I herewith confirm my continued existence.

C’mon, we can’t blame a man modeling himself after Charles de Gaulle for trying to make France a more important and interesting factor in the war! But now that we’re at it, let’s have the Dutch! and the Greeks, Yugoslavians, Poles! A separate Chinese communist faction, Indonesian freedom fighters, the resistance! And Finland of course, a separate Axis nation.

Seriously, from a gaming point of view, I agree that we don’t want to add more rules, and I also think that it’s slightly pointless to have France as a separate nation at all. It can never do much, and has no income…. no fun playing it. For simplicity, it could simply be removed, by just assuming that we would be a little bit further in the war.

Maybe my eyesight isn’t all that great, but I’m having a hard time seeing all the units at this resolution., especially the German ones. How many Germans are there in Eastern Poland? It seems to me like the Russians can hit that force, but I’m not sure, and I can’t readily distinguish the Russian planes either.
One thing I do see though, is a single Russian inf in Amur while there are also 12 Russian inf in Buryatia. I think that’s one too many?

They’re very nice, well done. But, a pet peeve of mine: the US flag is the current one. During World War 2, the 48 star flag was used because Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states.

I have nothing against more realism, but in the end, it’s a board game. Game balance is extremely important because without it, the game can’t really be played. In a historically realistic setting in terms of forces and income, the Axis wouldn’t stand a chance.

So for a change like this to work, it would be necessary to avoid putting the Allies at a disadvantage, especially because consesnsu has it that they already need a considerable bid right now.

@Caesar:

What I want to test this by making Canada its own nation, combine UK’s income into one making London the capital. I want to buff the Canadian military by giving it a fighter, maybe one for two more infantry, putting one inf. in Hong Kong, two inf. in London. Canada will go last and France will go first, not sure on National Objectives yet.

So if I understand this correctly, you advocate abolishing UK Pacific in order to boost the UK’s income and compensate the UK for not having Canada’s 7 IPC? That change probably favors the Allies at least during the first few turns, but historically, it would ignore the significant contribution India made to World War II, so I’m not so sure about it from a viewpoint of added realism. And Canada would still need a bigger income than 7 - I suppose the easiest way would be to just upgrade a few of their home territories.

And by “France will go first”, do you propose that France will move before Germany, or just that France will move before Canada? France before Germany would be a major change and a big advantage to the Allies.

Natioanl objectives for Canada…. I’m thinking: 5 IPC for having a land unit in Normandy-Bordeaux. This would reflect Canada’s role in liberating Western Europe and from a game perspective, might provide the Germans with an extra incentive to kick the Allies out of Normandy-Bordeaux as opposed to just holding Paris.

@GrizzlyMan:

The Vikings were great at battling others and sacking villages, but they weren’t organized into empires, and their leaders made no attempt to form governments over the people.

On the contrary, Kings such as Harald Bluetooth and Canute the Great ruled large parts of Scandinavia and Great Britain. The last of the Viking kings, Harald Hardrade of Norway, launched a massive invasion of England, attempting to reconquer what he believed was rightfully his. He failed, but soon after, William the Conquerer was successful - and he was a direct descendant of the Vikings who had founded Normandy.
Men such as these definitely formed central governments and attempted to create empires, and often succeeded at doing so.
And how do I know all that? Well, apart from A&A, I also play Britannia! 

@GrizzlyMan:

If they did form a central government, I’m sure they would have dominated Northern Europe and England for centuries

They did!

Kudos to both of you for all your hard work and dedication over many years.

Game 11 started less than an hour ago and is already looking drawish. Magnus seems to be aiming for the tiebreak which will likely favor him.

@Panther said in The new forum has been a lot of work and it's not done yet:

@KaLeu Please perform a hard refresh (reload) with your browser the next time you set yourself to “online” and try again, then.

Thanks, that worked. After I did a Ctrl-F5, I could indeed set it and it now remains at ‘Online’, even after logging out and in. Problem solved!

I think of myself as a retired chess player, though I occasionally consider un-retiring myself. At my best, some 25 years ago, I was a pretty strong player, and I’m still rated at well over 2300 on FIDE’s rating list, FIDE being the world chess federation. That rating no longer reflects my current playing strength of course. There are several reasons for me not to play anymore. Time constraints, other interests – but also, annoyance at my own game and performance. To reach my former level would require a massive time investment. It’s a difficult game.

But playing in a chess tournament can be a very rewarding experience. The chess crowd is very diverse and you’ll meet people from all walks of life. I fondly remember tournaments I played during summer holidays long ago, with a group of friends from my chess club, visiting great cities like London or Berlin, and having a very good time overall. So by all means, go for it!

How to improve in chess? Well, it requires some work. Just playing will probably also help, but don’t expect miracles if you don’t study the game. I’ve known chess players who never improved even after decades of play. Not a big deal of course as long as they’re having fun, but some are more ambitious. It’s tempting to study opening books, but I’d recommend tactics, endgame, strategy. There are plenty of good books on tactics, but the easy way is just to try and solve online chess puzzles. Chess is a game of pattern recognition, and the more pattern’s you’ve seen the better player you’ll be.
As for playing - try to play strong opponents. Losing may not be much fun, but it won’t kill you and it will make you stronger. Some people think that it’s more ‘fun’ to just play against equally strong opponents, but they typically won’t get past that specific level. Which is not a big deal if that level suits you just fine! But the prime reason I once hit 2300 was that I had a group of friends at roughly that same level - some a bit better, some a bit worse, but we improved a lot by fighting each other over the chess board.

And DoManMacgee does offer some good advice here too: your overall physical condition is something to be aware of, and it’s a key factor for today’s world class players. Though I must admit that in the old days, my own ‘preparation’ didn’t necessarily exclude a night of beer swilling and blitz games……

If I win, I’m donating my prize to Gargantua.

Oh, one more thing. The huge Japanese battleship was called Yamato. Yamamoto was the name of Japan’s most famous admiral. Maybe the arrival of Admiral Yamamoto would indeed correspond to having an extra battleship, but I’m not sure that’s what you intended.

They’re very nice, well done. But, a pet peeve of mine: the US flag is the current one. During World War 2, the 48 star flag was used because Alaska and Hawaii were not yet states.

I herewith confirm my continued existence.

@CWO-Marc said in UK World War Two Bombing Site Map:

German bombers attacked the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh on 16 October 1939. The last raid was a V2 rocket attack near Iwade in Kent on 29 March 1945.

Thanks for the interesting link!

The map seems to be offline right now ‘due to high demand’, but the data can still be accessed. And indicate that the first ‘attack’ actually consisted of two unexploded shells on 6 September 1939. Also, the last raid was actually a V1 according to: https://www.flickr.com/photos/22124479@N03/5001363807
The Wikipedia article on the V1 has Datchworth as its final British target, however. And the dataset lists 7 attacks on that day, apparently listing Datchworth as ‘Batchworth’.

Well, it seems like Topmat has vanished from the forum. Too bad. Our second game was just underway and could have become interesting.
I do hope everything is alright for my former chess opponent.

@Topmat Have fun! Your move is correct. I’ll continue 9. h3

@Topmat 8. cxd4

@Topmat 6. Bxc6+ To speed things up a little bit, I think it’s safe to assume that you’ll recapture with 6 … bxc6 to which I will then answer 7. d4.

@Panther Thanks!