I agree that the values are right from a historical context; however, that’s when you have to decide what’s more important to you as a gamer: the historical accuracy of a piece’s attack and defense value or the balance and playability of the game.

Of course there has to be a balance between those two objectives–it is what makes Axis and Allies so popular–but on this issue, I vote for fun over accuracy every time. Meaning, I’m willing to try out any rule change to see if it changes things for the better.

Well anyone who tries it, post back on this thread with their thoughts. As for increasing the infantry to 2/2, in my mind that defeats the whole purpose of making the tanks 3/3, which was to balance the game and make infantry a less desireable purchase. There’s a 7 page thread on this discussion here.

The marines rule sounds cool but I don’t know how it would translate to the original A&A becaues I think it favors the United States and thus the allies more than the Axis which has the effect of unbalancing the game even further.

I heard someone mention the idea sometime of allowing tanks to take their second move after combat if they had one left. That might be interesting because in essence it would allow tanks to strafe like fighters can do. Maybe it would suck, I don’t know.

Supposedly the point of increasing the defense value of the tank was to eliminate the infantry push mechanic described so well in Don Rae’s essays. I am curious if anyone has played enough with this new rule to see if it has the intended effect. I am also curious if anyone has played with Don’s suggestion of making infantry 1/1 instead of messing witht the tanks.

Both options seem viable but the only way to know for sure is to play test it.

Exactly, against a human I wouldn’t have made the bold comment to say the game was over in so early, but the AI is so bad that once it gets behind it can never regain the advantage. By the second turn I had taken a lot of Asia, a good part of Africa, Karelia and had just performed a hit and run on Russia.
I didn’t mean that I had achieved victory conditions by T2, just that I knew I was going to win.

Thing is, against the computer you can be really agressive because it won’t exploit you stretching your resources and doesn’t recognize how things you do change the map and strategy. For example, you can build industrial complexes and it doesn’t seem to effect the computer’s strategy. It doesn’t try and capture the territory or defend against how it changes the game.

Oh well, I guess unless the game got so popular that a deep blue AA computer was built we’ll have to keep wooping up on other people. :D

I don’t think I was making myself clear.

The situation which I cannot find a rule prohibiting is as follows:

Your navy is located in SZ #1. The fighting units (subs, aircraft, battleships, etc.) engage an enemy navy occupying adjacent SZ #2. This navy is defeated during the combat phase and you occupy SZ2 with your remaining units.

During the non-combat phase, it is legal to move transports (from either SZ1 or another SZ _through_SZ2 and into SZ3. To me this shouldn’t be legal since the ships engaged in battle had to stop after the battle, you shouldn’t be able to move through this zone during the non-com phase of the same turn, even if you don’t engage in combat.

I absolutely agree. If the transport wants to eventually move into a SZ that was occupied by enemy forces at the beginning of a turn, that constitudes and attack and needs to be declared at the beginning. Of course, if they plan on unloading troops to an enemy occupied territory after the naval battle (assuming success) they can do that as well, but it must be declared.

I’ve had people try and convince me that you could use a Navy to clear ships out of a SZ and then move a transport ship through this SZ into another during the non-combat phase. If they are attacking at the final destination, this is obviously against the rules, but to my surprise I could not find a rule specifically stating this was illegal if they only unload troops to friendly territories. Can anyone give me some backup on this issue?

The first time I played each side the game was effectively over by T2. I had axis victory in T4. Even with the patch the AI is still really stupid. It doesn’t understand how to defend units or how to attack an enemies weak point. If there is no one else to play, I end up just playing myself.

Despite all that there were so many other problems with the game. So many places the game forces you to click or make a choice when there is no option. For example, if the enemy has rolled 5 hits and you only have 3 units, it still makes you choose which ones you want to die. Moving ships in groups is also a pain in the butt.

I’ve also found that the game freezes when you attack the British battleship in the med and then try and land a unit on Gibralter with the troop transport.

Does anyone know if people have taken the time to hack into the code for the game and fix some of these bugs or improve the AI? That would be great. Or if anyone has modded the game to implement the AA Chess rules, I’ve always wanted to try that too.