G40 Halifax Rules

That’s a really good question, and one for which I don’t have a ready answer. I would say that Halifax provides a definite Allied advantage over OOB, but the changes (particularly with respect to the production rules) go further than anything you could achieve with a pre-placement bid on game balance. The core conditions out of the first round are altered here, such that its hard to compare Halifax with OOB at bid X, or to equivocate.

Some of the changes here favor Axis as well as Allies on the production spread, but my gut tells me that what we have done here, definitely provides the allies with a leg up. I think this comes primarily from the way the British economy is handled, by collapsing UK pacific into UK, but its hard to put a specific amount on it in IPCs.

In my play group, we never did find a balanced bid for G40. Even with a pre-placement Allied bid between +12 and +18 ipcs, nobody I gamed with ever felt that the game was particularly well balanced even with such a bid. There might have been openings for the Allies to win, but this was do more to the chaos of dice rolls than to the pre-positioning of extra units. It is also still unclear to me at what point you start swinging irreparably in the other direction (e.g. at X ipcs on the bid, then Allies almost always win.) Consider for example, how even a bid of 6 ipcs spent in the right place, can swing a TUV trade dramatically in the opening round. This even more so, if people use LL, which I don’t, but can still appreciate the effectiveness of pre-placement just giving a single extra pip in a key battle.

We started at 3, like always, then 6, then 9. Axis still fairly dominant.

So basically we had a G40 range somewhere between 10-18 to be balsy or to be more comfortable. But again, those games still did not feel balanced to me. Nobody I’ve played with has accepted a pre-placement bid over 20, on the logic that “the game couldn’t possibly be that unbalanced!” or even if it was, that the corrective of 20 ipcs pre-placement would be more distorting than its worth on account of the power of aircraft in A&A games. So basically 18 at the high end for us, and of course Axis can still win quite handily.

Which is why I have gone over more and more to HRs at income as a solution to game balance, rather than pre-placement bidding.  G40 never felt balanced to me by side on production, even with a bid, at least not balanced in the way that Halifax feels roughly balanced right now. So I have not yet used a bid for this set up.

I would say we have probably not removed the overall Axis advantage on the board, but have put the Allies at least back into contention. I think it is wise to enable a UK defense of London. The cost in the Pacific is still significant, but a set up where UK cannot possibly win the battle of Britain or defend their home island at 50/50 seems somehow unacceptable for the gameplay. Likewise for a Moscow crush. If it seems like Axis just wipe the floor every time, either on London or Moscow, that’s when I begin to think of core changes. The original games play reasonably well as single theater games, but the balance as a joined up thing was shaky. Now it will be much easier to tease out just how well the British Empire stacks up against the Axis, or how Russia fares, absent a bid under this set up. More games will reveal where we are.

I will say though, that I already find myself exploring builds that I would not have considered in OOB with a pre-placement bid.

ps. If anyone would like to playtest Halifax using tripleA to see how it compares to a bid game OOB, here is a gamesave you can use. Right now everything necessary can be handled via the edit mode. In the save below, you can see the list of game edits in the game history tab. For example, how UK Pacific is removed and its territory ownership transferred to Britain. Also how the Commonwealth is formed by Adding British territories to Anzac. Also, in this case all starting factories are set to Major, and it is the players responsibility to know which are allowed to produce at the IC, Major, or Minor (if captured) under the Halifax values 10, 5, or 3.

Basically all Halifax adjustments are via edit and the players responsibility to track things like NOs or total income. For example, in the place units phase you can edit income to match the appropriate values and then include a newly purchase “Minor factory” on the board. If a territory is captured you can edit the IC factory to a Minor factorywith the edit mode. Right now Major Factories are just ICs and the production limitation is up to the player to self enforce. Or if its more helpful, you just edit your unit placements at the end of the turn to match the correct values. The amount of editing currently required in tripleA, basically matches the changes you have to track in a normal game. Except here the set up has been handled already.

