Warning: This is quite a long essay.
As everyone knows, because the US historically had the greatest industrial capacity of any nation during World War 2, they start with the most IPCs of any nation in every version of Axis and Allies, including Global 1940.
But I think the game understates this advantage.
If the World War 2 databook is correct (link here: https://archive.org/details/worldwariidatabo0000elli/page/276/mode/2up), in every year after entering the war, the US produced more coal, oil, iron ore, and steel than all of the Axis combined. This includes 1942, the peak year of Axis in territorial expansion, and 1943, the peak years of Axis
production for most of these raw materials.
Unsurprisingly, with this advantage, the US achieved feats like building more military aircraft than all of the Axis combined in each year from 1942-1945, more fighters in 1944 alone than Japan from 1941-1945, more merchant shipping in each year from 1942-1945 alone than Japan in the entire war (including 1939 and 1940), and more aircraft carriers, battleships, cruisers and destroyers than the rest of the world combined in 1943 and 1944.
To illustrate whether Global 1940 understates America’s IPC advantage over the Axis powers, I used edit mode on the Global 1940 map on TripleA to create a rough sketch of Axis frontiers in August 1942 and October 1943, calculate how many IPCs the Axis would’ve had under these borders, and compare those numbers to the US. I chose August 1942 because I thought this would be where the difference between the game and reality would be most apparent (it was, after all, when the Axis powers expanded to their maximum extent) and October 1943 to show that even later in the war when the Axis were clearly on the defensive and losing territory, America’s advantage was still understated. 1943 was also when the production of most industrial resources amongst the Axis as a whole peaked.
I didn’t choose a date later than 1944 because by then, the damage from the Allied bombing campaign on Germany and the submarine campaign against Japan reduced their production capacities so much that simply adding up the IPC values of their territories would be inaccurate even as a rough estimate.
This was not the case in 1942 and 1943. For example, the total tonnage of Japanese oil tankers, according to the databook, actually increased from 1942 to 1943 because more tankers were built than sunk. This was reversed in 1944 as the American submarine campaign intensified. If this trend was true for the rest of the Japanese merchant marine, this would’ve imposed a high cost on Japanese production capabilities in 1944 and 1945 that would’ve been difficult to quantify into IPCs.
The same is true for the Allied bombing campaigns in Europe. While, according to page 236 of the databook, the UK and the US “only” dropped 18,703+1,411 = 20,114 tons of bombs in all of 1942 and 157,367+44,185+13,144 = 214,696 tons in 1943, the Western Allies dropped more tons of bombs in each month of 1944 alone than they did in all of 1942 and overall dropped 1,154,897 tons of bombs, or over 5 times the amount dropped in 1943.
When drawing these maps I tried to be as conservative as possible towards the Axis, such as not including disputed or only partially conquered areas such as the territories with Stalingrad and Leningrad, the Solomon Islands, Alexandria, and eastern New Guinea, as well as independent, Axis-aligned nations such as Finland, Bulgaria, Thailand, and the non-occupied areas of Vichy France (the “free zone” and the colonies), since those nations were not listed in the databook’s resource tallies, while Hungary and Romania were. However, I did include the areas of puppet states that were part of Japan or Germany in all but name and hence probably contributed to their resource piles, such as Manchuko and Croatia. I also tried to be as generous as possible towards the Allies, such as assigning Southern Italy and French North Africa towards the US.
Note that given I created these maps in a short period of time, I only edited the parts of the map relevant to this mini-investigation, meaning that I didn’t represent the British conquests of Vichy Syria and Iraq nor did I show the Anglo-Soviet occupation of Persia.
Oh, and given that it’s difficult to represent the Second Sino-Japanese War on an Axis and Allies map, I decided to just leave the frontlines from 1940 as is. I don’t think the Japanese made any successful offensives into China until 1944 anyway.
