Randomization system

So my friend and I were out to make a system of the game where you count up the IPC cost of each unit on the board and let each nation rebuy their units.

In the end, this ended up spawning a system in order to randomize a Global 1940 game with random country teams, random income, and where you get to create your own starting setup.

The setup:

We split the countries into 6 majors and 4 minors. The teams are randomly chosen by whichever method you would care to have them randomized. For the sake of an even amount of minors and majors, the UK was split into UK and India as 2 seperate nations. They are aligned as follows:

Majors:
Germany
UK
Russia
US
Japan
Italy

Minors:
India
ANZAC
France’
China

Each player would draw 3 majors and 2 minors.

At this point, we would decide incomes.

The major powers of a team would end up having a collective income of 160, and the minors would have a collective income of 40. At this point, we would use a website to get a random number to give the total income for each nation.

We would get a random number from 30-80 for each major country, and 10-30 for each minor.

For the minors, naturally you randomize one and the other gets the difference, and for the majors you would need two, and re-adjust the randomization number in order to prevent the third nation from going under the minimum roll. (For example, an 80 roll on the first number, and you would make the new randomization number between 30-50 in order to ensure that the leftover is at least 30 out of 180).

In order to adjust the income of the nations without going through and fiddling with each territory on the board, the capital of each nation was boosted or subtracted from until the sufficient total income was reached. For example, in our game that we played, Germany rolled 66 as a total income, and Berlin was boosted by 36 IPC’s as a result. Granted, this makes capitals absurdly valuable in some occasions, but it was the simplest method, and players tend to protect their capitals largely anyway.

We found out that split in half for two teams, the total value of units on the board came out close to 1300, but we decided upon 1200 total IPC’s for buying for each player. At this point, we took turns each spending 100 IPC’s for 12 rounds until the board was filled. You would have to make an attempt to use up all of your money, but we decided in the end if you have 1 or 2 IPC’s remaining, it may be deposited into the starting cash of any of your nations.

After this, we randomized the turn order, then got playing!

General rule changes:

In order to keep majors major and minors minor, as well as prevent any one nation from having so much cash spent on it that it becomes an unstoppable juggernaut, we imposed the following limits:

You must spend at least 200 IPC’s toward the deployment of each major country, and no more than 500 IPC’s.
You must spend at least 100 IPC’s toward the deployment of each minor country, and no more than 200.

In addition, although starting bases and complexes on the board remained in position, more were allowed to be bought.

Furthermore, to address the potential issue of “I’m the USA deploying ships in the mediterranean” or something else absurd, the requirement was made that Naval units could only be placed within a sea zone adjacent to an Industrial Complex. They could be placed 1 sea zone away from an Industrial Complex but only on the condition that they are not adjacent to a hostile territory.

We ended up deciding that it would be best to consider the Japanese-controlled territories in China as being originally Japanese owned. This would make things much simpler should a situation occur where they are drawn to be on the same team.

In addition, China’s restrictions upon unit purchasing and unit movement were lifted in order to have them fair as a minor rather than an underpowered waste of a nation. They were given a capital and major IC in the province of Anhwe, as this was the closest available province to the capital of Beijing.

The AA guns, IC’s, airbases, and naval bases on the board remained in their natural positions except for China, as noted above, and ANZAC was given a major IC in their capital.

Since we couldn’t well have neutrals remain the same with pro axis, pro allies and pro neutral with nobody necessarily being axis or allies, we changed them as follows:

No neutrals are pro-either side any more. Every neutral is treated as a true neutral.
Attacking a true neutral no longer makes all other true neutrals into pro of the opposite side.
In order to prevent the ransacking of every neutral in sight for cash, the amount of infantry in each neutral territory was doubled.

In addition, to address the issue of the Dutch East Indies, they are now treated as neutrals. We based the troops on the islands upon the ratio of IPC value:troops for most other nations. We ended up concluding that on most occasions, the general value was at or very close to 2 IPC’s per 3 troops. Therefore we put 6 each on Sumatra and Java, and 4 on Celebes. We then doubled the garrison as with other neutrals, for a total of 12 on Sumatra and Java, and 8 on Celebes.

Other than the stated changes, we operated under the Alpha 2+ ruleset, unless I forgot to post another change of ours, but I believe I’ve gotten everything.

Well since the income is changed, that hardly matters. In the end, we just felt that their position on the board works out better as a major than a minor.