Build/Placement question…

Our current thinking is that intentional over-purchasing should not be allowed.  That means that all players must verify during the purchase phase that more units have not been purchased than can be mobilized at that time.  Since repairs of damaged ICs occur in the purchase phase, those repairs are taken into consideration.  However, no events that may or may not happen after the purchase phase may be taken into account.  If over-purchasing still occurs, it must be considered accidental and should be dealt with using the current rules.

@variance:

Suppose all the Chinese territories are axis controlled, China has troops in Burma, and they have $6.  They buy 2 infantry and attack Yunnan but fail to liberate it.  They would get their $6 back right?

Under the conditions above, the China player would not be allowed to purchase any units that turn, as he/she has no mobilization capacity during the purchase phase.

@ShadowHAwk:

Then the US issue also needs to be solved as you get your factories to majors after going to war but that is after the buy phase so you would have 9 production where you would actualy have 30.

Under the conditions above, if the US begins the turn still neutral, all of its ICs will still be minors, and its mobilization potential should be calculated as such.  Bear in mind that this only occurs if the US declares war without having been attacked first, as a declaration of war against the US will immediately upgrade the ICs so that they will be majors at the beginning of the US’s following turn.

Thanks Krieghund!

That is what I was guessing (about the intent) and already ruled on our on-line league accordingly - that over-buying is not allowed.

Shadowhawk is referring to a Triple A glitch/loophole where the USA factories are not always upgraded immediately upon state of war.

There is no " intentional over-purchasing " only the intend to not place all units.
You would have to know if somebody is intentionaly over-purchasing units wich you don’t know.
( How would you ever find out??)

But there is intentionaly holding back on placing units, and this may occur when the events after purchasing your units are changed to your disadvantage!

For example: you bought an IC  (as Axis Player) for Romania and start now your combat in eastern Poland and loose horroble and also have nothing between Romania and the hordes of the red army and must now place your IC in your Mob.Phase knowing that russia now can reach and take over.
You then intentionally Holding back on Units wich you should have placed.
But it was not intentionally during your purchasing Phase since you did not now the outcome of combat due to bad dice rolling.
Well we all agree this case is not a comon one.
But it will be still punished as that, that you have to loose not placed Units.

I think the rule (place all units or loose them) is ok, but needs a diffrent Name.
I go for - Sabotage, since Sabotage was performed on any side during WWII and is not as sounding hard as the explanation of it.
It does not leave the bitter taste that you intenionally did something wrong  :-).

And yes, it should be changed for the online game, because you are able to just place them the next turn.

my two cents…

That doesn’t even apply, aequitias.

You talking about buying a major?  You still have to place it.  You could place it in Holland or Norway or something, but you have to place it.

Never mind that you’re crazy to purchase a major for Romania…

I’m curious, from a gameplay enjoyment standpoint, what is the benefit of separating the purchase phase from the placement phase, by interjecting the combat move/battle/noncom move phases between them? I mean other than tradition?

Because I don’t see a major problem with just shifting the purchase phase to some penultimate position in the phase order right, before placement. So long as each player receives the same benefit, of being able to choose their purchase after the combats are resolved, I just don’t think it would have a negative impact on the gameplay or game enjoyment. It would resolve all the problems mentioned in this thread, and accelerate the pace of the game considerably.

I can understand the idea that OOB these units are being purchased = “trained in advance, under fog of war conditions” but is it really even necessary to model this, given how abstract time is in this game already? I honestly wouldn’t have a problem if the game phases looked more like this…

Research/Repair
Combat Movement
Combat
Non Combat Movement
Purchase
Place
Collect Income

I think the gameplay would be just as enjoyable, and the game would resolve faster, with less purchasing errors or problems along the way.

The only complication in adopting such a scheme would be landing air on a newly purchased carrier, but honestly, you could just ditch that rule. I mean how weird is that rule anyway?

