Having Italy as the 6th player in revised axis and allies

@Imperious:

Lucky day:

How exactly is the map set up… can you jpeg it and post the map?

IL,  we tried to keep it simple, didn’t want to have to print a new board at the time, but use the revised board as much as possible.  What we came up with, was pretty close to what is discussed in this thread.

Italy takes control of Southern Europe, Balkans and Libya, as well as the fleet off the coast of Italy.  All units there remain the same, but become Italian, with the one exception of adding a German transport, or rather keeping the German transport in the Med.

Country values–Germany became 20, SE became 8 and Balkans became 4.  This gives Italy 13 and keeps Germany the same.
(we decided that SBR was limited to 10 in Germany)

We played Italy right after Germany, but thought they could also go first, or even after Great Britain.

-this setup we felt wasn’t absolutely ideal, but it was easy to play on the AAR board (no zone or territory changes, only units really) and added a 6th player.  We have had both sides win, sometimes Italy was the most important, (amphious assaulting into Caucaus and 1-2-3 punching Moscow) and sometimes they truly were the soft underbelly of Europe.

Here’s a jpg of Europe with this setup

luc

[attachment deleted by admin]

Cool. My cousin and I played 4 games of the “pact of steel” setup in tripleA and found through switching sides that defeating the axis was extremely difficult (Axis 4, Allies 0). Italy was simply too powerful & added too many units to the German defense of Europe each turn. It looks like this version with a “weaker” version of Italy may help balance this a bit better.

One thing we both liked about having Italy as a power was that Germany could be a bit more offensively minded without worrying as much about getting stomped by the allies.

I look forward to giving this a try. Thanks!

Yeah you wanna make Italy a meaningful playing but new units are gonna kill balance.

LuckyDay, how did you balance the extra 10 IPC Axis is gaining?

@polywog:

Cool. My cousin and I played 4 games of the “pact of steel” setup in tripleA and found through switching sides that defeating the axis was extremely difficult (Axis 4, Allies 0). Italy was simply too powerful & added too many units to the German defense of Europe each turn. It looks like this version with a “weaker” version of Italy may help balance this a bit better.

One thing we both liked about having Italy as a power was that Germany could be a bit more offensively minded without worrying as much about getting stomped by the allies.

I look forward to giving this a try. Thanks!

Yes, this can be a problem. That Italian forces are used for a stronghold of German defense in Europe. Simultaneous play does nearly eliminate this problem, and I don’t think adding a Transport will be forcing the balance… to much… Adding Italy does make the Axis stronger at first, but it could work against them later on.

@tekkyy:

LuckyDay, how did you balance the extra 10 IPC Axis is gaining?

We felt that since the Allies were still up by 13 IPCs that the production advantage was still there’s, and a concerted push by the Allies one way or another would give them the momentum that they wanted while the Axis were still pushing in all directions.

So far when we’ve played we have had games go for both sides so we are still trying to work out where it is out of balance, but our leaning is that the Allies are stronger right now still.  We’ve played it FTF, but put together the triplea model because we had a couple new players and wanted them to practice as well as everyone play-testing.

luc

@Imperious:

LUcky Day you sure you dont want to use our AARHE map for this ? As you know our approach is similiar and our map is a million times better.

I could support your efforts to bring the level of asethetics into a higher realm. I could even remake the Icons for the units. At least they wont look so horrible.

Imperious Leader,  I very much like the AARHE map and setup, I haven’t played it yet because we haven’t printed out it out yet, though I’ve gone through all the info a good bit.  We would like to use a map that is set for 6 players as that is what we have many times, and the more we’ve played the more that we’ve talked about getting a bigger map with the approriate detail.  Just haven’t gotten the group into agreement over the large map yet.

@LuckyDay:

  We’ve played it FTF, but put together the triplea model because we had a couple new players and wanted them to practice as well as everyone play-testing.

sorry for the confusion IL, thus far we’ve used this map setup for practice in prep for playing in the group FTF with a revised board and extra pieces from various A/A boards.    I did not realize that you were talking about better pieces and maps for the computer game.  I thought you were talking about physical pieces.

luc

@Imperious:

http://www.onwar.com/articles/f0302.htm

here is some information from the harrison book concerning Italy and here economic capabilities in 1942.

Here’s another roughly accurate source of of GDP listings through-out the ages.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_past_GDP_(PPP)

I’ve redone all the IPC values for my games awhile ago. I assigned a value to every territory on the board including neutrals, except for the Sahara and some of the itty-bitty pacific islands.
After several revisions, I’ve settled with the following numbers…

USSR 47 (before germany invaded)
Germany (and nations under its influence) 119
British Empire 92 (India alone is 22)
Japanese Empire 55
USA (states only + panama) 172 :-o

China 24 (split between US and Japan)
South America 25

Russia simply has no chance and is always crushed by Germany if you use the revised or classic maps original unit setups. :cry:
The game does get fun and out of hand very quickly dealing with tons of IPCs and huge masses of units. :-D

Email me at www.biofury@yahoo.com if you want a copy of a map with these different IPC values and how I figured them out.

