Stupid A&A G40 Rules

@ShadowHAwk:

Retreat rule indeed does not make sense at all. Units should retreat to where they came from.

You could now illegaly move through the gibraltar channel with surface ships.

No, you can’t.  Bringing subs into the battle through the strait doesn’t allow surface ships to retreat through it, it just keeps the subs from retreating through it until the surface ships are all sunk.

I think the silliest rule is that you can land fighters and tactical bombers on a newly created aircraft carrier.   I don’t really mind the effect of the rule or its “unrealism”, I don’t like it because its an express violation of the turn order.   It doesn’t affect the rules like it used to (in the old game you could only defend sea zones with carriers and newly created planes, all the existing planes had to sit on London etc.)

noncom–planes must land
but
noncom–my planes will be in SZ 110, without a carrier.
noncom ends
place units
place the purchased carrier
my planes land

there are also some really chunky “timing” rules and screening rules (such as foiling amphibious shots or leaving the defender with more information than the attacker before he has to commit to an unretreatable attack), but they seem to enhance rather than detract from play because they force you to make choices and then not wiggle out of them (by fighting battles in a certain order etc.)

As usual, you guys seem to have come up with a huge variety of house rules to cover situations that either never come up, or fix problems that don’t exist.   Â

My house rule?  No house rules.   Â

@Young:

The stupidest A&A G40 rule…

“The Allies win by controlling Berlin, Rome, and Tokyo for a complete round of play, as long as they control an Allied capital (Washington, London, Paris, or Moscow) at the end of that round”

This rule says to me that the designers got lazy in coming up with something fair for both sides. In turn they unknowingly created a kobiashi maro gaming environment where as the Allies you could lose without question, but could never win without surrender. Some say that in war there is surrender, but one could also say that in boardgames there are reachable game objectives for all players.

I second the nomination for this monstrosity is the stupidest rule.

Honourable mention goes to  SBR damage to air and naval bases being repaired before combat movement instead of before noncombat movement, as this rule ensure that SBR of bases is pointless about 99.9999% of the time.

@variance:

I second the nomination for this monstrosity is the stupidest rule.

Honourable mention goes to  SBR damage to air and naval bases being repaired before combat movement instead of before noncombat movement, as this rule ensure that SBR of bases is pointless about 99.9999% of the time.

I don’t mean to keep playing contrarian here, but I am going to have to disagree once again. I wouldn’t even be comfortable granting you 50%, let alone 99.9999%. There are a myriad of times where hitting a facility messes up an opposed power’s scrambling or ability to be mobile. The entire game can come down to boats moving only 2 instead of 3, or planes only moving 4 instead of 5.

Her are some immediate examples I can think of without putting any more thought into than typing them:

Example #1: Italy bombs UK/US air base. Air base is now non-functional during Germany’s turn, protecting them from scrambles.
Example #2: Any Axis player bombing a UK air base or naval base renders it unusable on the US’s turn (In the common case of Gibraltar/SZ 91, This can save Rome, Norway, and Western Germany for an entire additional turn).
Example #3: German bomber hits US air base on some pacific island. Now ANZAC fighters can’t scramble. Japan’s odds might go from something like 25% to 80% for killing the Allied Pacific fleet.
Example #4: Any time a power loses its capital and has damaged facilities.

And even if the power can repair its damaged facility on its turn, the fact that you’ve destroyed 1-4 IPCs of enemy income counts for something.

I agree about the stupid victory conditions for the allies.

I always simply had it where the Allies win by controlling 3 originally Axis victory city territories at the end of Italy’s turn, thus you only needed one capital at minimum.

It seems that one of the simplest ways to achieve a more balanced game would be to reduce the SBR bonus to +1, or 0, at least against the industrial complexes.

This rule affects all the bombers in the game, but they are primarily used by the Axis, the SBR damage against Russia (then UK Pac, then UK London) is one of the most paralyzing aspects of the economic game.    When you are dealing with a few raids or bombers, the AAA shootdown and fighter cover rules seem to provide a good balance between a harsh raid and the ability to choose to use your fighters as a deterrent.