Picture this…

They christen the new ship with a bottle of champagne against the hull.
The band starts playing, crowds of people begin waving flags, elated to sea the new ship hit the water for the first time.
Just then, fighters returning from the heat of battle, start skidding in and landing on the deck!
I mean, how real is that anyway?
:-D

Perhaps even more to the point…

Why should the enemy get to know what forces you purchased before the combat phase?  From a metagaming standpoint, the defender can then use this knowledge to determine what sorts of casualty selections they make or whether to scramble or intercept, which just seems a bit weird. Sure you could write it down in secret, but in that case why force the players to make another step in a game already full of steps? If you shifted the purchase phase, you could again get rid of this issue. For me the actual gameflow and gamplay would trump whatever you lose in imaginary interpretion terms, from saying the money always has to be allocated beforehand to such and such, because this mirrors reality somehow.

Its just as easy to say that “time is abstract in this game.” And because game time is abstract, you can thus call up your units and place them at the same time, though in real life of course this process represents weeks and months of advanced planning. Who really cares about the abstract interpretation, if it makes the game better? and prevents common errors, and encourages people to play faster games, that resolve in a more timely fashion? I don’t care, anyway. For me it would be better just to have purchase after combat, and let the warfare determine what you buy. But I guess there is that force of tradition.

I just see so many purchasing/placement mistakes derail the gameplay so often and lead to these huge time sinks where players can’t decide what to buy. Or they buy something and then move in a way that screws up their original plan. Probably hours of wasted game time, that could have been spent on more positive game experiences, simply as a result of where the Purchase phase occurs in the procession of phases.

Too long, so didn’t read it all, but I have some answers for you.

#1) Playing by forum, for big/complicated moves, players often skip the purchase phase, mock up their turn (so they can see it after all the combat movement and noncombat movement) and then decide what they want to buy.  So your suggestion would help by making the game easier to play.

#2) The main reason the purchase phase is before the combat phase is obviously so that you are required to commit to your purchases before seeing how the dice go.  This is not just tradition, it makes the game more fun.

#3) Yes a reason you purchase first is because of the time it takes to produce things.  In the war, they had to anticipate what was needed months in advance.  A game turn is roughly a season, or 3 months.

Well brevity is not my strong suit I guess, judging by the walls I like to post. But just on #2)

Are you really sure that it adds that much to the fun?  Because I’m not.

I’d rather win or lose a game based on the rolls and sound decision making by both players on purchase. Not because someone got confused, or botched something, and now they can’t land their fighters. Or because they clearly didn’t bean count very well on fly, and now have transports they can’t defend, or can’t use effectively.

When games resolve based on mistaken stuff like that, I think most players find the resolution more frustrating than fun. Sure you can point out the opponents mistake and gloat, or allow for a replay, but I’d just shirk the whole thing, and shift that purchase phase.

I don’t buy the whole game time = real historical time analogy, in months or seasons or whatever. It’s so abstract already, what’s the difference how historical time is imagined to elapse? Players will create there own narratives about the timeline regardless of what a game turn in intended to represent.

There’s a lot I could say, but I’ll just be brief.
I’ve never had any problem getting confused, botching something, not being able to land my fighters, or having transport problems. 
I also don’t see my opponents making these glaring errors.

Again, if you are not playing face to face, merely make up your move, see where everything’s going to be, figure out what to buy, then go back and redo the turn.

If G40 is too complicated or too much work for you, try AA50.  It is not nearly as complicated.  If you don’t like the rules of the game, you just need to find someone to play who agrees with you, and house rule it.

Or, play RISK.  You figure out how many armies you get, you place them immediately, you make one attack at a time, and you roll dice.  I’m not sure A&A is your game.

AA50 is great, so is Risk, so is this game.

I get the impression that you’re coming at this from a long or multi-session game, or perhaps games played by forum or email, where time and intense focus and pre planning are easier. Or I don’t know, perhaps your playgroup is just so expert that none of these issues ever come up.

I’ve been playing for a while though, with players of varying skill levels, and trying to teach this game to new players, and I still see this stuff happen all the time.

@Gamerman01:

If G40 is too complicated or too much work for you, try AA50.  It is not nearly as complicated.  If you don’t like the rules of the game, you just need to find someone to play who agrees with you, and house rule it.