@Biofury:

Here’s another roughly accurate source of of GDP listings through-out the ages.

Thanks for that information. But while GDP figures are a useful thing to keep in the back of one’s head, I prefer to rely on military production figures for game design purposes. Below are some military production data for World War II.

Tanks
Soviet Union: 105,000
US: 88,000
Germany: 46,000
UK: 28,000
Canada: 6,000
Japan: 3,000
Italy: 2,000
Hungary: 500

Artillery
Soviet Union: 517,000
US: 257,000
Germany: 159,000
UK: 125,000
Japan: 13,000
Canada: 10,000
Italy: 7,000
Other Commonwealth: 5,000
Hungary: 400

Mortars
Soviet Union: 200,000
US: 105,000
UK: 103,000
Germany: 73,000
Commonwealth: 46,000

Machine guns
USA: 2,680,000
Soviet Union: 1,477,000
Germany: 674,000
Japan: 380,000
UK: 297,000
Canada: 252,000
Other Commonwealth: 38,000
Hungary: 5,000

Military aircraft
US: 325,000
Germany: 189,000
Soviet Union: 157,000
UK: 132,000
Japan: 76,000
Canada: 16,000
Italy: 11,000
Other Commonwealth: 3,000
Hungary: 1,000
Romania: 1,000

The Soviets produced 2.3 times as many tanks as the Germans, 3.3 times as many artillery, 2.7 times as many mortars, 2.1 times as many machine guns, and 83% as many military aircraft. It’s true these numbers don’t capture the fact that the Germans devoted a greater portion of their output to naval spending than the Soviets. Also, some of these differences are due to Germany’s late-war production problems. But Germany arguably reached its production peak in 1944; so its late war production problems only explain a modest portion of the production gap between itself and the Soviet Union.

Historical Military production does gives some hitorical hints. But it is after all based on historical decisions.

One thing the game shouldn’t do is to enforce historical decisions. We want the historical background not the historical decisions otherwise there would be no game ?  :wink:

Military production “capacity” would be be better. But not prefect. I mean how hard is it to open up new tank factories and close down a few fighter factories?

@Imperious:

I don’t agree with that premise. The total production of war material remains very linked to the ACTUAL outcome of the war. So if the axis get off to a great start… you suddenly got alot of numbers having no meaning at all, because now say the Germans are camped in Moscow and the Soviets are weaker. Additionally, the cost of producing a tank in one economy is not the same as another. Example: German tanks were made up of many more parts than the Soviets and even when these tanks broke down a part from the same exact model tank would not be a fix… They in many cases had to be custom made. The Soviets metal was very poor grade, while the early German armor was exceptional grade. Late German armor was totally horrible because the metals used ‘filler’ metals to make up for scarce raw materials.

GDP is the best starting point for addressing the economics, while the starting forces that were historically available would be a better guide to address setup problems.

But in the end it all depends on game balance… or the game will play the same result everything and soon become a chore.

There are a host of problems involved with applying GDPs to a game like this.
1. Different nations devoted a different portion of their capacity to the war effort.
2. As you explained, varying degrees of reliance on mass production gave some nations an advantage over others.
3. The way GDP is calculated is . . . less than useful for a game like this. Woman A takes care of her own children. Contribution to the GDP: 0. Woman B provides babysitting services for someone else’s children. Those babysitting services are factored into the GDP. Moreover, suppose an American woman and an African woman both make money by babysitting children. The American woman earns ten times as much per hour. I’m pretty sure that the American woman is contributing ten times as much to her country’s GDP as is the African woman. The logic is that, since the free market valued the American woman’s babysitting services ten times as much as the African woman’s; the American woman’s are ten times as valuable. Obviously, this logic leads to an inaccurate comparison between the services provided in poor countries vis-a-vis those in rich countries.

Problem 3 means that GDP figures tend to overstate the production differences between rich countries and poor countries. The average German had a higher standard of living than the average Soviet citizen. That difference caused Germany to have a higher GDP than the Soviets; but it didn’t cause Germany to produce more tanks.

@tekkyy:

Historical Military production does gives some hitorical hints. But it is after all based on historical decisions.

One thing the game shouldn’t do is to enforce historical decisions. We want the historical background not the historical decisions otherwise there would be no game ?  :wink:

Military production “capacity” would be be better. But not prefect. I mean how hard is it to open up new tank factories and close down a few fighter factories?

I agree with you about military production capacity . . . we shouldn’t be forcing the German player to build U-boats if he or she would rather have tanks. I was merely using those production data to get a general feel for each nation’s productive capacity.

@Imperious:

what then is a better starting point IYO? production of tanks in 1944 is not the answer either…

I agree 1944 is not the answer. But in the major land battle of Kursk (1943), the Soviets had twice as many cannons as the Germans, over 2.5 times as many tanks, and roughly as many aircraft. Even assuming that 15% of the Soviets’ equipment came from lend-lease, and even allowing for the fact that the Germans were fighting an air and sea war in the west, you’re still looking at a production advantage for the Soviet Union.