Why is surrender not an option in the original game?

Ok, i concede you can take and hold bryansk G4 with @aagamerz13 's strategy

Thank you for the quick reply @axis-dominion

@CWO:

@DizzKneeLand33:

Apparently none of you has a cat…

Yes, the cat issue is something that’s come up a few times on this board, as the picture below will illustrate.  I can’t recall if the suggestions were made seriously or not, but some board members have thought about protecting their games-in-progress from one weekend to the next by using a system of overhead pulleys to either raise the table to the ceiling or lower a protective hood over the map.  Feasible for a dedicated gaming room in the basement, but not likely to be approved for the living room by the lady of the house.

That is SO CUTE!!!

How well does the cat play?  Does he attack the US on turn one? :-D

I like seeing young folk playing the game.  It gives me hope that not all is lost on video games and electronic devices.  My son is 12 and is just starting to get into A&A although we play a lot of other games like D&D, MTG and most recently Talisman.

Nice setup too.  I really need to get myself a setup like that.

I am in the middle of game, round 4 America’s turn.  I took several pictures of the board that I could email you if you would like.  I could then give you the exact chip stacks around Russia since it is kind of hard to tell.  The situation is Germany has taken and hold Ukraine with about 15 inf, 2 art, 8 mech, 7 tanks. Russia has 17 inf in Bryansk with more in Russia.  The Luftwaf is all but gone, Italy is almost totally out of Africa and only has 1 trans and 1 DD on the board.  Japan has wiped out China and is poised to enter Russia, Russia inf are in Manchuria and there are 22 Brit inf in India with 2 art.  America has a small naval off Gibraltor and a large navy off the coast of Caroline islands (controlled by Japan) opposite the IJN in the Phillipeans SZ.

If you are interested shoot me an email, but I couldn’t get them to you until Sunday, since I am leaving town for the rest of the week.

@jim010:

For defensive power for my money, and allows for fht swapping at sea.

That’s a pretty big deal right there.

A long time ago, back when we just had the Classic MB version of A&A, I started working on an idea to break all territories into smaller sections so it wouldn’t just be one battle and you get the whole territory.  For example, the Eastern US territory would be broken down into all the different states so if an Axis attacked it, they would have to fight state to state in order to win that territory, and maybe some of the larger states could be split into two or three sections.  I thought this seemed more realistic than just one battle and you win the entire Eastern half of the United States.
However, many problems became apparent fairly quickly.  First of all, I couldn’t always find more detailed maps of some of the territories like those in central and eastern Russia, territories in Africa, Southeast Asia, etc. 
Also, going from the World map to a single territory map you would have to change all the units.  For example;  you have 10 infantry, 2 armor and 2 fighters defending Eastern USA.  If you shrink this down to just that territory broken up into many territories,  it would have to be something like 100 infantry, 20 armors and 20 fighters spread out amongst all those territories.  Plus you would have to figure out where to put them and it wouldn’t necessarily be an even amount.  You wouldn’t have the same amount of units defending Washington or New York as you would some empty space.  The same would hold true for the attackers.  How many units would you have attacking each territory?  Plus, I didn’t have a clue as to how to break it down like this for Naval warfare.  How many actual ships does 1 battleship on the World Map represent on the smaller maps?
Finally, it occurred to me that this would make just one game of A&A take literally MONTHS to complete.  Attacking a territory would be like opening up a whole new game.  Granted, there are a number of unoccupied territories that you could simply “blitz” and not have to refer to the smaller maps, but any substantial combat would take hours to complete as your forces move to take a territory a piece at a time.  Also, this would possibly mess up some attacks and leave a territory in a “contested” state for some time.  For example;  Germany invades Eastern US.  Germany has 20 Inf, 8 tanks, 2 fighters and 2 bombers.  The US has 10 inf, 2 tanks and 2 fighters plus the AA gun.  Now, depending on how the forces get laid out on the small scale map, and also depending on luck of the dice rolls, there are any number of outcomes.  On the World Map, it would be one big battle and over, likely with Germany winning .  However, on the small  map, it’s possible that say the Germans did well in the north.  However, in the south the US forces defeated the invader and still have good forces intact.  Also, on this scale, there will likely be more US forces farther inland as reserves.  So now the territory of Eastern USA is basically half German controlled and half US controlled.  This would drag this one battle out even longer.  Now, it’s possible that the triumphant German forces in the North could possibly get whittled down to nothing as they try to work their way south.
Anyway, my point is that doing a game like this would make it take way too long and I would imagine most people would lose intereste after a while.  It’s an interesting concept but if you get too detailed the game loses its fun.

@Gargantua:

That makes it obviously quite difficult to persuade other people to play with me…

Lie.

It’s only that long now, because people are still JUST starting to play.

I think that he said his group hadn’t played it before, so I think it would still take a while.  And even if all the players are used to the game, it is much longer than previous A&A games.

Random note: a lie is to deliberately mislead someone.  That’s not what polybios is doing, so you shouldn’t accuse him of it.