Or, play RISK.  You figure out how many armies you get, you place them immediately, you make one attack at a time, and you roll dice.  I’m not sure A&A is your game.

I agree with you that there are many ways one might play a game like this, and ways to play using the same basic architecture in different variations.

All I wanted to do was highlight an observation here, about hang ups I’ve seen with the purchase phase.

The suggestion that A&A isn’t my game? Patently ridiculous! I have a deep love of this game.

If something I said got under your skin,  I don’t know why. But no need to put me on blast. I’m here to share thoughts and ideas about A&A, same as anyone else. Because it is most definitely my game, and I dig it.

I guess I touched a nerve with you somewhere, and this thread feels rather heated now. I’ll come back later when the conversation doesn’t burn so hot.

Here before I retire once more to other places on these boards, let me just stress again how much I love this game and admire it’s creators for making it available. But how is someone to find like minded G40 players, or figure out ways to improve the basic game, if you don’t touch on these core issues from time to time,  or at least open discussions and try to analyze it from another perspective?

Like, for example, why the purchase phase needs to occur exactly when it does in the procession?

Here’s what I see, doing purchase before combat tests a players memory and ability to plan in advance under many possible contingencies. But purchase after combat might test equally interesting abilities, like the ability to react immediately to the results of a given battle with optimal purchases, responding to the circumstances on the ground. You’d still have the narrative component, the combat component with the rolls, but it could also be faster.

Apologies if this seems too far afield for the subject of the thread, but I think it’s dead on topic. Trying to figure out player intent or when to legitimatly refund purchases and such, this all comes from issues relating to the position of the purchase phase at the begining of the turn before combat. Sure thats the way it is by the book, and traditionally, but it might have come at the end. This was a decision made in Classic, that hasn’t really been revisited since.

You guys have been discussing a metagaming exploit, that exists as a way to address a seeminlgy innocuous purchasing mistake that players might make. The suggestion about returned purchase, is a way of hedging your bets, and trying to gain some advantage from placement after the combat rolls become clear.

I’m trying to point out that ultimately this mistake would never occur if one considered shifting the purchase phase. Sure the gameplay would be different, but it might be just as much fun, and purchasing errors like this would not have room to enter into it.

Finally just back to your point #3)

If game time is meant to be historically analogous to real time, 3 months per round, and the game starts in spring 1940, then that’s 2 or 3 seasons (depending on how you count the first season) to 1941, so on round 6/7 it’s Spring 1942, about 10 rounds to 1943, 14 rounds to 1944, 18 rounds to 1945? I don’t think people hold to that sense of the timeline with too much concreteness, as most games will resolve long before 1945 in that case. I think players adopt a sense of the timeline that is more malleable, and which fits instead with the feel of the specific situation occurring on the gameboard. But even with that 3 months as a rough guideline, what is the scale of time between an individual purchase and placement phase? Still 3 months? And then are they all conflated, with each nations purchase to placement representing those same 3 months? I just think at some point the time analogy breaks down, because this is a turn based game, and what we are left with is just the imagined narrative that players create for themselves as they go along. Basically I’m saying you could do it either way and I don’t think it would undermine the abstract timeline or the gameplay or the fun. It would just be a different kind of fun.

I don’t think that stuff because I’m all green on the board, or because the complexity of g40 overwhelms me relative to other A&A boards. Or because I need to put on the dunce cap and go back to playing Risk over in the kids corner. I mean, why you gotta jump the discussion to a place like that?
:-D

The purchase phase has been in the same position in the procession of phases since Classic,  which I also played a great deal in my day. I understand how it works, I’m just raising a question about the genuine entertainment value of the current purchase position compared to other possible alternatives,  since I find it curious.

The question is not unique to global second edition and it could apply to any A&A game. I thought it was legitimately an interesting question, from a gameplay perspective, whether the game is really more fun with combat after purchase, than it might be the other way around, which is why I raised the Q.

