I haven’t read this anywhere else, but the IPC value assigned to the countries in SE Asia and in particular Australia are ridiculous.
Australia was a fully industrialized nation of comparable economy and population to Canada. In realty the GDP of Australia was greater than that of French Indochina, the Philippines, East Indies, Borneo and New Guinea combined! All these countries were 3rd world colonies at the time and still are 3rd world economies.
That the East Indies and Borneo are 4 IPC’s each while Australia is 2 IPC’s is ridiculous. Where is the incentive for the Japanese player to attack Australia as they did in the war or to invade as they prepared to (and would have if not for the battle of the Coral Sea).
Australia was used as an allied naval base and as the Allied headquarters in the Pacific theater.
In my games East Indies and Borneo are reduced by one IPC each (and that still leaves them with far too much) and Australia increased to 4 IPC’s.
This gives the Japanese a serious reason to come south and gives Great Britain a better option for building up forces in the Pacific, especially if they choose colonial NA.
Give it a go and see how game play changes, it will make it slightly harder for the Japanese, but much more historically accurate.
The Japanese can still capture all those IPC’s early on, and the threat of this will force the US navy to come to the rescue as historically happened otherwise Australia will be lost to the Japanese.
Has anyone done anything similar.
And US should have 80-90 ipc production…? Thats according to history. I hear axis bid for 30-35, any higher???
:lol:
In my games East Indies and Borneo are reduced by one IPC each
Thats insane. Japan started its war only for these territories. Australia is a useless desert and Icehouse wasn’t even born yet.
To Japan those blokes down under are even a bit overpriced.
To England’s war economy that all their worth as well.
The same extrapolation could be made for India, but Japan didn’t want any part of the caste system. And Curry is not good for Japanese stomachs. India had no value to Japan or the war for the most part.
The Indies and Borneo had petroleum and rubber resources far more vital to the Japanese war effort than any single resource Australia had.
Despite Australia’s larger overall economy, the Indies had more of what Japan needed most.
One must remember that the Japanese war against the U.S. and Europe was primarily to secure resources to fuel the ongoing occupation of China.
There was no reason to overextend to Australia when what was needed was much closer to home. The Japanese efforts against India and Australia were to improve Japan’s defensive position against the Allies, not gain additional territory, resources, or subjects.
If Australia were important to Japan they would send the crap they did at Coral Sea. A couple of carriers and a few measly support ships to be able to take Port Moresby in preparation for attacking the former penal colony?
come on. They should have stuck it out in the Indian ocean and sunk all of Admiral Somerville’s junk barges of crap and destroyed Ceylon.
they tried hard to get to australia. guadalcanal and port morbsey staved that threat. plus the major reason japan didnt want to take it is b/c australia would take soooo many men to garrison. such a big place, and quite a few people. the outback would be a guerillas playground.
oh and tobruk was a staging ground to take australia, but we rendered that base useless to the japs by a great game of chess(humans being the pawns)
No one agrees, ah well. That’s what house rules are for, my house, my rules!
Anyway, the point is not to say what IPC values territories should really have, but what should their value be in relation to other territories, especially those nearby in the same theartre of operations.
As pointed out by Lucifer, the US could potentially have much more than it has compared to some nations. But the current pricing of Australia would be the equilvant of making Mexico or Brazil more valuable than the US.
That is, two small jungle and mountain covered islands with little resources and almost no infrasture are priced at twice the value of a 1st world nation that sits right next door.
It is of course true that these islands had petroleum and rubber that Japan needed (as pointed out), though I wouldn’t value that over the iron ore, petroleum, coal, ports, steel mills, ship yards, factories, refineries etc in Australia. The Japanese took the indonesian islands because they were easy targets, with only tiny colonial garrisions.
The main point of my change is to get the Japanese player to at least think about moving south. Currently the Japanese player spends most resources trying to take all of China, and push to Moscow neither of which were ever attempted.
And the so called crap that the Japanese sent to the Coral Sea gave a better account of itself than the allied fleet it engaged. Only problem was they couldn’t afford the losses and the US could. And if Australian involvement meant so little to Britain, why did Churchill do every thing in his power to keep the Australian divisions in North Africa instead of going to the Pacific when the Japanese entered the war?
@Sir:
No one agrees, ah well. That’s what house rules are for, my house, my rules!
Yeah, and I’m happy that Norway was more important than China and most other nations/TT’s which have less ipc value.
“My” country had more production than several hundred million citizens :-D
If u use triplea, u can just change the ipc value in the .xml files, then your local playgroup can use other values, if this
makes the game more funny, I don’t see any wrong in doing it.
@Sir:
The main point of my change is to get the Japanese player to at least think about moving south. Currently the Japanese player spends most resources trying to take all of China, and push to Moscow neither of which were ever attempted.
There is a custom scenario map, called POS, pact of steel, which is close to revised, but TT’s in pac are worth more,
and KJF might work somehow, because of initial setup units + modified TT values makes for a slightly more historically
correct gameplay.
POS have Italy as the sixth power, but the PAC part of the map is more different from revised than other continents.
POS is one of the best done custom maps in triplea imo, and works great for multiplayer.
Pos isn’t available as boardgame though, u have use triplea to play POS :)
Australia may be worth more in terms of historical man power, but the game needs to balance strategic value with historical value.