Here are the files (I used version 2.7 for TripleA and the UHD Global 1940 map):
August 1942 Axis frontiers.tsvg
October 1943 Axis frontiers.tsvg
Here are the total IPC values of all the territories controlled by the Axis and the US in the August 1942 map:
Germany: 51 IPCs
Japan: 52 IPCsI
taly: 9 IPCs
US: 50 IPCs
Now let’s add up national objectives (remember, everyone’s at war):
5 IPCs to Germany for Swedish iron ore.
5 IPCs to Japan for controlling Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and Celebes.
10 IPCs to the US for controlling their mainland.
5 IPCs to the US for controlling all of Mexico, the West Indies, and Central America.
Overall, this means that the “baseline” Axis IPC totals in August 1942 would be 51+52+9+5+5 = 122 IPCs, while the “baseline” US IPC totals would be 50+5+10 = 65 IPCs.
And yeah, the US would still have more IPCs than any individual Axis power, but in a time when the US supposedly produced more of every major resource than all of the Axis combined, the US seems very underpowered. And while I’m not too knowledgeable on this subject, it seems to me that any economic damage to Japan by the American submarine campaign at this stage would’ve been more than equalized by the German U-boat campaign at this time.
And here are the total IPC values of all the territories controlled by the Axis and the US in the October 1943 map:
Germany: 55 IPCs
Japan: 52 IPCs
Italy: 0 IPCs (lost its capital, all of its land taken over by the US, UK, or Germany)
US: 56 IPCs
Now let’s add up national objectives (remember, everyone’s at war):
5 IPCs to Germany for Swedish iron ore.
5 IPCs to Japan for controlling Borneo, Java, Sumatra, and Celebes.
10 IPCs to the US for controlling their mainland.
5 IPCs to the US for controlling all of Mexico, the West Indies, and Central America.
5 IPCs to the US for controlling Hawaii, the Aleutians, Alaska, the Line Islands, and Johnston Island.
Overall, this means that the “baseline” Axis IPC totals in October 1943 would be 55+52+5+5 = 117 IPCs, while the “baseline” US IPC totals would be 56+5+10+5 = 76 IPCs.
I’m sure those numbers get closer if you add in the impact of the increasingly effective American submarine campaign in the Pacific and Allied bombing campaigns in Europe, but again, America’s resources comfortably outpaced the Axis’ combined during this time period. And this isn’t even including whatever resources Finland, Bulgaria, and Thailand had!
I understand that most Axis and Allies games have to engage in historical inaccuracies to give the Axis a chance at winning, such as giving Japan the world’s largest air force at the beginning of 1941, 1942 2nd Edition (tied with Germany), and Global 1940.
But in Global 1940 these inaccuracies lead to the game, as everyone agrees, being quite imbalanced in favor of the Axis. This imbalance can be corrected either by using a bid to increase Allied pieces (what most people do) or removing Axis pieces, both of which could be historically accurate. However, I feel that this somewhat upsets the fundamental game dynamic of the Axis having more units than the Allies at the beginning while the Allies have more IPCs. And if you enjoy the enormous power that can be unleashed in an out-of-box J1 or G1, making it weaker may make the game less fun.
But another historically accurate way to correct Global 1940’s imbalance without these changes would be to increase the number of IPCs the Allies earn each turn. As I hope I’ve demonstrated above, relative to the combined Axis powers the US has about 60 IPCs less than it “should” have in a more historically accurate matchup. Therefore, I think one potential way to balance the game (I haven’t playtested it yet) would be to simply give the US 60 more IPCs each turn they’re at war. This can be easily done on TripleA.
Before the first turn the US is or will be at war, and after loading the game and selecting “play local game”, click on the “resource modifiers” button. If you’re using play by email or play by forum, click on the “select local players and AI’s” button to find the resource modifiers section. Then enter “60” into the “bonus income” line for the US. Then load, play, and save the game. This modifier should stay the next time the file is loaded.
I decided to suggest a flat IPC increase rather than increasing US IPC income by a certain ratio of their “baseline” income (e.g 150% or 200%) because a flat IPC increase is more predictable and prevents minor strokes of luck or temporary advantages from being unnecessarily magnified. In other words, I think a flat IPC increase preserves more of the original dynamic of the game more than IPC ratios do.
Let me know what you think of this essay and whether I’m getting anything wrong.
