Global Victory Conditions MATH analysis


  • But dont the allies start with 13? UK: London, Calcutta, Cairo, Hong Kong, Ottawa (5) US: San Fransisco, Manila, Honolulu, Washington (4), Russia: Stalingrad, Leningrad, Moscow (3), ANZAC: Sydney, and even Paris for 14, that is if I’m not missing any

    Edit: I guess maybe you could say US and Russia aren’t officially Allies at the beginning, but still. I also wouldn’t say the Axis are toast after round 1 if they dont take any besides Paris because the only really other possible ones are Hong Kong and Manila and that is only if Japan does a DOW on J1, which the 13 VC condition would force them to. Perhaps instead of strictly taking capitals the allies have to ‘neutralize’ the Axis Powers. For example, Japan only has Tokyo left (only territory), allied convoy surrounding it, so Japan can literally do nothing since they gain no IPCs, thus neutralized. Of course this would have to be played with, but just a thought.

  • '18 '17

    Our house rule for modified victory is simple: neither side can win if they don’t also own ALL of their starting capital cities.  So, the Axis can’t win, no matter how many victory cities they may own, unless they also have control of Rome, Tokyo and Berlin at the same time.  Same goes for the Axis.


  • @Navymule:

    Our house rule for modified victory is simple: neither side can win if they don’t also own ALL of their starting capital cities.  So, the Axis can’t win, no matter how many victory cities they may own, unless they also have control of Rome, Tokyo and Berlin at the same time.  Same goes for the Axis.

    That’s indeed simple and easy to remember, which is very practical.  Just to clarify two points: am I correct that you mean capital in the Global rules sense (i.e. red-square cities), rather than in the Pacific 1940 rules sense (which confusingly refers to the red-dot cities of Calcutta, Sydney and San Francisco as “Allied capitals”)?  And am I correct that Paris is included in the count, meaning that the Allies have to control 4 starting capitals, versus 3 for the Axis?

  • '18 '17

    Basic capitals.  So Berlin, Rome and Tokyo for Axis. Washington, London, Calcutta, Sydney and Moscow for Allied.  We don’t require the others for victory.  But most times one side will concede once the writing is on the wall, as IPC dominance tends to tell after the first eight to ten turns.


  • Maybe have different types of victory.

    Tactical victory = control 15 victory cities.
    Total victory = knock out all enemy capitals.
    Political victory = enemy conceded.
    Economic victory = combined ipc over 175

    Before game starts each side secretly writes down their goal


  • @CWO:

    @thespaceman:

    This is something i havent thought of before but lets take this one step further. The axis could go completely bonkers on one board in order to gain victory on the other and win the game.

    Eg germany invades canada. Lets say Germany ignored russia beyond maybe a token effort. But over turns 4-8 could go all out after America. The goal to is  get US forces distracted and committed to going Atlantic. Russia takes the opportunity to invade germany but as a consequnce Japan gets hawaii.

    Another scenario might be germany building strategic bombers to do Japans dirty work and bomb Australia. Germany again loses on the Europe map but with german help Japan walks into Sydney picking up the last Victory City.

    All good points, and they raise an interesting conceptual issue about the Global 1940 victory conditions, whose OOB form reads:

    The Axis wins the game by controlling either any 8 victory cities on the Europe map or any 6 victory cities on the Pacific map for a complete round of play, as long as they control an Axis capital (Berlin, Rome, or Tokyo) at the end of
    that round.

    The Allies win by controlling Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo for a complete round of play, as long as they control an Allied capital (Washington, London, Paris, or Moscow) at the end of that round.

    These victory conditions are actually rather abstracted when you look at them from the perspective of how the actual powers fighting the actual Second World War might have seen them.  One part of the problem is that victory is defined in terms of the control of certain cities (capitals and/or non-capitals, depending on which team is involved).  This concept has both merits and questionable elements, but in my opinion a more serious conceptual problem arises from the fact that the game is trying to deal with two aspects of WWII which can both be viewed in two different ways.  The first aspect is: was WWII fundamentally a single global war or was it fundamentally two separate (though linked) theatre-scale wars occurring pretty much on opposite sides of the planet?  The second aspect is: was WWII fundamentally a war between two coalitions – the Axis and the Allies – or was it fundamentally a war involving multiple individual powers who, at various times, were either out of the war or were in on one side or were in on the other side?

