Change to NCM

[Little_Boot]

In the war, when troops were shipped long distances, they would be transported by rail, rather than marching. This increased speed, and also meant that tanks and infantry would travel long distances at the same speed as armor, as both would’ve been loaded on train cars.

My proposal is that infantry and artillery (and AAA I guess) should be able to move 2 spaces during the noncombat move phase. One condition to this movement is that the territory that they originate in, as well as the territory that they move through (not their destination, however) must have an IPC value of at least 2. Territories with an IPC value of only 1 would not have the rail infrastructure to ship large numbers of troops. This means that rail movement would be mostly confined to Europe, with most of the rest of the world being dominated by territories with a value of 1.

Also there could potentially be a trans-Siberian railroad exception to the rule, allowing Russian troops to move between Moscow and Amur 2 spaces at a time. This would help the Russians get their far east troops back in time to contribute to the battle with Germany.

[The Hessian]

Hi Procas,
besides of the increased realism of this rule, it would favour the axis powers far too much. I fear that especially Germany would become to powerful as cheap infantry would make it much quicker to the eastern front and I’m not sure how to counter this. Okay, in A&A1940-Global Russia could bring up her eastern infantry quicker towards Moscow. But in all other A&A versions there are no Russian Far East Army.

[Narvik]

The game is designed this way, so if we add a railroad rule everything will get off balance . Tanks will never again make it to the map, and ships will be worthless too.

Long story short, I say all your land units can noncombat move unlimited inside your original home territories as long as they are adjacent to each other. This is historical correct. In the real war a German division could be moved from Denmark to Romania in one day because of well developed railways, but from Poland to Caucasus would take 3 months because the track was different in Russia making the division unload and embark a new train, and on top of that the Partisans would sabotage the railway all the time.

[The Hessian]

Narvik, this will be a nice house rule. I should give it a try.
But how do you handle the British colonies, especially in central Africa? Would you give this advantage to China? (In case of the two Pacific-Versions or the Anniversary-Edition) And what’s about strategic bombing raids against these rail lines? In fact a mighty blow against Germany and Japan in 1944&45.

[Black_Elk]

Hi Procas!

I like the concept. The main difficulty I see with a 2 ipc rule though, is that the some of the major transcontinental railways that existed at the time would violate the rule (by passing through 1 ipc territories.) The Trans-Siberian, Trans-Canadian, Tran-Australian would all be out for example.

Something along the lines of what Narvik suggested might be workable, but there the issue would be max capacity of the rail lines. For example, it’s conceivable that some units could be redirected from one end of the rail network to the other, but not all units at the same time. So would there be an upper limit on how many units could move around like that, within the broader region they control by rail?

It might be interesting if the total rail capacity was somehow related to total production capacity of a Nation. For example, if the max number of units that could be moved around like this, was limed either by your total IPCs or by the number of nearby factories, or something of that sort.

The idea of caping the movement at 2 for all ground units would fit with the concept generally, but would definitely diminish the value of tanks and mech as others pointed out. A bonus of +1 to all units, is another alternative, though this would dramatically increase the value of tanks and mech. Its an interesting trade off, but on the whole expanded movement makes me a little nervous. It really needs to be handled delicately, since it’s much more powerful than expanding say attack or defense values. The long range air tech, or ABs have been an example of this, and they can be very potent, and crazy game changing.

I still like the idea of a rail base though, or some kind of rail component to the factories, or ways for Infantry to move at an accelerated pace under some conditions like those.