A good game goal for SBRs would be;

1. want to give the Sbomber the ability to smash all of the productive capability of a MajIC with a modest stack of bombers, (check, that’s well covered by the rules as is,  but as long as bombers live, theyre are more and more of them and they become impossible to stop)
2. luck should matter (it really doesn’t–getting 3-4 bombers is enough to lock out most of Russias production at any given time)
3. there should be a viable defense against it (again, there really isn’t–fighters rolling a 2 like the tech advancement pretty much would shut off SBR completely, AAA don’t fire at bombers that overfly them–that would also make AA worth something again)
4. it should require trade offs or hard choices (not really in G40 because the bombers fly so far and the other planes are the same price, the big bombers can fly wherever they want and then land in a convenient place and are as strong on naval/land offense as they are SBRs)
5. the SBR should work for every team’s benefit (in this game, it totally doesn’t.  you have to own Korea or Iwo to bomb Japan.  Germany has so many complexes you cant shut them all down so its pointless to hit any of them.  Same America).
6. they should not be trumping (with dark skies and SBR they are quite trumping…either better or best but never a bad option)

I know this would be one of those hated house rules, I’m a dirty dirty hypocrite…

@Young:

@Ryuzaki_Lawliet:

I agree about the stupid victory conditions for the allies.

I always simply had it where the Allies win by controlling 3 originally Axis victory city territories at the end of Italy’s turn, thus you only needed one capital at minimum.

That seems like a pretty good alternative, better than the oob rule for sure.

I just realised after all this time, that this rule doesn’t help much. Shanghai is not an originally Japanese victory city.

Alternate victory conditions:

Allies win the game by either:

Control Paris, London, Moscow, and 1 originally European Axis victory city territory (Europe Allied Victory)
or
Control Calcutta, Sydney, Manila, and Shanghai/Tokyo (Pacific Allied Victory)

Have either of these completed, at the end of Italy’s turn, to win the game as the Allies.

@Ryuzaki_Lawliet:

@Young:

@Ryuzaki_Lawliet:

I agree about the stupid victory conditions for the allies.

I always simply had it where the Allies win by controlling 3 originally Axis victory city territories at the end of Italy’s turn, thus you only needed one capital at minimum.

That seems like a pretty good alternative, better than the oob rule for sure.

I just realised after all this time, that this rule doesn’t help much. Shanghai is not an originally Japanese victory city.

Alternate victory conditions:

Allies win the game by either:

Control Paris, London, Moscow, and 1 originally European Axis victory city territory (Europe Allied Victory)
or
Control Calcutta, Sydney, Manila, and Shanghai/Tokyo (Pacific Allied Victory)

Have either of these completed, at the end of Italy’s turn, to win the game as the Allies.

That seems reasonable, but you should probably keep the whole “hold for one complete round” so the US can’t just win the game after taking Shanghai even if it’s counterable.

Having just learned that 2 AAA against 2 aircraft is only 2 shots makes no sense to me! It just feels wrong! It should be 4 shots. Surely?

@Private:

Having just learned that 2 AAA against 2 aircraft is only 2 shots makes no sense to me! It just feels wrong! It should be 4 shots. Surely?

Nope, that would make AA guns go from “meh” to “holy shit wow”. They are only “meh”.

“Meh” indeed tes. Why can’t both AAAs fire at each plane? Where is the sense in that?

@Private:

“Meh” indeed tes. Why can’t both AAAs fire at each plane? Where is the sense in that?

I’m not sure I understand your argument, which seems to be saying that the number of shots that can be fired by weapons in a given amount of time depends on the number of targets rather than on the number of weapons being fired.  Let’s say that we have two AAA guns and one target plane, and that each gun can fire one shot in one unit of time, which is fine.  Now let’s say that we have the same two AAA guns, but that we now have two target planes.  Why would the rate of fire of the weapons suddenly double from one shot per unit of time to two shots per unit of time? The amount of time hasn’t changed and the number of guns hasn’t changed – so why would the guns be pumping twice as many shells into the sky?

Well that’s how it works now… any number of AA guns from one to infinity still works out to one shot per plane total.

