@frimmel:
I think Krieg’s Method One is the most elegant solution– reduce the effectiveness of AA.
Thanks.
@frimmel:
So while I’m not much for tweaks (I think the game (note not the ‘simulation’ is fun as is) or even offering them I’m going to ask this one: What about reducing the cost of fighters and increasing the fighter basing capacity of AC’s and airfields?
Leave all other things unchanged? Or would you need to then cut back on Fighter naval attack dice?
That’s the problem with adjusting things. It tends to snowball. If you make one thing more powerful, you run the risk of creating a situation where it dominates the game. Then you end up having to change something else to make up for it, and so on. I’ve been down this road before. I started out tweaking the basic A&A combat system, and ended up rewriting it because of the ripples those tweaks caused.
In this case, it’s obvious (as Timerover said) that airfields should have a much higher capacity to support air units than carriers do. However, it you boost the airfields’ capacity, you run the risk of making carriers superfluous. If you do that, you need to give carriers some other property or ability to make them necessary. Or you could cut down on the number or airfields available, which would be historically accurate, but then you have to start messing with the victory conditions. And so on.
That’s why I tend to favor small adjustments. It’s very easy to destroy game balance with large ones, unless you can manage to make multiple large ones that balance each other out.
On another note, Axis & Allies games have never claimed to be overly historically accurate. That’s not their mission. Their mission is to provide a fun gaming experience while introducing people (especially young people) to an important chapter in history. They’re meant as a jumping-off point to stimulate curiosity.
As such, there is a fine balance between not only historical accuracy and playability, but also between evoking the “feel” of World War II combat while keeping things simple and easy to learn while not overly distorting the reality of history. If you veer too far into simulation territory, you’re going to scare a lot of people off. If you make it too abstract, you’ll also lose people. I think the track record of these games and their continued popularity prove that Larry has struck a near-perfect balance here. Sure, there are historical inaccuracies, but no more than you’ll find in fiction books and movies (and even some non-fiction books) about the war. People whose curiosity about history is truly fired by these games will find out more about the war, and will learn for themselves what’s been glossed over or eliminated for the sake of simplicity.
The thing that I find most fascinating about the design of these games is that two historical inaccuracies will often cancel each other out. There’s a perfect example in this very discussion. Complaints have been made both about the fact that airfields are allowed to be built on islands that can’t possibly support an airfield, and that airfields have the same capacity to support planes that carriers do. Both complaints are valid from a “realism” point of view. However, combining these two features of the game yields the practical result that airfields, as a whole, can support more fighters than carriers can. While the mechanical details contain inaccuracy, the abstract whole reflects reality in a way that creates a fun strategic puzzle. Rather than working to increase the capacity of one or two airfields throughout the game in order to support more planes, the player is encouraged to gain territory in order to reach that goal. Thus, conflict is promoted while at the same creating an abstract measure of victory. That’s what I call elegant design.
The fact that these abstractions in the games’ designs also provide a “skeleton” that can be customized in any way that the consumer wants is another reason for the success of these games, in my opinion. The basic system is there to be tweaked in any way that you want to “fix” whatever pet peeve you have with the way the game represents history, or just flesh out an area that you think deserves more detail. You can do anything from play the game as is to making major modifications (possibly to the point of creating a new game entirely) in the way that Timerover, Imperious Leader and others have. I think that some folks have more fun tinkering with the games than they do actually playing them.
