Hello! I’m starting this thread to show off drafts of a new map for TripleA that I’m working on. I call it the “middleweight” map because it’s meant to have a medium size and complexity – somewhat larger than Revised, but somewhat smaller than World at War. I’ll be updating this top post as I progress through the design work. Some of my design goals for this map include:

(1) Break up the “capital areas” into multiple tiles, so that central Germany, continental USA, mainland Japan, etc. are not so easy to defend.
(2) Add a few buffer tiles that are meant to be traded back and forth in the opening so that players don’t lose their capitals or their entire economies on the first turn, e.g., Belgium and Argonne between France and Germany, or Vladivostok and Buryatia between Siberia and Manchuria.
(3) Place virtually all islands between sea zones instead of inside sea zones, so that controlling islands is a useful way to improve your mobility and logistics – you don’t have to waste an entire flying into and out of each sea zone, for example.
(4) Ensure that crossing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans is difficult yet possible – players should have to put some thought and advance planning into how and where to cross, but the time lag should not be so extreme that you have to buy transports on turn 1 to have a chance of retaking a victory city on turn 5.
(5) Eliminate most of the ‘extra’ tiles in Siberia, China, Africa, etc. that are meant to take up space and slow down enemy invasions…enemy invasions should be slowed by defending troops in plausible chokepoints, not by sheer distance alone.
(6) Use clear visual signals to help call attention to the strategic features of the map, e.g., all Allies in light colors and all Axis in dark colors; all victory cities are in large circles that look visually distinct from other territories.
(7) Enhance replayability by offering many different economically valuable theaters to fight in; all territories are worth at least 1 IPC, and it should not be obvious which direction(s) each nation should be trying to expand.
(8) Reduce the importance of capital looting; you can still steal some cash when you sack a capital, but it shouldn’t totally shut down a players’ ability to manufacture new units.

The screenshots below are very early drafts; I haven’t assigned territory values or put down starting units yet, but hopefully it will give you an idea of where I’m headed. Feedback on game balance, strategy, software bugs (e.g. territories are missing a connection) and user experience is extremely welcome at all times. Feedback on graphic design and historical accuracy is welcome primarily if you are volunteering to do some of the work of improving those areas of the game, e.g., if you want to contribute some images or edit the .xml file to include proper country names, great, I will be happy to send you the files; if you just want to complain that I got your favorite territory’s name wrong, that’s not as useful.

I plan to make two different scenarios for this map, one for 1939 and one for 1942. If you want to make a different scenario, I will be happy to send you the source files! As always, thanks to all of my buddies here on the forum who have contributed ideas, images, and feedback over the years – I could not have started this project without you, and, frankly, if I didn’t have buddies like you to hang out with, then I wouldn’t even want to work on this type of map.

1939:

1942:

6 tanks is a good R2/R3 buy if you think you can actually use those tanks to stop Germany from safely stacking Bryansk or Belarus or Eastern Ukraine or something like that. The most obvious reason why that might be true is if Germany attempted Sea Lion, but it could also happen if Germany got diced in Paris and lost most of their fast movers, or if Germany bought a ton of infantry and artillery on G1/G2, or if Germany bought a bunch of subs and bombers on G1/G2. Basically if you can slow Germany down by a full turn by preventing them from stacking the next territory in their lineup (or by taking that territory back from them after they’ve unsafely stacked there) then you gain almost a full additional turn of Russian income before the Russian capital and/or economy collapses, which more than pays for the inefficiency of tank purchases.

On the other hand, if you buy 6 tanks and don’t stop Germany from advancing on schedule, then, yeah, you’ve just blown money Russia can’t afford to lose, and Germany will get Moscow for cheap.

Buying 2 to 3 artillery and/or mech. infantry per turn as Russia is almost always a good idea, because it can force Germany to keep their forces together, or it can allow you to defensively stack, e.g., Leningrad for an extra turn and then safely retreat your mechanized forces (or send mechanized forces from Moscow to the rescue of a stack of infantry retreating to, e.g., Bryansk). You pull off one trick like that, and, again it pays for itself. You win a couple of battles against pairs of German units with 2 inf, 1 art, 1 ftr that you might have lost with 3 inf, 1 ftr, and, again, it pays for itself. Even if you don’t manage to pull that off, the difference between having 9 (or 27) Russian units and 10 (or 30) Russian units is not game-changing…we’re talking about a few percent on the Moscow battle or a few extra tanks for Germany after they conquer it; we’re not talking about throwing the game way.