I may agree to increase the value of Australia to 4 IPC with the reduction of England to 7 IPC and E. Canada to 2 IPC.
I may also agree to decrease the values of Borneo and E. Indies to 3 IPC each with the increase of Japan to 10 IPC. (Because then when Japan is reduced to only Japan, they can still build a fighter if they want too.)
None of the changes would drastically change the outcome of the game because each nation would have the same amount of home value. Strategically, the Industrial Complex to Australia will become much more valuable then putting one in India. Then again, that may make it more fun!
England will also be more motivated to defend Australia since it is now a “major” territory. (Major territories, to me, are anything worth 3 IPC or more. Valuable are those worth 2 or more. Minor are those worth 1. Worthless are those worth 0.)
7 IPC England would play differently due to build limits.
And Craig Yope’s Victory Cities is a pretty interesting way of getting the Allies into defending areas like Australia and Hawaii ^^
@Bean:
7 IPC England would play differently due to build limits.
Good point – so would Japan at 10 IPCs and EI at 3 (instead of 4) IPCs. Every territory’s value is set based on strategic considerations and game balance, IMO, and only loosely on historical value. How else to explain Italy being valued the same as France, for goodness sake!
One interesting concept would be a bidding system where, instead of bidding additional IPCs in hand to spend, you bid for additional IPC value on Axis territories. So, for example, a bid of 4 would allow the Axis to add a total of 4 IPCs of value to one or more of their territories. Now THAT would impact game play, don’t you think? And in unpredictable ways too.
So, for example, a bid of 4 would allow the Axis to add a total of 4 IPCs of value to one or more of their territories. Now THAT would impact game play, don’t you think? And in unpredictable ways too.
To be honest, I think we should bid in terms of battleships :-D
4 battleships to SZ8, please!
Jennifer, have u tried POS?
Imo, if A&A should be changed to become more historically correct, it would probably become a game which is not fun to play.
A variant which could work, either as a computer game or boardgame, is if u can build armies from 1933 to 1939 etc…
Germany was better prepared than any other European country, but US had big industrial production which
was swiftly changed to producing war materials.
Maybe if Germans could build more subs, instead of BB’s, more ftrs, then later on the great US ipc advantage would come into
play, but this could theoretically be too late. Germany could never challenge the US, but Germany could possibly
win the war against UK and Russia. And Jap could also possibly contain US out of pac for several more years than what
actually happened. If someone makes an A&A variant of this, or a new game, then it’s possible to have more
historical value than the current version.
Then some countries will have turns (buying units) while other countries can’t buy anything, just wait for the war to begin :P
One interesting concept would be a bidding system where, instead of bidding additional IPCs in hand to spend, you bid for additional IPC value on Axis territories. So, for example, a bid of 4 would allow the Axis to add a total of 4 IPCs of value to one or more of their territories. Now THAT would impact game play, don’t you think? And in unpredictable ways too.
That’s an interesting idea! I haven’t heard about this one before.
I would like to try it though. Would be exciting to see what level the axis bid would be with equal players.
Usual bids are 6-9 with 1 or 2 units pr. TT’s.
With a TT production bid I would guess it would be lower than 8-9…
Well, Bean and Gamer, I agree. But it might be more interesting for a change of pace!
Dunno if it would be good or bad though. Maybe the changes should be coupled with unlimited production in your own capitol?
Bit of a tangent here, but I recall Larry Harris (the game designer) indicating that if he were to make the next version of A&A that he only wanted capitals to be able to build things; he didn’t like the idea of being able to freely move IPCs around the world to make 3 bombers in India for instance. I think the idea is that complexes increase the value of the territory instead of being able to produce there, which is interesting. But remember this is all speculation from a couple years old post.
Australia and other TT’s in pac r not good implemented to real WW2, but then it would be a completely different game.
Imo is just wasting time to try to change TT’s value or some other details.
Discussions might be interesting, both game and real WW2, but what u r asking for is not A&A revised….!
The most important issue here is that Jap tried to go west against Russia, but were badly beaten, and they also
got stuck in China. And it is not uncommon to see Afr in yellow, Japanese colors in games that axis is leading, from
rnd 10 and further… :lol:
@Bean:
Bit of a tangent here, but I recall Larry Harris (the game designer) indicating that if he were to make the next version of A&A that he only wanted capitals to be able to build things; he didn’t like the idea of being able to freely move IPCs around the world to make 3 bombers in India for instance. I think the idea is that complexes increase the value of the territory instead of being able to produce there, which is interesting. But remember this is all speculation from a couple years old post.
That would be interesting….planning strats to attack the enemy supply lines, if u only could place units in
capitals, the supply lines will be both long, thin and vulnerable :)
Might be fun if every nation was limited in where it could build.
Russia would be Russia/Caucasus (two major industrial centers)
Germany would be Germany/S. Europe (two major industrial centers)
England would be England, maybe Australia, but I’ll explain why not later
Japan would be Japan
America would be E and W USA
England should be limited to England because Japan is limited to Japan.
Of course, all industrial centers would have to be unlimited production and to capture the treasury of a nation you would have to own all industrial centers. So the fall of Berlin wouldn’t necessarily be the end, Germany could still buy, build and collect in S. Europe, etc.
