Simplified National Objectives v1.0 for G40

Re: AA50 National Advantage Cards

On this post, Many interesting national advantage. Some new. Unfortunatly, the 12 first Links are missing.

Alright, I finally got around to completing a full game with these rules. The results:
Soviet Union Victory! The game was close, with the last few turns being a race to see whether Russia could hold Berlin for a full turn before the US could capture and hold a capital. In the end, Russia was able to hold Berlin the turn before the US would have won for holding Rome. The game was 11 turns long, I think. I kind of lost count.

France was definitely the big loser of this game, never capturing a single victory city, and being almost completely wiped from the board by the end. Though France started fairly strong, its navy (the most expensive at the start) was too spread out to accomplish anything, and it slowly lost its African territories due to an inability to reinforce them. The final blow was when France, seeing a weak Northern Italy, send out too many forces on the offensive and lost its Capital to Germany.

Italy also did poorly. Though it easily dominated the Mediterranean, it lacked the economy to support its efforts against a UK that was going almost full Egypt. When France invaded Northern Italy, Italy withdrew as many of its forces from North Africa as possible to defend its Capital. After that, Italy managed to stave off a German assault and even counter attack back into a then dying Germany, but the US came in and crushed Rome just before the end.

Germany did quite well, before it fell apart. Early on, Germany held the line with France and Italy, while still throwing most of its forces at Russia. It managed to gain some good ground, and was greatly helped initially by the Finnish and Bulgarian troops. However, after France made it’s move on Italy, Germany was forced to march into Paris to prevent France from gaining control of Southern Europe and fighting Germany with all its might. This unfortunately destabilized the Western front, and Germany began losing ground in Russia while fighting with France and Italy. A rush to try and take Paris and Rome before the Russians took Poland failed, and Germany was eventually completely wiped from the board.

The United Kingdom struggled initially, as Italian forces opposed it in Africa. However, the UK put a Minor IC in Egypt and was able outproduce Italy over time. Eventually it took complete control of Africa as Italy pulled out to defend its European territory. The UK managed to defend against a US invasion, and at the end game launched an invasion of Belgium and took Normandy and West Germany. It was maybe one turn away from a victory at the end, but Russia and the US had just barely beaten it to meeting their objectives.

The United States was the “clock” of the game: with no opponents at the start, the US had a few turns to build up an invasion force to conquer Europe. It was a race for the other nations to win before the American behemoth arrived to crush them. Unfortunately, this made America really boring to play, as they had no action until the end of the game.

The Soviet Union had a great game. They struggled against the mighty German war machine at first, but in the end, their single-minded assault on Berlin won out. They were able to reached a staggering 50 IPCs a turn as they captured Berlin, and managed to hold it a full turn just ahead of the capitalist Americans.

So, what needs changing? Not much. The Major powers all seem pretty balanced, as any of them could have won if they had used an ideal strategy. Additionally, most of the game they were all at about 30 IPCs, with the US having slightly more and the UK having slightly less.

The Minor Powers need help though. Their starting advantage of having the most units quickly wears off, and then Italy is left neutered with IPCs hovering at about 14, and France loses IPCs over the course of the game as its colonies are taken.

Unfortunately, I can’t find a good way to balance it well. I believe a National Objective system might help, giving France and Italy NOs that are relatively easy to accomplish while giving the Major Powers NOs that require a lot of work.

Well the idea was to take all the “at war” related NOs and just streamline them into a single simple to remember rule with a straight forward easy to remember bonus. G40 is poorly balanced to begin with. I wouldn’t suggest this as the sole corrective for game balance, since clearly, if you want a game balanced by side, you’re going to have to tweak the board in more ways than this. I just find it annoying how for example, Russia has no incentive not to declare on Japan immediately, or how there is no mechanism to support neutrality in so many instances with various powers. Even if the decision to declare is still fairly obvious,  at least this gives you something to consider,  and something that holds for both sides along a neutrality pact, instead of so many 1 sided DoW bonuses. There are a bunch of silly NOs that seem to exist for no other reason than to give certain nations +5 here and there. I’d just as soon ditch all of them in favor of a single rule that handles neutrality across the board.

I think it might be novel if this included a nod to the pro - side neutrals too. But again, I don’t see this as necessarily a balance driver, more something I prefer for rules consistency with all powers.

When you get down to it, I just don’t think the DoW bonuses +5, belong in the National Objectives list. They cannot be contested the way other NOs can, and the way they are worded OOB, these objectives don’t seem to drive the gameplay in a very meaningful way. I would seperate them off from the other NOs and provide a universal rule that can be handled in a line or two, applying to everyone equally. Then replace the existing Neutrality/DoW NOs currently in G40 OOB, with some NOs that are more interesting as gameplay drivers.

My usual approach for Axis and Allies, going back to AA50 and now with G40, is to replace specific National Objectives, with universal or general Objectives that accomplish similar gameplay effects whenever possible, since I believe the latter are better for the game flow and easier to remember. Basically if you can replace half a dozen Nation Objectives, with a single General Objective (that applies the same way for all nations) that is ideal.

Thus far I have used this neutrality bonus idea, in conjunction with a VC bonus idea, and a few others to more less strip G40 of “national” objectives altogether. Then if you wanted to bring NOs back into play, to do something more streamlined,  with just 1 or 2 high value NO per nation, on areas of the board where the gameplay/strategic interest would benefit from their inclusion.

Along these lines, for consistency and to provide additional income for Germany and Italy, it might make sense to include China in the neutrality rules. I gripe on China constantly, but in this case you’d have a potential +10 for both sides if G/I opt not to declare on it. Axis would have to decide if they want the extra in Europe, but only at the risk of a stronger China vs Japan. Which might have an interesting effect on balance. I’ll edit to the lead post to reflect this option.

@Lozmoid:

I really like the idea of combining South Africa, Australia & New Zeleand, and Canada to form the Commonwealth playable nation. Can anyone please advise me exactly which territories would fall into this faction? […] Am I missing any others? Thank you!

For the answer that I worked out for my own customized version of the game map, have a look at the pictures I posted of my map table here…

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=32700.0

…and look for all the territories on which I put a customized blue-white-red roundel (the largest shot of which you’ll see on South West Africa and the Union of South Africa in the picture labeled “7 Europe Right Panel”).

Note that I tinkered with some of the British and ANZAC possessions in the Pacific, which are incorrectly attributed on the OOB map.

always OOB.

Lets just say the rules you posted 1,2,3 were basicially similar. AS far as the Chinese placement the idea was to prevent a wall type of atmosphere where the Chinese would stack all the pieces in choke points.

Historically they were quasi military forces which largely came from the various regions of China, and not organized in such a fashion to move around and conduct major campaigns because the logistics were primitive to say the least. Thats why China got passed over as a proper nation, because they were not modernized at all.

So to not include some notion of preventing stacking you can readily see what will happen.

The rule book on China is deliberately over explaining a simple concept. You just cant place new infantry in a territory unless it has lass than 3 infantry total.

The other rule is Chinese cant leave greater china, which includes the 2 Japan controlled territories and Kwangtung as well as original Chinese territories, and in the case of Kwangtung they don’t get money if they take it.

Thats it.  Its like 4 sentences at most the entire rules for China. If you just rewrite the rules i am sure anybody can get the page down to a few sentences.

That is a pretty cool rule.

oh no
I did very misleading typo  :cry:

“after all combat moves are declared”
should read
“after all non-combat moves are declared”

only air units have the mobility to reinforced rapidly (before combat)

IL, recall land units’ ability to reinforce BEFORE combat led to legendary exploitation and complex rules after rules to fix