Victory Cities - Same Old Japan Race to Moscow… but wait...

@ButterSurge hello! I am a Global War 36 player, i am interested in trying this scenario out but, id like to limitations on when things happen. One of the things i like about global war is that the axis can attack and declare war as they please, which puts a fun spin it the game in my opinion. With that being said, have you done a test game without the set time declarations?

@Franklin_Cain The problem with a 6+5 rule is that the Axis are almost always at or near 11 cities after 6 rounds. Germany with a simple crush Russia assault should have Novgorod (Leningrad), France, Germany, Poland + Italy has Rome = 5 with Volgograd as the relatively easy 6th VC. Japan has Japan, Kiangsu, Kwangtung, Philippines, and with some effort India = 5.

If the Axis don’t have to get those extra cities (8 Europe or 6 Pacific), then they don’t have to extend themselves to get the “last” VC. India is a stretch for Japan, but not terrible if that is all they need. They can afford to lose a few aircraft if they never have to go get Australia or Hawaii. Similarly, the Germans can easily take Volgograd and leave Moscow alone. The Russians don’t have the flexibility to defend both against the Germans so one of them will fall.

Bumping up the number to 7+5 is still putting a lot of pressure on the Allies. The Germans should be able to takedown Moscow by maintaining a good focus in the East. The Allies might be able to defend Egypt and have a sizeable force in the Middle East, but they may not (probably won’t) initially be in a position to takeback Volgograd immediately after the fall of Moscow. So again the Axis “win” without really having to exert themselves. The magic number of 8 was developed after lots of game testing and is a surprisingly good rule.

That all said, changing the VC count is another way (besides the bid) to level the playing field between players of dissimilar abilities. If you wanted to let the newer player take the Axis and lower the VC count, then you could have a competitive game.

There was a bit of discussion recently over here…

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=42496.0

…about what the victory conditions ought to represent from a realistic viewpoint.

Ps. I would submit that there is already a relative scale of forces represented in the OOB starting unit distribution, such that 1 inf in one territory (or one region of the map) doesn’t necessarily equate to 1 inf in another territory (somewhere else on the map) in terms of how many actual men that sculpt is supposed to represent.

The game is intentionally vague about this stuff, and if you try to force a one-size-fits-all analogy onto every sculpt on the board, such that 1 sculpt = X number of actual historical forces, the game immediately breaks down with a number of wild inconsistencies all over the place.

This is not just the case for infantry, but for all unit types. A fighter sculpt in Russia or Germany might represent thousands of more individual aircraft than one in China would. Likewise a starting ship in one part of the world might represent a force that is much larger than a starting ship in some other part of the world. Even Ipcs on the map are like this, where the value of one territory tile vs another, can only be really be understood/accepted as anything even remotely accurate if you evaluate it in relative terms on a more localized scale.

For the purposes of a historical gameplay narrative, 1 infantry unit on the map represents whatever it needs to, for the game to make sense. And we are basically already suspending disbelief, when we accept the OOB set up. This rule would just build on that by adding the 1 inf per VC thing into the equation, leaving the player free to imagine that the unit scales in whatever way makes the most sense for a given VC.

Also, I wonder if having an 8 VC count makes the Axis advantage overbearing? May have to play with a bid for something like this

Egypt (i.e. the Suez canal) was Britain’s lifeline to the Asian dominions and colonies.

Perhaps combine all UK/India/Anzac economies, but if the canal is lost it must be divided into East and West. Therefore, taking Cairo for the Axis stops UK spending all combined income in the European theatre.

These VCs could actually be very good for fixing some one problem of the game. “Capture the capitals” is always a terrible victory condition, and because of the slow warfare in this game, the CPs basically have to get an economic advantage to stand a chance (which is virtually impossible). I don’t agree with the non-capitals having production capacity, but I could be convinced if it led to better balance. However, I would change it to 12 VCs after round 4, with one of them having to be an enemy capital, and shared or revolted Russian VCs counting as half a point for both sides. (Perhaps only for the CPs if Russia intentionally revolting itself becomes a problem) Contested VCs are still nothing for either side.

I would only do this types of thing like they had in AAE.

Adding resource centers and if the enemy takes it he rolls out or you assign X as additional IPC lost to simulate strategic resources no longer available.

other way is you assign Victory points to each city ( based on historical model) and create a national morale chart where your units cost more if you are lower than a specific threshold.

Example: Germany has say 40 total starting VP and if during the game they lose spaces and hit below 20, all units cost +1 each till they get back to 20 or greater.