It’s also just more fun to have something to do with the Russians other than turtle. If it’s not clearly worse to buy a few mechs and art, why not enjoy yourself?

Against my better judgment, here are some thoughts on the “meta” or “structure” of an Allied playbook.

With respect to Germany and Japan, the Allies are like the black pieces in chess – they’re responding to Axis initiative, so a good Allied player needs a battle plan for each of the most popular German and Japanese openings.

With respect to Italy, the Allies are like the white pieces in chess – the Allies set the initiative, and Italy has to respond. Depending on what the Allies do, Italy could start the game with one transport or three transports, with a big force in East Africa or no units in East Africa with a big stack in Tobruk or no forces in Tobruk, with Vichy control guaranteed, or with Vichy nearly impossible and an Allied landing force in Greece. So a good Allied player doesn’t need different plans to use against Italy; they just need one good anti-Italian attack. (A master-class player will need different plans so they can perfectly adapt their play to the situation on the board and keep their opponent off-balance, but that’s beyond the scope of a “playbook.”)

As I see it, the most popular German openings are:

• Sea Lion (build transports and some surface ships, focus on taking London on G3),
• Barbarossa (build mechs and tanks, focus on taking Moscow G5 - G7 with enough tanks/planes left over to threaten Egypt),
• Dark Skies (build mechs and bombers, focus on holding all Allies at bay with bombers while Germany accumulates income advantages from Norway, Leningrad, Stalingrad, and maybe Egypt and/or Iraq).

The most popular Japanese openings, as far as I can tell, are:

• a J1 attack on the Philippines and Borneo with the idea of taking all of the money islands by J2-J3 and taking India J3-J6 or at least knocking the UK Pacific’s income down to near-zero very quickly
• a J1 attack on Pearl Harbor, with or without an invasion of Hawaii, with the idea of tying down US assets to help Germany win in Europe
• a conservative J2 or J3 attack that focuses on knocking out China early and making high-value trades to keep Japan’s options wide open so they can threaten Russia, India, or Australia later in the game
• a suicidal attack on Russia, often through China, with planes being sacrificed to airblitz open a path and/or strategically bomb Moscow to weaken Russia for a German win.

So a good Allied playbook needs ways to address all 7 of these Axis openings, as well as one good anti-Italian attack. Personally, I prefer scrambling no planes against the German naval attacks and then launching the Taranto raid every game, combined with moving the Pacific transport to Persia and the Mediterranean transport to either Southern France (if needed to prevent Vichy) or Greece (if Vichy will not be triggered). On turn 1, always, I like to buy a factory in Egypt and 2 inf, 1 ftr in London. I like to follow that up with a factory in Persia, build mostly land units until Italy is cleared out of Africa, Iraq, and/or Syria, and then build mostly subs to shut Italy down in Sea Zone 97. It’s not a foolproof plan and there are times when something else might be slightly better, but this plan will always work well enough, no matter what your Axis opponents are doing. The Allies have enough to think about in the opening without trying to memorize five different anti-Italian openings.

@trulpen I really like the way you are thinking about how to pose thorny dilemmas for your opponent, but I don’t think spending 15 IPCs to save a damaged Battleship is ever a cost-effective play against an opponent who can calmly respond to an unexpected opening.

The thing is, Germany barely has a use for a battleship. They’re not going to get into round after round of combat where they can keep repairing it and leveraging the efficiency of the free hit. They’re not going to be doing much shore bombardment. At least in the Baltic / North Sea region, they’re not brushing up against factory limits; you can drop 20 units a turn. As aequitas points out, in the long run Germany isn’t a naval power anyway; the US & UK will eventually win control of the Atlantic Ocean; it’s just a matter of time.

Would I spend 5 IPCs to save a German BB? Sure. It’s of some use; it’s a large piece. But 15 IPCs is almost the whole cost of the BB. The Axis need to expand explosively in the first few turns in order to compete; any investments you make need to pay a very high interest rate. The interest rate on rescuing your BB is low because you buy the AB turn 1, then turn 2 the BB goes back into the Baltic to lick its wounds, then on G3 you get to move the BB somewhere. Where, exactly? To hit Leningrad? I mean, OK, maybe – but that does what, exactly…reduces your chances of losing an 8 IPC destroyer? And has decent odds of bombarding one Soviet infantry? So ballpark you’re earning something like 4 IPC + 2 IPC = 6 IPC, two turns later, on your 15 IPC airbase investment.

