I was 6 in 1987, but I can see the argument for expanded distance from an evasion perspective.
:)
However, having played on custom maps that attempt to achieve this, I can tell you that they are often painfully boring if you do nothing but increase the number of sea zone tiles between land masses. The earliest iterations of Big World 1942 (a custom game for tripleA by Wandering Head, that I helped with in early stages) showed this problem in action.
He believed as you do, that the ocean distances of the OOB games were ridiculous. His solution there was to basically double the number of tiles in the Atlantic and even more in the Pacific, while preserving the same movement at 2.
He also did not like the cartoonish geography of the OOB maps, the solution there was to use mercator. I had gripes with the OOB geography as well, though I think Mercator is unworkable for a game like this because Europe is too small. This is what lead me to making that Domination map projection, that tried to strike a compromise between the two. In TripleA that map projection was used for v3 AA50, just to give an idea, even there Europe was almost too small, though there was less overall map scrolling in tripleA which was the aim.
In both cases on land and at sea, the extra distance was problematic for pacing, which is why half tracks and cruisers were given a movement of 3, in one of the intermediate versions, just to provide some more interest. Even then though, the pace dragged a lot. USA in particular was very slow.
I’m not sure what the best solution is. Perhaps more distance would be workable with considerably more starting units and a much higher starting income per nation?
Anyway back to the main subject of this thread, a recuring problem with USA is that they don’t have enough total cash to play a split theater game.
If on the other hand you do give them enough starting income to do this, smart players will still just throw it all in one direction because of the way US starting production is distributed. In most games this is around 12 production Atlantic and 10 production Pacific. In Global this is even higher.
One solution, from a map redesign standpoint, would be to significantly drop the cap on the coastal factories and push the additional production to the interior of North America. But a map redesign doesn’t do you any good when you’re working with an existing game.
Perhaps another approach would be to provide a separate USA bonus for each theater, with the caveat that this money can only be used for naval units and must be spent in the specific theater. For example +10 to USA Atlantic and +10 to USA Pacific.
Or perhaps you could alternate the bonus +20 to Pacific on the odd rounds, +20 to Atlantic on the even rounds.
Another approach would be to simply split the income for USA between the Pacific and Europe boards, as suggested by Commander Jennifer and others, basically mirroring the split UK economy.
I’m not hugely fond of either approach since they introduce a lot more complexity, but absent some sort of placement restriction by theater, players will always throw everything one direction, because it’s more effective.
Given the choice, I think a bonus restricted by theater would be easier to work with for an HR.