    I raise this point because the game’s concept of an Axis win (or an Allied win) would probably have looked strange to the actual participants under some outcome scenarios.  Let’s take, for example, a hypothetical scenario that fits the requirements for an Allied win: a scenario in which the Allies control one of their capitals (Moscow), plus all three Axis capitals, while the Axis controls Washington, London and Paris.  Would the Americans, the British and the French have considered this to be an Allied victory?  Perhaps.  A Soviet victory?  Probably.  A victory for themselves?  I wonder.

    Let’s take another example.  In May 1945, the Allies “won on the Europe side of the board” when the parts of Germany and Italy that were still under Axis control surrendered.  Let’s say that this situation get replicated on the Global map.  The OOB rules says that, for the Allies, “winning on the Europe side of the board” (as happened historically in May 1945) isn’t enough for them to achieve victory; they also have to control Tokyo.  (That’s probably the reason why that rule is there: because historically, having the Allies “win on the Europe side of the board” wasn’t enough to complete the Allied victory over the Axis.)  Now let’s say that Japan, improbably, somehow manages at this point to defeat the Allies in the Pacific theatre and fulfil the game’s requirements for an Axis victory.  Would the defeated Germans and Italians (in real life ) have regarded this outcome as an Axis victory?  I rather doubt it.

    My point here is that WWII was, in many ways, a complex set of interrelated localized conflicts with different starting and end dates and different participants.  To give just a few examples: the war between Japan and China lasted, non-stop, from 1937 to 1945; the war between Germany and France lasted, arguably, from 1939 to 1940 (and was lost by France); from the American and Soviet perspectives, WWII began in 1941 rather than 1939.

    And WWII also had a complicated geography – not just because of its overall European theatre / Pacific theatre structure, but also because of the geographic differences between the participants themselves.  Some have very small home territories (the surface area of Great Britain is smaller than that of Kansas) while others (like the USSR, the largest country in the world) have vast ones; some had no “remote” territorial possessions beyond their home territories, some had a few, and some had vast holdings of this kind.  Just out of curiosity, I assembled this table (I hope the formatting won’t be too wonky when I post it into this thread) to describe each of the game’s powers situation in this regard:

    Player          Home territory on                 Has any remote colonial / territorial
    powers        which side of board?            holdings? If so, on which board side?

    US               Both                                     Yes / Both

    USSR          Both                                     No

    UK              Europe                                  Yes / Both
    France         Europe                                  Yes / Both

    ANZAC       Pacific                                  Yes / Pacific
    Japan           Pacific                                  Yes / Pacific

    China           Pacific                                  No

    Germany      Europe                                 No

    Italy             Europe                                 Yes / Europe

    Non-player  Home territory on                 Has any remote colonial / territorial
    entities        which side of board?            holdings? If so, on which board side?
    with map
    roundels

    Canada        Both                                      No
    [Same situation as USSR]

    Holland        Europe                                  Yes / Both
    [Same situation as UK and France]

    I guess what I’m wondering at the end of all this is: have any of the folks on the forum who’ve developed house rules come up with a more nuanced set of victory conditions which take these various factors into consideration?

    I think you are mixing up a few things here CWO Marc.
    Historically accurate and Gameplay purpose.
    To define VC Condition, the Maker chose a certain scale, Timeline and let’s call it Balanced Territory Size = BTS for the map and some Historically accuracy.

    The VC is also there to bring this game to an end.
    We know from experiance that it also could go on and on to over 20 Turns.
    If we are trying to ripp apart the VC conditions we should also then change the Timeline and the BTS for this map.

    I think a great analysim was allready given with a 25% chance for a single Power and to sum it up to 75% chance for Axis or Allies on a global game.
    Wich for my understandig explains it a 100%.

  • Liaison TripleA '11 '10

    I knew this thread would be an epic battle.

  • '21 '20 '19 '18 '17 '16

    @TheRedBaron:

    But dont the allies start with 13? UK: London, Calcutta, Cairo, Hong Kong, Ottawa (5) US: San Fransisco, Manila, Honolulu, Washington (4), Russia: Stalingrad, Leningrad, Moscow (3), ANZAC: Sydney, and even Paris for 14, that is if I’m not missing any

    Edit: I guess maybe you could say US and Russia aren’t officially Allies at the beginning, but still. I also wouldn’t say the Axis are toast after round 1 if they dont take any besides Paris because the only really other possible ones are Hong Kong and Manila and that is only if Japan does a DOW on J1, which the 13 VC condition would force them to. Perhaps instead of strictly taking capitals the allies have to ‘neutralize’ the Axis Powers. For example, Japan only has Tokyo left (only territory), allied convoy surrounding it, so Japan can literally do nothing since they gain no IPCs, thus neutralized. Of course this would have to be played with, but just a thought.