Meanwhile, if you just leave the BB alone, and let it stay wounded in the British sea zone, it’s got a 2/3 chance of killing a British destroyer or fighter – there’s your 6 IPCs right there.

So, yes, you’re laying an interesting trap for your opponents by inviting them to hit a BB that’s defended by 3 fighters and either come in too weak or pass up on the chance to do Taranto and hit mostly air…but if they see the trap and ignore your BB and do Taranto anyway, then you’ve spent 15 IPC to save a piece that’s really only worth about 10 IPCs at most to the German side.

UPDATE: Balanced Mod is live on TripleA! Download the map from the bottom of the “Good Maps” section if you want to try it.

Third draft based on feedback from everyone and playtests with @axis_roll – thank you for commenting!

The conventional wisdom is that A&A 50th Anniversary Edition, 1941 Scenario requires a large bid for the Allies, so I thought I’d try my hand at creating an alternate set of national objectives that could balance the game not by giving the Allies a large up-front gift of units, but by giving the Allies a chance to develop a mighty economy that can turn the tides of war in the middle-game. The goal is to have some more adrenaline and some more asymmetry in the game play – the Axis will expand very rapidly in the first few turns, but they’ll need to shut down most of the Allied NOs as part of their initial expansion, or else they’re likely to get crushed around turn 7 or 8 by the Allied rebound. I’ve also slightly changed China’s starting setup (and some of the Chinese movement/income rules) to make China more relevant. Note that the Turkish Straits / Black Sea are considered open for both ships and planes for all players.

It’s not required, but I recommend adding the air interception rules from Global 1940’s Balanced Mod: fighters escort and intercept strategic bombing raids using one die per fighter that hits an enemy plane on a 2 or less, and strategic bombers roll one die per bomber that hits an enemy plane on a 1 or less if they are challenged by interceptors. Strategic bombers that make it through any interceptors and/or flak to roll damage should deal 1d6 + 1 points of damage to a factory, not 1d6: so if you roll a 3, you deal 4 points of damage to the factory. This makes bombing a little more attractive against unguarded factories, but much less attractive against a factory with a proper air force defending it.

You could also throw in Marines from Global 1940 Balanced Mod if you like; I don’t think it would make much difference either way to the game play.

Let me know what you think! All comments welcome.

GERMANY

• Scandinavian Iron – 5 IPCs if Axis control 2+ of: Norway, Finland, and NW Europe
• Operation Barbarossa – 5 IPCs if Axis control 2+ of: Karelia, Ukraine, Caucasus
• Secure Rumanian Oil – 3 IPCs if Axis control Romania and there are no Allied planes in the Balkans, Ukraine, Sea Zone 15, or Sea Zone 16.
• Eurasian Wheat – 3 IPCs if Axis control 2+ of East Poland, Belorussia, and East Ukraine
• Archangel-Astrakhan Line – 3 IPCs if Axis control 2+ of: Archangel, Moscow, and Kazakh

RUSSIA

• Northern Lend-Lease – 3 IPCs after the start of turn 2 if Allies control Archangel with no Axis ships in SZ 3 or 4
• Southern Lend-Lease – 3 IPCs after the start of turn 2 if Allies control Persia & Caucasus w/ no Axis ships in SZ 34
• Eastern Lend-Lease – 3 IPCs after the start of turn 2 if Allies control SFE & Yakutsk w/ no Axis ships in SZ 63

JAPAN

• Chinese Coastline – 3 IPCs if Axis control Manchuria, Kiangsu, Fukien, Kwantung, and French Indochina
• Chinese Hegemony – 3 IPCs if Axis control literally all Chinese territories
• Bornese Oil – 3 IPCs if Axis control Borneo and no Allied warships anywhere in SZ 49, 50, 60, 61, or 62
• Javanese Rubber – 3 IPCs if Axis control East Indies and no Allied warships anywhere in SZ 38, 49, 50, 60, 61, or 62
• Central Pacific Islands – 3 IPCs if Axis control 4+ of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Midway, Wake, Carolines, Hawaii
• Co-Prosperity Sphere – 3 IPCs if Axis control 2+ of India, Australia, Hawaii, Yakut SSR

UK

• North Atlantic – 3 IPCs if Allies control E. Canada, Greenland, and Iceland with no Axis ships in SZs 1 through 9.
• Mediterranean Route – 3 IPCs if Allies control Gibraltar and Egypt with no Axis warships in SZ 13, 14, 15, or 16.
• Soft Underbelly – 3 IPCs if UK or USA has at least one land unit in Italy, the Balkans, or Romania.
• Indian Empire – 5 IPCs if Allies control India, Madagascar, and South Africa with no Axis ships in SZs 28 through 35.
• ANZAC – 5 IPCs if Allies control Australia, New Zealand, New Guinea, and the Solomon Islands.

