Great Thank you
How Can We Incentivize the US to Split its Effort Between Atlantic and Pacific?
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Nice ideas! And some clean looking charts!
I don’t have a whole lot more to add, except to say that I think it’s probably important for any new victory scheme to include an ipc reward, or some similar form of gameplay incentive (the R&D option that YG uses would work too) as a way to counterbalance the capital capture rules that everyone has grown accustomed to using.
Despite the problems it causes for realism, I think most players still enjoy the idea of looting, and of having that huge purse afterwards to make a major purchase. I think for a new victory system to replace the current one, and be popular, it should somehow satisfy that desire for victory spoils and relate to the actual gameplay, rather than purely as a technical victory abstraction. If that makes sense. Otherwise I think most people will just default to the OOB rules and capitulation.
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Black_Elk, I think there’s something in what you say – if conquering a target city doesn’t feel important, then people won’t bother to keep track of them.
I think the biggest problem with the current idea of victory cities is that official victory cities aren’t distinctly more important than ordinary valuable cities. Yes, the victory cities tend to be in high-IPC territories and/or in strategic locations, but not uniquely so, and not much more so than other cities. For example, suppose that the two teams have armies that are roughly the same strength as they are at the game’s OOB setup, but as the Allies, I control all of the starting Allied territories, plus Oslo, Helsinki, Kiev, Baghdad, Tehran, Saigon, Beijing, Borneo, and Sumatra. I’d argue that the game is over – even though I haven’t captured a single Axis victory city, the Axis have no real hope of winning. This example shows why keeping track of victory cities doesn’t feel rewarding – yes, it’s nice to have victory cities, but there are other, non-victory cities that can be just as crucial to your strategy, and it gets kind of annoying to have to track (a) which cities you need as launching pads for your attacks, (b) which cities you need for their IPC value, © which cities you need because they have factories in them, and also (d) which cities you need because the victory conditions said so. The (d) just winds up feeling arbitrary and superfluous.
The capital rules – looting your opponent’s treasury and shutting down 100% of their production – give you a reason to actually care about your progress. That’s drama; the in-game consequences of losing Moscow are in a whole new league compared to the in-game consequences of losing Leningrad. It’s not just a difference in degree; it’s a difference in kind.
The problem is that the capital rules incentivize players to engage in boring, ahistorical, one-sided offensives where the players take turns steamrolling each other in opposite theaters. So how can we eliminate that incentive while still capturing a sense of drama and purpose in our victory conditions?
I don’t think setting up 10+ victory cities per side is compatible with drama, even if we write great new looting rules. You want progress toward a victory condition to be something momentous – a turning point in the war – not just the seizure of another, somewhat more important territory. If I capture France, that’s a turning point in the war regardless of whether Paris is a victory city and regardless of whether I get to loot the French treasury. The territory itself is inherently valuable because of its location and its IPC value. Making it one of 20 victory cities on the map won’t do much to add or detract from that value.
I do think some modest looting rules could work well with having 3 target cities per theater per side – maybe in 1942.2 you steal 10 IPCs from the opponent’s treasury when you capture a target city, in AA50 you steal 15 IPCs, and in Global 1940 you steal 20 IPCs.
If you want to stick with a traditional victory city mechanic despite my arguments against it, then I have no objection to adding Cairo, Sydney, and Stalingrad as new victory cities – but don’t expect that to solve the one-theater problem. If I can win by concentrating all my forces in one theater, then I’m going to do so, and it’s much, much easier to win by taking, e.g., Leningrad + Moscow + Stalingrad + Cairo (i.e., a purely European victory) then it is to win by taking Leningrad + Moscow + Sydney + Honolulu (a victory balanced across both theaters).
Finally, having a victory condition based on pure economy or based on Young Grasshopper’s victory token rules could get you the incentives you want, but only at the cost of a potentially unsatisfying “Euro ending,” where someone is declared the “official winner” even though her opponents still have plenty of will and opportunity to fight. I realize that Settlers of Catan is an incredibly popular game, but I personally avoid it because I see no reason for someone to win just because she has 10 victory points. That goes double for, e.g., Twilight Imperium. If I’m going to setup and play a competitive 8-hour game like AA50, I don’t want that game to end until someone (maybe you, maybe me) has been soundly defeated or until the game has been fought to a plausible stalemate. Other people may feel differently, but I feel intensely frustrated when the rules call for me to end the game and put the game away just because someone has checked off a bunch of boxes on his in-game to-do list.