The next step is to create a full gamemap xml with appropriate production units, rather than just an edited save game using the two factory types currently available. But if you want to try it immediately, here is a save that shows the basic changes for Halifax: Commonwealth option 2.

Gamesave attached here…

G40 Halifax 2.tsvg

A few images of the saved game above for TripleA.

You can see it uses the standard TripleA ANZAC faction, color and position in game sequence, but with the value at 20 to represent the full Commonwealth (option 2). Note how Eire is now blue, fighter in Ontario, and commonwealth ships at sea. UK pacific in the stats window is set to Zero, and the income added to the British. Check the values of ANZAC and British in the stats columns as these now correspond to the full Commonwealth and full British Empire factions under the Halifax rules.

With regard to NOs and to things like capital capture or liberating conquered territory, or factories, again it is up to the player to track the appropriate total income or make the appropriate “possession” edit in the game options. If you want to play a full game, just remember to edit your NOs, and to check territory ownership in the case of any of the adjusted territories being taken and reconquered, since they will then revert to the original owner. Example, Japan takes Burma, and then UK recaptures it, the liberated territory will show up as UK-Pacific, so at this point you need to “edit possession” back to the British. Same deal if capitals are captured or liberated, just make sure to edit your total IPCs and track your factory production according to the Halifax rules.

Next step for us would be to make the full xml gamefile (rather than just an edited saved game), with the full faction name Commonwealth, a chosen color for territories and units, and a Roundel. A new gamefile is also necessary to get all 3 production facility types available. But until then you can still play around with the savegame if you like, just load it into your saved game folder in tripleA to see the core changes under Halifax.

I generally use the map view at 60% for Global like the Atlantic image (60% gives a reasonably clear view with only a bit of ‘fuzz’) but the south Africa image shows the scale of the territories in the mapview at 100% for those who prefer the close up. Enjoy
:-D

And here is the save for Commonwealth option 1, in case anyone wants to see what it looks like without all the other Dominions. Note the differences in the stats columns between Option 1 and Option 2 with respect to British and Anzac starting income and TUV.

So far I have been playing with the Full Commonwealth option 2, but for good measure now we have a savegame for both in case anyone wants to play.

G40 Halifax 1.tsvg

@Black_Elk:

Next step for us would be to make the full xml gamefile (rather than just an edited saved game), with the full faction name Commonwealth, a chosen color for territories and units, and a Roundel. A new gamefile is also necessary to get all 3 production facility types available. But until then you can still play around with the savegame if you like, just load it into your saved game folder in tripleA to see the core changes under Halifax.

Wait no longer! I made a gamefile for both Option 1 and 2 Halifax rules. It’s just ANZAC colored for now, but that is a simple change if a general consensus prefers a different color. TripleA even comes with a Commonwealth Roundel in the default game files, so that choice was simple. The only new rules that must be player enforced are the restriction on building units costing more than 10 from minor factories, as well as the Commonwealth having two capitals. (I just made Ottowa the Commonwealth capital, because how often does it really get taken?)

Here is a mediafire link since the forum won’t allow attachment of this size:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/fp2z76r282ukq8d/World_War_II_Global.zip

Note to Users: I highly recommend saving a backup of the original World War II Global.zip file somewhere so you have something to restore to if something somehow goes wrong in the transfer. Other than that, all you have to do is replace the normal .zip file with the one linked and the maps should show up in your game list the next time you start TripleA.

Also, to Young Grasshopper: There is a fighter in Ontario added to the setup, correct? I know you’re probably used to playing with it by now, but it’s not in the setup modifications section of the original post. Neither is all Major ICs (except India) becoming Industrial Complexes, but that’s more intuitive.

And, some pics of the new game.

Option 2 pics

#houserules

@Imperious:

#houserules

Please do not put this jewel into the wormhole vortex of Houserules.:cry:
At least, keep it stickied amongst the first threads of Houserules’ forum.
Thanks,

Congrats on the sticky for all of you folks who worked on this! I haven’t played this as I am teaching new players the OOB Basics right now, but I think this maybe something that’s going to be good down the road.

