Those US pacific builds- really a NO thing?

We’ve been starting to play with a variant that Japan completes an immediate victory for Axis if they control all VCs on the Pacific side of the board except San Francisco. This is to force the US and British to defend the Pacific and contain Japan’s growth. I.e. a “political” victory condition since the American and British voters wouldn’t have accepted surrender of this theater of operations.

To balance things out we have been using bids for the Allies, but we also think about adding 10 IPCs to the US “home NO”. In this way they would outproduce the Japs and it would be a slightly quicker game. Our experience is that US need to send units to Europe in order to stop Germany as well, but we don’t want every game to end up a “Kill Germany First” with the US just stacking West Coast with land units. What do you think about this variant? Would another idea be to use the Convoy disruption rules from A&A 1940 so that you pay an IPC price for ignoring Japan, has anyone tried this? US would then lose 13 IPCs/turn to Jap convoy attacks, question is if that’s enough to prevent KGF?

@axis_roll:

contributing to the problem in the pacific is the inability of UK to effectively help USA.

It could be something as simple as adding an IC to australia.
I’ve heard ideas of limited complexes that can be upgraded at a cost.

Limited like either only ground units or inf only.
Upgrade to full at $8 or some other dollar cost.

This enables the allies to help defend / slow the japanese expansion while giving the Americans some land base(s) for bombers.

There’s a TripleA mod created by Veqryn that gives UK a complex of its choice as a bid.

I think the game would be better with starting complexes in Aussie and India but its tricky to work out the game dynamics without tipping the balance to either side.

I generally don’t build up my navy.  Italy starts with so little money that its hard to do.  There’s also little that Italy can do if the Allies decide to focus on your navy and take it out.  There is simply nothing that Italy can buy to prevent it.  I’d rather not risk losing that money on a sinking ship.  I focus on landing as much into Africa as I can before my navy gets whacked.  Hopefully that means I’m cashing in around Africa once that has happened.

@dondoolee:

-Think I am getting off easy because you “only” role 2 dice for heavy bombers

-Am still filled with wonder by transporting an infantry unit AND ANYTHING ELSE I WANT!

-Still think it is a bit rude and unsportsmanlike to attack Germany with Russia on R1.

Hehe - what a great post.  Yes, I’ve played enough Revised (about 70 games on GTO) and Anniversary that I think all of the Classic stuff is actually expelled from my system.  However, the ones I quoted still resonate with me.  Although with Germany right on the doorstep, it doesn’t seem rude or unsportsmanlike to attack Germany on R1 (which was crippling in Classic, as you imply)  In Classic you had the Caucasus buffer zone.
I’ve got some new ones to add.
-  I still have urges to attack subs with planes for the free shots.

-  Still cringe at attacking transports with planes because I might lose my planes and still not hit the transports (actually, I got used to the Anny rule very quickly)

-  Still have the urge to attack Russia with Germany with all available personnel every turn, especially turn 1, to get that all important Karelia factory!

I find the US/UK vs Japan option (1941) is very viable.  Maybe I am misreading what was said before, but it actually seems more viable to me than a traditional kill Germany first. (I think this is because Italy can liberate/take land and Germany can reinforce it with fighters to defend now, a very significant and major defensive capability!)

America may be limited to 52 IPC or less a round if they go Kill Japan first.  However, England should be making significantly more than the 20-30 IPC they get in a kill Germany/ignore Japan campaign because of the NO in the Pacific, the non-loss of the NO in the Indian Ocean/Africa/Australia/etc, the increased land ownership in the Asian SE and SE Pacific Islands, etc.  Meanwhile, Japan shouldn’t be earning too much either, America could, realistically, be earning near to more than double what Japan is if played right.

The German fleet is so useless that I don’t even bother blowing it apart on England 1.  Maybe England 3, if I have the fighters to spare and Italy’s already owned. :)

Thanks, I would be interested in the list of changes you made.

I’ll post my complete setup in the House Rules section once I’m satisfied with it. I’m still testing it for now. As you said, it’s very similar to what you have done in the Pacific, but Europe is a bit different. The main difference is that I gave Germany control of East Poland and Baltic States, so the game starts a few months into Barbarossa (late summer or so), while the German still had momentum.

Let us know how it goes.  Good luck!