Out of curiosity, if you do favor a pure economic victory condition for AA50 or 1942.2, where would you draw the line? How many IPCs should the Axis need to win? How about the Allies? Are people willing to call the game for the Axis if the Allies haven’t won by turn X? Which turn?
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The problem is that the capital rules incentivize players to engage in boring, ahistorical, one-sided offensives where the players take turns steamrolling each other in opposite theaters. So how can we eliminate that incentive while still capturing a sense of drama and purpose in our victory conditions?
Maybe by introducing some sort of political-impact element to the game. I don’t know what precise form it could take (a current approximate equivalent are the national objectives) or what kind of bonus it would translate into (perhaps cash, perhaps victory points, perhaps forward or backward movement along a political “progress towards victory” chart of some sort), but the idea would be for some territories (and some player actions, about which I’ll say more in a moment) to have higher political/symbolic value than others.
To give just one rough example: the Hawaiian Islands territory (which includes Honololu) and the Philippines territory (which includes Manila) both start out as US island territories in the Pacific, and purely on paper the Philippines territory is worth more than Hawaii (at 2 IPCs versus 1), but from a historical point of view they didn’t at all have the same political value. If Hawaii had been occupied by Japan, the political symbolism would have been very large and very bad for the US and very large and very good for Japan; sort of a Pearl Harbor on steroids. Fortunately it never happened. By contrast, the Philippines were actually occupied by Japan; in the US, this event provoked a mixture of anger and embarrassment, but at a level that was quite manageable.
Some sort of political-impact factor relating to player actions in general could also, perhaps, help with problems such as the two-theatre issue you’ve mentioned. Players could be rewarded not just for holding specific territories with high symbolic value; they could also be rewarded for taking political considerations into account when planning their overall strategy. I won’t go into the details here (though I can provide them if you want), but there were a number of reasons why historically the US fought a two-theatre war in WWII, and some of those reasons were political in nature. Those kinds of considerations aren’t currently reflected in the A&A rules (which don’t use politics as a hard-wired element of the victory conditions), so naturally the players can ignore these factors and follow strategies that (as you mention) are both inaccurate from a historical viewpoint and unsatisfactory from a gaming viewpoint.
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To pick up on Argothair’s reference to momentous turning points of the war being something that could perhaps be reflected in a revised system of victory conditions, here’s a concrete example of a territory (and of events associated with it) which turned out to have major political and strategic implications for both the Allies and the Axis in WWII, even though in Global 1940 this territory has no IPC value, contains no victory city, and has no OOB national objectives associated with it. That territory is Sicily.
For the Allies, the planned invasion of Sicily was (among other things) designed to benefit the overall Allied war effort by helping to keep the Soviet/Anglo-American alliance glued together. Churchill and Roosevelt were under pressure from Stalin to open a second front against Germany in continental Europe, to help relieve the pressure on the Soviets, who felt – with some justification – that they were bearing the brunt of the land war with Germany. The Anglo-American argument that their strategic bombing offensive against Germany was a kind of “second front” wasn’t satisfactory from Stalin’s point of view, but at the same time the British and the Americans weren’t yet ready in 1943 to launch a cross-Channel invasion against occupied France. An invasion of Italy (via Sicily) from North Africa thus offered a kind of compromise between what Stalin wanted and what the Anglo-Americans were unable to do. (It also helped that Churchill had the same fondness in both WWI and WWII for strategic outflanking schemes of debatable value. He believed that Italy was “the soft underbelly of the Axis crocodile,” an assertion which ought to have sounded absurd to anyone who could read a topographical map of Italy.)