Oh fantastic!  I was wondering where this thread had gone, now I see it got a sticky! Genius.

Oh colonelcarter, great work! I was really hoping someone would put that file together,  since I’ve been so busy with my day job lately. This is great! Now we can play for real!

To YG, that’s correct dude, Halifax is now playable on tripleA. :)

I would definitely encourage everyone to check it out and gather some hard data from playtesting. Especially as regards things like balance by sides (allied advantage, disadvantage etc.) Often times the anecdotal experience of players in a face to face game can seem very compelling,  but it can just as easily lead to over compensation. I would suggest that right now we are no where near enough games played to determine the overall balance of the set up. This requires at bare minimum at least 100 games played, at a reasonably high level of skill, before I would start suggesting set up alterations. This is because each alteration requires a pretty strong control group of tests to measure against, so we can see how alterations are affecting things. I’m excited that we now have a legit gamefile for these purposes.  It will speed us along considerably :)

Again great work guys!

I do not like the NO’s being given to the UK and US for strategic bombing. Feels forced.

I also don’t like the taking away of the USSR communism bonus, when you could have just changed it to make sense rather than abolish it. This would be changing it to “+3 IPCs for control of any orginal Axis, Pro-axis, or Neutral territory with a printed IPC value of ‘1’ or more”. So no more world tours for soviet troops to get that 3 ipcs for Sardinia etc.

YGH, you got my thumb up as well. I just noticed this topic now, and I really like the commonwealth setup idea. I will try to bring this to my gamegroup.

PS: If I were to make an houserule to the game, I’d change the mediterranean sea zones, add few zones in order to make it so that Italy and UK can’t attack in 1 move gibraltar/italy/egypt. Just because the mediterranean battle is terribly one-sided. Either Italy is annihilated or it dominates. I’d like a more balanced approach.

@ColonelCarter:

@Black_Elk:

Next step for us would be to make the full xml gamefile (rather than just an edited saved game), with the full faction name Commonwealth, a chosen color for territories and units, and a Roundel. A new gamefile is also necessary to get all 3 production facility types available. But until then you can still play around with the savegame if you like, just load it into your saved game folder in tripleA to see the core changes under Halifax.

Wait no longer! I made a gamefile for both Option 1 and 2 Halifax rules. It’s just ANZAC colored for now, but that is a simple change if a general consensus prefers a different color. TripleA even comes with a Commonwealth Roundel in the default game files, so that choice was simple. The only new rules that must be player enforced are the restriction on building units costing more than 10 from minor factories, as well as the Commonwealth having two capitals. (I just made Ottowa the Commonwealth capital, because how often does it really get taken?)

Here is a mediafire link since the forum won’t allow attachment of this size:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/fp2z76r282ukq8d/World_War_II_Global.zip

Note to Users: I highly recommend saving a backup of the original World War II Global.zip file somewhere so you have something to restore to if something somehow goes wrong in the transfer. Other than that, all you have to do is replace the normal .zip file with the one linked and the maps should show up in your game list the next time you start TripleA.

Also, to Young Grasshopper: There is a fighter in Ontario added to the setup, correct? I know you’re probably used to playing with it by now, but it’s not in the setup modifications section of the original post. Neither is all Major ICs (except India) becoming Industrial Complexes, but that’s more intuitive.

And, some pics of the new game.

I wanted to thank ColonelCarter again for putting these gamefiles together.

I have asked Veq to review it and to consider adding the Halifax mod to the next build of tripleA. But for the time being this gamefile works as an alternative, just be sure to save your G40 gamefiles under a different name for backup purposes ex. “World War II Global Original” or something along those lines, before you add the new gamefiles to your mapfolder. Also, if you do not use a Mac, you may find some of the files in Carters zip redundant. This may require you to unzip the file after download to get at the necessary materials.

