@panther Oh, sorry I misunderstood you. It was just my error. I didn’t know about or see that category. Again, I’m sorry.
What's the cheesiest thing about Global 1940?
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I don’t think it really a cheesy thing but I would have liked to see more involment with France. I know there were historical timeline considerations but I would have liked some mechanic that made them more playable. Even as Vichy and or free France.
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If any of you ever played World at War, I think many of there concepts played well into the historical aspect of things while keeping the game simple enough. Especially the French idea.
I agree with most of everyone’s ideas except of course the problem is always keeping it simple, however in Global, I think there is a lot more room for historical accuracy while keeping it simple.
Overall I really think the game could have achieved the desired changes we now see without some the NO’s being as silly as I think some of them are.
Did anyone here play World at War. They were working on an online game version, like triple A but it took years for the first version to come on line, and years of promises for the 2nd version. Many of us paid in advance for the online version never to see it fully developed and out money gone.
I expect when Axis came out with its Europe/Japan/Global versions, it put them out of business.
With that said it is worth reiterating the cheesiest thing about Axis, by a landslide is the 6VC rule for Japan. Does anyone play without that rule.
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With that said it is worth reiterating the cheesiest thing about Axis, by a landslide is the 6VC rule for Japan. Does anyone play without that rule.
The league is working on a New and Improved house rule version of G40, and it will certainly not include a 6VC rule for Japan. We’re just getting started - not a finished product yet.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AhOB4pSke42ydGh6d2NwRDJRRzBteEsyU1EtNGhXVUE#gid=2
Discussion on this thread:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=25260.0 -
What do you all think of this as Victory conditions for Japan?
Axis must hold any 3 of the following for 1 complete round:
1) Western USA
2) New South Wales
3) India
4) all territories originally controlled by China (total extermination; includes Kwangtung) 5) any 20 islands on the Pacific map (“islands” include the island of Japan, Hawaii, Philippines, DEIs, New Zealand, and all the little islands; Dutch New Guinea plus New Guinea counts as 1 island). Note: please count the islands on the map and consider which ones are usually easy or hard for Japan to get.These are all historically reasonable goals for Japan in WWII. The first 3 were pretty unlikely to succeed, and they should be in the game. In terms of game balance, what implications would this have? Could UK stack Egypt to the rafters while also holding Calcutta at all cost? Could Russia be allowed to fall if Cairo is not so strong? How to reinforce the Chinese? Could we see fleets actually used to hop around islands in the pacific rather than just have this silly Mexican standoff at Hawaii?
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At least 2 in the list are more or less easily obtained by Japan (no. 3 and 4), at the cost of letting the USA fleet get ahead.
This leaves 1 harder task, which I like. It replaces the importance of Hawai with Sydney which is harder to take (except when early focused on) but not impossible. Maybe those 20 islands need to be a few more or less, but I like the basic idea, especially the islands!I think the usual game-mechanics stay unchanged by these conditions. However, this does make it easier for the allies. Now they don’t need to defend both Hawai and Sydney but only Sydney. Assuming that if the USA + ANZAC are strong enough to defend Sydney, Japan also cannot hope to take 20 islands instead.
Defending Sydney and preventing Japan from Getting 20 islands sounds easier than defending Hawai + Sydney but even if that is not, it shouldn’t be harder and the historic feel seems much stronger in your proposal!
This might even tip the balance for allied wins in the league closer to 50% from its 44%. But I still feel, given normal luck, the allies should win much closer to 50% anyway ;-).
At equal experience levels, Allied losses seem always to be due to a judgemental error to me (or very bad dicing) and lucky enough for the axis, those are quite easily made because the Axis flexibility! -
That 20 Islands idea is an interesting concept. I just took a look at the Pacific map and there are 30 total islands. Japan starts out with 9 of those. Let’s assume, just for the moment, that Japan is able to keep ALL the islands it starts out with. Suppose Japan is able to conquer all of China, satisfying ONE of the victory conditions. Upon declaring war, here is what I figure:
Philippines is almost always one of the first to fall to Japan == 10 Islands.
Guam wouldn’t be too hard == 11 Islands
The DEI is usually one of Japan’s major objectives == 15 Islands
If Japan takes Calcutta, Ceylon is almost a given == 16 Islands (plus one more victory condition)
Let’s say for the sake of argument that Japan also manages to nab Wake == 17 Islands
Now it gets somewhat tricky. Japan needs 3 more islands. They could go head on against the US and grab the Aleutians, Midway and Hawaii, then try to hold all those for a complete round. Possible, but pretty hard if the US has any decent force in W US. Would work best if the US went all after Germany.