The Anglo-American invasion of Sicily in early July 1943 advanced the cause of the three main Allied powers by helping to maintain their cohesion, but it was also the start of a chain of events which ultimately had the opposite effect on the two main European Axis powers. Mussolini was removed from power within a couple of weeks of the invasion of Sicily. When the Allies invaded mainland Italy at the beginning of September, the new Italian government negotiated an armistice with the Allied powers, and eventually switched sides from the Axis to the Allies. The Italian armistice led both to an Italian civil war and to the German invasion of Italy, whereby the German Army (taking advantage of the fact that Italy’s topography is well suited for defense) reduced the Allied advance to a slow grind that would last until 1945. The German invasion of Italy (and its takeover of the Italian zones of occupation in France and the Balkans) involved about 40 divisions if I’m not mistaken, which necessarily meant reducing the number of German forces serving elsewhere.
The specifics of the above anecdote are, of course, too detailed for a simplified military-themed game like A&A, and I’m not suggesting that they (and similar ones for other territories) be modeled in detail into a new set of victory conditions. The more general point to take away is that a particular territory (or a particular set of actions by a player) could potentially be considered to affect the course of the war in ways that aren’t reflected in a victory system which is based either on economics or on victory cities. I’m not sure, though, if that’s what Argothair was driving at.
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All excellent points! I for one would love to see a more robust campaign in the Med, especially in the smaller scale maps, where there is little incentive to attack the med islands.
I’m going to drift a little here, just thinking about how players often enjoy the looting idea, and how that might be used to encourage a more dual theater type of game.
One thought is to attach a bonus to every territory, such that 1 IPC from the bank is awarded for each successful conquest of a territory that turn. The advantage here goes to the attacker, rather than the defender, and to nations that can make multiple attacks per turn, but it does ensure that every territory has a value in game.
Clearly this introduces more money into the game, with a consistent influx of cash, and some who prefer the tighter economy game will probably cry foul (‘more units means longer gamelength etc.’) So as a way to take that money back out of the game, we provide a looting mechanism, where players can take that additional money away from each other.
Rather than focusing all the loot on the capital territory, it could instead be dispersed across each victory city on the map but at some smaller amount. Or you could make it proportional somehow, to the number of total VCs controlled in a theater, such that’s it more advantageous to take a city from a Nation that controls more total VCs on one side of the map, than it is to take them from a Nation that controls fewer VCs on the other side. I’m still trying to puzzle out how to achieve that exactly, but maybe just simple doubling? There are usually more VCs on the Europe side. Or maybe it could alternate by game round, where one round the European theater get a doubling bonus, and next round it is the Pacific, so there would be a reason to focus on each theater independently (in this case alternating by gameround.) I can imagine a situation where knowing in advance which theater gets the focus, would encourage strategic purchasing for each theater. Odd rounds Pacific, Even rounds Atlantic, something along those lines?
Just having the loot attached to the VCs, whatever form that takes, would go a long way towards encouraging a dual front war. This type of scheme would make taking and holding VCs critical to the actual victory because of the powerful looting incentive. Every nation would have a reason to take and hold, rather than trade such spaces for income, since the looting value would outweigh the regular income or bonus value in most cases. Basically you wouldn’t want to just brazenly attack a VC with no intention of holding the territory, because then you run the risk of getting looted yourself in response.
Once the VCs are made more significant and harder to contest, the action would be necessarily pushed out somewhat to all the other territories on the map, since they’d all be worth at least something to attack, and you’d want to cover yourself economically for the possibility of getting looted. So maybe a space like Sicily gets into the action, as a stepping stone. Acquired initially for the bonus, and then serving as a springboard to VC looting at Rome, which is a little more like what happened in the war. Same deal with the Pacific Islands, they get snatched up for the bonus, on the way towards the main goal of contesting the VCs and taking loot from the enemy.
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I do think some modest looting rules could work well with having 3 target cities per theater per side – maybe in 1942.2 you steal 10 IPCs from the opponent’s treasury when you capture a target city, in AA50 you steal 15 IPCs, and in Global 1940 you steal 20 IPCs.
If you want to stick with a traditional victory city mechanic despite my arguments against it, then I have no objection to adding Cairo, Sydney, and Stalingrad as new victory cities – but don’t expect that to solve the one-theater problem. If I can win by concentrating all my forces in one theater, then I’m going to do so, and it’s much, much easier to win by taking, e.g., Leningrad + Moscow + Stalingrad + Cairo (i.e., a purely European victory) then it is to win by taking Leningrad + Moscow + Sydney + Honolulu (a victory balanced across both theaters).
