That is cool. I like your thought process here.
It may be a long read to catch up, but part of what you are doing is being discussed here over in House Rules: G40 Redesign http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=36518.0
Discussion of late has been less focused on Victory Conditions, but I think a few of us at least have agreed that Victory Conditions are the most central element of game play. If you want to shape how the game is played, the most immediate way would be to modify the Victory Conditions.
I would love a more nuanced game that has multiple paths to victory and a more complex strategic structure. Unless you enlarge the map even more than G40 is, it will be difficult to achieve this I think. Because map size (# of territories) is directly related to how complex you can get. That must be balanced with simplicity and ease of play so that the game is not overly ponderous and technical.
I have never before considered a three faceted motivation system like you describe here. At least I have never recognized it as such. Tactical decisions, Economic decisions (includes NOs) and Victory decisions. Many times all three of these factors are combined within a single territory. However, the Victory point system you describe could be considered a sort of second currency in the game. If you can make it Victory Points sufficiently valuable to compete with the other two, I think there is real potential here.
@lthaut:
How it works is that as the game progresses the Axis have to be in control of less and less territories to win and if they lose too much the Allies win. This more closely reflects the end game stages of chess or checkers. Struggle for Europe and Pacific already had this system in place so it was pretty convenient to see how they distributed the points in this system which I’ve mostly converted over. One point of note though is that because they have a different movement mechanic feedback will probably be necessary to figure out what the right winning number conditions are. So far straight from the Struggle for Europe and Pacific global game the numbers will loosely be in these ranges:
Summer 1942 37(lose) -65(win), Winter 1942 37-64, Summer 1943 33-59, Winter 1943 28-52, Summer 1944 23-40, Winter 1944 17-27, Summer 1945 12-12.
This scale assumes that the Allies will inevitably grow and become harder to defeat as the game goes on. As long as that is inevitable then this method shouldn’t be an issue… but if the Axis have one really great round in, say, Winter of 43, they could win the game before the Allies are truly defeated.
What I do not quite understand is how the Axis could be considered to win later in the game by having less territory than they had in the beginning or the middle. Say the Germans took Stalingrad in 1943 but did not have enough points for victory… if it comes to 1945 and they have lost Stalingrad and are pushed back closer to Germany they could still win? This puts great onus on the Allies to consistently make large gains so that the Axis do not win simply by existing in a stalemate.
You haven’t finished yet and I do not fully understand the rules, but these are just my initial questions.