Hey YG, I know you have put the City Objective idea on the back burner, but if you get a chance to try it out I would love to hear any feedback from your playgroup. I am using Halifax with my buddy Tony on monday, and we are adopting the scheme you initially proposed with the VCs at 5 and Capitals at 10. I have been playing solitaires today in preparation (resetting at round three, just to tease out openings.)
In our game we have decided not to restrict the City bonus only to “Nations at war.” Simple rule, control of the City awards the set bonus, regardless of the political situation. I let my friend make the call on this, and he said he didn’t want to play another game “where Russia gets slammed, and USA is a broke joke”, so that was my solution. :-D
We are keeping the DoW with the Mongolia rule in effect for Japan/Russia (the first one to attack the other, activates Mongolia for the enemy, but this has no effect on City Objective money). So in this situation Russia collects +20, USA +20 (or more), right from the outset. I can honestly say just looking at the solitaires, that this is the most fun I’ve had playing myself in a while ;)
This is considerably more money to the Allies than under some other schemes proposed, but to be frank, I think its not unreasonable at all.
Commonwealth including South Africa and S.W. Africa. and the balance seemed to definitely improve the Allies’ standing. Going to try this Face to Face on Monday.
Anyway, I don’t know how much interest there is on the City Objectives for Halifax, but I think its going to be a lot of fun.
To the last post, Essex Class carriers sound cool. For me, basic unit parity at the start is important though. Some players I’ve gamed with in the past, believe that National units should have different values and different costs in A&A games. I suppose if its going to work anywhere, it would work with G40 players. But I prefer when all unit types basically behave the same way at the outset, so you can see the comparative strength of all players at a glance (without having to memorize an independent unit roster for each Nation.) When unit values or costs do get changed, I always like it better when this is handled through some kind of Technology or standard Upgrade mechanism (something that could be available to all players). Even if it ends up being a “Free tech” awarded to just one Nation at the outset. So that might be something to think about.
Just out of curiosity, why round 3 for the Soviet Union? As opposed to say round 2 or 4?
I’m not opposed. But just to illustrate a point, in more general terms, one thing I don’t really like is when the game pretends that there is a fixed timeline in A&A beyond the “start year”, or proposes some “real” correspondence between game rounds and actual time months/seasons/years etc.
Why place restrictions on the sort of Narrative players can create? Beyond the “Start Date”, I prefer to imagine my own story about what’s going on with my games, or where exactly we are in the World War II timeline at any given point. Seems to me that when you fix a DoW by round, its like saying “OK by round 3 we’re definitely in 1941.”
I guess I just find the DoW weird and annoying in general. Introducing a whole complex layer of politics to achieve a fairly narrow gameplay outcome. I suppose my question on that issue is, wouldn’t it make more sense to just pick a round and say, “by this round all nations may declare war”? Just seems kind of curious to have one restricted to round 3, but another to round 4. Well anyway, I’ll leave that to people who find the DoW entertaining. My goal would be to find a way to get rid of DoW completely, while still preserving the same essential feel of a 1940 start but leading immediately into a total war situation as quickly as possible (where all players behave according to the same essential rules for movement, combat, and all the rest.) To DoW just seems like overburdened artifice, which is only there to restrict what the US/Russian player can do. I mean before DoW, we had a simple restricted opening in Classic that seemed to work reasonably well to a similar end, and it didn’t have all this complex baggage that influences the game beyond the first round.
Again, for those who do favor the current system, I’d much rather have the Russians able to DoW in Europe in round 3 as you suggest, rather than no DoW at all, (or no activity until London falls.) I guess I just really don’t like the DoW in general, as I don’t find that it adds very much to the gameplay for the all complexity it introduces into the game. Alas
Had it been Europe and Pacific 1941, combined for G41, the integration would have been so much smoother, but I guess that ship sailed a long time ago.
All that said, I like where you’re headed with this thing. Can’t wait to hear the after action reports after the weekend.
Have fun dude :-D