Finally, having a victory condition based on pure economy or based on Young Grasshopper’s victory token rules could get you the incentives you want, but only at the cost of a potentially unsatisfying “Euro ending,” where someone is declared the “official winner” even though her opponents still have plenty of will and opportunity to fight. I realize that Settlers of Catan is an incredibly popular game, but I personally avoid it because I see no reason for someone to win just because she has 10 victory points. That goes double for, e.g., Twilight Imperium. If I’m going to setup and play a competitive 8-hour game like AA50, I don’t want that game to end until someone (maybe you, maybe me) has been soundly defeated or until the game has been fought to a plausible stalemate. Other people may feel differently, but I feel intensely frustrated when the rules call for me to end the game and put the game away just because someone has checked off a bunch of boxes on his in-game to-do list.
Out of curiosity, if you do favor a pure economic victory condition for AA50 or 1942.2, where would you draw the line? How many IPCs should the Axis need to win? How about the Allies? Are people willing to call the game for the Axis if the Allies haven’t won by turn X? Which turn?
Still talking about 1942.2, I cannot see a how 4 VCs winning conditions is easier to achieve by a Center charge of US and UK than a split mix of 1 ETO vs 3 PTO or 3 ETO vs 1 ETO VCs win or even 2-2.
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@Argothair I am absolutely certain that its impossible to courage USA to go both oceans with just small ipc edits or some house rules. It totally requires new units, new rules, new drawings and new national balances.
Requirements:
- Make Germany/USA stronger and Japan weak as much as possible.
-Reduce ship costs as much as possible (destroyer cost becomes 4-5ipc) while maintaning air unit’s somewhat usefulness against air and reducing their costs and rebalancing between ground and air units.
-Make California-Sydney distance 2 and no Australia factory.
-Open Mongolia, cooperation between Russian and Chinese units will discourage Japan to stemroll Central Asia.
-Give Russia Asian factories protected by some valueless territories serving as speed bump. You can give Russia special units to mobilize in this factories.
-If there is no harbour, make sure having no more than 4 sea zones between Japan and USA.
-Britain must start with Indian factory or factories. Open up a route from India to China hence making possible to cooperations between them in area. Also Making Russia suitable to send help India in urgency.
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You’re not doing nearly enough here to explain your reasoning. I’m interested in discussing whether small changes can be enough to encourage the USA to split its forces, or whether large changes would be needed, but you’re not really discussing that topic – you’re just asserting that large changes are needed and then listing all of the large changes that you’d like to see in a game.
It’s fine if you personally like the changes you’re proposing, but if you want to have a discussion or debate or whatever then you’ll have to help us understand why you believe that they’re necessary.
That applies both to the general question of how large the changes would need to be to get the USA to split its forces, and to many of the specific changes you suggest. E.g., why does removing an Australia factory encourage the US to split its forces? Why does making ships cheaper relative to airplanes encourage the US to split its forces? These effects are not obvious to me.
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Lets summarize the reasons why USA always goes Atlantic only.
- Easier to defeat Germany first and ignore Japan
- Easier to mass bombing Germany
- Germany initially possesses bigger threat than Japan
- Germany has no enogh money for air coverage unlike Japan.
- More and easily reachable money via Atlantic rather than Pacific.
- USA is almost alone in the Pacific while heavily accompanied by UK in Atlantic
- Japan starts with bigger fleet than USA
- Ships are expensive, less flexible and don’t bring money. Totally opposite of ground units.
- Cheaper option of keeping California with mass infantries.
- Japan’s ability to outproduce USA even if USA goes fully Pacific.
- Combine power’s superiority over the dispersed ones.
The tons of solid reasons really cannot be reversed inside of classic A&A rules and costings because they will always outweight and discourage USA to split its forces.
Assigning 1ipc each of Pacific islands would have no effect to change the course of war. We would still stuck forever to the boring Japanese armour blitz in Central Asia, Germany turns into survival mod to wait Japan rescue by taking Moscow,. USA establishing a pipeline through North Africa.
-Australia factory isn’t needed, it just turns Japan into “take now or never be able to take” mod. Instead I would suggest making USA closer to Australia. Also its no fun because UK would buy nothing other than infantry and they will be unable to effectively participate Pacific campaigns.
