Thank you!
Possible Rules Change
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Leap-frogging is basically taking advantage of the turn order to capitalize on your allies’ advances, which circumvents the purpose of contesting territories.
I think contested territories are a huge improvement over the issues with the classic WWII line, wich in fact were kind of gamey. Typically you could see a stack in Germany and a stack in Russia, and one inf in Poland who would dubble-collect income after unlimited back and forth battles. Some times an ally would clear out that lone inf, and let the other allies tanks “leap-frog” (Blitz) and attack the enemy stack. Not to mention all the strafe attacks just to wear down a stack, and retreat just before you got stuck in that territory. You could even attack a territory (Yugo)from two different directions South Germany and Rumania), and after one round of battle, if the defender survived, you could retreat all your attacking units to one territory (Rumania), and abuse this attack as infantry express to get your inf faster to the front than if they had to walk in friendly territories. So yes, you guys are doing a great job.
But the rules should be simple and rational. When UK is not allowed to retreat from a battle to seak safety at its French allies, and Germany is not allowed to hide behind the Austrians, just because they failed to get a liason unit there in time, then that rule is beyound common sense, and bound for derogatory land.
As I said, the map is the issue. Moscow is too close to Berlin. I know Larry from years back, and suspect he did this on purpose just to tease people. But you can keep on with rule change proposals for ever if that is your kind of fun, but I tell you that as long Moscow is two steps away from Berlin then Russia cant trade land for time as they usual do in real wars, and since you at the same time placed Paris like 8 steps away from Berlin, then we will not get the WWI feeling. Next time buy a real Atlas before you start drawing maps.
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I can respect your issues with the map, but as I am sure you know changing that is not an option, especially not in this thread. Given the framework we have, would you support this change?
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Razor,
I see no reason to be condescending and rude towards Larry about the map. His record on game designing is excellent. In fact when anomalies in game mechanics, game balance and other rules issues come up with his games, he and Krieg have accepted constructive criticsm and suggestions to make the game better as this thread has done.
You may not like the map, but as Von said, that is NOT going to change. So if you problems with what is proposed or have better ideas lets hear them, but lets not berate the designers who are trying to listen and make improvements.
Kim
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To me, the topic address one of two advancement choices.
Either advance separately along two fronts, (hence Germany moved a large force into Poland)
or. advance as one along one front (Austria moves into Ukraine, Germany moves into Austrian held territories clearing Russian single infantry as needed, thus can opening)
This rule change seems to be advocating for a change that makes the two front war more advantageous or viable than a 1 front battle. These are choices based on play styles established probably from earlier game types.
As written, (when Russia pulls out of Poland, they leave 1 unit to stall) ok, so Germany is stalled one round. What prevents Germany from moving next to Moscow or into Austrian contested/held Ukraine next turn? Remember if Austria is in Ukraine, Russia must choose which fronts to attack with its larger force, thus committing them for a turn. And if Ukraine is contested, Germany will be able to move a large force in without firing a shot.
Remember, you are knocking down Russia’s IPCs when you outmaneuver them and they retreat backwards.
Personally, its way to early to change rules, give the community months to try out different approaches, and then address recurring issues if a larger body agrees with the minority’s current distaste of the way this new game plays when compared to older tactics from other versions. Having lived through this with global 1940 being changed so frequently, and too early, only to cater to a vocal minority; I was left with less enthusiasm for the game then before. If the vocal members are upset with the game let them house rule it until the time that others come to the same conclusion. The game does not have to be “fixed” the month it comes out, remember, changes will persist for years to come, lets give the community at least half a year too, before we change things.
Basically as written, Russia can stall Germany once in Poland and once in Ukraine or Belarus, or Livonia. So if the Russians stall twice and they are 3 spaces away, by turn 5 Moscow can be contested or be collecting very low amounts of IPCs.
Remember if the Russians counterattack into these territories they are (stuck the round they attack) , move into Moscow, contest it and reinforce the other battles, and then they are stuck permanently.Isn’t Russia going to lose all of the money from contested territories or retreating? Doesn’t this give the CPs a lot of IPCs when this is over?
Heaven forbid, there is another approach: Lead with Germany: Build up turn 1, Move into Poland turn 2 with Germany, reinforce and/or clear with Austria’s stack: Move into Belarus, Livonia, or Ukraine (whichever is empty, let Russia try to counterattack the combined German/Austrian stack) turn 3: Move Austria in the same clearing or reinforcing: Move into Moscow turn 4(contesting it if able) so Austria can then move in for the capture or contest-ation. This prevents any stalling other than by shear defensive numbers.
Here are the numbers for this argument:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=30597.0 -
Razor you have a point as far as the map goes between Berlin and Moscow there are 3 territories (about 1150 miles), and between Berlin and Paris there are 4 territories (about 650 miles). The map is purposely distorted for game play though. The territories on the western front are about half the size of those on the eastern front and more urban. You are conquering much smaller chunks of land on the western front because of the dug in trench warfare that the game try’s to simulate. Movement on the eastern front is much better just because it was much more rural, so you can gain/lose much larger land masses or at least can keep larger areas contested.
You do have a valid point though. If there was 1 more territory between Berlin/Vienna to Moscow the leap frogging thing wouldn’t be an issue with the proposed rule change. The map isn’t going to change though, so lets be done with that (at least in this thread).
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This whole issue is being caused by Russia holding Poland, they should abandon it on R1 because they might get cut off.
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This whole issue is being caused by Russia holding Poland, they should abandon it on R1 because they might get cut off.
There is a lot more to the issue than that, especially on the western front. Poland is just one example.
Regarding James’ post:
Clearly, it is NOT too early for rules changes, since there have already been several, including a MAJOR overhaul of the Russian revolution.