ITALY

• Vichy Collaboration – 3 IPCs if Axis control France, Morocco, and Libya
• Mare Nostrum – 3 IPCs if there are no Allied ships in SZs 13, 14, 15, 16 and at least one Italian ship in SZ 13-16
• Abyssinian Adventure – 3 IPCs if Axis control 2+ of Sudan, Italian East Africa, Rhodesia
• Mideastern Oil – 5 IPCs if Axis control 2+ of Egypt, Trans-Jordan, Persia, Caucasus

USA

• Arsenal of Democracy – 5 IPCs after the start of turn 3 if Allies control Western US, Central US, and Eastern US
• Manifest Destiny – 5 IPCs after the start of turn 3 if Allies control Mexico, Panama, Hawaii, and Alaska
• South Atlantic – 2 IPCs if Allies control West Indies and Brazil with no Axis warships in SZ 10, 11, 12, 17, 18, or 19
• Operation Torch – 3 IPCs if America has a land unit or flag in both Morocco and Libya
• Operation Overlord – 5 IPCs if USA has land units both NW Europe and France
• Alcor Aluminum – 2 IPCs if Allies control Australia, Solomon Islands, Hawaii, and Western US
• Central Pacific Islands – 3 IPCs if Allies control 4+ of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Midway, Wake, Carolines, Hawaii
• MacArthur was a Donkey – 5 IPCs if Allies control the Philippines
• West Pacific Airstrips – 5 IPCs if Allies control 3+ of Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Formosa, Manchuria, Buryatia

CHINA

• Burma Road – +1 Chinese artillery for any Chinese-owned territory if Allies control India, Burma, and Yunnan
  ** Setup Change – Sikang starts the game with 1 infantry, 1 fighter. Yunnan starts with (only) 2 infantry.
  ** Movement Change – Chinese troops may move into Burma, French Indochina, and/or Kwangtung.
  ** Income Change – China receives all reinforcements based on the map after combat, just like other nations.

(Edited per axisroll’s comments about needing more relative weight in the Pacific)
(Thanks to Baron Munchhausen for suggesting addition of Greenland)
(Tweaked Russian and UK objectives to be somewhat harder based on playtests with Corpo24)
(Special thanks to axisroll for playtesting these with me for two full games!)
(There are minor changes to the German and British objectives based on recent feedback, which have now been copied as version 1.1 on TripleA. Please make sure you and your opponents are playing with the same version! Version 1.0 has only 3 German objectives instead of 5, and it contains an error in the Russian Southern Lend-Lease objective.)

This is basically my favorite topic.

I agree that in most A&A games, transports are too expensive, especially for tournament play (since tournaments usually have fewer rounds, which means there’s less opportunity for the transport to slowly pay for itself over many rounds).

I think it’s going too far to say that expensive transports are the reason why A&A games are unbalanced. I think the reason why A&A games are unbalanced is that most games are unbalanced by default, and it takes an enormous amount of skill and effort and testing to make a game balanced, and historically Avalon Hill etc. have not invested that level of effort into balancing their A&A games, and even if they did put more effort into balancing their games, it’s not always clear that they would be successful.

If you imagine the game designer as an archer who is shooting arrows at a paper target, then getting a “balanced” game is like the bullseye. If the average bid is 5 IPCs or less, then the game is at least roughly balanced. That’s the bullseye – it’s the width of a one-time payment of 5 IPCs. But there’s no special reason why the arrow has to hit the bullseye. Maybe the game will need a one-time payment of 10 or 20 or 80 IPCs. Maybe the game is so unbalanced that you’ve got to add extra national objectives or extra unit types for one side, or change the turn order, or something drastic like that. There are lots of ways to shoot an arrow at a balanced game and “miss.” The total design space is much, much wider than 5 IPCs – it’s hundreds and hundreds of IPCs “wide.”

