Capitals

I am not a big fan of house rules, since this is supposed to be a balanced game that is played in tournaments, and only loosely based on a WWII theme. But if you insist to add all this extra spice, I suggest to keep it inside the A&A box of known game mechanics. Let China be the base of what happens when your capital is lost. And skip the pro neutral thing, its either true neutral or not neutral.

The Rule.
1. When your capital is lost, all territories under your control become true neutral. You are no longer an active player. You can no longer move any of your former units, they are stuck where you left them last turn. Your ships will not make a seazone hostile. Former allied units on your territory must either combat move out next turn or trigger combat. If you have units in former allied territories, they are removed from the map.

A lot of evidence from the real WWII support this rule suggestion. When the French capital was captured, all other French territories became neutral. Not pro but true. US and UK had to combat move into neutral French Morocco, Germany had to combat move into Vichy, and Japan had to combat move into FIC. Also, all French units that were in UK when Paris fell, were demobilized and sent home to occupied France. When the Italian capitol was taken, the former allied German units in Northern Italy would face combat against the by now neutral Italian units in that territory. When the Finnish capital was taken by Russia in sept 1944, Finland was declared neutral and the former allied German units in Northern Finland faced combat against the Finnish forces there. Same with Romania in 1944. And so on. When Japan captured the Chinese capital Bejing in 1937, China become neutral. When this game start, China is a neutral with an occupied capitol.

2. When a neutral territory is attacked, it is no longer neutral but allied to the enemy of the attacker. And remember, with this rule there are no pro neutral, only true neutral, so a combat move into a neutral territory will never trigger a world wide uprising by other neutrals, like in the OOB rules.

Evidence to support this.
Neutral Poland is attacked by Germany and Russia and get allied to UK and France. No other true neutral join the war.
Viborg territory of neutral Finland is attacked by Russia, and can join the Western Allies, but the road to Finland is blocked by other neutrals that dont want to join the war.
Neutral countries Norway, Denmark, Belgium and the Netherlands is attacked by Germany, and taken in one round since they are one territory each. No other true neutrals join the war.

3. When a neutral nation is at war, and it has no capitol, either because the capitol was taken in a previous turn, or it is a minor one territory nation, or Mongolia, then it can purchase infantry only, limited by its income, and place this infantry in any territory in order to the Chinese special OOB rule

The main problem with the reinforcements mechanic is that of the “pinning” trick, whereby the attacker can send a single infantry to attack stack B in order to prevent units defending stack B from reinforcing stack A during that combat phase.

Possible solutions:

1. The defender always chooses the order in which battles are resolved;

2. An attack is not allowed against a force more than 3 times that of the attacker (in total units);

3. The defender is still allowed to reinforce even from tts under attack; this creates other problems, effectively giving the defender a “free retreat” option.

4. Fight all battles in a combat phase simultaneously by round, only allowing reinforcements from tts clear of enemy units.

why not be able to just upgrade a cruiser you allready own?
for 7 IPC’s for a battle ship

or just bring them damage into play

We’re curious if you get to roll for Diplomacy if you lose your capital.  There doesn’t seem to be anything in the rules prohibiting it like there is for Tech Dev.

We’re leaning towards not allowing it.

BTW:  Germany had some HOT dice and repelled the UK invasion.  Lesson learned!  Must be Begas rubbing off.

No you lose your capital you lose ability for tech and diplomacy, when you lose your last factory you cant build anything but infantry.

Why are capital ships (Carriers in 1940 and Battleships) repaired at no cost and taking no time? I think they should be forced to sit out for a turn while repairs are carried out. I can live with it being no cost though.

Or does that weaken Battleships too much? You still need carriers.

@CWO:

@taamvan:

I am not sure what the British government’s back up plan was anyways if Sea Lion was successful.

The British government may not have had an actual “backup plan”, in terms of something serious and concrete and specific.  My impression is that Britain’s civilian and military leaders were focussed on preventing an invasion in the first place, and on defeating it if it did actually occur, and that they were sufficiently confident that they could accomplish one or the other of those goals that they didn’t need to give any detailed consideration to what to do if Britain ended up facing defeat.  Hitler, similarly, didn’t give serious consideration to invading Britain until he was forced to admit that Britain wasn’t going to come to terms with him after the defeat of France.

It’s quite possible that British government considered the possibility of setting up a government-in-exile in Canada (or elsewhere), but “considering the possibility” isn’t the same thing as preparing a functional contingency plan.  And in fact, there would have been two good reasons NOT to work on such a functional plan.  First, it would have taken up time and resources that could have been better used elsewhere, even if it only amounted to a small number of staff.  More importantly, preparing such a plan – even in secret – would have been politically very dangerous.  Churchill had famously been proclaiming in the House of Commons that “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.”  If word had somewhow reached the public that the same Churchill was secretly preparing plans to decamp to Canada, it would have had two very serious negative effects: it would have told the public that Churchill believed that Britain genuinely risked being conquered by Nazi Germany (which would have been very bad for morale) and it would have convinced people that Churchill was hypocritical on a monumental scale (which would have ended his political career).  It would also have destabilized the British government, which was the last thing Britain needed at that time.

No, I completely understand why Churchhill did that, he was a very ballsy man and someone who was needed for UK but you’d still think you want some kind of back up just in case. I am sure his staff and the Royal Family would AT LEAST retreat to Ireland if need be.

The vichy rules reminds me of the one from xeno games.  I think their’s was to roll for the fleet like yours except uk and germany each got one chance at the fleet and 2-4 was scuttle. I like your idea of rolling for individual ships. Maybe make it individual sz’s?

On the territories they rolled 50-50 free or vichy. If it went vichy it and everything in it turned german. I think the allies were allowed to use free french areas any way they wanted,but if they actually attacked a FF territory to take control of it, all remaining FF turned vichy. If FIC went vichy it went to japan.

It went something like that anyways.

It should read:

4)  When a battleship has a damage marker its firepower is reduced by one i.e.
a)  A battleship with one damage marker, hits on a roll of 3
b)  A battleship with two damage markers, sinks
c)  An Aircraft carrier with a damage marker sinks
d)  A cruiser with one damage marker sinks

all ships thats take one hit sink is the rule

the BB can take 2 hits before it sinks.

If you want to make all the units take 2-3 hits, that will be a big change