Balanced Mod [Anniversary 41]

I am excited to announce the 1941 Anniversary Balanced Mod is now available as a TripleA map!

I’m still working on the automatic download, but for now, if you’re tech-savvy, you can put the objectives.properties file in world_war_ii_v3-master/map, and put the WW2v3-1941balmod file in world_war_ii_v3-master/map/games, and it should work for you. You will need to manually change the file type of the ‘objectives’ file from “objectives.txt” to “objectives.properties” because TripleA cannot handle the “.properties” file type. It is OK to replace the old objectives.properties file; I have preserved all of its old info for you. You will probably need to unzip the relevant folder (which is in C:/users/[your name]/TripleA/downloadedMaps/) in order to add the files.

WW2v3-1941balmod.xml
objectives.txt

OK, we are live in TripleA! You can download Anniversary Balanced Mod normally, just like any other TripleA map. It’ll be near the bottom of the list of “Good” quality maps. I wrote an Objectives tracker for the mod that will help you keep track of which objectives you’re meeting. If anyone wants to play a game of it with me online, just let me know! :)

Yeah, the Astrakhan-Archangel Line NO is a bit weird in that it’s very difficult to achieve without taking Moscow itself, and if you already have Moscow, do you really care about another 5 IPCs? This isn’t Global, where the Allies can easily fight on after losing Moscow. I could imagine a “Eurasian Wheat” objective that gave you 5 IPCs for 2+ of Karelia, Belorussia, and Ukraine, and then an A-A Line objective that gave you 5 IPCs for 2+ of Archangel, Caucasus, and Kazakh. Another option is to interpret the AA line a bit more literally, and say that you need to hold all 4 of Archangel, Belorussia, Eastern Ukraine, and Caucasus.

It’s tricky to get 3 objectives that are ( a ) based on a similar format, so they’re easy to memorize, ( b ) more or less historically plausible, ( c ) not overlapping too much with each other, and ( d ) giving the player interesting strategic objectives that are different from what any player would do anyway without the NOs. In other words, I see little point in telling Germany that they want to hold France. Of course they want France; it’s right next to 2 Axis capitals and worth a ton of IPCs. You don’t need to further incentivize that with an NO. So, do I really want to tell players to try to hold all the territories next to Moscow? Of course they want to do that; that’s how you bottle the Russians up and cut them off from Lend-Lease.

If it helps you any, imagine the Eastern Ukrainian wheat goes to feed the factory workers in Kharkov and Rostov, so there’s not as much of a surplus in that territory.

I’m interested in alternatives to the “Soft Underbelly” NO for Britain; that’s probably the NO that I’m least happy with. The British were historically very interested in attacking southern Europe via the Med, but there are just not many territories on this map that fit the bill! You could expand the NO to include Romania, I guess, but I feel like the British are more likely to reach Romania via Persia, by land, then they are to actually launch an amphibious assault there.

Thanks for writing in! I hope you get a chance to try the game and see what you think of it.

You can turn off tech development fairly easily in the Map Options dialog box, just like for any other map. I also like to play without tech.

Before you declare that a two-ocean USA is impossible, why not give it a try? I’ve playtested this a fair bit, and my experience is that the USA absolutely can build two navies as their income gets up into the 60s and 70s, and that Japan is vulnerable because the navy can pick up 3 IPCs from the central Pacific islands, or 3.5 IPCs from the Philippines, or 5.5 IPCs from Borneo, or 5.5 IPCs from East Indies, all of which are threatened from zones like the Solomon Islands or Wake Island. If you’d like to play the Axis sometime, I can show you what I mean.

There’s also a tricky problem with trying to make A&A maps match up with history. Historically, if the Axis had won the battles of El Alamein, Stalingrad, and Midway, would they have had an economic advantage against the Allies, or would they have knocked any major Ally out of the war? I’d say no to both counts, by a very wide margin. The USA + Britain + USSR + China outnumbered and outgunned and outproduced Germany + Italy + Japan by roughly 3:1, even after the loss of France and Poland and Shanghai and Ukraine. As you say, total Japanese income could never have approached total US income during the war, no matter how well the battles went for Japan. But the same thing is true of Germany! So if you want to be faithful to that historical reality, you have to write a map where the Axis are guaranteed to lose. That’s the route chosen by some hex-and-counter games like Unconditional Surrender, and some innovative semi-wargames like Churchill, but it’s not the way TripleA works, and it’s not part of the philosophy for this map. I have to give both sides a fair chance to win, and that means that sometimes the Axis will have an unrealistically high income.

All that said, it is possible that Germany is still a little too weak and Japan is still a little too strong. If we were going to add a fourth new national objective for Germany, what should it be? Any suggestions? If we were going to weaken or remove one of Japan’s national objectives or make one of them harder to achieve, what should that be?

As far as map changes, I am in broad agreement with your ideas, and I am working on implementing them in my other map, Argo’s Middleweight. Thanks for your comments on that map as well, which I’ll reply to in that thread!

If you want to try balanced mod in the lobby with me, I can make some time this weekend – I’m in California; just let me know when.

I’m not really sure what it would mean to make the UK, Russia, and Japan all weaker at the same time – how would you achieve that? Are you talking about less cash, or fewer starting units, or worse national objectives, or what? I’m not inherently opposed to the idea, but I think you have to be careful about nerfing half the countries in the game, because you might inadvertently make them less fun to play by not giving them enough plausible strategies – part of what it means to be relatively weak is that you might be forced to play defense, or you might be forced to make one limited offensive in one particular theater, because that’s all your economy/forces will support.

Fair point on the tolerance of Allied nations to accept casualties without seeking a separate peace, but, again, you’re talking about a radically different set of victory conditions than is typical on TripleA. We usually play until one side beats the other, not until one side wears out the other’s will to fight and agrees to a draw. You could arrange for a morale system or a clock or something like that, but it would be a much bigger change to the game than just altering the national objectives on a pre-existing map.

Speaking of which, may I ask why you’re even on this thread if you don’t like national objectives? The whole point of this variant is to reinvigorate the WW2v3 map by changing the national objectives. Of course you’re welcome to play whatever you like, but I’m confused about why you’re here if you don’t like NOs.