The problem is production.

Cruisers and Battleships are too expensive.

Production in A&A is and has always been arbitrary.
For example, it takes a nation 1 turn to build a Capital ship. It takes at least 2years of construction in real life and I’d say that’s worth 4 turns in A&A. Cruisers not much less, for a more complete picture.

I feel that naval production is indeed too expensive.
In another strategical level wargame I play that is more true to history (a lot), it costs 4 ‘build points’ to construct a Carrier, 3 ‘BP’ for a Heavy Cruiser, (for reference) 6 ‘BP’ to form an armored corps and 3 for an infantry corps/army/army group…

@ShadowHAwk:

The strategic bombing campaign isnt really an issue most of the time, besides yes germany can produce 3 units in france, well nice if you need them in russia that is a long way off.

And even with all the production what is germany going to do with it 50 income you can spend on 1 major facility.

Just because the axis can produce at a lot of points does not make it an issue, they dont have the money to actualy do so.

As you said, the SBR-campaign is effective most of the time ;-). I want to emphasise that. Recently I saw when it is NOT: if Germany + Italy completely prevent allied landings in Norway and western Europe with a lot of troops. Yes, this is possible and yes this means they cannot grab Moscow but no, unfortunately this doesn’t mean Russia can do something about Germany on the eastfront. The Red Army still becomes a harmless bird in a cage…

Long story short, I call this the axis economic strangle strategy where they do not hunt down VC’s quickly but only squeeze the life out of Russia while preventing any permanent allied landings. This means the allies can SBR West Germany but that’s about it. Berlin can stay out of harms way if the allies do not have a safe landing spot for their STR in western Europe/Scandinavia. SBR a lot of minor IC’s (Paris, Normandy, Southern France, Ukraine, Leningrad, Stalingrad) works contra-productive in my opinion, since this means loosing more TUV on average (shot down bombers) than the average damage caused.

@ShadowHAwk:

Also what is preventing the anzac to build another facility?
Japan is building them so your comparison is flawed there, you say japan can build a lot and anzac also needs to build.

Japan also almost is required to build facilities as the size of the maps requires them to be all over the place, making a decent suppy line is pretty hard, the US is near australia in 2 turns and japan also takes 2 turns to get to the money islands so the supplylines of the allies are not that bad. Same goes for europe 2 turns from US to attack german or italian area that is really small. Compared to germany it takes 1 turn to get into russia for mech then another turn to get anywhere close to the action.
For Japan it takes 1 turn to be at the coast another turn to get into position and then you can attack with your stuff.

I never build an IC with ANZAC, because a) their income gets reduced to 10 or below and so they can very rarely build more than 3 units anyway and b) any production other than land/air units is dangerous and must be done very cautiously. Allies must Always be aware of Japan taking advantage of too few defenders in Sydney.

@ShadowHAwk:

If you make units cheaper this will change the balance of the game pretty fast. As the allies have a huge income advantage when attacked turn 1 this is around 60 production more then the axis ( or about 60%) if you make stuff cheaper especialy navy it is the side with the most income that will benefit the most

Wholeheartedly agreed. I personally find that the allied Navies need more loving from the setup/game system because that is where their historical strength was and that’s completely absent in this game. At least in Europe, the allied navies were able to move and attack wherever they wanted to, even if the complete Luftwaffe would have stayed in the west, leaving Russia alone. SO I wouldn’t mind if the allies gained a real advantage  at sea (at least in Europe). AFAIC, the UK/French are setup more into the rear, where G1 cannot reach them. That is simple enough and would not disrupt the balance too much. I find it annoying enough already, that Germany can hold off the allies in the west for 10+ turns AND birdcage Russia as well at the same time. Germany should have to make a choice there, really

@ghr2:

Cruisers and Battleships are too expensive.

This and transports not being able to defend. I still feel that transports not defending is the biggest mistake in this game. Makes the Europe side impossible to play as allies.

@theROCmonster:

@ghr2:

Cruisers and Battleships are too expensive.

This and transports not being able to defend. I still feel that transports not defending is the biggest mistake in this game. Makes the Europe side impossible to play as allies.

Gotta disagree with you there. One of the things that irritated me no end in Classic was seeing someone with a couple of battleships and a stack of transports using them for cannon fodder. Transports were supposed to be protected by the warships and I think the defenseless transport rule makes the best of this.
The only think I don’t like is 1 ship or plane taking out a whole stack of transports. That’s why in our house rules, we only allow a max of 3 transports sunk by any one warship or aircraft.

If the game allowed for it I’d like to see two kinds of transports. The standard 7 Pt transport, and a transport that costs 9 can take a hit and defend on a 1 but cannot be taken as a hit when attacking until all the other ships are dead.