At the start of an A&A game, the position is intentionally asymmetrical: the Axis will have more armies and planes, and the Allies will control more territory. That means you can’t necessarily tell whether the game is balanced just by glancing at it – it’s not obvious what the conversion factor should be between Total Unit Value (TUV) and Production (IPCs). Do the Axis need an extra 3 IPCs of TUV for every 1 IPC of Allied advantage in the production value of their starting territories? Or is the ratio closer to 2:1? 4:1? 5:1? It depends on what the best-available opening strategies are, and how effective they are, and how quickly and reliably the Axis can expect to conquer Allied territory, and, yes, on how much it will cost the Allies to build up a fleet of transports (or minor factories) with which to project their power from far-away sources of income such as New York City and London. It’s very hard to say what the exact ratio of TUV Advantage to Production Advantage should be without extensive playtesting and/or complicated, detailed analysis. It’s not something you can just eyeball.

So when you make a new Axis & Allies game, it might look balanced to the naked eye, but if you’re even slightly wrong about the proper ratio of TUV to Production, you could easily be so wrong that re-balancing your game will require a bid of 30 or 60 or 200 IPCs.

There’s a kind of horrible paradox in A&A design: if you design a great game, then people will play it to death over many years, and, in so doing, will invent all kinds of new openings that change how rapidly the Axis are able to conquer territory from the Allies. When people first started playing Global 1940 2nd Edition, even moderately-skilled players weren’t necessarily familiar with Dark Skies, or Middle Earth, or Bright Skies, or the Russian tank blitz, or the Yunnan stack – all of which are sort of core parts of the way the game is currently played. But if you’re looking at the game and trying to figure out how large of a bid the Allies need, well, that depends in part on how good the Allied opening strategies are and how good the Axis opening strategies are. So you’re trying to balance a game with literally hundreds of pieces so finely that you don’t want to need to add even two more pieces to one side – i.e., to within 1% tolerances – but you’re also hoping to build a game that’s dynamic and interesting enough that as people play it, they’ll develop new openings and new approaches to the game.

After all, if players could work out the “one best strategy” for an A&A game within a few months after it was released, and nobody could ever improve on that strategy, then it wouldn’t be a very good game, or, at least, it wouldn’t have much replay value. But if you can’t work out the “one best strategy” with 1,000 players in 6 months, then you probably also can’t work out the “one best strategy” with 10 playtesters in 2 years – so the playtesters are necessarily going to miss some of the best opening strategies, which in turn will throw off the balance in the opening.

I do fault the designers of Axis & Allies Spring 1942 2nd Edition, because the balance on that game isn’t even close – ordinary, straightforward play by the Axis should win at least 80% of the games at even a moderate skill level if the Allies don’t get a bid. You don’t have to do anything fancy to win that game as the Axis – just build 1/2 infantry, 1/6 artillery, and 1/3 tanks with both Germany and Japan, leave a couple of infantry at home to guard Berlin and Tokyo, and send the rest of the units to Moscow. Roll some dice, and then the Axis win. This is a strategy that the designers could have and should have discovered during playtesting, so they should have been aware that the game was not balanced out-of-the-box, and they should have changed the rules or the starting setup accordingly.

For the other games, I don’t necessarily fault the designers; they made a reasonable effort to hit the target, and they just happened to miss. World War I is massively biased in favor of the Allies, but it took a little while to figure that out; it wasn’t necessarily obvious that Britain needed to spend its entire budget in India, or that the USA needed to spend its entire budget on shoring up Rome via the Mediterranean. These are ahistorical strategies that haven’t really been tried in previous A&A games, so it’s fine that they came as a surprise to the designers.

Same thing with A&A Anniversary Edition 1941: it turns out that the Italians are able to can-open for the Germans in a way that devastates Russia, and that it’s too hard to stop Japan’s amphibious explosion because there’s nowhere sane for the Allies to build a Pacific factory, but those weren’t necessarily problems that were obvious in advance: these problems were the result of changes in the Italian and Chinese setup that were new to Anniversary.

I would like to see cheaper transports as an option, especially for tournament games, but I don’t think there’s any way to set a price on transports (or to scrap transports in favor of infantry-carrying cruiser groups) that would eliminate the hard problem of balance.

Now with territory values and a lighter color for the sea zone!

All right, sounds like an interesting learning game. Sometimes you do get diced in an early battle (or three of them) and then that reverberates across the game. Especially if Japan is not declaring war on the Anglo-Americans, then there’s not much wiggle room for the UK & Russia to defend Moscow; a few bad battles or a few bad choices and Moscow can fall really early, and that’s all normal. I would have discussed the overall strategic situation with the Russian player, and explained why it made sense for them to sit tight and wait for British aid to arrive from Persia/India, but it’s hard playing just one country all day, and sometimes you just want to make a frigging attack, you know? It can be a lot more fun making one big attack and losing badly because of it than literally sitting around all day biding time and then having your friends argue about whether the resulting position was slightly favoring the Axis or slightly favoring the Allies.

