Ps. CWOMarc and LHoffman are covering a lot of ground in their exchanges, with critical analyses that are definitely driving towards the kind of broader victory conditions and play patterns I’m interested in pursuing. I don’t want to sidetrack that discussion by interjection too many ideas at once. But I did want to mention just one thing, since I think you guys might be able to help with the historical grounding.
Do you like India (Or UK Pacific) the way its handled OOB?
Do you like it as a separate player nation?
Would you nix it and just make the British into a single faction with a single economy?
I ask because it seems to me that India in its normal OOB role (game play terms) is rather less significant than it should be. Their sole contribution seems to be against Japan, and in preparing defenses against the ‘inevitable’ JDoW. But in the actual war India’s contribution was pretty important to the European conflict too. What I mean is that units from “the Pacific economy” are rarely used in North African or Italian campaigns. Even in the middle east it is usually UK Europe sending units to prop up India, whereas the historical reality was basically the reverse right?
I’m not terribly familiar with the history here, but from what I’ve read casually, it seems like UK Pacific units should be pushing West a lot more than they do in the OOB game. I’m just wondering, what’s the point of having them as a separate economy, if it isn’t really used to model that history? It seems like it would be much simpler if they were either a separate Nation (with distinct sculpts the way Anzac is) or else just collapsed into the broader British Empire. I suppose the rationale OOB might be that Indian units are already in place in Africa and the Med etc, by the time of the start date. So some of those units in the UK Europe set up charts, are actually UK Pacific starting units under normal British (European) command?
Anyway, it all seems rather complicated. If we want to split economies by theater, it’d probably be better to do this for all relevant player nations, instead of making it UK exclusive, or just drop the idea altogether. And I don’t like the name “UK” for a Pacific faction to begin with, so there’s that as well haha.
I bring it up because it seems like it would be important to determine the total number of actual player nations involved, when we outline the victory conditions generally. Some of the OOB problems we are trying to solve might go away or be rather different if the UK Pacific faction was handled differently, or if it was eliminated altogether.
Anyway, what do you all think about India?
Would you maybe rather have split economies for everyone? Or for everyone relevant, like US, UK, and Russia? That might work, and might solve some issues with the Japan vs USA, Japan vs Russia situation. Though again seems like it might be more complicated than its worth.
pps. another thought. It was mentioned already on the previous page by LHoffman in the context of “splitting the US” the way UK has theater specific economies, though he came down against it. I feel the same way. It would also be harder to track since the boxed game doesn’t come with any special roundels for the US, the way it does those Union Jack counter chips for UK Pacific. If you wanted to control the spending of income, I’d do that on the placement side somehow, the way Jennifer suggested. X IPCs, or X units must be placed on one side or the other, or maybe both. It could perhaps be tied to the factory unit itself?
This is something that hasn’t been tried yet in A&A, or at least not at full scale. I mean the idea that Major Factories have an IPC spending cap, as well as a production cap. Or perhaps its not a cap, but a minimum, or an allowance. Something similar has been suggested with regard to minors, but there the restriction was by unit type, not by the total number of IPCs spent. I’m not sure how this might look without breaking the games essential feel, but say you had like a total IPC cap, the way we have a cap on total production per factory. Where instead of breaking up the map into two basic sides/arenas and restrict the spending that way, you could break it up into smaller regional arenas (determined by factory locations) and restrict the spending locally instead of by theater. This would necessarily ground/distribute the spending where the production is actually located.
Factories somehow controlling the flow of industrial production “money” that is used to spawn units in specific territories/areas of the game map consistently. The total money spent on the units I mean, not just the total number of units (as it is OOB). Spending based on some kind of cap in total IPCs per factory unit, or allowance in IPCs spent, not just a total free for all, spent anywhere, the way it is right now. Even if this money was like a bonus on top of the normal system, but grounded by the production facility units themselves, it would force at least some spending to be distributed across all the factories instead of focused on just one. That’s an idea, but again might be too radical.
It just seems odd how you have such a concentration of income into some factories, at the expense of others in A&A. I mean wouldn’t nearly all the facilities that a nation controls be producing arms in any given span of time? Part of me likes the idea of factories somehow tying down purchases over time to specific localities. This might be along a Pacific side Europe side map wide division, but also work in a more nuanced way, in smaller regions. Stripped down the idea here is that factories generate IPC money, but the additional ipcs that they generate have to be spent at THAT facility.
IPC is such a bizarrely all inclusive term in this game. It is industrial production capacity, but also resources, oil, minerals, man hours etc all rolled into one.
As Marc pointed out, there were ways for nations to increase their production capacity that didn’t necessitate conquering new territories. But in the game the only way to increase your IPC total is to take land from the enemy or from neutrals. If not the factory unit, than I guess what I’m proposing is a unit or marker that generates money or expands the economy directly. Not a moveable resource scheme, since that involves a whole other set of challenges. I’m thinking something simpler, just a token on the map that generates cash (that must be spent at THAT location) which can be placed to anchor the purchasing gameplay.
It doesn’t have to replace the current economic/purchasing system, just augment it in a way that allows us more control over where spending occurs (in ways that are more focused than allowed by the current OOB factory units/purchasing system.) I wonder if something like that could work? This doesn’t have to be a purchaseable unit. Instead it could just be pre-set. Or determined by a timeline or based on a table tied to the game round etc. It could be maybe destroyed if captured, or removed in ways similar to the ways it is generated (via table or timeline). Or I supposed it could be purchasable? Like if we want the Americans building units in the Pacific, you put one of those tokens in the territories that want to serve as anchors, and it more or less guarantees that at least some units will be created in that region each round. Or say you don’t want Japan to spawn an endless train of units from minor factories in China, then you just don’t put any of those tokens in coastal China, have it located on the island of Japan. Same deal with Russia, perhaps they get 1 such token per round, or 1 per round after a certain round, so that their economy increases over time, but that increase is also tied to specific locations/regions where the units get mobilized.
This doesn’t totally solve the essential problem of units “going the wrong way” or marching off in wildly “ahistorical” total one dimensional directions. That problem goes beyond just the purchasing location where units are spawned, and moves into a broader “movement” phase issues, where units wander around the map after they’re purchased/spawned. There’s probably no way to really force players to play somewhere, unless you include a movement restriction/allowance of some sort. But production restrictions/allowances could get you at least half way there. Units are more likely to be distributed across the board, instead of concentrated all in one spot. I just think it would be helpful, to have an actual token or physical unit of some sort. Or to use the existing production units somehow, like the factory unit, that way its graphically represented on the game board.
Right now you can be awarded money for conquering land, or achieving objectives, but the money never has any strings attached. What if instead of “+10 ipcs”, an objective read something like “+10 IPC, to spend in Central USA” where the objective bonuses counted during the purchase units phase, rather than the collect income phase? Things like that would allow you to control the flow a bit more, even if you wanted to stay within an NO type framework.
Just trying to think of ways you could handle different issues using a similar mechanic. Something that could cover the “war time” economy idea for USA, or the ramping up of production for Russia, while encouraging USA to spend in both theaters issue, and still prevent Japan from spamming mech minors in coastal China.
