Not seeing it

Funcioneta,

I don’t think Japan can possibly do everything that you stated they can do.  How can they take Sydney (killing Anzac), take Calcutta (killing UK Pacific), and permanently engage the US (there by giving the Europe Axis a chance) all within  a reasonable time frame (say 5-7 rounds)?  Having played just a few games, they simply don’t have the resources to go in three distinct directions concurrently.

Here is the reasoning I use when looking at this from the US players perspective.  As the US I ask myself, if I spend all my money in the Atlantic, how much and how easily do I affect the game?

Answer:  A lot and it is relatively easy.  Compared to Japan, Germany and Italy start with a much more limited Navy and much, much smaller air force.  The US can spend much less on planes and capital ships and correspondingly more on transports and ground units.  Also, if Germany does Sealion, which seems to be a common occurrence, I don’t know how they don’t respond forcefully to that?
If Japan goes 100% against the US, they only have one major complex, the one in Japan.  Even if they set up a shuck-shuck convoy from Japan to Alaska and it has a minor complex and a naval base, the US has three major complexes that it can build out of in order to boot Japan out of North America.

Question:  If the US spends all of its money in the Pacific, how much and how easily do I affect the game?

My answer:  I don’t know and not very easily.  Japan has a huge fleet and 20 planes (at least in the Alpha setup).  America starts out with a relatively meager fleet and air force. To gain parity, they would need to spend a lot.  Now granted, if the US comes into the Pacific, it will open something else up for either the UK or Anzac but at what expense in the European theater?

In my mind, I keep falling back to the idea that Japan can’t possibly do everything you laid out for them in a reasonable amount of time.  Maybe they could, but I guess I would have to see it.

Kungfujew,

I agree with what you say.  Europe is the easier theater for the US to affect change in and I think that is why most players do it.

This is not a criticism of you two personally.  It is just that I don’t see this in my mind.

Russia needs it’s own victory conditions.

THAT would make things MUCH more interesting, offer rational balance - as they too do not want the allies to win, and you’d get a new diplomatic side of the game.

It would be a real MOVING solution to sort out game balance, Russia would apply themselves strategically to meet their own goals.

Axis / Allies / Comintern

The issue with Japan doing all that is in the allocation of forces.  Thinl about it from a pac 40 point of view.  Japan can easily overpower both India and anzac in the first 5 turns, it’s only the intervention of the US that turns the tide, and the threat of their air and naval forces that forces japan to pull back or keep some of it’s power in reserve.  If you hold off attacking the western allies for 2-4 turns then the US can’t be in a position to attack until the start of turn 4 or 5.  By the end of turn three china will be dead and you can position yourself in the carolines and/or sz 36 to launch a devistating blow to either ally with ALL your consolidated forces.  Without needing to spend money on fleets to defend against the US, factories and transports and lots of ground troops can be purchased.  A well placed air or naval base will let you attack at any weak point in overwhelming force, and, unlike in a Pac 40 game, the uk gets no +10 ipc bonus for the islands and land territories.  With a 3-5 turn head start on the US in the pacific, even if they start to build up, you don’t need any of your starting forces to combat them.  Just think about how far you’d get in a pac 40 game without the US spending in the pacific and what you’d do to make as much headway as fast as possible and you’ll see what I’m talking about. 5-7 turns is more than long enough to do irreperable damage to the allies cause in the pacific, and then turn to africa/the west coast and russia.

@Gargantua:

Russia needs it’s own victory conditions.

THAT would make things MUCH more interesting, offer rational balance - as they too do not want the allies to win, and you’d get a new diplomatic side of the game.

It would be a real MOVING solution to sort out game balance, Russia would apply themselves strategically to meet their own goals.

Axis / Allies / Comintern

I maintain that you also need Japan to be separate to balance this.

You then have 4 factions, each one looking out for itself.

Then, simplify turn movement by having each complete faction moving together, so no Italian can opener for Germany and no UK/US 1-2 punching.

Factions can make alliances, but never share land territory or fight together.

Different scenarios make for 3 faction games (after Summer turn 1941) and 2 faction games (after Winter turn 1941).  Anything starting before this needs to be a four cornered fight, with alliances forming as players choose.

I also believe that NO nation not at war* should collect income or build units.  The “Western Allies” player will have enough to do with UK, France and China; the USA should only be activated when it goes to war.  At most, it should have a “foreign aid” budget each turn to send via convoy; it’s up to factions at war with the WA to decide if it’s worth disrupting these and bring the US into the war earlier.

