*This is a gameplay discussion - I understand that losing the capitol historically would be very very bad, but that’s not reason enough to put it in a game that is only loosely based on history IMHO. It needs to serve a gameplay function, and not hurt the game in the process.
I don’t think there actually needs to be any special rules for capitol capture. To me, as long as capturing a capitol has such amazingly powerful implications (they can’t produce for two turns, capturing party gets a huge boost to their income), it’s going to dominate the strategy of the game.
If the current capitol capture rules stay in the game, it seems the major strategies will always revolve around capturing berlin for the allies or capturing moscow for the axis. Everybody seems to agree that once one of those things happens the other side can’t come back (or is very far from making a comeback).
If you remove the special capture rules, it’s still a HUGE blow to capture someone’s capitol (they lose their biggest IPC generator, and their biggest (sometimes their only) production center.
This is why japan players always try to attack the soviets. Even when Larry makes it harder, they still try to do it, because it’s still more worthwhile to kill moscow and fight a pitiful little war in the pacific, than to actually go for VCs and fight over the whole map (wouldn’t it be more interesting if we fought over the world and not just Europe?)
I wonder how the game would play at 12 VCs and no special capitol capture rules (can still produce and keep money when capitol is captured). I actually played a game on the Revised map where someone added a lot of VCs (many mirroring the A&A50 ones) and it felt very tense as the axis constantly got one VC away from victory then the allies managed to grab back Leningrad just as japan captured Sydney. I liked that game a lot for that reason. The game was also well balanced, as the allies came back almost to win (multiple times), but some really bad dice rolls killed them in a climactic eastern front battle.
What do you guys think about the capitol capture rules? There’s a very important balancing act done by every game (especially territory based strategy games) that i call Perpetual Comeback mechanic vs. Slippery Slope Mechanic. The capitol capture rules are an example of a slippery slope mechanic. Many Euro games whereby the person in last place gets the more favorable starting position for the next turn is an example of a perpetual comeback mechanic.
A slippery slope mechanic rewards the winning player for being in the lead/punishes the losing player. Basically a slippery slope mehcanic causes the player that’s farther behind to fall further behind. Usually game mechanics by default will reward people for being in the lead, you don’t need to help it by adding extra rules that make that reward even greater!
I will quote a wise game designer who introduced me to this concept (link to article at the bottom of this post):
@Sirlin.net:
For example, imagine that every time your team scored in basketball that the opponent’s team lost a player. In that game, falling behind is doubly bad because each basket counts for score AND it makes the opposing team less able to score points of its own. The actual game of basketball does not have this screwy feature though, so real basketball does not have slippery slope. Scoring in real basketball puts you closer to winning but does not at all hamper your opponents’ ability to score.
A perpetual comeback mechanic is a mechanic that rewards the losing player/punishes the winning player. These types of mechanics are sometimes required if you want the game to be fun, as many games start out (by design) heavily in favor of slippery slope.
Just think of the two as the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer (game mechanics).
A game too far on the slippery slope side ends up being really boring past a certain point because everybody knows who is going to win and you’re just going through the motions. If an RTS game was too slippery slope, for example. Winning the first battle means you will probably win the game - as every battle you win increases your chances of winning the next battle. So why keep playing after the first battle?
A game too far on the perpetual comeback side ends up being very annoying for skilled players who would like to be rewarded for doing well, and not punished. It could even make the game so random that skill doesn’t matter (i’m looking at you MARIO KART!).
So you neither want slippery slope nor perpetual comeback mechanics to define your game, but if we take a look at A&A, what do we see?
Slippery Slope:
- Capturing territory takes away IPC from the loser and gives it to the victor (a swing 2x as big as the IPC value of the territory).
- Capturing territory with an industrial complex/AA gun takes it from the loser and gives it to the victor (the delay in production for the capturing side is actually a limit on this slippery slope mechanic).
- Winning a battle well (you killed more IPC than he did) means you have a greater chance of winning the next one (your TUV compared to his is higher than it was before the battle).
- Capturing a Capitol gives you a huge money boost, and completely removes the enemy from being able to produce anything, effectively killing off their power if you manage to hold it. (this is added directly on top of 1 and 2, both of which are more exacerbated with capitols due to the high IPC/production value of the territory)
Perpetual Comeback mechanics:
- defending is usually more cost effective than attacking - (inf stack + planes much more useful on defence)
- Once someone starts to gain a lot of territory on an opponent, the losing party gets to focus all of their forces in one place and strike at the thinned out forces of the enemy who is far from their production facility.
- Planes Cannot land in newly captured territory (this would be an even bigger perpetual comeback mechanic if it allowed for planes to land in “liberated” territory but not “captured” territory).
Can you guys come up with any more? Now we’re at the subjective part of the argument. Are the Capture Capitol rules needed in order to prevent the game from taking too long? Are they necessary to make up for the perpetual comeback mechanics of the game? I would say no, because Slippery Slope Mechanics #1 and #2 are both very powerful and are even more powerful when you consider the importance of capitol IPC and production.
What are your thoughts? Are there, in fact, other game-winning (either 13 or 15 VP) strategies that work better/are easier to pull off than capture moscow/berlin?
BTW - you can check out a great article on Slippery Slope vs. Perpetual Comback game design here:
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/slippery-slope-and-perpetual-comeback.html