@aequitas:

There is no " intentional over-purchasing " only the intend to not place all units.
You would have to know if somebody is intentionaly over-purchasing units wich you don’t know.
( How would you ever find out??)

In face-to-face play, if you pay attention to what your opponent is purchasing vis-a-vis his mobilization capacity, you can tell if he/she has over-purchased and point it out at that point to be corrected.  If not, then I guess you’ll just have to take his/her word for it later.

In computer-based play, the program should regulate this.

@aequitas:

But there is intentionaly holding back on placing units, and this may occur when the events after purchasing your units are changed to your disadvantage!

This is illegal.  You must mobilize all units that you can.  However, where you mobilize them can change based on the events of the turn.

@Black_Elk:

I’m curious, from a gameplay enjoyment standpoint, what is the benefit of separating the purchase phase from the placement phase, by interjecting the combat move/battle/noncom move phases between them? I mean other than tradition?

In the real world, military units take time to produce, and they can’t be changed at the last minute due to current events.  The order of phases represents the requirement for this advance planning within the abstraction of time in the game.  There are many abstractions in the game, time being chief among them, but the intent of these abstractions is to make things as realistic as possible at a macro level.

@Black_Elk:

The only complication in adopting such a scheme would be landing air on a newly purchased carrier, but honestly, you could just ditch that rule.

That rule was implemented to avoid the situation where new carriers were launched without any air cover whatsoever unless air units were purchased in the same turn, which was completely unrealistic.

@Black_Elk:

I mean how weird is that rule anyway?

Picture this…

They christen the new ship with a bottle of champagne against the hull.
The band starts playing, crowds of people begin waving flags, elated to sea the new ship hit the water for the first time.
Just then, fighters returning from the heat of battle, start skidding in and landing on the deck!
I mean, how real is that anyway?
:-D

This sort of argument always tickles me.  Later in your post, you reference the fact that time is abstracted in the game, and yet in this example you assume that everything that happens in a turn happens on the same day.  In the amount of time that transpires in a turn, the landing of the planes returning from battle happens days if not weeks after the launching of the ship.

The order of phases in the turn is meant to impose some amount of “realism” (albeit abstracted) on the events that occur during that (also abstracted) time frame.  As I said earlier, purchasing is first to represent the advance planning required in building new units.  Similarly, mobilization is near the end to keep new units from having much of an impact on the events of the current turn.  However, this order of phases should not be construed to indicate that the events of the turn necessarily actually “happen” in that order.  In the abstraction of time, the new units are being built and mobilized throughout the turn (though not soon enough to take part in battles), just as the strategic movements represented by noncombat movement take place throughout the turn.  Given that abstraction, it’s not hard to imagine existing air units (whether having been in combat or not) being reassigned to a newly-commissioned carrier over a period of time representing multiple months.

The example was meant to tickle. That’s why my grinning idiot face is tacked on there. My go to face when trying to keep something lighthearted.  
:-D

and I was definitely trying to play devil’s advocate too. :evil:

@Krieghund:

In the real world, military units take time to produce, and they can’t be changed at the last minute due to current events.  The order of phases represents the requirement for this advance planning within the abstraction of time in the game.  There are many abstractions in the game, time being chief among them, but the intent of these abstractions is to make things as realistic as possible at the macro level.

[… in response to the champagne fighter landing day]

This sort of argument always tickles me.  Later in your post, you reference the fact that time is abstracted in the game, and yet in this example you assume that everything that happens in a turn happens on the same day.  In the amount of time that transpires in a turn, the landing of the planes returning from battle happens days if not weeks after the launching of the ship.

The order of phases in the turn is meant to impose some amount of “realism” (albeit abstracted) on the events that occur during that (also abstracted) time frame.  As I said earlier, purchasing is first to represent the advance planning required in building new units.  Similarly, mobilization is near the end to keep new units from having much of an impact on the events of the current turn.  However, this order of phases should not be construed to indicate that the events of the turn necessarily actually “happen” in that order.  In the abstraction of time, the new units are being built and mobilized throughout the turn (though not soon enough to take part in battles), just as the strategic movements represented by noncombat movement take place throughout the turn.  Given that abstraction, it’s not hard to imagine existing air units (whether having been in combat or not) being reassigned to a newly-commissioned carrier over a period of time representing multiple months.