*By at war I mean of course at war with another faction, not with neutrals. Or indeed China; in fact I’m considering that 3 factions might be able to place Chinese units!  The KMT are controlled by the WA, “Cochin” forces by Japan, and CCP units by the Soviet player.  Thus, there is a “war within a war” going on in China, with the Chinese factions free to attack each other even if their “parent” factions are allies.

I was even thinking of a German Chinese faction, but Germany seems to have pulled out of China completely by 1939, with other “Nationalist” groups pretty much absorbed by the KMT. But maybe the Axis player can start up a new Chinese army…

@kungfujew:

The issue with Japan doing all that is in the allocation of forces.  Think about it from a pac 40 point of view.  Japan can easily overpower both India and anzac in the first 5 turns…

Are we talking about the OOB setup or Alpha?  Since we know the OOB setup will be changed, my group is using the Alpha setup.  I don’t know how Japan does this with the Alpha setup.  If you can take out India and Anzac by round 5 with the Alpha setup, wow, I need to think much harder about what I am doing as Japan.

@kungfujew:

If you hold off attacking the western allies for 2-4 turns then the US can’t be in a position to attack until the start of turn 4 or 5.  By the end of turn three china will be dead and you can position yourself in the carolines and/or sz 36 to launch a devistating blow to either ally with ALL your consolidated forces.

Ok, I’m following you so far….

@kungfujew:

Without needing to spend money on fleets to defend against the US, factories and transports and lots of ground troops can be purchased.  A well placed air or naval base will let you attack at any weak point in overwhelming force, and, unlike in a Pac 40 game, the uk gets no +10 ipc bonus for the islands and land territories.  With a 3-5 turn head start on the US in the pacific, even if they start to build up, you don’t need any of your starting forces to combat them.  Just think about how far you’d get in a pac 40 game without the US spending in the pacific and what you’d do to make as much headway as fast as possible and you’ll see what I’m talking about. 5-7 turns is more than long enough to do irreperable damage to the allies cause in the pacific, and then turn to africa/the west coast and russia.

I never played Pac40 alone so everything in the 1940 rule set was new to me.  What you say here will take me more time to digest and think about.

One thing I will say is that building new industrial complexes is sooo slow.  You build it on round x.  Round x+1 you get to place units in it.  It’s round x+2 before you get to use them.  If the US sees this, they can easily build a wall of ground units for either defense or a counter attack in advance of your landing.  This is just the thinking in my mind.

Everything I was saying was in a scenario of america going all for europe, and if the allies are making 20 with anzac, 20 with india and 0 with america and you can’t steamroll the uk/anzac/china then you’re doing something wrong.  The game is balanced for 3 allies and one axis power.  Take an ally, not to mention the one making a full half of the income for the whole team, out of the picture and it’s nowhere close to a fair fight.

@MaherC:

Is this beta setup using the OOB or alpha as it’s base?

it uses alpha as base, generally any further changes currently are on alpha because everyone agrees that alpha has a better setup they are simply refining the alpha setup right now which hasnt been finalised. questioneer just gave it a name of beta because he has quite a few changes that are actually bunched up together but its mostly NO changes and not many setup changes

@kungfujew:

Everything I was saying was in a scenario of america going all for europe, and if the allies are making 20 with anzac, 20 with india and 0 with america and you can’t steamroll the uk/anzac/china then you’re doing something wrong.  The game is balanced for 3 allies and one axis power.  Take an ally, not to mention the one making a full half of the income for the whole team, out of the picture and it’s nowhere close to a fair fight.

I agree that the UK, Anzac, and China can be defeated easily with the US going 100% in Europe. I just don’t think it can be done fast enough for the Japanese to turn enough power onto America before the US has affected the outcome of the European theater.  Calcutta in particular can turtle up pretty hard and it takes until round five, if not usually round six, before they go down.

I know you said that Japan won’t even need any of its starting forces to combat the US at this point, but this is hard for me to believe.  For six ipc the US can buy two infantry for defense with 4 pips.  To equal that, Japan has to buy a transport, one infantry and one artillery.  That costs 14 ipc for the same attack value.  Considering Japan only has one major factory vs the three that America has, I just don’t see how this is a winning strategy for the Axis unless it is only meant to pull them away from Europe for 1-3 rounds.  After that, America should have it’s shores sufficiently defended/recaptured.  Also, even if Japan completely convoy raids the west coast of America for 14 ipc, the US would be making 66 ipc (assuming Japan has the Philippines) to cream the European Axis with.

I could always be wrong, but from my few games so far, what you are telling me just doesn’t seem to make sense.

@MaherC:

Using the Alpha as a base sounds like a recipe for disaster.   If the Alpha is for Pac40, then why not use the OOB setup for the G40 “beta” ?

