable impact, then they are basically pointless and a waste of space in the rules. They should be replaced by better NOs in that case, if NOs are your thing :)

  • 2024 '22 '21 '19 '15 '14

    I propose that a new cost structure for naval units be adopted in Halifax! At the values suggested in the recent HR thread in these forums.

    Submarines 5 ipcs
    Transports 6 ipcs
    Destroyers 7 ipcs
    Cruisers 10 ipcs
    Carriers 14 ipcs
    Battleships 17 ipcs

    I believe this would yield a fun game with the Halifax rules (not least because it would allow for the Cruiser built at a minor.

    I will test this in my next Halifax game Commonwealth v2

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