The problem is production.

@Young:

I have spent a lot of thought lately about G40 production units and their rules, and I believe they grossly favor the Axis and could be the culprit behind the game’s balance issues.

This is partly behind the imbalance in my opinion. Several other factors limiting the effectiveness of the Allies in the game are:

• The game does not take into account relative populations at all. Russia had three times Germany’s population at the start of hostilities between the two nations, yet Germany is able to infinitely produce infantry if it wants to do so. Infantry was amazingly cheap for the Russians and dreadfully expensive for the Germans, yet they cost the same amount to each nation in the game.

• The game does not take into account the resources available to each power and has no logistical system. A primary motivation for both Germany and Japan, was a desire for petroleum based products. A key element in Germany’s failure in the Battle of Kursk was a dearth of petroleum-based products for the air force which prevented them from obtaining air superiority, but this is not reflected at all in the abstractions the game makes.

• The game does not take into account terrain at all, glossing over all difficulties due to terrain and weather. Fighting in Burma and India was a thick slog in actuality, but yet attacking units are not made less powerful in these circumstances. Winter in Russia was devastating for the German forces and took a serious toll on the Germans’ capability to wage mechanized war.

• The national objective system does not take into account realities encountered historically. Historically, defence of Japan itself was considered paramount and once the Doolittle raid happened Japan pulled its naval forces out of the South Pacific to protect Japan itself. Likewise, Japan historically considered the defence of Guadalcanal vital, but in game terms I have never seen Japan push out that far unless they had already won the game… (The NO system does give a sop to the logistics issue by giving Germany a boost for the Middle East and Caucasus, but that is a very crude abstraction that actually makes the Axis more powerful.)

• At the start of the war the Axis powers were already at maximum industrial production capacity, as was the UK, but the rest of the Allies were not. Several historians have noted that Churchhill and Stalin were both astonished at the amount of war material that the US planned to produce, and then the US surpassed their estimated production values. This is approximated by turning all the US factories to major when the US enters the war. What the game does not account for is that Russia also was doing massive manufacturing at the same time. The Russian air force in 1942 dwarfed the German air force.

• The big one, in my opinion, is that the game does not force Axis players to make the same mistakes that Germany made. If Germany and Japan were played each game historically, you would all be saying that the game is stacked against the Axis!

All of these are flaws based on the desire to turn a historical event into a game that can be played quickly.

(You could probably detract one of these by counterpointing that the UK forces were really not professional English soldiers but instead soldiers from various Commonwealth nations who saw themselves as being repressed by the English for economic gain by the English. India was actually considered a threat for rebellion at the outbreak of hostilities, UK forces in Hong Kong surrendered in only six days with minimal losses, and Malaysia was lost when a few thousand Japanese soldiers received the surrender of more than 140,000 UK forces in Singapore.)

Marsh

@Marshmallow:

This is partly behind the imbalance in my opinion. Several other factors limiting the effectiveness of the Allies in the game are: […]

Very good list of historical WWII elements that are either disregarded by the A&A rules or which are highly (arguably too highly) abstracted.  Another abstraction I’d add to the list are the rules which define certain countries as pro-Allied or pro-Axis neutrals, and which allow the pro side to basically take control of them.  The countries defined as pro-Allied or pro-Axis actually experienced a wide range of different situations from each other, not all of them fitting the model used in the game rules.  There’s also the rule which causes every strict neutral country in the world to go to war against any side that attacks any single strict neutral; its purposes seems to be to dissuade players from invading countries that stayed neutral in WWII without resorting to a rule that simply states flat out that “you can’t invade a strict neutral.”

The diagnosis that these issues stem from the “desire to turn a historical event into a game that can be played quickly” is fundamentally correct, in the sense that every wargame designer has to decide what balance the game will strike between realism and playability, with gains on one side often coming at the expense of the other side.  That said, the places where wargames fall on the realism/playability continuum are all valid in their own ways.  A&A is much more complex than, let’s say, Risk, and much more simple than, let’s say, a professional military simulation system; all three examples are aimed at different niches, and what matters in the end isn’t so much which niche a wargame occupies but rather how well it works within that niche.

One point that I don’t think I’d call a flaw is the absence of rules which “force Axis players to make the same mistakes that Germany made”.  I’m personally happy that A&A does not contain such rules, which are sometimes described by gamers as “idiocy rules.”  I value realism and historical accuracy very much, but if A&A was designed entirely towards the end of replicating all of WWII with complete accuracy, with the players locked by the rules into actions which would produce such a replication, then there would be no point in playing the game because its course and outcome would always be foregone conclusions.

