Soaking up a hit and boosting an infantry or artillery (what about mechs? Are they ‘just’ infantry with trucks or no?) to 3 defense seems reasonable to me.

The cost should be the same as the amount of trenches already in the territory. I don’t like hard limits, and this would simulate the cost of various stages of fortification quite well I think.

So if you decided to place 10 in Moscow:
0+1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9=$45
to soak up 10 hits.

Past a cetain point, it stops being viable and so self-balances.

Limit to no more than one placed in any given territory per round.

@Variable:

cheap transports will allow countries to move twice the number of land units for the same price.

On the other hand, with other naval units cheaper, it will be twice as easy to block them.

A while since I’ve posted here.

I do think things need to be kept simple. As simple as possible. However, I think the problem that a lot of people are having is treating the commander as “just another unit”. Think about it - each battle would usually have some form of overall commander. I think what we are trying to simulate here is one with unusually high ability at a tactical level (strategic operations are performed by the player, which I think eliminates the need for theatre or supreme commanders). However, natural talent/experience can’t be simply “bought”.

For commander placement, I’m thinking something along these lines:

Whenever a “1” is rolled by ANY unit, the owning player gains a “point” towards a commander (keep track of this by a seperate IPC stack or something). Immediately after gaining a set number of points, say 10, that player places a commander in any territory or capital ship. Once a player has a maximum number of commanders in play (1 for minor powers, 3 for major), they stop counting points. When they go below this maximum, they can start counting again.

This would simulate the recognition and “promotion” of a tactically minded individual(s). Who cares whether it’s Patton or Zhukov, it’s a “commander” for KISS’ sake.

As for what a commander does, I believe they should be able to re-roll once for every type of unit they are assigned to. This would encourage combined arms whilst keeping the commanders balanced, I think. More than 1 commander in a territory is considered to still be one commander, to prevent massive “unbeatable” stacks.

Hope that all makes sense.

Yes.

IMO Japan would never have committed to anything substantial against Russia unless they managed to attain most or all of their primary objectives in the Pacific and Southern Asia (“liberation” of India, uncontested influence over the Pacific, etc…).

Ultimately, anything that would help the Axis get supplies and troops to Africa (including a successful assassination of Hitler :-P) would have made a huge difference on that front IMO.

Yeah, maybe 4 is a bit better for them now that you point out the advantages for Germany.

Why would the cost be at 2, while a sea transport is 7?

The idea with making them cheaper than naval transports is that the main advantage to the latter isn’t that they speed up movement, it’s that they allow normally unreachable places to be reached. No matter a land unit’s movement speed, it can’t cross the atlantic without help.

So when they get dropped in an area with 1 enemy infantry, how do they fight anybody?

Didn’t think of this happening. I guess you’d just have to have at least 1 defending unit fighting at any one time, regardless of the amount of paras.

Airborne can be considered “elite” troops however, but to mix them like this is not realistic.
Marines are special troops trained for sea invasions and are also “elite” but not in the same task as above.

I admit that realism is compromised here, but if elite infantry are allowed to fill all these roles, it will mean less unit types and therefore less compexity. Believe me when I say I’m still all for historical accuracy and realism, this is just my take on things.

Sorry IL, by “nation specifics” I meant the type of units that end up being manufactured by FMG. I believe some might get an extra variant of tank, mech etc. By all means make the same units have the same stats.

@GoSanchez6:

To continue my thought. Have the soldiers carrying flags using iconic images of the war.
USA Marines on Mt Suribachi. U.S.S.R soldier planting flag in Berlin. Japan. Soldiers waving arms up in triumph around the rising sun. Germans. Soldier goosestepping with  banner.  Italy and Britain I will have to think about. France waving a white flag. Just kidding. What do you think FMG.

Frankly, these would look amazing on the board. However, I am against the idea of including them as a replacement for the roundels. It would just clutter up the board too much and would just look odd with a dozen German flags all over Russia, without any in Germany itself. Maybe they could be used for a “Morale boost” rule?