    Yeah, math sucks :)

    By the time the US enters the game, the Axis should have reduced the Allies VC count to 11. By the time the Allies can recapture those initial losses (Paris, Manila, and Hong Kong), the Axis should have taken Leningrad and Calcutta as well.

    It could be as simple as putting a starting round on it: If at the end of any round following round 10 either side has held X victory cities for a whole turn, that side wins. Of course, we would still need to agree on X (or make X different for Axis vs Allies). A number higher than 13 means that the Axis essentially has to win on both sides of the board. A number lower than 14 may make Allied victory too easy.

    The neutralization concept is interesting, but it sounds like epic arguments could emerge. Control of sea zone 6 by the Allies does not always neutralize Japan.

    Marsh

  • '18 '17

    I like the idea of more than one conditions for victory as mentioned previously.  One being a victory city condition and the other being an economic victory.  Perhaps assigning a point value to each city, such as 10 points for player capitols and 3 points for other VC’s and then a threshold for victory after a certain turn for the city condition.

    The economic victory is often a more obvious win.  Once one side is out-earning the other by a significant margin the outcome is usually apparent to both sides.  It shouldn’t be too difficult to come up with either a margin of economy figure for victory, or a straight threshold for combined economy, whichever would work better.

    edit: gud grammer


  • I also think a bit more of a link to the national objectives would make sense. Economic victory makes more sense for japan than anzac for example.

  • '20 '19 '18

    Reading this thread, I find myself wondering how the following Allied VC change would impact the game:

    The Allies win if, at the end of any round, the only Axis-controlled victory cities are Berlin, Rome and/or Tokyo and the combined value of all Axis-controlled territories is less than 33 IPCs.

    This change to Allied victory conditions raises a few questions.

    1. Is that enough for an undisputed Allied victory?
    2. At that point in the game, what are the odds of the Axis mounting a dramatic comeback for the win?
    3. Would this VC change help balance the game?
    4. Would it shorten the game, or would the Axis player normally surrender before reaching that point?
    5. If this VC would not shorten the game, how can it be tweaked to achieve that result?

    I haven’t tried this yet, but I’m going to give it a shot and see what happens. One potential impact I can see is that often-overlooked territories (in the games I’ve played, anyway) like Okinawa and Formosa gain strategic value to both sides as the Axis approach the 33 IPC threshold.

  • '19 '17 '16

    Sensible axis players would surrender well before that.

  • '18 '17

    If there are 241 IPC’s worth of territories (before NO’s), that would mean the Allies would be earning well over 200 IPC’s a turn.  No way the Axis could recover from that deficit.  That would mean another 50-70 IPC’s worth of NO’s as well.

  • '20 '19 '18

    @Navymule:

    If there are 241 IPC’s worth of territories (before NO’s), that would mean the Allies would be earning well over 200 IPC’s a turn.  No way the Axis could recover from that deficit.  That would mean another 50-70 IPC’s worth of NO’s as well.

    I wouldn’t think the Axis could recover, either, but I also wouldn’t say it’s impossible. The Allies begin the game with a 175-66 IPC advantage, but seem to lose more than half the time. Why does this happen?

    The short answer is that the Axis victory conditions are easier to achieve, in part because Axis income is concentrated in Germany and Japan. This allows the two main aggressors to develop strategy, purchase units needed to implement that strategy and get them to the front rapidly. Put another way, in the hands of an experienced player, the Axis have a very efficient military-industrial complex.

    On the other hand, the Allied IPC advantage, at least for the first 5-6 turns, is negated by the dispersal of those IPCs to every corner of the globe…and the Allies’ powerhouse must cross two oceans to join the fight. Until the US is fully engaged in battle, the Allied IPC advantage is virtually nonexistent.

    I could talk/write at length on the economics of G40, but I’ll jump to the key question: If the goal is to improve game balance by creating a new victory condition, wherein the Allies win if the number of Axis-controlled Victory Cities falls below X and the combined IPC value of Axis-controlled territories falls below Y, what are X and Y? In other words, what is the Axis’ “point of no return?”

Suggested Topics

  • 1
  • 8
  • 2
  • 18
  • 1
  • 9
  • 1
  • 1
Axis & Allies Boardgaming Custom Painted Miniatures

24

Online

17.0k

Users

39.3k

Topics

1.7m

Posts