@CWO:

One point that I don’t think I’d call a flaw is the absence of rules which “force Axis players to make the same mistakes that Germany made”.  I’m personally happy that A&A does not contain such rules, which are sometimes described by gamers as “idiocy rules.”  I value realism and historical accuracy very much, but if A&A was designed entirely towards the end of replicating all of WWII with complete accuracy, with the players locked by the rules into actions which would produce such a replication, then there would be no point in playing the game because its course and outcome would always be foregone conclusions.

Agreed. It’s not really a flaw. I would also hate being forced to do stupid by the rules.

Marsh

@CWO:

One point that I don’t think I’d call a flaw is the absence of rules which “force Axis players to make the same mistakes that Germany made”.  I’m personally happy that A&A does not contain such rules, which are sometimes described by gamers as “idiocy rules.”  I value realism and historical accuracy very much, but if A&A was designed entirely towards the end of replicating all of WWII with complete accuracy, with the players locked by the rules into actions which would produce such a replication, then there would be no point in playing the game because its course and outcome would always be foregone conclusions.

A good example of this might be if Germany was ready for their final battle in Moscow, with a huge German stack ready to go, then suddenly Hitler meddles and all the German armor is sent south to the Caucasus.

There are other things that are not represented in this game, such as superior or inferior tactics or even the quality of units facing one another. One example would be that in 1939/1940, in Africa, the Italian army outnumbered the British almost 6 to 1. Italians had some 250,000 troops in Libya and another 100,000 in Ethiopia compared to roughly 60,000 in Egypt for the Brits, yet the Brits still kicked the Italian’s butts and never ended up losing Egypt, even when Rommel showed up.
Yet in this game, Italian troops basically have the same chance to take Egypt as the Brits do of holding it.
There is also quality of units to consider. While German tanks were superior to British, the British armor was superior to Italian tanks. Japanese armor was found sorely lacking when they came up against the Russians in the border conflicts in Manchuria. Yet in this game, all tanks from all sides are pretty much treated equal.
Russian air units were vastly inferior to the Luftwaffe in 1941. While the Germans did a good job of destroying most planes on the ground, what Russian planes did get up to fight the Luftwaffe were sorely outmatched. It wasn’t until 1942 that the Russians started producing better planes to start competing with the Germans. This might be represented by Russia only starting with 2 fighters and 1 tac, but if you put a German fighter against a Russian fighter in combat, in this game the capabilities are pretty much equal.
Then there are different naval techniques. In the Pacific, there were a few occasions where US and Japanese ships encountered each other at night and the Japanese came off far better because their night fighting techniques were superior to the Americans. In this case, if you could say all fleet engagements occur during night, a KJF would be impossible because the US Navy would keep losing. However, this game doesn’t account for day or night time hours. Actually, since you can attack with aircraft anytime, I am guessing this game assumes all action takes place during the day, in nice clear weather.

While all these are valid points, the problem is that if you made allowances for types of units, weather, terrain, historical blunders or brilliant ideas, day or night, it really would end up dragging this game out to incredible lengths. A good game of Global 40 can already take between 8 and 15 hours to play. Adding too many other effects would stretch that time out further and further. You might have to just plan a whole week out just for a single game.
I personally like the game just about how it is. While adding a few house rules or new units here and there could be fun, you just don’t want to over do it or you end up spending less time playing and more time trying to remember which rule to apply.

@knp7765:

While all these are valid points, the problem is that if you made allowances for types of units, weather, terrain, historical blunders or brilliant ideas, day or night, it really would end up dragging this game out to incredible lengths. A good game of Global 40 can already take between 8 and 15 hours to play. Adding too many other effects would stretch that time out further and further. You might have to just plan a whole week out just for a single game. I personally like the game just about how it is. While adding a few house rules or new units here and there could be fun, you just don’t want to over do it or you end up spending less time playing and more time trying to remember which rule to apply.

Well said.  In terms of where Global fits on the realism-versus-playability continuum, I think it works fairly well generally speaking, though there are of course many things that could be tweaked or house-ruled.  The OOB game replicates certain aspects of WWII pretty faithfully, handles others in a simplified but credible way, makes notional use of other aspects by using highly abstracted mechanisms, and completely ignores lots of things.  This blended approach involves compromises, of course – but frankly, the design of just about any device or system involves trade-offs and compromises.