I almost think you have to discuss strategies like that ahead of time, and figure out what countries to give people based on what their playstyle is. Especially in a game of Global with multiple newbies – if you’ve got a reckless attacker, give 'em the Germans or the Japanese. If you’ve got a timid turtle, give 'em the Russians or give 'em UK Pac + Anzac + China. That’s hard to suss out; a lot of people aren’t self-aware about what their playstyle is and may not admit to being a turtle even if they know it, but I think as the host you at least have to try to have that conversation.

As far as strategy, I think the British destroyers have to be built in Canada (SZ 106) when the Germans are doing an aggressive forward deployment with carrier and airbases. Building in Wales (SZ 109) is just a gift; it lets the Germans sink 'em for cheap. I’d also be very careful about moving into the Southern France sea zone when the Luftwaffe is still intact, because the risk-reward ratio is all wrong. If your fleet holds, then you deny Italy its Mare Nostrum NO for 1 turn (5 IPCs), and you get some additional boats into the Battle of the Atlantic at the cost of giving Italy a credible threat against Eastern Med targets like Egypt, Jordan, Crete, and Syria. It’s not clear that those results are better than just doing Taranto and sinking 2 Italian transports, which likely denies them the New Roman Empire NO (5 IPCs) for the rest of the game, and that’s what you get when everything goes well – as you saw, if it goes poorly against either the Italians or the Germans on a follow-up G2 attack, then you lose both your Atlantic and your Med fleets and you have very, very little to show for it. But you knew that.

Anyway, if Germany is buying an airbase and a carrier on G1, that’s the entire G1 economy, so they have no destroyers on the board. That means one interesting British purchase is submarines for the Atlantic! Hit the carrier, hit the battleship, hit the convoy zones in Norway and Normandy…just generally make life uncomfortable for the Kriegsmarine, and if you bait Germany into buying a couple of destroyers on top of the airbase and carrier, then at that point Russia should be rich enough to hold its own. Alternatively, if Germany retreats into the Baltic, the subs are useful against Italy in the Med.

I would use these rules:

(1) if the defender sees a key battle coming and can predict that they’ll want an unusual order of loss, they can leave a note, send an e-mail, etc., informing the attacker of their preferred order of loss, and the attacker will then follow that order.

(2) if there is no note, the attacker will provisionally use a standard order of loss.

(3) after seeing the results of the battle, the defender can pay 2 IPCs to the bank per casualty that they want to switch. You didn’t want to lose your bomber after all? Fine, pay 2 IPCs, and you can have your bomber back in exchange for one of your infantry. This should be expensive enough to deter casual abuse but still cheap enough that if you would really be upset about the order of loss, you can fix it without too much drama. Don’t think it’s fair that you should have to pay to set up your order of loss exactly the way you want it? Well, then, you should have foreseen the battle and given orders in advance. Don’t feel like thinking that hard every turn? Well, then, you can always just cough up 2 IPCs. It’s a way of speeding up the game while making sure that nothing unacceptably bad will happen because of order of loss issues.

Update: I decided to manually trace a brand new vector map so that I can squash and enlarge continents as I see fit and then rescale when I’m done so that the smallest tiles will still be enough pixels wide to hold a few unit types each. Here’s Europe and Africa – you may notice that Africa is only half the height it ‘should’ be compared to Europe, and that the UK is about 140% of its proper size, and that the English Channel and North Sea are about triple their proper sizes. I plan to continue abusing geography for our wargaming convenience until I’ve finished the whole globe. This project is taking several years longer than I originally anticipated, but I do not plan to quit. Thanks again for all your support.

Two more bugs – Rio de Oro should connect to French West Africa but doesn’t, and I’m not able to win a triggered victory with the Axis for controlling 13+ Victory Cities for a full turn (see attached saved game). The Axis had 14 VCs at the start of G9, and they still have 14 VCs at the end of G10, but the game isn’t showing any kind of victory message.2022-4-26-WW2-Path-to-Victory.tsvg

@navalland Thank you again for the feedback on the Caucasus – I have finally implemented the split.

@flyingbadger Yup, I checked the XML. It’s a bug; the territory is being assigned to Europe instead of Pacific. The maintainers need to add

<option name="changeUnitOwners" value="British"/>
<option name="whenCapturedByGoesTo" value="British:UK_Pacific"/>

to the Kyushu territory attachment.