Each nation may only purchase a maximum of 3 minor factories per game.

I think the above rule may be too harsh considering minor factories will be removed from the board once captured.  It might come down to nobody being able to build factories because they have met their quota on purchasing factories for the game.  Its an interesting house rule though.  I’m looking forward to hearing how it plays out.

@theROCmonster:

@ghr2:

Cruisers and Battleships are too expensive.

This and transports not being able to defend. I still feel that transports not defending is the biggest mistake in this game. Makes the Europe side impossible to play as allies.

I don’t think it makes sense though since the warships job is to protect the transports.

However I think the worst thing though is when you can lose and all of your transports no matter the quantity. That’s something that should be changed IMO

Interesting points.  I’d only add that Russia should have a 3 factory behind Moscow.  In 1930’s the Urals were industrialized.  Making all those territories 1 value is an error.  Anyhow, have a 3 factory behind Moscow would reduce the bomber damage the Axis can do to the USSR.  A full bomber strike against the USSR can be devastating.

One idea I’ve had about the transport issue is this:

a transport gets to roll a “maneuver” (basically a chance to avoid an attack) at a 1.

So you have a transport by itself and Germany sends a bomber at it: you get one roll and if you hit a 1 you survive but without the ridiculous addition of your transport killing a bomber.

I had to have a good one eventually!

Thanks, I’ll jump over there and chime in

@Young:

I have spent a lot of thought lately about G40 production units and their rules, and I believe they grossly favor the Axis and could be the culprit behind the game’s balance issues.

This is partly behind the imbalance in my opinion. Several other factors limiting the effectiveness of the Allies in the game are:

• The game does not take into account relative populations at all. Russia had three times Germany’s population at the start of hostilities between the two nations, yet Germany is able to infinitely produce infantry if it wants to do so. Infantry was amazingly cheap for the Russians and dreadfully expensive for the Germans, yet they cost the same amount to each nation in the game.

• The game does not take into account the resources available to each power and has no logistical system. A primary motivation for both Germany and Japan, was a desire for petroleum based products. A key element in Germany’s failure in the Battle of Kursk was a dearth of petroleum-based products for the air force which prevented them from obtaining air superiority, but this is not reflected at all in the abstractions the game makes.

• The game does not take into account terrain at all, glossing over all difficulties due to terrain and weather. Fighting in Burma and India was a thick slog in actuality, but yet attacking units are not made less powerful in these circumstances. Winter in Russia was devastating for the German forces and took a serious toll on the Germans’ capability to wage mechanized war.

• The national objective system does not take into account realities encountered historically. Historically, defence of Japan itself was considered paramount and once the Doolittle raid happened Japan pulled its naval forces out of the South Pacific to protect Japan itself. Likewise, Japan historically considered the defence of Guadalcanal vital, but in game terms I have never seen Japan push out that far unless they had already won the game… (The NO system does give a sop to the logistics issue by giving Germany a boost for the Middle East and Caucasus, but that is a very crude abstraction that actually makes the Axis more powerful.)

• At the start of the war the Axis powers were already at maximum industrial production capacity, as was the UK, but the rest of the Allies were not. Several historians have noted that Churchhill and Stalin were both astonished at the amount of war material that the US planned to produce, and then the US surpassed their estimated production values. This is approximated by turning all the US factories to major when the US enters the war. What the game does not account for is that Russia also was doing massive manufacturing at the same time. The Russian air force in 1942 dwarfed the German air force.

• The big one, in my opinion, is that the game does not force Axis players to make the same mistakes that Germany made. If Germany and Japan were played each game historically, you would all be saying that the game is stacked against the Axis!

All of these are flaws based on the desire to turn a historical event into a game that can be played quickly.

(You could probably detract one of these by counterpointing that the UK forces were really not professional English soldiers but instead soldiers from various Commonwealth nations who saw themselves as being repressed by the English for economic gain by the English. India was actually considered a threat for rebellion at the outbreak of hostilities, UK forces in Hong Kong surrendered in only six days with minimal losses, and Malaysia was lost when a few thousand Japanese soldiers received the surrender of more than 140,000 UK forces in Singapore.)

Marsh

@Marshmallow:

This is partly behind the imbalance in my opinion. Several other factors limiting the effectiveness of the Allies in the game are: […]

Very good list of historical WWII elements that are either disregarded by the A&A rules or which are highly (arguably too highly) abstracted.  Another abstraction I’d add to the list are the rules which define certain countries as pro-Allied or pro-Axis neutrals, and which allow the pro side to basically take control of them.  The countries defined as pro-Allied or pro-Axis actually experienced a wide range of different situations from each other, not all of them fitting the model used in the game rules.  There’s also the rule which causes every strict neutral country in the world to go to war against any side that attacks any single strict neutral; its purposes seems to be to dissuade players from invading countries that stayed neutral in WWII without resorting to a rule that simply states flat out that “you can’t invade a strict neutral.”