The only request I made in addition to including this stuff in tripleA, is a way to make National Obectives for G40 optional. Right now they are part of the game, which means they are counted and added in automatically. For my purposes this is kind of annoying since I really don’t like National Objectives, and my game group does not use them in G40. But other than that, this gamefile at least provides a functional way to play Halifax in tripleA. I have to admit, I rather wish the names of option 1 and 2 were reversed, since I much prefer the latter, and I think it definitely makes a difference on game balance, but that’s not so big a deal. I would say however, that we should probably try to settle on which variants of this ruleset we really want to playtest in earnest, especially if Veq puts it up on tripleA. Its all well and good to have many options, and a bunch of specialized versions of the ruleset if you play Face to Face, but for the purposes of playtesting with TripleA it would be nice to fully explore one set up, before altering the conditions.

Why test Halifax using TripleA?

Basically because I don’t trust anecdotal evidence when it comes to Axis and Allies anymore. Especially when the issue concerns overall set-up and game balance. Before making a serious judgment about anything, I would want to see hard data, and the only data that is reliable for me right now is the data gathered during TripleA playtesting. Why?

Well, essentially what it comes down to is a complete lack of confidence, on my part, in the playtesting methods used for the Official A&A Games. Put simply, I am not convinced that the OOB games are being properly playtested before they are released.

I regard pretty much all playtesting evidence from Face to Face games as anecdotal. That’s not to say its irrelevant or that its not useful in other ways, but when it comes to actually breaking the set-up and finding out where it tilts one way or the other on balance, the issue is quantity as much as quality. An FtF game can still be a lot of fun and tell you whether a game can be entertaining, even a hopelessly unbalanced one, but they are also harder to organize. It takes longer to play FtF, and when you are playing everything happens in tunnel vision. You can’t step outside the game to really analyse a specific roll, or see why such and such a buy went wrong, or how exactly a single battle in the second round altered the course of everything. Because then your turn comes up and you have to roll, and who has time for all that analysis when the rolls are up? While you are inside the game, its the play that’s important, and the analysis often falls by the wayside. Even for people who write things down, and who approach it more analytically, while the game is going on its the flow that captures all the attention. That’s cool when you’re playing the game, but not as much for trying to parse it out and scrutinize it for balance. Here’s the hitch with FtF…

Not only is there no way to confirm that a game was actually played (unless you witness it firsthand), but there is also no strong way to verify or track what actually happened in that game, after the fact. Even with a really dedicated group of playtesters, taking diligent notes, with video or photographs, even then, the best FtF playtesters still can’t give us the level of detail that tripleA testing can, not at anything like the same speed at any rate.  In tripleA each phase, of each turn, of each game round is tracked, and recorded in the game history.

This makes it possible to review each test game, to go back and look at what actually happened in exacting detail. So for example, if I tell you “The Axis are unstoppable for reasons X, Y, or Z!” or “The Allies always do A, B, and C!” you don’t have to take my word for it. You can actually go back and look at the gamesave, check the history and see for yourself. It would be impossible to overstate how valuable this is from a playtesting perspective. Not only can you track everything and review it after the fact, but you can also view critical statistics at a glance for every round of gameplay. You can check the odds on every first round battle, both under normal Dice and Low Luck conditions, and you can verify whether the game is actually being played at a high level of skill, (e.g. whether the buys and battles are expert, or middling, or beginner.) What’s more, you can test how any potential future set up change will effect the first round odds on any given battle or strat. And on top of all this, you can dramatically increase the number of games playtested in a given amount of time.

I have been trying since 2004 to persuade Larry and others of the merits of going digital for playtesting, using a platform like tripleA, for all the reasons listed above. To my knowledge this approach has not been adopted, and the result, so far as I can see, is a series of OOB games (rather poorly balanced by sides= bids or HRS necessary for balance) being released for sale to the general public before they are fully cooked.

I think if we are serious about creating a G40 mod that is “balanced”, then playtesting on the tripleA platform is the obvious way forward. Now that we have a gamefile for our set-up, it is time to invite our best players to try and break it against each other! If imbalances are discovered, and changes are made, at least we will have evidence to back them up. Make sense?