Has anyone thought about making a 3-faction 1939 version of Path to Victory, with Liberals, Communists, and Fascists as three separate alliances? I think the extra territories would be very helpful for simulating Communist vs. Nationalist China, as well as for the historical division of Persia. You could add a new territory type called “pro-Communist” for areas like Baltic States, East Poland, and Northwest Persia. (Not that these areas actually liked the Soviets in any kind of democratic sense; just that the Soviets were able to successfully pull off coups there.) And then you could add a second Chinese-style nation for some of the northwest Chinese provinces that was allied with Russia instead of with the Liberals.

@flyingbadger One more bug, I think – as UK Pacific, I was unable to place a minor factory in Kyushu even after controlling it for two full turns. It works fine on edit mode, just not as part of the normal unit placement. I feel like Japan should be part of the Pacific economy, no?

@the-spaceman Seems like a good start. A few thoughts to throw into the mix:

1. I would say UK’s naval priorities should be first the Baltic fleet, then any stray transports, then any stray subs. The subs don’t do any convoy damage or anything like that, so they’re really just targets of opportunity; it’s not like you can safely leave British transports unattended anyway because of the German bomber, so the subs aren’t doing that much more harm. The Baltic fleet is top priority because it allows Germans to cheaply conquer Norway/Finland/Karelia, and because it’s too expensive for Germany to sanely replace.

2. The Australian transport can flee across Argentina to the Atlantic, but I would leave the destroyer behind to block a J2 attack on Australia – I think it does more good slowing down Japan and keeping some of the UK income than it does to get a destroyer added to your Atlantic fleet, like, 3 turns later. For similar reasons, I usually won’t move the starting US Pacific fleet to the Atlantic. If the Allies took unusually heavy naval losses, then maybe it’s worthwhile, but the Pacific fleet is earning you nothing the whole time it’s in transit through the Panama Canal. Having a few starting boats in the Pacific – even just CV, ftr, DD, tran – means that if you ever do need to upgrade the Pacific fleet into a formidable force because Japan is grabbing Alaska and Hawaii or whatever, then you can do so with one turn of purchases. If you can’t quickly reinforce the US Pacific fleet to the point where it can drive away the Japanese navy, then you might be forced to buy 10 infantry for the Western US instead or something similarly expensive and wasteful.

3. It doesn’t always make sense to build a huge Atlantic fleet at all as the Allies – sometimes you can sink the Italian fleet using primarily air power and subs, and/or build a pair of factories in Egypt, South Africa, India, or Australia. Some games you won’t have enough good safe factory sites, and some games you’ll need a big fleet because, e.g., Germany is heavy on air power (so you need protection for your transports) but short on infantry (so invading France is really attractive). On the other hand, if Germany trades its entire air force to wipe out your boats on G1, builds a factory in France on G1, and then drops 6 infantry there on G2, maybe just let the Atlantic navy go for several turns and rely on factories instead, or have the British build factories and let the Americans reinforce with a fleet into Morocco after they build up.

I’m trying this out for the first time; it’s pretty interesting so far. I like the islands in the middle of sea zones, and I like having some of the extra sea zones to maneuver in. I also like the larger Lake Ladoga and the revised stats for mechanized infantry.

I used a variation of simon’s Pearl Harbor attack and it seemed to work fine against the AI; I got Hawaii itself on J2 and was able to hold it for a couple of turns, although I think I’ll let it go on US4 to focus on India/Australia. US has been building nothing but DD/ftr/CV in San Diego since the game started, so that’s a win in terms of distracting the US and reducing its income. Obviously a human would do better than an AI, but, you know, I’d do better if it weren’t my very first time on this map.

I saw what I thought was a bug – I activated Vichy on F2, and most of the French colonies went pro-Axis, as they should, but Southern France stayed bright blue. It looked like the French were able to attack Northern Italy out of Southern France if they wanted to. Is that coded differently than it is in Global Bal Mod, or am I missing something?

2022-4-7-WW2-Path-to-Victory.tsvg

@simon33 Yeah, the Siberian factory is in a very strange spot. It’s on the coast of SZ 5, which Japan can conveniently reach from its main sea zones, from the Formosa/Hong Kong sea zone, or from Guam. Once you capture that factory there’s nowhere else in Asia for Russia to build another one, but if Russia leaves its troops in Siberia proper to defend the factory, then you might as well not have them, because you’re not adjacent to any Japanese territories, so you’re not threatening Japan.

