With only one game played like this so far, I don’t have an answer/idea about some of these “what if questions” concerning balance. And maybe if the players I tried this with so far had been more skilled player’s things would have been MUCH different, but we just used the same turn order that is outlined in this set of rules and it didn’t really affect the overall balance of the game.
Round 1 only;
Russia
Axis
Allies
Round 2 and beyond;
Axis
Allies
The rules are not real clear; but we allowed all units in a single territory/sea zone to attack at the same time.
Example; if the Germans had 3 infantry and 1 tank and 1 fighter and the Italians had 1 infantry and 1 tank all attacking the Russians in a single territory we rolled all the attacking units (4inf, 2 tanks and 1 fig) as one force against what ever units the Russians had.
Early in the game this felt really strong; the Allies kept getting trounced in every battle. But once the Allies consolidated their own forces a few turns later so that they could attack in the same “joint offensive” fashion, the Axis started getting trounced by over whelming odds too.
No battle in this one game was SO powerful that it changed the overall flow/feel of the game.
But, the rules are not written real clear as how to conduct combats. And I have been doing some reading on the forums for house rules since than and it looks like the idea is to have the individual powers attack separately (even if they are in the same territory) instead of “jointly” as we did.
One thing is for certain about using this all Axis all Allies turn sequence is that it speeds up the game by at least 30% to 40%. Our turns for six players per the official rules take an average of 1 hour (+20 minutes…1hr to 1hr 20mins). With this turn order the average time was about 40 minutes (+/- 10 minutes…30mins to 50mins). And the 20 or so minutes that you are “waiting for your turn” goes real fast. You don’t have enough time to “get bored” because your never really “waiting for your turn” because you have to keep looking at the board to figure out your purchases/strategy/moves while rolling your defensive dice too.
All of the other details about balance; I don’t know what to think about that…YET. But one thing is for certain, I’m going to play AA50 with this turn sequence several more times before I even consider a bid to correct any imbalance.
But, so far (IMO) the increased speed of the game alone is worth the chance of unbalancing the game.
(IMO) AA50 is just too long of a game to play; I don’t think we’ve had a game yet finish in less than 5 hours. In AAR our LONGEST games would last 5 hours but most of them ran closer to 4 hours (or less). So far all of our AA50 games have been lasting 6+ hours (and usually much longer). I’m sure we could play for less victory cities, but I just never really got into playing for nothing but a total victory for some reason. I’ve always favored the “till someone cries” (surrenders) type of games. The strategies are really different when you play till “the bitter end” instead of to a set (low) number of victory cities.