My guess is that the theory is that since WW2 era AA was basically “spray and pray”, not precisely targeted like current AA, it didn’t pump out more shots, just the shots that it did pump out were likely to hit something in proportion to the number of targets available to hit.

It might be interesting to see what happened if each AA gun got to fire, people would definitely buy them whereas they don’t now. It would severely decrease the value of air in land battles, making it nearly worthless with enough stacked AA. You’d have to have AA guns at a cost of 15 or more to balance that out and remove a lot of the starting AA.

In the current setup with AA, a cost of 3 would be more appropriate and get them used/purchased more often. If we removed their ability to take a hit in combat a cost of 2 might even work. WW2 AA weren’t sophisticated or expensive weapons, they were basically medium caliber machine guns. They certainly didn’t cost almost as much as a tank or a sub!

As is, AA guns shine at scaring your opponent into thinking “what if”. That is their main benefit, do not forget this.

At a cost of 5, AA guns are often not worth purchasing over 1.66 infantry units, even if your opponent has lots of planes, assuming you have a large defensive stack. For instance, if Germany has 15 planes coming, and Russia already has 4 AA guns to shoot at 12, they’re actually very likely better suited to buy infantry than an AA gun + infantry.

At a cost of 4, AA guns would become absolutely better than infantry, but not by a huge amount, in large battles with lots of attacking planes.

At a cost of 3, AA guns would fucking amazing, and you’d be seeing them be purchased much, much more often. A cost of 3 would be game-changing.

@SubmersedElk:

My guess is that the theory is that since WW2 era AA was basically “spray and pray”, not precisely targeted like current AA, it didn’t pump out more shots, just the shots that it did pump out were likely to hit something in proportion to the number of targets available to hit.

It’s a good point that the WWII-era weapons we’re discussing here were used in (by our modern-day standards) a fairly crude “firehose” manner, and it’s true that firing a shot a large formation of planes has a higher chance of producing a hit than firing a shot at a single plane, in the same way that firing a rifle at a line of massed infantrymen has a higher chance of producing a hit than firing a rifle at a single infantryman.  But it has to be remembered that, when you’re firing at any group of targets, a single shot will (in principle) still only hit one target and miss all the others, no matter how many targets there are.  The chances of a hit will go up, but it will still remain just a hit; it doesn’t become multiple hits.

The OOB rule which says that each AAA gun (on the firing end) in a territory can fire three shots, but that every plane in the air over that territory (on the receiving end) can only be fired on once is pretty bizarre from a real-world perspective.  And in gaming terms, it means that the defender on the ground only gets the maximum possible benefit out of his AAA guns if the number of enemy planes is precisely three times the number of AAA guns he has.  If the number of enemy planes is larger than this, then the defender doesn’t have enough shots to take a shot at all of them; if the number of enemy planes is smaller than this, then the defender’s excess shots are wasted because they aren’t allowed to count.  Frustrating.  Perhaps necessary to prevent AAA guns from being overpowered, but still frustrating – at least from the point of view of the defender.  From perspective of the planes overhead, it’s a very welcome situation.

Hi Marc.

@CWO:

I’m not sure I understand your argument, which seems to be saying that the number of shots that can be fired by weapons in a given amount of time depends on the number of targets rather than on the number of weapons being fired.

No - I am saying that the number shots should depend on the number of guns. If 1 AAA at 1 plane = 1shot, then 2 AAA at 1 plane should be 2 shots.

@CWO:

Let’s say that we have two AAA guns and one target plane, and that each gun can fire one shot in one unit of time, which is fine.  Now let’s say that we have the same two AAA guns, but that we now have two target planes.  Why would the rate of fire of the weapons suddenly double from one shot per unit of time to two shots per unit of time? The amount of time hasn’t changed and the number of guns hasn’t changed – so why would the guns be pumping twice as many shells into the sky?

Eh? The number of guns has changed! If the number of guns doubles, then the number of shots also doubles in the same unit of time.

With precision weapons and high hit rates this might not be true, but with “spray and pray” (very good Mr Elk) the probability of a hit increases in proportion to the number of shots. The less precise the weapon, the greater the correlation between number of shots and number of hits.