As Krieghund himself has said, the reason for disallowing movement to a friendly territory was to disallow can opening. It seems at the time the designers knew this was a funky rule, but the can opening worry trumped that.
Now, requiring that a unit of the moving power be in the friendly territory removes a lot of the “funkiness,” and still prevents the can opening that was so undesirable. It gives the players the ability to do what they logically should be able to do still without being able to do what the current rule was designed to prevent!
In other words,without the can opening worry, the players would be able to do what I am talking about anyways. Now that a system has been proposed where the can opening worry is eliminated, there’s not much, if anything, left in the way.
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Well don’t hold any territory you can get surrounded in. I understand the game rules might change to allow/disallow certain movement in this instance, but from a practical standpoint being farther away from your capital than you need to be is a bad idea anyway.
Even with this rule change I don’t think the issue will come up very often at all.
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Clearly, it is NOT too early for rules changes, since there have already been several, including a MAJOR overhaul of the Russian revolution.
Technically, the only rules change has been to the Russian Revolution rules, and even that was more fleshing out than changing. The remaining items are all errata and clarifications, most being the latter.
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Clearly, it is NOT too early for rules changes, since there have already been several, including a MAJOR overhaul of the Russian revolution.
Technically, the only rules change has been to the Russian Revolution rules, and even that was more fleshing out than changing. The remaining items are all errata and clarifications, most being the latter.
US transports would beg to differ, but I don’t think my debating this will help this thread much unless it becomes the idea that this fleshing out of the movement rule :wink: is too big of an out-fleshing. If the situations are as rare as some of those who are expressing doubt about this adjustment would suggest, then it is a lot smaller an adjustment than the Russian Revolution out-fleshings.
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Perhaps this is a question you can’t answer Krieg for certain reasons, and if it isn’t that’s cool, but if this idea (to allow movement into a friendly territory from a contested if the moving power already had at least one unit there) was thought of (or if it was thought of, considered more) during testing, would it likely already be the case?
It seems to me that if the prohibition on more logical movement was due to the obstacle of fear of can opening, and since the idea on the table avoids that obstacle, there are no more obstacles in the way of more logical movement.
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US transports would beg to differ
I have neither confirmed nor denied that was a change, nor will I.
It seems to me that if the prohibition on more logical movement was due to the obstacle of fear of can opening, and since the idea on the table avoids that obstacle, there are no more obstacles in the way of more logical movement.
I tend to agree, but I don’t have time to playtest it right now, and I’d rather have someone come up with any problems now than after making the change. Hence this discussion.
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US transports would beg to differ
I have neither confirmed nor denied that was a change, nor will I.
Sorry about that. It was the only thing other than the Revolution in red and there was no mention of it in the rules, so it seemed to me to be new. I’ll try not to assume next time.
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So the US transport thing was changed or wasn’t it? Is it just under consideration? I am confused.
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Sorry about that. It was the only thing other than the Revolution in red and there was no mention of it in the rules, so it seemed to me to be new. I’ll try not to assume next time.
The items in red were simply new items that had not been released before, as opposed to the rest of the items in the post which were being restated in a collected form.
@Texas:
So the US transport thing was changed or wasn’t it? Is it just under consideration? I am confused.
Yes, it is changed. The point I was making was that I’ve never said whether it’s a rules change or an omission from the Rulebook.
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Oh okay, got it. Thanks for the clarification.
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vonLettowVorbeck1914 writes:
I think a lot of the posts on this topic come from not knowing why the rules are as they are in the first place regarding movement from contested TT’s to friendly one.Not sure if you are in a position to answer this one, but what was the rationale behind not allowing Germany to move from a contested territory to an Austrian-controlled territory but allowing them to move from a contested territory to another contested territory that happens to have 1 (or more) German(s) there?
The reason for this rule is unfortunately very fiddly. It’s there to prevent can openers, which were way too effective against Russia in playtesting.
It needs to be understood that the rule is as it is now because of the can opener worry. It also needs to be understood that the change does not allow that can opener, since an infantry of the moving power would already need to be there at the start of the turn.
A power would have been allowed to move into a friendly if not for the can opener worry. This particular rule change provides a means for allowing such movement without allowing the can opener. Thus, the obstacle to allowing it is gone, and there is not nearly sufficient reason to maintain the illogical rule as it stands.
By the way, there are more examples of this rule in action than just Russia. Refer to the FAQ thread and the rule change thread for some of them. Russia is the example I used most often since it was easy to imagine as it could happen quite early in the game relative to the other examples.
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The simplest solution to me would seem to disallow movement from one contested area to another contested area altogether. This is what most wargames do and for good reason.
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Exactly like in the other game. You move out of contested area, like ZOC ( they don’t let you move into another ZOC, you must move out first)
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Played using this rule this weekend and it worked fine. I would probably refine it to count friendly allied original territories as counting as having a unit in for movement purposes just so allied troops defending home countries have the same rules for retreats, but its not that big a deal.
Our group will continue to to play with Kriegs rule proposal and report back. Out first game it worked very well with no problems.
As for the Russian Revolution, I tend to agree with Krieg that there are still ways to abuse the rule and its optional anyway. We played without using the revolution rules this week end and it was clear that had the rule been used it favors the allies and hurts the Central Powers. Being an optional rule, I would never agree to use it as a Central Power player.
Less so denying the CP a victory city (which it does) is denying them the Russian IPCs for capturing Moscow and the rest of her territories. There are about 12 IPCs that can be captured without using this rule and there simply is no advantage to the Central Powers.
The only way it might help is if Russia retreats to Moscow without fighting any major battles and forces a multi turn battle for Moscow, but even then it would only be a couple turns as she would not be able to hold on long.
My group is working on some Ideas, but for now, we wont be using this optional rule (see my game report).
Kim
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