In a way, one of the nicest things about such a huge game as Global 1940 is that its very size and complexity provides players with tremendous scope for adapting it to their individual tastes by creating house rules, adding extra sculpts (such as the HBG ones) and even producing their own maps.  This diversity is clearly very appealing to A&A gamers, as demonstrated by the large number of very active (and passionately discussed) house rule threads that can be found on this discussion board.

CWO Marc,
Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong. I love using some house rules. I’ve found that if you introduce some house rules and play them enough times, everyone gets comfortable with them and they end up becoming second nature. Here’s a few examples of ours:
Submarines can submerge after the first round of combat even when enemy destroyers are present.
Heavy Bombers roll 2 dice and keep BOTH results.
Mechanized Infantry units can blitz on their own without being paired with a tank.
Japan gets a $5 NO for control of all Chinese territories.

We’ve played with most of these so long that we don’t need to check on them anymore. In fact, we sometimes end up having to look up OOB rules.
I just think if you come up with too many, particularly including weather and terrain, that no one could possibly keep track of all of them and you would have to keep checking to see if you are playing right. That’s why I couldn’t get into the Axis & Allies Miniatures games because there was too many factors to keep track of.
Then again, with some people, that’s just the type of game they get into. Some people like a lot of different rules for different situations. It’s just not for me is all. I like things a little simpler.

@knp7765:

CWO Marc,
Oh yeah, don’t get me wrong. I love using some house rules. I’ve found that if you introduce some house rules and play them enough times, everyone gets comfortable with them and they end up becoming second nature. Here’s a few examples of ours:
Submarines can submerge after the first round of combat even when enemy destroyers are present.
Heavy Bombers roll 2 dice and keep BOTH results.
Mechanized Infantry units can blitz on their own without being paired with a tank.
Japan gets a $5 NO for control of all Chinese territories.

We’ve played with most of these so long that we don’t need to check on them anymore. In fact, we sometimes end up having to look up OOB rules.

You really play with 2D6 SBR damage, it is very interesting.

Can you tell me more please about your game experience (impact if a player is full blown SBR strategy or waiting to attack undefended ICs, etc.) by posting in this thread below, because I have a specific issue on how to balance StB attacking @1 against Fg defending @3 in SBR.
12 IPCs or 10 IPCs?, damage 1D6+2 or 2D6?, the odds are clearly lower than OOB and against attacker (contrary to OOB):

Rethinking Air units simulating historical air-to-air combat: 2 planes carrier
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=34667.msg1337965#msg1337965

Sometimes when I read commentary like the above I think to myself, what these guys really need is for someone like the CreativeAssembly to make a War War II game as part of their “Total War” franchise. The original Shogun: Total War, was itself based on a boardgame, and the structure of Medieval also featured a TBS style campaign map that looked a lot like a boardgame. Ever since Empire: Total War and the way they handled the split theater Campaign map and Napoleon: Total War with attrition, I have been thinking a lot about whether the sort of gameplay developed by Activision/CA could be merged with a boardgame like Axis and Allies to create a legit world war II game? “Axis and Allies: Total War” or something similar. A game like Total War has the benefit of allowing a very nuanced units roster, a complex economy and diplomatic system, opportunities for historical blurbs, maps changing colors etc. All things that make a great computer game. I would definitely buy a World War II computer game like that if CA brought it into the Total War franchise. But that’s a digression.

Here’s the thing, Axis and Allies the way I grew up with it is decidedly a Boardgame. Its not a WarGame, and its not a computer game. Unlike a computer game such as Total War, where all the unit statistics and “rolling” happens behind the scenes, in A&A all players need to understand what mechanics are in operation, and it has to be easy to read. All units need to have easy to  remember costs, and values for the rolls, since in a boardgame you actually roll this stuff out. That’s why a national unit roster with different costs or abilities doesn’t work well, because the players have to track it all. There’s no computer to handle all this computation for you. The same thing with movement! Or logistics! And especially production!

These all have to be kept simple, or the game won’t function as a boardgame. I think one of the major rubs with G40, is that it tries to satisfy a lot of expectations that people have from playing computer games or advanced wargames, by grafting them onto a simple and highly abstract boardgame (which is what Classic A&A.)