Another possibility is going hard after ANZAC. Japan could grab New Guinea, New Britain and the Solomons. Japan would be pretty strong at this point and ANZAC may not be able to do much about it. However, if the US has a strong fleet around Hawaii, they can reach the Solomons.
Of course, then there is Wake and the Marshalls within easy range of Hawaii.
I think the only way this could be accomplished is if the US almost totally ignored the Pacific. There is no way Japan could guard all those islands. Of course, maybe this is meant more to keep the US engaged in the Pacific and not going KGF. In that case, it would be a successful idea.By the way, you said ANY 20 islands. So it would be okay for Japan to end up losing one or more of their original islands (except for Japan of course) as long as they still had a total of 20?
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By the way, you said ANY 20 islands. So it would be okay for Japan to end up losing one or more of their original islands (except for Japan of course) as long as they still had a total of 20?
Sure, any 20 islands will do. I just picked 20 as a starting number; maybe it could be knocked down a bit to 18 or something that works. It would be hard to defend them all, but also hard for USA to grab and hold too. I would bet that in this scheme India becomes a lot harder to get than it typically is now because everyone focuses on defending Cairo instead (e.g. Tobruk or Taranto raids instead of sending everything Eastward). If that’s true then USA would have to do something about the Atlantic, maybe get a second front going to relieve Russia.
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I like the idea of more varied paths to victory for each side. It makes balance tougher, but done right would be great.
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(…) I would bet that in this scheme India becomes a lot harder to get than it typically is now because everyone focuses on defending Cairo instead (e.g. Tobruk or Taranto raids instead of sending everything Eastward). If that’s true then USA would have to do something about the Atlantic, maybe get a second front going to relieve Russia.Â
From my own experience I’d say you bet right: at least the threat of a second front is needed to keep Germany in check, else the allies risk loosing both Moscow and Cairo.
To be honest I don’t see how not sending everything eastwards makes life easier for India? I’d rather say it 'll make life in Calcutta harder because Japan doesnt have to face a bigger UK-fleet and airforce. I suspect I am missing something ;-).
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By send everything Eastward I meant sending stuff from Egypt and z98 toward India to reinforce it; not stripping India planes and fleet to reinforce Egypt.
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ah nvm, I guess Im on the wording a bit too much ;-)
I take it we agree that not sending units from Cairo -> Calcutta makes it harder for UK to defend India and easier for Japan to get it.
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I love the general idea.
In terms of balance (is 20 too much or not enough?) - I’m too lazy to check it and trust in this community to figure it out g
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Good ideas for alternative Japan/Axis win conditions. We need to chew on these awhile.
I like the idea of making island groups more meaningful, which is why I’ve started a couple ideas for NO’s (that are much more realistic than Larry’s crazy one for japan with the Solomon’s and Wake and whatnot)I currently have it as 5 for Carolines, Wake, Guam, and Midway (All have strategic air bases and were very important in WWII) instead of the wacky current one (Wake, Guam, Midway, Solomons and Gilbert? Seriously?). When would Japan ever take these 5 islands before getting 6 VC’s? :lol:
At first I liked the idea of total domination of China, but - Mega cheesy that the Allies could avert Axis global win by taking Kansu or some other obscure Chinese territory. That’s even worse than Hawaii or Sydney… For a second I thought well, how about all but 2-3 IPC’s worth of China, but you have the same problem.
So I guess actually I don’t think dominating China should be a victory condition (except for requiring Hong Kong and the Capital - that still makes sense). It’s worth so much money and makes Japan’s life so much easier if China is subdued it probably shouldn’t be a victory condition to take a ton of Chinese territory. Great ideas, though. Keep 'em coming -
At first I liked the idea of total domination of China, but - Mega cheesy that the Allies could avert Axis global win by taking Kansu or some other obscure Chinese territory. That’s even worse than Hawaii or Sydney… For a second I thought well, how about all but 2-3 IPC’s worth of China, but you have the same problem.
So I guess actually I don’t think dominating China should be a victory condition (except for requiring Hong Kong and the Capital - that still makes sense). It’s worth so much money and makes Japan’s life so much easier if China is subdued it probably shouldn’t be a victory condition to take a ton of Chinese territory. Great ideas, though. Keep 'em comingI put in a house rule NO for Japan: $5 per round if ALL Chinese territories under Axis control.
I put in another for the Japanese held islands: $5 for control of Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Formosa, Marianas, Palau, Carolines AND Marshalls. Japan has to keep control of all of them.
As for that weird NO with Midway, Wake, Guam, Gilberts and Solomons, I changed that one to $1 per island.
I also removed the US NO of $10 for control of EUS, CUS and WUS and gave the US a new NO: $1 each for control of Midway, Wake, Guam, Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Marshalls, Carolines, Palau, Marianas and Formosa. That way the US can still make the extra $10 but they have to fight for it, it’s not just a given. Also, they start right out with 3 of them. That is unless Japan’s DOW on the US includes taking any or all of those three islands.
