Proposed neutral rules for A&AGlobal, feedback welcome

We use neutral blocks too, but ours is set up a little different:
South American block:  All strict neurtrals in South American continent
Mongolian block:  All territories in Mongolia.  (this is treated differently now in ALpha+3)
Mid-East block:  Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan
European Block:  Sweeden, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal and Eire
African Block:  All strict neutrals in African continent

When we first started using neutral blocks, I was not aware of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in Africa.  We just went simply geographical.  Makes the game a little simpler to remember.  Also, some people say Turkey should be included in the Europe block, but I thought it suited the Mid East block better and I wanted another country to go with the other two, although when you think about it, Turkey really does affect Europe more.

I have never cared much at all for the “pro” one side or the other neutrals.  Doesn’t much make sense to me and I like to keep it simple as well.  I have always figured “neutral” means “neutral”.  Even if the government of one was “pro” one side or the other, it didn’t mean that the highest percentage of the population agreed with that sentiment (look at the U.S. before the war).  Then you have the added political effects (and the calculations to go with it) of a population disagreeing with its government - even IF the government was totalitarian.  For game playing, I don’t want to mess with that so we use this rule:

NEUTRALS
Neutral countries may be attacked without paying an IPC penalty. When you attack a neutral (or violate its neutrality by an over flight) your opponent whose capital is closest to that neutral country rolls THREE dice. [Exception: roll SIX dice when violating the neutrality of Turkey or Spain.] The resulting number is the amount of IPCs your opponent receives to IMMEDIATELY spend on land or air units to place in that neutral country to defend against your attack. All neutrals have an IPC territory value of ONE when they are controlled by a major power.

Attacking or conquering one neutral country has no effect on any other neutral either “pro” or “con”.

I like that. I’m playing game where you attack and if you lose, that territory only becomes an allied territory of either axis or allies. You only can influence certain ones, icp value , roll dice. The rest you can attack.

Well, I guess for your games you could simply make Sweeden on their own.  If it gets attacked, by Axis or Allies, it only affects Sweeden and no other neutral.
By the way, earlier I listed Eire in the European block of strict neutrals.  I just looked at the map and realized it is Pro-Allies already.  DUH!

Just curious, why do you treat Switzerland with such high penalty if it is attacked?

@SS:

I like that. I’m playing game where you attack and if you lose, that territory only becomes an allied territory of either axis or allies. You only can influence certain ones, icp value , roll dice. The rest you can attack.

Aye, we do something very similar.  If you attack and fail to conquer the neutral territory, it then becomes a territory of the power who defended it.  There is still no effect on any other neutral territory on the board as a result of the battle.

You keep hitting this and I keep agreeing with you.

Shall we drive to Larry’s place and have a face to face reckoning with him about this? It may be the only way to get this established.

As for a house rule, two of my games ended abruptly, if you are willing to test it online, I am happy to engage in a test of this.

I like the idea of the blocs. I would just as soon lump Sweden and Switzerland into the Europe-Africa bloc to keep things clean and semi-plausible. That would be the simple recommendation. However…

Since Sweden was kind of an interesting case, you could consider making them the “if certain conditions are met…” country for the Allies as an answer to the proposals for Spain to become a pro-Axis neutral if certain conditions are met. According to my very cursory online research, Sweden was apparently drafting plans in 1943 to join the Allies for liberating Denmark. This even with the Axis still historically in control of Norway and Finland. Perhaps if the following conditions are met:
-UK is not Axis occupied
-Norway and Finland are Allied controlled
?-US has at least one ground unit in mainland Europe.

I think changing values of units would add fun and accuracy to without adding new rules to remember. After all, the OOB setup is already mangled anyway, what’s the trouble in adding a few extra lines to the initial setup for some of the neutrals?
These would be my modifications:

Mongolia: reduce to 2-3 INF total. The Mongolian army was only ~80,000 personnel in 1945. I don’t know the country’s total population in 1940  but the almighty wikipedia says < 1 mil in 1939. As it stands now, they have 3x the military of Switzerland, a nation with far more people and more organized conscription. Even with the scale of historical divisions to A&A pieces being smaller on the Pacific board than Europe, Mongolia is way too large of a force. Historically they were pretty insignificant in WWII.

Argentina: add a cruiser (sz 85)
Spain: add a tac bomber
Sweden: add a cruiser (sz 114), add a tac bomber, maybe replace an INF with an ARTY

I’m certainly no expert but I get the impression that Sweden as a whole wasn’t too keen on the Nazis, especially after watching them trample the sovereignty of their Scandinavian neighbors. Sweden was really in an impossible place, being surrounded on all sides by Nazi-controlled territory. I reckon they figured their best bet was to avoid an ugly fight and occupation and acquiesce to German trade and transportation demands. I think it’s very telling that as soon as the tide started to swing against the Axis, the Swedes were entering talks with the Allies about liberating Denmark, even though they were still surrounded by the Nazi empire.

Very few Swedish volunteers joined the German Army or Waffen SS. Many fought with the Finns again in the Continuation War, but Swedes in the Wermacht/SS were very small relative to other nations like Norway, Belgium, France, and others. I wouldn’t advocate any A&A trigger for Sweden to join the Axis. I haven’t read anything that indicates a serious leaning toward the Axis. But again, I’m no expert on Sweden; I would love to hear dissenting opinions.

feldgrau.com/sweden.html
waffen-ss.no/sweden.htm

What about neutral territories producing units. Once they have be occupied, during the mobilize units phase they produce 1/3 of their standing army (infantry). In all scenarios this would be either  1 or 2 Infantry that would just appear. You could liken this to forced conscription or something. Dont know how that would work for the Allies though. Im sure someone can make something up. Is this the sort of thing you were asking for?

Also I dont know why the Allies would attack strict neutrals. Maybe the extra Infantry could apply to the Axis only causing the need for the Allies to liberate these territories? with urgency.

The income from the neutral goes to their controller, so any “units” they would produce go to their controlling nation for training and “appear” there during mobilize new units.  That’s how I always viewed complexes really, more as training facilities.  It better explains why you cannot place infantry in territories without complexes.  If you think of them as factories, well, how do you “assemble” an infantryman?  (I guess rifle + helmet + rucksack + boots + clothes, but what about 18 years of life experience, 9 weeks of training?)