Girls, girls; you can’t fight in here: this is the forum!
If I may make a few more inquiries regarding IL’s system.
So far I’m very pleased to see many of the ideas I’ve been advocating for years being implemented:
Rail movement
Production only in home areas
Infantry not linked to factories
Ships based in ports rather than the open sea
Air superiority phase before general combat
Some more ideas I’m hopeful for:
(1) Collect income at start of turn.
One of the silliest flaws of the standard system; I’ve seen tts such as Moscow and Caucasus change hands 3 or 4 times in a round, thus generating 4 or 5 times the income as normal. If money is calculated at the beginning of a turn, then areas which change hands actually generate less income, which makes a lot more sense.
My preferred turn sequence:
1. Purchase new units
2. Develop weapons (for next turn)
3. Collect income (to spend next turn)
4. Combat Movement (cannot use rail)
5. Non-combat movement (into uncontested areas)
6. Combat
7. Land aircraft (from combat)
8. Place new units
(2) No new factories.
Factories represent an entire industrialized area. It is unrealistic for new industrial bases to be “built” in the course of a few years. The only exception to this is the possibility of the USSR dismantling factories and transporting them to safer areas such as the Urals. Even this example was a titanic effort in the face of extreme needs.
(3) Basic terrain.
Terrain seriously effects the type of warfare that can be fought on it. The only attempt at this in A&A so far is a few impassable areas.
Consider the early tanks of WWI. They had enough difficulty moving on the flat terrain of the North European Plain; its hard to see them being effective in attacking mountains.
So I’d like to see a few basic terrain types: Lowlands, Highlands(impassable to tanks/cars, Mountains(impassable), Marshes(impassable to all but infantry & Cavalry), deserts.
(4) Multiple turns for ship builds.
Took a long time to build a capital ship; certainly it should be a minimum of 2 rounds.
(5) Hidden Submarines. I know this might be a pain to keep track of, as locations have to be written down, but to me sub warfare will only be authentic if surface ships don’t know where enemy subs are when they try to move.
(6) Commerce raiding. I’m assuming that Convoy Zones, or something to the same effect, will be included. Like WWII, the closest the Allies came to defeat in this war was from the U-Boat menace. Germany’s surrender had at least as much to do with food shortages as enemy victories.
My suggestion is that ships from Cruiser up to Dreadnought should be able to bombard land tts regardless of simultaneous land attacks. This might involve firing upon undefended tts far from the front lines simply to reduce income (defender pays IPCs to bank to cover losses.)
This is less relevant in a game not featuring areas outside Europe; without the campaigns of German ships in the South Atlantic, Indian Ocean and Pacific the feature is less important.
(7)Munitions/Supply
Armies (particularly artillery) often ran short of shells and needed supplying with ammunition. Say 10 units of supplies cost 1 IPC. Built in any factory, can be railed or transported where you need them.
I’m toying with using Gibson’s Diplomacy shells: one idea from this is that different colours represent different types, for example HE, smoke, gas.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/image/371445/diplomacy
Stuff that IL has already rejected:
(1) Sculpts for every tech development.
Always wanted this for WWII, but for 1914-18 its actually much easier, in that only fighter planes had serious development during the war. Other stuff was essentially new items needing new sculpts anyway.
My aircraft development would be:
Recon planes (start)
Eindekker (The Fokker Scourge), countered by Allied Nieuport;
Albatross (Bloody April), countered by Allied Sopwith
Bombers
I would suggest that each of these represents a significant leap forward, justifying new sculpts for all. The 2 fighter developments were about a lot more than fitting machine guns; they were whole new generations of aircraft. And the sculpts would look so cool painted up… I don’t want to have to think “does that country have this tech” - the unit itself should tell me.
I also think that earlier versions of the unit should remain in place with their old abilities and be phased out gradually. An early war plane could not compete with the Albatross just by fitting new armaments. Also, units in outlying areas would be far less likely to get the new units and would have to make do.
(2) Revolutionary forces.
IL believes that Russia, on the Revolution of October 1417, simply drops out of the war to fight its own internal civil conflict - something irrelevant to the Great War itself. He has yet to reveal how this will be implemented, especially in regard to how and what Germany gets in Russian tts.
I think this is oversimplifying the reality, and believe that Bolshevik and Nationalist forces were an inherent part of the conflict. Hence, I would like revolutions in every country to be possible, with relevant forces in red and black used (will have to buy a 2nd copy…)
(3) Open development of when countries enter the war.
This has been discussed “at some length” above, suffice to say my view is that the game should aim to simulate August 1914 exactly, with everything that might have happened thereafter possible in the game. I appreciate that this can make balancing more difficult to achieve.
The USA joining the Allies eventually would still be very likely; but the possibility of it joining the Central Powers should be just feasible; for example if the British Navy blows the German fleet out of the water the Americans might begin to consider the RN as its greatest rival.