Hi axxis14 and welcome to the forum. Let’s see whether I can help with your questions ….
@axxis14:
During the first combat move phase, Soviet Union wants to attack West Russia with Russia, and at the same time Germany wants to attack Russia with West Russia.
In other words, two opposing territories want to attack each other. In this case, when you start playing out the fight, how do you determine which side is the attacker and which side is the defender if each side wants to be the attacker?
Since Russia and Germany do not take their turns at the same time, this circumstance does not arise. Russia goes first. It completes all stages of its move, including its attack on West Russia. During Russia’s turn Germany can only defend. Germany’s turn is next. West Russia is now controlled by Russia and Germany has no units left there to attack Russia.
So you don’t do combat for each Power and then non-combat for each. Instead you do purchasing, combat, non-combat, mobilisation, income for one Power. Then you do all those stages for the next.
@axxis14:
During a combat phase, Japanese transports move into Sea zone 43 to launch and amphibious attack on Midway. If the US player was not originally planning to defend against this, but he can, is he allowed to?
The second question boils down to this: All of the combat moves by all the different countries are supposed to happen at the same time. Therefore, if the US was originally planning to move southward but now he sees that it would be a better move to go northward to defend Midway, is he allowed to change his intended moves based on his knowledge of his opponent’s moves? If so, it seems like this favors the countries who move later because they essentially know exactly what their opponents are planning to do.
As per my first answer, all of the combat moves do NOT happen at the same time.
When the US declares its combats, Japan will have already completed its turn.
However, each Power does declare all its combats within its turn before undertaking the resulting battles and cannot then change those combat moves. For example if Russia declares battles in E Europe and Ukraine, if the battle goes badly in E Europe, Russia cannot then decide not to commence the battle already declared in Ukraine. Russia does have the flexibility, however, of deciding to retreat after any round of dice, so it can pay to undertake the battles in a specific order. In this example, Russia could retreat from Ukraine after the first round of dice.
Hope this helps
Private Panic