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@GEN-MANSTEIN I’ll tell you the same thing I told Navalland, which is that if you want to start an interesting conversation, you have to explain what your rules are supposed to accomplish, and how they accomplish that, and why that’s a good thing to accomplish. Everybody likes their own house rules; if we didn’t like them, we wouldn’t keep using them. But you have to do more than just share your stuff and say “my stuff is best.” Otherwise there’s nothing to talk about.
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I see that both KGF and KJF can work and what is the need to in some way force the US player to commit to some rule that forces away the player options. I am always for player options and increasing the same.
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Much more interesting, thank you! Now I can try to go point-by-point and explain why I disagree.
- Easier to defeat Germany first and ignore Japan
If you add IPCs in the South/Central Pacific, then it’s not as easy to ignore Japan, because Japan can grow more powerful while you’re ignoring it. In theory, you could make it harder to “defeat Germany first” by giving Germany more starting infantry.
- Easier to mass bombing Germany
London is a sort of unsinkable carrier, so it’s easier to bomb Berlin from London, which you already own, than to try to outfight the Japanese Navy, seize, e.g., Iwo Jima, and use that as a base for bombing. I hear you. Part of how you balance this is by setting up opportunities to bomb undefended Japanese transports. If the Japanese are pressured to constantly send transports into the south/central Pacific to take or reinforce valuable islands there, then you can bomb those transports from Australia or Hawaii. It’s not precisely the same thing as bombing Germany’s factories, but it winds up having a similar effect.
- Germany initially possesses bigger threat than Japan
That’s part of why I favor factories in India and Australia. Germany initially poses a bigger threat to Moscow than Japan, which is as it should be; Japan’s initial threat should be to the centers of commonwealth production. As the Allies, you should be worried that Germany will take Moscow, Italy will take Cairo, and Japan will take Calcutta, Sydney, and/or Honolulu. Again, you have to put enough IPCs into India/Australia that the Allies will care about that threat almost as much as they care about the threat to Moscow. This might also mean you have to weaken the rules for capital looting – if you can permanently shut down the entire Russian economy just by taking Moscow, that might not be a threat that any number of valuable islands can compete with.
- Germany has no enogh money for air coverage unlike Japan.
I’m still not sure what this one is getting at – it sounds like a bad setup by whichever game you have in mind. If Germany can’t possibly afford to buy decent fighter coverage, then that’s poor scenario design. In my experience Germany can usually buy plenty of fighters if it wants to, it just sometimes has other priorities, which is fine.
- More and easily reachable money via Atlantic rather than Pacific.
That’s exactly what I’m proposing to change – put some more money in the central/south Pacific, and then it’s easier for the US to reach that money earlier in the fight with Japan.
- USA is almost alone in the Pacific while heavily accompanied by UK in Atlantic
Again, this is part of what I’m proposing to change – give the UK a factory or a good factory site in Australia and/or India, and now the UK can heavily accompany the USA in the Pacific as well.
- Japan starts with bigger fleet than USA
That’s fine as long as it’s realistic for the USA to quickly get to parity or superiority, especially in sea zones that are closer to San Francisco than to Tokyo. The ideal is for both sides to have a ‘sphere of influence.’ If Japan will obviously and always control the entire Pacific Ocean, then, sure, USA should go 100% Kill Germany First. If the USA will obviously and always control the entire Pacific, then I guess USA should go 100% Kill Japan First. The way to get the USA to split its forces between the two theaters is to set things up so that the USA can control a part of the Pacific, but not all of it, at least not right away – so the USA will have an incentive to send its starting transports, infantry, etc. to Guadalcanal and Morocco because that’s about how far away from US factories that the US can reliably protect its transports that early in the game. And then of course that demands that the Solomons, north Africa, and so on are worth a non-trivial amount of cash – just because it’s reasonably safe to go there doesn’t guarantee that it’s worthwhile.
- Ships are expensive, less flexible and don’t bring money. Totally opposite of ground units.
That’s fine, and I don’t mind reducing the price of ships, but I still don’t see what that has to do with getting the USA to split its forces between theaters.
- Cheaper option of keeping California with mass infantries.