What annoys me to no end, specifically with regard to the Production issue is this…
Ever since AA50, Larry and the other creators have opted to use new rules to flesh out the production game, rather than adjusting IPC values (which would have been so much simpler!) In my view, the very same types of things that people are trying to accomplish via tweaking rules for the production units, could have been handled just by altering the IPC value of certain territories directly. You could say the same thing about VC, and NO rules. All that was required would have been to take the highly abstract and already shaky idea of “Industrial Production Capacity” and just alter those values directly on the map spread to achieve the sort of gameplay people are after. This would have kept the production game more “out in the open”, less “hidden behind the scenes,” and something you could observe with greater ease as a player “at a glance.” When I see the extraordinary lengths the creators were willing to go in order to avoid changing IPCs, creating new factory rules, creating special bonus income rules etc I just don’t get it.

So yes, I agree entirely, that the Problem is Production!

Though when I read it, I think the problem is just as much to do with the IPC spread itself (potential production) than it is the abilities, locations, and costs of the factory units themselves. In short, I get the very strong impression that first the IPC distribution of the gamemap was established, and then the factory rules/abilities were adapted to fit with it, whereas I would have done exactly the opposite!

First establish were you want the production be (potentially) and how you want the production to play, and then adapt the IPC distribution on the gamemap to support it. I still believe that this unit should probably be removed from the unit roster entirely, and have all its locations fixed from the outset. Or that it should be much more flexible, and redrafted as a “base” or “mobilization point” rather than as an industrial complex.

I tend to agree with Knp, more than any other A&A game, the 1940 games especially have so many rules already, that a few HRs added on top of these don’t seem nearly as wild. I would be very comfortable playing a game that had that rule for subs for example, or for mech moving 2. Or adding a NO here and there, since what’s one more, when you already have so many NOs to remember. If a production HR can easily fix the balance or the gameplay to be more entertaining, then I say go for it.  The map itself is hard to change once its sent to print, so much as I wish the IPCs distribution was different, it’s just too hard to alter characteristics of the physical map. Even though I really really wish this wasn’t the case, because the information on the map is much easier to read and understand, than a bunch of hidden rules that aren’t visually presented on the gameboard itself. Just as an example, even after half a dozen iterations of the worldmap, and despite all the various rules and NOs and bases and changes to production profiles, A&A still has not produced a game where Hawaii, Midway, Guadalcanal, Iwo etc are hotly contested.

I believe this is because of the IPC spread, and could be fixed easily, if only the creator was willing to ditch the idea that IPCs cannot be abstracted in the same way everything else about this game is abstracted. Here’s something that might have been tried, but wasn’t… Make Hawaii worth 3 ipcs (the replacement cost of an infantry!) and give it a factory. Do the same with some of those other pacific islands and raise their IPC values. This has been my ongoing suggestion since Revised came out, but it never happens. I can’t for the life of me follow the logic, from a gameplay perspective.

How is it any “less realistic” to have the Japanese capturing India or Cairo or Moscow, than it is to provide the game with production spread in the Pacific that actually allows the Japanese to contest North America? Or for North America to viably contest Japan?

All the 1940 production rules seem specifically designed to remove this possibility from the gameplay. No ICs on islands, a preponderance of valueless Pacific islands, weak Pacific NOs etc. all of which conspire to make the make the Pacific a one trick pony in pretty much every A&A game. What is needed is more stepping stone territories between San Francisco and Tokyo.

Even the design of Anzac, which could very well have provided this, fails to do so. No IC in New Zealand for example, and so many other minor hang ups, that of course Japan is never going to gun for New Guinea/Sydney/NZ/Guadalcanal over say Moscow/India, since a Pacific thrust has no Endgame pay off for Axis. Alas!

@Black_Elk:

Even the design of Anzac, which could very well have provided this, fails to do so. No IC in New Zealand for example, and so many other minor hang ups, that of course Japan is never going to gun for New Guinea/Sydney/NZ/Guadalcanal over say Moscow/India, since a Pacific thrust has no Endgame pay off for Axis. Alas!

Brilliant analysis Black Elk, completely agree. Would be interesting to see a custom map appear that incorporates some of these ideas. More factories (probably with some simple rules that restrict the types of units that can be placed there) could radically transform the strategic options in A&A…

More factories (probably with some simple rules that restrict the types of units that can be placed there) could radically transform the strategic options in A&A…

For me it’s already done…