That argument is based on no knowledge of AAA. My only qualification is being reasonably adept with statistics. Rant over! Now how do I get myself out of the mess I am in, in my current game of 40G …… :?

@teslas:

As is, AA guns shine at scaring your opponent into thinking “what if”. That is their main benefit, do not forget this.

At a cost of 5, AA guns are often not worth purchasing over 1.66 infantry units, even if your opponent has lots of planes, assuming you have a large defensive stack. For instance, if Germany has 15 planes coming, and Russia already has 4 AA guns to shoot at 12, they’re actually very likely better suited to buy infantry than an AA gun + infantry.

That’s a good summary of why AA guns as-is are poorly balanced in the negative direction. Even in optimal circumstances it’s not worth buying one, ever.

At a cost of 4, AA guns would become absolutely better than infantry, but not by a huge amount, in large battles with lots of attacking planes.

Shouldn’t they be, though? Enemy has lots of airplanes, you need to defend - if that’s not what AA is for, what is AA for?

At a cost of 3, AA guns would ����ing amazing, and you’d be seeing them be purchased much, much more often. A cost of 3 would be game-changing.

I think it’s worth a shot. As you noted even at a cost of 4 it would only be in specific battles way late into the game where an opponent commits a huge air force that it would be worth buying, and then only marginally so. So we have to bring the cost down to 3 to make them worth buying at all in any circumstance. If a unit exists in the game there should be some circumstance in which it’s worth buying it, no? There’s the threshold - cost of 3. It’s worth testing to see what happens IMO.

@ShadowHAwk:

Also a gun can only shoot so fast, so this limits the amount of planes that can be shot. Hence only 3 planes for each gun but more guns can shoot more.

Perhaps it is me not understanding you guys, but I don’t think so.

Max 3 planes per gun is fine. But more guns should shoot more as you say. That is what I am saying, as I thought my previous post made clear.

@Private:

I am saying that the number of shots should depend on the number of guns. If 1 AAA at 1 plane = 1shot, then 2 AAA at 1 plane should be 2 shots.

But the rules say not. As confirmed by Kreighund.

Just for fun, I tried to imagine what an air-defense network would look like in the real world if it replicated the OOB rules.  The result goes like this.

The network would consist of one or more AAA guns.  Each gun would have an ammunition allowance of just three shells.  The guns would all be tied to (and remotely operated by) a centralized fire-control system.  The system would be coupled to a radar surveillance system that would track an enemy formation of planes as it arrives over the network’s territory.  The network would assign a unique identification number to each plane, and would attach to each ID number an initial status code of 0 indicating that the plane it identifies has not yet been fired upon.

Now the battle begins.  The network fire-control system targets one of the planes with one of the AAA guns and fires one shot.  If the plane is hit, it’s detsroyed.  If the plane isn’t hit, the network changes the status code of the lucky plane (identified by its unique ID number) from 0 to 1, indicating that it’s been fired on.  The centralized fire-control system then orders the fired AAA  gun (which now has only two shells left in its ammunition load) to stop tracking the lucky plane (in whose direction the AAA gun’s barrel is conveniently still more or less pointing) and to point itself at a completely different plane whose status code still reads 0.  The firing-and-retargeting process is repeated until the first AAA gun runs out of ammunition.  The network then orders a new AAA gun (if there’s more than one gun in the network) to go through the same routine, making sure that it scrupulously fires only at planes whose status code still reads 0.

This process continues until one of two things happens: the last AAA gun fires its last shell, or all the surviving planes overhead have been fired upon once and therefore now all have a status of 1.  If, at the point where all the surviving planes overhead now have a status of 1, any of the AAA guns on the ground still have shells left in their ammunition supply, they are ordered to cease fire at the available targets overhead.  Why they would be ordered to cease fire is beyond me.  Perhaps it’s considered unsportsmanlike conduct for an entire air defense network to fire at any single enemy plane more than once.  Perhaps the battle is being treated similarly to (one-half of) a pistol duel in which the two opponents – each armed with a pistol containing only one bullet – stand back to back, walk ten paces apart, turn and fire the single shot they’re allowed; if they miss, they call it a day and go home.