Doctrines are similar to technology, they give certain bonuses to units, and a deterministically chosen by the player. They however are not, created with ipcs or dice like research but are gotten through wartime experience/combat.
You gain points when your units DIE. Necessity is the mother of invention, people will innovate when glaring weaknesses are exposed, when your winning no one wants to change the system. Also acts as a nice catch up mechanism, to balance some of the luck factor of the game. At least new battle tactics are being developed from those defeats.
You can as much XP as the cost of the unit was worth. So if you loose a fighter you get 10 XP in air. Loose an infantry get 3 XP for land.
Germany/Japan having been fighting longer, would start with some of their XP partially filled.
Doctrines are broken up to groups land/sea/air. Each bought with different experience
Some Ideas/Examples
Land:
Rolling Barrages[XP cost??]: Arty gets a free bombardment shot, before battle. A hit means that unit may not fire back that first round.
Panzer Blitz[XP cost??]: Tanks may blitz after winning a battle that only lasts 1 turn.
Mobile Infantry [XP cost??]: Tanks can carry 1 infantry with them in the non-combat move.
-comments?
reminds me of command and conquer PC game type of thing.
It would lead to alot of chrome that you need to remember at each stage, unless you got one stage per unit and its universal across the board, which is not historical, unless you tweek lots of information from playtesting. I feel it will change over each game with no set conclusion of the perfect XP points required to obtain the doctrine level.
I prefer KISS, but with modified technology tree ( more choices to avoid deadly techs gamebreaker strategy), some of the AA50 stuff is plain goofy.
So if you allow the A-bomb, make it really hard to get it so some bloke does not spand all cash on turn one, fails, then throws the game away because he likes to gamble. I also like measured progress approach, but XP points allows for too much accounting to sort out who is what.
So the XP is not per unit. Its more like money.
We currently keep track of money pretty well, how hard is it to count the total value of IPC units you lost this turn?
Thats how much XP/Tech you got just “earned”. Its definitely hard to balance, but i think their could be some benefit.
I never understood, how researching a technology would instantly upgrade your units for 0 cost. While doctrines is a change in tactical thinking, using units differently. You don’t actually have to build anything or upgrade anything, but the techniques in battle change and represent a learning experience.
In real life:
Germany focus on armored manuver warfare, to encircle their enemies.
France focused on static defenses.
US focused heavily on heavy bombers and daylight raids.
While Brittain focused on night bombers.
Russia focused on heavy preliminary artillery bombardment, for battles.
while the US had artillery available quickly to lower lever units. (“RADIO”)
Japan developed the expertise and techniques for night battles.
I think these things add a little bit to flavor in the game.
Yes technology should be incremental. Its poor modeling to leave it to random, when you spend alot to get the tech you want and you either got it right away ( the “poof” method) or worse, you maintain it as a crap table with place bets on all the numbers and its too obvious your getting something but dont know what.
I like ‘directed incrementalism’ added with different levels for obtaining each technology because they cant all be the same. If you want the A-bomb it should be harder to get than heavy tanks and not some idea that you have an equal chance for either by the dice. That method eliminates the go broke tech strategy option. At least you know turns in advance how long things will take.
what is the complete list of these proposed unit boosts?
I never understood, how researching a technology would instantly upgrade your units for 0 cost. While doctrines is a change in tactical thinking, using units differently. You don’t actually have to build anything or upgrade anything, but the techniques in battle change and represent a learning experience.
In real life:
Germany focus on armored manuver warfare, to encircle their enemies.
France focused on static defenses.US focused heavily on heavy bombers and daylight raids.
While Brittain focused on night bombers.Russia focused on heavy preliminary artillery bombardment, for battles.
while the US had artillery available quickly to lower lever units. (“RADIO”)Japan developed the expertise and techniques for night battles.
I think these things add a little bit to flavor in the game.
Hi dpdlc,
What you’re describing sounds like the National Advantages available in A&A Revised. These were nation specific advantages that reflected certain tactics, special units, or strategies used by the different A&A nations.
It’s a shame they took these out of AA50 because you are absolutely correct, when balanced appropriately, they can add tremendous flavor to a game (check out AAR: Enhanced which uses a much more balanced set of national advantages compared to AAR OOTB)
