OK, Trenacker, here’s a first pass at a review of your units.
THE GOOD: Your unit selection is interesting and manageable. I am a big fan of the way you’ve split up the infantry, it’s fun to play around with some older units like zeppelins and cavalry, and I think the torpedo bomber is a sorely needed addition to the standard unit mix for any heavyweight A&A game. Scout planes and recon vans are also pretty neat if you can get their mechanics adjusted properly.
THE BAD: Regular Infantry and Regular Artillery look pretty underpowered compared to some of the new variants you’ve introduced. A matched pair of infantry and artillery cost $7, attack at 5 pips, and defend at 3 pips. That performance gets worse if you have excess infantry or excess artillery; it’s usually hard to pair them up perfectly under combat conditions. It’s a little hard to evaluate the effect of the artillery’s “first strike” ability, but assuming the enemy has a reasonable supply of cannon fodder, the first strike should take out about 2.5 pips of defensive strength per successful attack; since the artillery only hits 2/10 times, you have to multiply 2.5 pips * (20%) = 0.5 pips removed from the opposing stack. Some of the combos I show below look like an advantage that’s much more important than 0.5 pips.
Infantry and artillery have the following stats:
(*) Infantry and Artillery – cost $7, attack at 5 pips with minor first strike, defend at 3 pips.
Instead of buying infantry and artillery, I could buy:
() Light Infantry and Light Armor – cost $7, attack at 6 pips, defend at 4 pips.
() Light Infantry and Heavy Artillery – cost $7, attack at 6 pips w/ major first strike, defend at 3 pips.
() Three Cavalry Units – cost $6, attack at 6 pips or 9 pips against a smaller stack, defend at 3 pips.
() One Armor Unit – cost $6, attack at 5 pips, defend at 4 pips, blitz.
Zooming out from the details, it’s very important to think about what your cheapest units are and how they perform either alone, when paired with a heavy hitter, or in large groups. Hit points are very important – getting a chance to buy an extra unit, even a relatively weak unit, is huge.
Check out the performance of 15 light infantry ($30) vs. 10 regular infantry ($30):
() 15 Light infantry – attack at 30 pips, defend at 15 pips, 15 hit points
() 10 Regular infantry – attack at 20 pips, defend at 20 pips, 10 hit points
When the light infantry are attacking, they have a major advantage – they score 3 hits per round vs. only 2 hits per round from the regular infantry on defense, and they have lots more hits to absorb, so they will crush the regular infantry. That may be intentional; perhaps you want light infantry to be good at attacking.
But even when the light infantry are defending, they defend almost as well as the regular infantry can attack, and they have lots more hits to absorb. After one round of combat, the light infantry will have taken an average of 2.0 hits and dealt out an average of 1.5 hits. That leaves 8.5 regular infantry attacking 13 light infantry. The 8.5 regular infantry get 17 pips = 1.7 hits; the 13 light infantry get 13 pips = 1.3 hits. That leaves 7.2 regular infantry fighting 11.2 light infantry. Next round of combat, the regular infantry deal 1.4 hits, and the light infantry deal 1.1 hits. That leaves 6.1 regular infantry and 9.8 light infantry. After one more round of combat, you have 5.1 regular infantry and 8.6 light infantry.
You can kind of see where this battle is going – the regular infantry are not actually wearing down the light infantry at a rate that exceeds the 1.5 to 1 advantage that the light infantry have coming in because of their cheaper cost. At worst, it’s even odds, even when the regular infantry are attacking the light infantry. If it’s the other way around, then the regular infantry are screwed. So why ever build regular infantry?
It’s up to you how to fix this, but I think ultimately you are going to have to either increase the base cost of regular infantry to $4 (giving you more room in the chart for some discounted $3 units), or increase the performance of regular infantry to 3*/10 offense and 3*/10 defense (giving you more room in the chart for weaker $2 units that only hit on 1*/10 offense or 1*/10 defense).
THE UGLY: With five sea zones between Boston and Ireland and a maximum ship movement of 2, I don’t think you’re going to get any interesting action across the Atlantic, Pacific, or Indian Oceans. You don’t spell out in your spreadsheet how supply works, or how naval bases work, but even if a naval base can increase movement by +1, that’s still way too slow. Buying transport planes for $7 (which can presumably move one infantry across six spaces) is going to be much, much better than buying troop transport ships for $7 (which can move two infantry across two spaces).
Suppose you have naval bases in both Boston and Greenland, and suppose the game runs for 12 turns before there’s a clear winner. If you travel by sea, you can deliver troops from Boston to London on turn 3, return to Boston on turn 5, make a second delivery to London on turn 7, return to Boston on turn 9, and make a third delivery to London on turn 9. That’s all you get – three deliveries of two infantry each, for six total infantry delivered to London.
If you use troop transports instead, you can deliver your first load on turn 2, return to Boston on turn 3, deliver a second load on turn 4, return to Boston on turn 5, deliver a third load on turn 6, return to Boston on turn 6, deliver a fourth load on turn 7, return to Boston on turn 8, deliver a fifth load on turn 9, return to Boston on turn 10, and deliver a sixth load on turn 11.
So on the shortest important route, with naval bases and no air bases, the air transports equal the performance of the naval transports. If you have a longer route (to Paris, Oslo, Rome…God forbid you want to reach Archangel or Guadalcanal) or if you’re missing a naval base anywhere along the route, then the naval transports get much worse very quickly.
You might have a similar problem with your Strategic Bombers, depending on how hard it is to get the technology prerequisite. $16 for 8 pips of offense delivered at a speed of 7 sounds like it could be way more effective than paying $13 to get 4 pips of defense (2 infantry plus a transport) delivered at a speed of 2.
I did not see a cost for your Marine Infantry. Can those be purchased? For how much? Even at $2, they look a bit underpowered…at their best, during an amphibious assault, the marines are A2/D1/M1 units, which is worse than what cavalry get all the time (A2 / D1 / M2), plus the marines don’t get the cavalry’s charge or blitz abilities. Are you limiting amphibious assaults to only marines, and requiring everyone else to grab a beachhead first? Is there anyway to get a beachhead other than with marines?
Finally, I don’t understand why the Cargo Transport costs the same as the Troop Transport if the Cargo Transport can carry any 2 land units plus provide a bit of extra naval defense, but the Troop Transport can only carry 2 infantry and has no defense. Doesn’t that make the Cargo Transport strictly better?
I’d encourage you to keep working at this; I do think there is the core of an interesting system in these units. Keep pecking away at the diamond until it shines!