The diagnosis that these issues stem from the “desire to turn a historical event into a game that can be played quickly” is fundamentally correct, in the sense that every wargame designer has to decide what balance the game will strike between realism and playability, with gains on one side often coming at the expense of the other side.  That said, the places where wargames fall on the realism/playability continuum are all valid in their own ways.  A&A is much more complex than, let’s say, Risk, and much more simple than, let’s say, a professional military simulation system; all three examples are aimed at different niches, and what matters in the end isn’t so much which niche a wargame occupies but rather how well it works within that niche.

One point that I don’t think I’d call a flaw is the absence of rules which “force Axis players to make the same mistakes that Germany made”.  I’m personally happy that A&A does not contain such rules, which are sometimes described by gamers as “idiocy rules.”  I value realism and historical accuracy very much, but if A&A was designed entirely towards the end of replicating all of WWII with complete accuracy, with the players locked by the rules into actions which would produce such a replication, then there would be no point in playing the game because its course and outcome would always be foregone conclusions.

@CWO:

One point that I don’t think I’d call a flaw is the absence of rules which “force Axis players to make the same mistakes that Germany made”.  I’m personally happy that A&A does not contain such rules, which are sometimes described by gamers as “idiocy rules.”  I value realism and historical accuracy very much, but if A&A was designed entirely towards the end of replicating all of WWII with complete accuracy, with the players locked by the rules into actions which would produce such a replication, then there would be no point in playing the game because its course and outcome would always be foregone conclusions.

Agreed. It’s not really a flaw. I would also hate being forced to do stupid by the rules.

Marsh

@CWO:

One point that I don’t think I’d call a flaw is the absence of rules which “force Axis players to make the same mistakes that Germany made”.  I’m personally happy that A&A does not contain such rules, which are sometimes described by gamers as “idiocy rules.”  I value realism and historical accuracy very much, but if A&A was designed entirely towards the end of replicating all of WWII with complete accuracy, with the players locked by the rules into actions which would produce such a replication, then there would be no point in playing the game because its course and outcome would always be foregone conclusions.

A good example of this might be if Germany was ready for their final battle in Moscow, with a huge German stack ready to go, then suddenly Hitler meddles and all the German armor is sent south to the Caucasus.

There are other things that are not represented in this game, such as superior or inferior tactics or even the quality of units facing one another. One example would be that in 1939/1940, in Africa, the Italian army outnumbered the British almost 6 to 1. Italians had some 250,000 troops in Libya and another 100,000 in Ethiopia compared to roughly 60,000 in Egypt for the Brits, yet the Brits still kicked the Italian’s butts and never ended up losing Egypt, even when Rommel showed up.
Yet in this game, Italian troops basically have the same chance to take Egypt as the Brits do of holding it.
There is also quality of units to consider. While German tanks were superior to British, the British armor was superior to Italian tanks. Japanese armor was found sorely lacking when they came up against the Russians in the border conflicts in Manchuria. Yet in this game, all tanks from all sides are pretty much treated equal.
Russian air units were vastly inferior to the Luftwaffe in 1941. While the Germans did a good job of destroying most planes on the ground, what Russian planes did get up to fight the Luftwaffe were sorely outmatched. It wasn’t until 1942 that the Russians started producing better planes to start competing with the Germans. This might be represented by Russia only starting with 2 fighters and 1 tac, but if you put a German fighter against a Russian fighter in combat, in this game the capabilities are pretty much equal.
Then there are different naval techniques. In the Pacific, there were a few occasions where US and Japanese ships encountered each other at night and the Japanese came off far better because their night fighting techniques were superior to the Americans. In this case, if you could say all fleet engagements occur during night, a KJF would be impossible because the US Navy would keep losing. However, this game doesn’t account for day or night time hours. Actually, since you can attack with aircraft anytime, I am guessing this game assumes all action takes place during the day, in nice clear weather.

While all these are valid points, the problem is that if you made allowances for types of units, weather, terrain, historical blunders or brilliant ideas, day or night, it really would end up dragging this game out to incredible lengths. A good game of Global 40 can already take between 8 and 15 hours to play. Adding too many other effects would stretch that time out further and further. You might have to just plan a whole week out just for a single game.
I personally like the game just about how it is. While adding a few house rules or new units here and there could be fun, you just don’t want to over do it or you end up spending less time playing and more time trying to remember which rule to apply.