I’ve already tried these new NOs in a couple of games and they do create more island fighting. -
Mega cheesy that the Allies could avert Axis global win by taking Kansu or some other obscure Chinese territory.
Yeah I guess the 18 inf, 2AA from the far east marching over Mongolia and then to Kansu would become a standard cheeselog. I like the islands bit though, and knp’s experience with something similar suggests there might be something to that. Not sure which or how many islands should count but I bet there is some point that would strike a good balance. So x number of islands would count as a VC.
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Axis must hold any 3 of the following for 1 complete round:
1) Western USA
2) New South Wales
3) India
4) all territories originally controlled by China (total extermination; includes Kwangtung) 5) any 20 islands on the Pacific map (“islands” include the island of Japan, Hawaii, Philippines, DEIs, New Zealand, and all the little islands; Dutch New Guinea plus New Guinea counts as 1 island). Â Note: please count the islands on the map and consider which ones are usually easy or hard for Japan to get.These are all historically reasonable goals for Japan in WWII. Â
I respectfully disagree that these goals were historically reasonable for Japan. By December 1941, the war in China had been going on continuously for four years, was absorbing huge amounts of Japanese manpower, and had to a large extent bogged down for Japan. Japan also had to maintain appreciable forces along Machuria’s borders with the USSR and Mongolia, where there had been a couple of shooting wars in the late 1930s. These situations all reflected the strategic ambitions of the Japanese Army, which favoured a “north and west” expansion strategy for Japan, in contrast with the Japanese Navy, which wanted to expand “south and east.”
Objectively, the Navy’s plan made more sense because that was where Japan would be able to find the resources it needed, notably the oil of the DEI. The Navy’s plan also had the advantage (from the Navy’s point of view) that expanding south and east would require a very heavy involvement of the Navy – unlike the war in China, which by its land-based nature was an Army show. Japan’s naval forces were available for a campaign south (towards the DEI, Malaya and New Guinea) and east (towards Hawaii and the Gilberts), but the Army was so heavily commited to the war in China that the campaigns launched by Japan in December 1941 had to be carried out with the comparatively few Army divisions that could be scraped together for the job, plus a few SNLF units.
Japan initially had the advantage of surprise and proximity, so it was able to take the Philippines, the DEI, Malaya, the Bismarck Archipelago, Burma, Hong Kong, Wake, Guam and the Gilberts in short order. But as the war reached New Guinea and the Solomons, Japan started becoming seriously overextended because the oceanic distances were becoming too large and because Japan simply didn’t have enough troops available to take and hold that much territory in the face of serious opposition (which is exactly what they started facing as the Americans recovered from their initial defeats and found ways to hold the line until they had built up enough strength to start driving the Japanese back across the Pacific). Given that Japan didn’t manage to complete its conquest of Guadalcanal and New Guinea, never got past Burma, captured just two useless islands in the Aleutians, and didn’t even bother to snap up the easy prize of the Ellice Islands, it would have been quite unrealistic for Japan to imagine that it could conquer all of India or parts of Australia, let alone capture and occupy parts of the continental United States across 6,000 mile of ocean. I think that the most ambitious conquest the Japanese might have credibly added to their actual vistories was the Hawaiian Islands – and even that one is a bit of a stretch, given Japan’s spectacular failure to set foot on Midway Island, which was minuscule in comparison to the main Hawaiian Islands and appreciably closer to Japan.
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@CWO:
I respectfully disagree that these goals were historically reasonable for Japan.
Your historical knowledge is impressive. However, we are playing a game and it needs to be balanced. Historic accuracy, while being important, is not nearly as important as balance is.
None of the Axis powers came close to what we see in this game and what we consider balanced.
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However, we are playing a game and it needs to be balanced. Historic accuracy, while being important, is not nearly as important as balance is.
Of course. I’m all in favour of having a balanced game, and of letting the players break out of the narrow confines of the actual events of the war. A&A, after all, isn’t a strict simulation of WWII – it’s a boardgame, and it needs to operate under simplifying assumptions to make it playable. I was just making the point that there’s a difference between setting certain variant objectives in a set of house rules (which is perfectly fine) and stating that these objectives were historically realistic for Japan (which isn’t necessarily the case).
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Thanks, CWO, that was terrific!
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Of the 5 objectives I gave, which ones were most seriously on the table for Japan in the war? How about crushing China and creating a defensive perimeter in the Pacific to protect its access to oil and stuff from the DEIs? No way were they ever going to take over India, Australia or the Western third of the United States, but yeah it is a game.
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