I guess it’s nice to be able to build some artillery to support your infantry stack – but any troops built in Siberia on R1 will still be behind (east) of the main Siberian infantry stack, so they can’t actually help those troops, e.g., attack a German stack in Kazakh on R7. You could theoretically build some mechs and tanks in Siberia on R2 or R3 and have them catch up with the infantry on the march, but you’re never going to have the cash to spare for that; you need the money in Leningrad/Moscow/Stalingrad.

It’s nice to be able to build a transport or whatever that could simulate a Russian invasion of Hokkaido ala a 1946 Operation Downfall if the atomic bomb was never developed, but that’s really just fluff at that point – if a Russian fleet in the Okhotsk Sea can survive a Japanese air attack, then Japan has already lost.

Bottom line is I just don’t see these changes as giving Russia any practical ability to either resist a Japanese invasion or force Japan to heavily garrison Manchuria. I like the spirit of the changes but I’m not convinced that they solve the problem of having Russia be impotent in Asia.

@general-6-stars It’s mostly a matter of perspective. If you’re used to playing BBR or G36 or G40, then of course they’ll seem natural to you.

If you’re not used to those games, then learning that each AA gun rolls up to 3 dice, but only in the first round of combat, and only up to the total number of attacking planes, and they can only hit planes, whereas strategic bombers roll 2 dice that hit at 2, but only in the first round of combat, and they can hit anything, and tactical bombers attack at a 3 unless they’re paired with a fighter or tank, in which case they attack at a 4, but they always defend at 3, even if they’re paired up, whereas fighters always attack at 3 and defend at 4…is a mouthful and a lot to keep track of.

It’s not obvious to me that this is easier than putting your pieces in a colored band and then rolling 1 die for every 3 pieces in that band. It’s just that the BBR rules are more familiar.

@vodot Great questions, as always. And yeah, like you said, it’s a tough sell – but I don’t think it’s that much crazier than BBR combat rules. When you add up the rules for submarines’ special abilities, for the way they get cancelled by destroyers, the various bonuses you get for having different types of pieces together, e.g., fighters + tac, or tac + tank, some of the stuff people are playing with already is pretty complicated. This system has kind of a minimum amount of crunchiness that you have to be prepared to swallow or you can’t play it at all, but once you digest that, there aren’t a ton of extra rules.

1. I think it probably makes sense for the attacker to dispose all their forces first, all at once, followed by the defender.

2. I’d be very open to the idea of a ‘reserve’ pool. You can place units in reserve at the start of battle instead of putting them in one of the color rows. You can do this regardless of whether you’re over the six-die limit or not. At the start of each round of combat other than round 1, you can move as many units as you like from reserves to one or more particular color(s). Once they’re deployed to a color, they stay there for the rest of the battle or until they’re dead. Thanks for the suggestion.

3. My design goal in terms of the relative power of each band is that the relative power will be almost 100% situational. If you’re attacking with a small group of infantry and a large stack of bombers, then the yellow band becomes much more important for the defenders, because air power can sweep your bombers off the field. On the other hand, if you’re engaging at sea with mostly battleships and destroyers, then the yellow band is not very important and you might struggle to find a use for your fighters. The red band is normally very important in land combat because it’s the only band that allows you to eliminate units of your choice, so you can pick off enemy tanks or planes, which simulates a blitzkrieg that gets behind enemy lines and disrupts HQ areas. However, if you’re fighting a stack of 20 infantry with no heavy weaponry, then choosing your casualties is much less important – although it’s still marginally useful to have some tank support, because the red casualties get eliminated before the white dice can fire, and because your first tank gets a whole die to itself, whereas you might need 3 more infantry to get an additional white die, or you might be capped on white dice if your infantry stack is large enough.

4. The defender gets an extra white die in every combat, which matters a lot in small battles. The attacker also has to dispose their forces first, which can create a tactical advantage for the defender. In very large battles like Kursk, Stalingrad, Normandy, Midway, etc., it’s difficult to say that there was a defender – both sides historically launched dozens of attacks and counterattacks over the course of what would be considered “one battle” in A&A game terms. One effect that bothers me is that the defender in a closely contested front will typically have no air support at all – you can’t land fighters in a newly conquered territory, and under my system an AAA gun is only useful to boost the power of fighters. One way to handle this is to allow fighters to intercept from an air base to any neighboring battle, whether that battle involves an amphibious assault or not. Another is to say that you can land, say, 2 planes in a newly conquered territory, representing your first couple of rough airfields that your engineers throw together there.