This ties into what I was saying on #7, above – sure, if you know you can’t contest any valuable portion of the Pacific, better to just give up and garrison California, but if you have a realistic opportunity to fight for the Solomons, Carolines, New Guinea, etc., and those territories are actually worth serious cash, then garrisoning California is cheaper, but it’s also much less rewarding, so the player faces an interesting choice.
- Japan’s ability to outproduce USA even if USA goes fully Pacific.
That’s just poor design; that needs to be fixed on any map.
- Combine power’s superiority over the dispersed ones.
This is always going to be a factor; it’s always useful to gang up on one opponent at a time. So the trick is to design the game in such a way that it’s rare or impossible to win a quick, total victory against a skilled defender, so that if you try going all out for, e.g., killing Germany on turn 5 then you’re likely to stall out and give Japan a chance to get huge. One option I’m working with in my Midddleweight map is having infantry defend at 3. The World at War series has infantry costing only 2 IPCs, instead. Either change tend to make it harder to quickly bowl over any given opponent.
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@GEN-MANSTEIN You ignored my request to explain what you’re trying to accomplish with your house rules, and instead you just posted more pictures of your house rules. I’m glad you like your game, but you’re not adding anything to this conversation.
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Well one suggestion was Use Victory city’s worth points to force US to have to spend more of a 50-50 40-60 But I guess Ill just get out of this convo since my game is way bigger then the normal AA games and probably looking for baby changes. I will remove my posts in a bit.
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@GEN-MANSTEIN Thank, you Gen. Manstein; I appreciate that. And I do like your game and I think there are some really cool ideas in there that I would love to discuss! Go ahead and start your own thread and tag me on it, and I’ll join you there. :)
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-Assigning 1ipc values to the Pacific Islands would certainly help and encourage Japan to invade them but I doubt USA will try to retake them. For balance purpose, Japan has to start with significantly bigger fleet than the Allies. It requires minimum 15 ipc (transport+destroyer) just to invade one of the island with a protection. Even if Japan lose some of them, she is still capable of compensating these loses with another conquests. While if USA just ignores Japan, the huge Japanese fleet lose its all combat value suddenly for a long time.
-Yes, the capital rule does not make sense. Nations should be able to collect income and mobilize units even if their capitals are fallen. Also no losing all of incomes when capital is lost.
-That’s why I think Germany is too weak and Japan is absurdly too strong in A&A games which should have been the other way around and it results Germany just spamming infantry and waiting Japan ro rescue. It makes no sense. Historically by far the strongest Axis country should not have badly needed Japan’s and Italy’s helps to just stay even alive. This aspects also encourage USA to go only one front since if Uk-Russia is strong enough to defeat Germany-Italy. USA could choose to go Pacific only to just secure the British colonies but still no two ocean going USA unfortunately.
-Ipc vaules are known very abstract but still it would look very weird if these Pacific islands worth more than 1 except Hawaii. For example Australia was obviously a lot more than twice valuable than Guinea yet having Australia just twice valuable than Guinea is somewhat justifiable for playability but Australia cannot be same with Guinea. It would totally negate all WWII feelings as much as the Japanese tanks storming Moscow.
If Guinea becomes 2 then Australia should be minimum 4, India 5 or 6, South Africa 3, Egypt 3, Hawaii 2 etc.-Having both Indian and Australian factories can actually help Japan more then Allies since if Japan concantrated southwest Pacific with East Indies Factories, UK might find itself spending more money than Japan in this area to just defend these factories because the Japanese units will be in range in both factories simultaneously considering USA needs 2 rounds to reinforce Australia.That’s why I’am fine with Indian factory but not with Australian factory.
-A solid way preventing USA going Pacific only is making UK-Russia doomed to fall without strong US assist in Europe. Preventing USA going only Atlantic is uhm… well I do believe not possible in A&A maps with its rules and cost structures. Totally needs redrawings, revaluings, new rules and costings.
-Expensive ships discourage naval investments for both sides when fighters just do well better than them with similar costs. Destroyer is too expensive for even mimic infantry abilities on sea such as blocking, baiting, deadzoning etc. Of course reducing ship costs do not magically create two ocean going USA, it is just one of the indispensible condition to achieve that. The expensive ships also reason too why Germany and Russia don’t build navy either.
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