Victory condition for short games

The group I play with is usually who ever we can through together for a day.  It’s real hard to get everyone’s schedule to line up enough to get back to a game.  I like the idea of the “baseball” score.  I noticed that the axis can score 56 points and the allies 55.  Are you suggesting scoring by the percentage of possible points per faction?  Say the axis capture: Manila (2), Shangai (1), hong Kong(2), Lenningrad(3), Cairo(3), Rome(2), Warsaw(2), Berlin(1), and Paris(1).  That is 17 points which is 30.4% of the possible 56 points available for the axis.  That leaves the allies with 15 points or 27.3% of the available 55 points for the allies.  It’s close.  The allies would suffer in a lower number of rounds because they have to ramp up production thus have a shorter amount of time to capture the cities needed to score higher. I guess the Japanese player would be less likely to wander in the Chinese countryside or the Siberean wilderness.  Focus would be on the defense and the attack of the cities rather than a domination and securing of flanks.  This would also allow for extra cities to be added to enhance the scoring.

We also had (1942 2.ed) some test games with different victory conditions, and it was rather funny:
A power needs 25 victory points to win the game. Victory cities come with 3, 2 or 1 victory points each.

3 Victory Points:

Eastern United States - Washington
United Kingdom - London
Russia - Moscow
Germany - Berlin
Japan - Tokyo

2 Victory Points:

France - Paris
Italy - Rome
Karelia S.S.R. - Leningrad
India - Calcutta
Kiangsu - Shanghai
Philippine Islands - Manila
Western United States - San Francisco

1 Victory Point:

Eastern Canada - Ottawa
Brazil - Sao Paolo
Norway - Oslo
Ukraine - Kiev
Caucasus - Stalingrad
Egypt - Cairo
Union of South Africa - Cape Town
Manchuria - Beijing
East Indies - Jakarta
Eastern Australia - Sydney
Hawaiian Islands - Honolulu

Starting Victory Points:

Axis Power: 18 VP
Germany: 9 VP
Japan: 9 VP

Allies Power: 22 VP
United States: 7 VP
United Kingdom: 9 VP
Soviet Union: 6 VP

The Allies Power has at the beginning an advantage of 4 VP and only need 3 more VP to win. This opens up some new strategic possibilities to overwhelm unwary Axis players and end the game rather quickly. However, the capital cities like Berlin or Tokyo should be rather impossible to conquer (getting one of them would be sufficient) but some of the 1 VPC’s are quite exposed and easy to get, like Kiev or Jakarta.

The Axis Power needs additional 7 VP (4 more than the Allies), which might look really imbalanced, but some of the Allies� Victory Cities are really simple to get (eg. Cairo, Honolulu). In this version the Allies players do not only have to defend Moscow and London, but also the rest of the world, which is totally different to normal games. Instead of the ordinary great battle in Europe, now the Axis also can strike at new areas. For example getting India, Karelia, Egypt, Australia and Hawaii is enough to win.

Edit: Damn, i can’t find a proper color for UK…

Yes Young Grasshopper; that is exactly what I was trying to say.  I like the idea of a score at the end of the day.  Arwaker’s plan has some interesting potential as well.  I would imagine it is hard to get some groups together and this type of “scoring” would at least give these groups a chance to know who won the “war”.