Your reply was constructive and provides some insights into the logic of the phases, which are implicit in the game’s sense of enforced “realism” and “abstract time” but not really explicitly stated in the manual with the same nuance. (Perhaps because they’re assumed to be obvious and not needing elaboration.) I was hoping someone would just state the goal of the phase design like this though, which you have, and I thank you for it.

For the record, I can still imagine other ways it might be constructed, but I think the case you present for the OOB procession of phases is totally solid and internally consistent.

Though having said that, can I now ask you a more genuine question? The question I was hoping to set up, by first clarifying the abstract phase to reality logic…

What is your opinion on the idea which some players use of shifting the purchase phase to a position after the combat movement phase, but before the battle phase proper (when the dice are rolled)? In this scheme the order of phases reads like this…

Research/Repair
Combat Movement
Purchase
Battle Rolls
Non combat Movement
Placement
Collect income

Note that here there is no extra information available to the player during their combat movement or purchase phase. The change is purely formal, since both occur before the actual combat rolls, but it really encourages players to consider their purchases more carefully.

Do you see any merit to this order, and is it acceptable to the designer? Because my group often plays this way and I think it’s very helpful in addressing issues like “accidental over purchase” etc.

Basically I was hoping to argue for this ultimately, but first wanted to see how people would respond to the idea of purchase after combat roll. This formula instead bumps the combat Movement phase to the lead position (after research/repair) but interjects the Purchase phase right after this, still before the Battle/Combat roll phase.

I think its a strong concept which can be used to help players, and especially new players, to make smarter purchasing decisions.  And as Gamerman01 suggested, people already simulate this order of phases in play by forum or PBEM games, so it’s not new really, but might be an interesting solution if adopted or promoted in standard play.

Again, thanks as always for doing what you do dude. And I hope everyone reads my posts with the same spirit of friendliness that I try to project.  Even when playing the fool.

Best Jason

@Gamerman01:

That doesn’t even apply, aequitias.

You talking about buying a major?  You still have to place it.  You could place it in Holland or Norway or something, but you have to place it.

Never mind that you’re crazy to purchase a major for Romania…

I was trying to point out the diffrence between intentional overpurchase and intentional holding back on Units to place on the board.

And I was giving an example with an IC.
Your Points are correct but have little to do with what I meant.
No Problem!

Well, your example didn’t make any sense.  If you can place units, you must.

Thanks for the debate and the clarification, gentlemen - Krieghund especially. No intentional overbuying, then. Vanished are my hopes to have a somewhat evil rule exploit named after me….

@Black_Elk:

The question I was hoping to set up, by first clarifying the abstract phase to reality logic…

What is your opinion on the idea which some players use of shifting the purchase phase to a position after the combat movement phase, but before the battle phase proper (when the dice are rolled)? In this scheme the order of phases reads like this…

Research/Repair
Combat Movement
Purchase
Battle Rolls
Non combat Movement
Placement
Collect income

Note that here there is no extra information available to the player during their combat movement or purchase phase. The change is purely formal, since both occur before the actual combat rolls, but it really encourages players to consider their purchases more carefully.

Do you see any merit to this order, and is it acceptable to the designer? Because my group often plays this way and I think it’s very helpful in addressing issues like “accidental over purchase” etc.

It does have merit, as it does what you intend it to do without disrupting the overall flow of the game too much.  That being said, I think it also reduces the “strategic planning” aspect that’s built into the phase order as designed.  It also breaks up the natural flow of combat movement leading into combat.  However, I see no reason why you can’t play this way if you think it makes things easier for you.

@Herr:

Thanks for the debate and the clarification, gentlemen - Krieghund especially. No intentional overbuying, then. Vanished are my hopes to have a somewhat evil rule exploit named after me….

Keep trying, you may get there someday!