A Nonsensical Retreat Rule?

[mikemikemike]

I picked up the Subject Title from an old post on the Global:  Recent game of AA 1940 Europe, the German infantry forces in Greater Southern German and only 1 German infantry from Romania attack Yugoslavia on Turn 1.  The attack fails (but weakens Yugo enough for the Italians to move in and take the IC Points next turn) and ALL German forces ‘retreat’ to Romania.  Pretty neat trick, huh?                            .
The rule should be they must retreat from the country which they originated but that is not the case.

[Charles de Gaulle]

It is a strange rule that I think was made to simplify retreats (it would be a little hard to remember where everything came from all the time and also differentiate which units died).  This one move is very gamey, but it seldom occurs outside of Yugoslavia.  Having an enemy territory smack in the middle of your forces just doesn’t happen that often in normal circumstances.

[ampdrive]

I 100% agree with retreat rule as it is.It’s a dynamic way to relocate slow moving units or consolidate a fleet.As an attacker you hope to take out all but 1 of the defending units.For the likely price of a few fodder units,you can better your position.

[Charles de Gaulle]

I think in the case of consolidation, it works well.  The only time it really looks weird or “cheap” is with Yugoslavia because the Germany objective isn’t consolidation but rather making infantry and artillery move twice in the same turn.

[Narvik]

There are a lot of gamey rules in A&A and it has to be, or else it would not be A&A, just a general wargame. Another typical move is the US carrier with a UK fighter that on US turn move 3 spaces from Australia to Japan, and then on UK turn the UK fighter sink some trannies. Or when you can land allied fighters on newly captured territory, but you can not land your own, even if every move in a turn is supposed to happen simoultanesly. Or the can opener. Your friend can clear the enemy territory, so you can blitz through it in your turn, but you can not use your own infantry to clear out that lone enemy and let your Tank stack blitz through in the same turn. Or a huge Tank stack that is not allowed to blitz because of one enemy AA-gun or factory. Or even better, one lone destroyer can stop 100 subs from moving through. Or the one destroyer that can stall a stack of battleships. Or one destroyer that make a stack of aircrafts be able to attack all subs. Remove that lone destroyer and the aircraft stack suddenly goes blind. In the real world it was the aircrafts that spotted the sub, and the destroyer that killed it. Or the retreat rules, only the attacker can retreat, and only if some of the defenders survived. It dont make sense from a military point of view, but without that rule there would be no fun in strafing attacks. You need to risk something, or else there is no fun. That said, I miss the option to contest territories like in A&A 1914. A small seazone can contain both friendly, neutral and enemy units, but a huge country like Poland cant ? I think the attacker should be able to press 1) continue attack, 2) stay to contest and 3) retreat. And no, the game would not be ruined by this, just enhanged

[Charles de Gaulle]

This is the direction I’d love to see A&A head towards: more interesting and less gamey combat.  Contested territories worked splendidly in 1914.  In fact, if it weren’t for the trench warfare style of fighting that is a little boring, I think 1914 game mechanics are better than the standard.

[taamvan]

try “the war game” many rules in this axa inspired global warfare game adapt to these concerns, for example, one ship cannot block a fleet, a fleet attack can propose up to 3 battles in path each of which are resolved in turn if sucessful.  there are many more such as nation specific pricing and units, a more varied economic structure, and so forth.  not by any means a shorter or simpler version of axa global however