1942.2 IPC revisions for a 3rd Edition

Are we just talking about IPC revisions? In that case I pretty mush are in line with your suggestions. Perhaps I would merge Austlia again and add 1-2 IPC which I would remove from Africa. That way the pacific options for the British would be way more interesting.

I really like what you are saying Black Elk. I also agree with oddbjoern on Africa. There is too much incone for Germany to steal there, if they can take  Egypt and move South.
That said, the US needs another 5, at least, starting income. This has to be in the States and safe. Too much of its little income is wasted on fleet and TTs.

@Black_Elk:

Step 3. Now take the 5 ipcs we just freed up, and increase the of value Iwo, Okinawa, Carolines, Wake and Solomons to 1 ipc! You can also reduce the value of Central US to 5 ipcs and add 1 ipc to Midway. Now all the islands have a value, and we didn’t have to change the starting cash at all.
Reason: Because at anything less than 1 ipc, experience has shown that players will ignore almost all these Pacific islands. And this sucks for a game that is supposed to model itself on WW2, since those islands are the very places where the war in the Pacific actually took place!

I think this would be the simplest approach for a more exciting game in the Pacific. At least for a map at this scale and using the current ruleset. It retains the same starting cash for Japan, but redirects the money from problem areas to the Pacific islands which are currently being bypassed all the time. I know there are other approaches, and a thousand different ways you could try to achieve a good pacific showdown by altering the rules, but I think its just much easier to get there if we alter a few IPC values on the map, and keep the basic rules the same.

What about you guys? Using 1942 Second Edition as the model, what sorts of minor changes would you make to preserve the same basic game, but make it better?

I agree with you.
I would go just a little further about Central USA: 4 IPCs and Hawaii would reach 2 IPCs to sweeten this VC objective.
Hawaii was an important way point toward Australia.

@Oddbjoern:

Are we just talking about IPC revisions? In that case I pretty mush are in line with your suggestions. Perhaps I would merge Australia again and add 1-2 IPC which I would remove from Africa. That way the pacific options for the British would be way more interesting.

Interesting points but there will be more territories with no value such as Anglo-Egypt-Sudan.

If Industrial Complex was much less expensive (8-10 IPCs) (50%-33% redux), maybe UK would be more able to invest an IC in Africa or Australia to protect these territories.

What about Gibraltar and Iceland?

Maybe we can keep Australia divided in two but make Eastern Australia a 2-3 IPCs territory.

Greenland is an “Ice” land, we can let it at zero IPC, but what about Formosa?

So then Black Elk, the extra icp values for the islands and US mainland would go towards the countries icp value for collect income phase.

Thanks for the post. I’m going to go and look at my other maps and see how much difference there is with putting a icp value on every territory.

@Black_Elk:

I think we’d probably only need to go down to 12 ipcs for the cost of the factory to make it a viable purchase option in a place like Africa. Or if there was a 2 ipc space in Australia, a factory there might be feasible if they only cost 12. At 15 the only players that have much use for them are Japan and the USA.

For a while now, I have definitely been in favor treating IPC values more like “abstract game points” than actual industrial production, so I really don’t have an issue with concepts like increasing or decreasing the value of specific territories, if this serves the gameplay.

In the post above I tried to confine my suggestion to the one area of the gamemap that has been a consistent disappointment for me and that is the valueless Pacific. I know there are people who believe that these territories can be made “valuable” in other ways, but I just don’t see it. Until they have a value of 1 ipc, I think they will be ignored. USA has no strong incentive to take them, and Japan has no strong incentive to hold onto them. Just making them worth 1 would make all the difference.
That would put 6 ipcs into contention, in areas that the USA can reach early on, so the first 4 rounds of the game aren’t so boring to play as USA.

I picked the 5 Japanese territories that I feel should have a value of 1, due to their historical significance in the war. And Midway too, because it’s Midway! That’s 6 territories that are currently worthless, which would be brought into play. The island of Formosa is less important to me.

If I had my way, every territory on the map would have a minimum value of 1, but I would be happy enough if the main Pacific islands that were contested during the war had a value of 1. Basically I was trying to find a simple way to keep the game at a similar economic scale, but with a more compelling Pacific distribution.

I tend to agree with wittmann, USA feels pretty cash strapped compared with Japan. I think there are two ways you could approach it, either more total IPCs or more starting ground units in North America (so you don’t have to buy them.) I think either approach to balance might work.

I would like to see Hawaii at 2 as well, just to give the territory more potential significance as a factory location, or as a target/springboard for Japan against North America. I’m not looking for huge changes to the map, I think we could accomplish a lot just in the range of +1 or -1 ipc in a few specific places :)

If you add 3 IPCs to USA, rising the starting money to 45 IPCs, maybe you can give 31 IPCs to Japan. How?

+1 IPC to Hawaii, Midway and Alaska while keeping Central US at 6 IPCs.
(less change on the original board, simpler to make the calculations).
Now, Formosa can rise to 1 IPC. (All “No IPC” Islands have a worth of 1 IPC.) Simpler to calculate.

If you think USA need another 1 IPC (46 IPCs) gives 1 to Greenland. And all 0 IPC islands will have their value.