How to achieve balance

@ckladman Yes, the game tends to favor the allies without objectives, and the axis with. To balance, you could trying giving a bid (additional starting units) to the side that is at a disadvantage, or play with objectives but reduce the payout. (3 ipcs vs 5.)

@taamvan Can you say a bit more about what Japan is doing in your games? It’s true that with a well-executed KGF Germany will be contained to the core territories of France, NW Europe, Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Romania – but that’s still worth $30 a turn and it takes the Allies a very long time to build and load enough transports to crack it.

Meanwhile, a pure KGF usually leaves Japan free to take India, then the Caucasuses, then Moscow – the Allies can certainly rush a few fighters to Moscow, but sending even one ruins the only practical Russian national objective, and if you build too many then you never get enough Allied ground troops to crack the German turtle – fighters in Moscow can’t reach to support an attack on France.

In my experience, without a bid and with NOs on, the Japanese attack on Moscow is much faster than the American attack on Paris, let alone Berlin. How does the Pacific play out in your games?

players have experienced with a allied inf bid in asia

Bid is +9 IPC of which it is exactly 3 infantry units which may be placed on any one territory or any combination of territories east of the Arc, Mos, Kaz, Per line which already has at least 1 land unit on it, or any Chinese territory including Chinese territories which are empty (of course Russian units on Russian territories, Chinese units on Chinese territories, and so on)  So you could place 3 UK infantry in India if you wish, 3 Chinese infantry in Yunnan, or even 3 infantry in Hawaii or something like that.

This makes for a fun game

Honestly Func, you haven’t tried to play KGF if you think its boring.  It’s true it would be boring if the Allied opponent simply regurgitated Revised strategies, but that’s not how you play KGF in 41–KGF in 41 requires aggression and timing and closely coordinated attacking.

It’s true that KGF is harder for the Axis to play against, because Axis has to think hard to anticipate the 1-2-3 attacks and coordinated movements.  But I don’t mind the challenge…it’s more interesting to fight a KGF then to win an inevitable economic victory or quickly stomp Russia if the Allies divide their focus.

What I can say with certainty is its lots of fun to be Allies when executing a KGF strategy, especially the sort of aggressive KGF strategy that Gargantua is talking about above.   It’s more exciting to be Allies in AA50 then in any previous version of AA, partially due to the challenge involved, and partially due to KGF being much more exciting and diverse with the inclusion of Italy.

With my friends, we play with Dardanelles closed and I gotta say that this limit Italy alot and gives Russia the opportunity to counter attack without fearing the Italian troops. Yes, the Italians can still clear a path, but it’s much harder with their ground troops (Italy have little tanks, and little infantry)

With Dardanelles closed, the Allies certainly see their chance of winning increase.

That said, with or without the Dardanelles closed, I believe this game to be fair for both side. I’ll give a slight advantage to the Axis simply because of their strong start.

Right now, we just discovered 42. We feel it is more balanced than 41 (for some reason, and maybe it is really more balanced).
Personally, I’d say this : If you want to balance (if it isn’t) 41, just remove some Japanese transports (I don’t believe in the “add some Chinese units”). 42 shows how Japan is weaker in the first few turns because it lacks transports. Like force them to take 1-2 more turn in order to take the free 8 ipcs in East Indies/Borne or something, or prevent them from sending that many ground forces in their first turn. From there, you will see how it limits Japan’s capabilities.

Robert

@axis_roll:

@ithkrall:

we have an agreed balance shift instead of a bid in my group

1 extra UK infantry in Egypt
2 extra Chinese infantry in the areas behind the front
move flying tigers back 1 space so it cant be attacked 1st turn
UK NO requires 4 of canda, egypt etc

that’s our balance tweaks

1 extra uk infantry in New Zealand.

That’s because we are New Zealanders and didn’t like our home country being undefended :) Has yet to come into play though until the game is basically decided.

Those three UK tweaks can be quite large.  Holding Egypt G1 is huge, possibly enabling a tank and a ftr to escape even if Germany did attack G1.  Adding more NO income enables more UK options, and the 1 extra inf in New Zealand makes an Australia IC more possible (in conjunction with the UK ftr from Egypt that gets to aid the defenses on UK3).  US can support that UK with 2 ftrs a turn quite easily while building a fleet in sz56 as the ftrs built on the existing US carrier can make it 4 spaces to Australia.

Bare in mind we have a gentlemans agreement not to move the NZ infantry out of NZ either

We found that the germans/italians could easily take egypt, everytime, thats why we added in the extra infantry.

The germans were moving a tank/infantry from france and the bomber to support. That would either win, or almost wipe the UK out. Italy would easily win the next exchange.

Now the UK has a 50/50 chance of holding (at least y our play experience)

China was getting wiped out on turn 1 as well, they needed a buff.

Its minor tweaks, but enough to find us seeing the game very balanced for us.

@Cmdr:

An all out attack on Japan’s worked more often. (Russia holds the front against Germany and stacks up to help with China/holding Japan back while England puts down ICs in Africa/Asia Minor and America blitzes in.)

Maybe this is why Japan is so strong?