My guess would be that Larry wants continuity between the Pacific and Global games.  That is why alpha setup is for both.

its because its easier to have same setup but with added NOs since NOs arent necessarily the same anyway, whilst it would be confusing if there were 2 different setups. perhaps if you play tested it also you can see for yourself whether the changes are good or bad

@MaherC:

I’ve tested the alpha enough to know it is trash, harsh but an accurate choice of words in my opinion.  Deal with it. :)

We’ve decided to use the new NO’s with the OOB setup and see what happens.

The new NO’s?

@MaherC:

I’ve tested the alpha enough to know it is trash, harsh but an accurate choice of words in my opinion.  Deal with it. :)

We’ve decided to use the new NO’s with the OOB setup and see what happens.

think of it this way suppose the probability of allies winning was 55-45 with OOB and 65-35 with alpha, with all the beta changes on OOB it would give axis too many advantages since they are so close already whilst the whole number of changes may be just enough to even the axis out with alpha

The point for alpha was, I think, 1) Preventing that in P40 Japan attack round 1 in all the games (I disagree about that being the best option, but anyway I have less P40 games played that others) and 2) Making the game easier to play deleting many aircraft (mainly Japanese, that has a obscene huge airfleet). I think that we should consider alpha only for P40, because in G40 attacking USA round 1 seems too foolish. I know that Larry wants to keep the same setup to both games, but that’s not going to work because much things change from one game to another

Now, if the chances in G40 are like 55/45, we don’t need to make adjusts yet because the difference is not too big and we need play more the game: I still think that the Ignore Japan and Ignore USA strats are disrupting the analisys of the balance, and it’s even possible that Axis could have a slight advantage (because of the same errors that AA50 had: the early fall of China/India and the lack of a non-agression treaty rule USSR-Japan)

If any, the idea of deleting planes to both sides was OK, but just to make the gameplay less confusing (I hate calculating gazillions of combos with such huge airfleets). As alternative, I still think that the allies in the Pacific should have more aaguns because It’s too easy to exploit for the Japanese and do huge airstrikes with few or even none inf cannonfodder against China, Siberia or even ANZAC in some cases. I’d give 1 aa gun to China in Szechwan, 1 aa gun for USSR at Amur, and 1 aagun to AZNAC at NZW

the alpha setup in global so totally screws the axis over that after seeing it played out in a few games I refuse to play either side in the game because its too easy as an allied player and impossible(pretty much) as an axis player to win.

I don’t belive that the people suggesting that Japan can do what they want before the US gets around to taking Japan understand the huge amount of ipc that the USA has. Even in E40 the USA has the income to make a disposeable invasion fleet EVERY TURN. In Global you can go back and forth with invasion fleets. In E40 I have hit africa one turn then Italy the next(and taken Italy as well) and I still was pumping troops pretty much every turn into africa to retake it.  America has an insane amount of IPC…two rounds of fleet building in the P will crush Japan’s fleet and pretty much kill their chances. IF America enters the war turn 1 they build for E first…for 2 turns, hit africa first then Italy/UK(depending on if Germany takes the UK) then they focus on building a fleet in the P. Either to retake Hawaii or they go pure fleet and start tracking down and killing Japan’s fleet.
Oh and did I mention that if the med is under allied control the USA can hope its fleet from Italy right over to india?

If two turns of fleet building for the US is messing you up to the point of losing then you need to alter your plans.  Start building more carriers and subs earlier.  Make your decisive engagements with the British and anzac forces as soon as you can, then move your fleet to better strategic positions.  New air and naval bases should be built so you can set up areas that you can hit from many different places, and still use your planes on the mainland.  Once the DEI are under control and the uk is making 6ish ipc’s and anzac 10, your BBs/CRs are better used as warships instead of for bombards.  The carolines is a great strategic location to use to split the allies as is anything in sz37 (malaya).  A transport chain can give you a solid flow of land troops and then make attacks on back to back turns without buying IC’s.  Spend the first 1-3 turns positioning yourself for a big push and spread around your transports so that each fleet has at least one so not only can the allies not predict where you’ll land but you can take advantage of oppenings.  Use the islands to your advantage so your land based planes can team up with your fleet and have a place to land.  Give yourself a couple extra bombers for their superb range.  In Global Japan seems like a complex power to play, alwya needing to watch it’s back, but good positioning and the fact that the US is far from any territory of worth (except japan itself, but 10 inf and a few planes is a HARD nut to crack.  Hunt down any UK/anzac navy early, so that you can use blocking destroyers to slow down the US fleets to great advantage.

I’m recruiting for a new multiplayer forum game so I can finaly put my Pac40 skills to the test in Global, so if you want to know what I mean come see that game.  Or better yet, join us.  :)