Supply Off On First Game

[Rocko911]

I had the No Supplies Needed on, for my first game to get a handle on it and wow I wonder if this helps the allies more than the axis because I pounded the US Navy in the ground but could not stop their industrial machine. I noticed they were creating task forces on both the west and east coast like the ice cream man handing out popsicles on a hot summer day. Is this due to the supply issue being off? Also the whole idea of supplies really scares the hell out of taking a good strategy game and making it a complicated logistical number crunch fest.

[delatbabel]

It's hard to get a handle on whether the "no supplies" rule unbalances the game, empirically. However I just played two games, one with supply off and one with simple supply.

In the "no supply" rule the allies got crunched badly. There were German fleets all over the planet, there was no stopping the subs which had been teched up to 5/5, and there was no way to hurt either the Japanese or German fleets. A lot of this has to do with how much tech vs production you use.

In the "simple supply" game it was a very even contest. I suspect that I have lost as the allies on a technicality, Japan is beaten but germany has retreated to megafortress Europe and can't really be hurt except for air raids, which I can't be bothered carrying on with to be honest. Other than that it's been a close and interesting game.

I agree that the supply rules just make this game a logistical nightmare. A lot of the ladder players seem to prefer advanced supply on but I think that just over-complicates what should be a relatively simple part of the game and doesn't add any realism.

[Rocko911]

delatbabel, I agree that the whole supply thing can be overly done. I guess we should be gratefull that they envisioned people like us when they designed the game and allow us to turn it off or limit it. The other area I have been questioning is the whole Research thing. There are almost too many choices and I am still a little fuzzy about the whole process.

[Joel Billings]

The game is much more balanced for Supplies of some kind. Standard Supply rules (not advanced) means it's all kept in a pool that can be used by any of your units. You just have to worry about building supplies every turn so you have enough to do what you want to do. There's no issue with having to move them anywhere. That's the level I suggest for those wanting to avoid the logistical nightmare. It adds one more thing you have to think about when you are building. It really mostly impacts the players when they are on the offensive as that takes more supplies as does repairing all the infrastructure you capture. For those that don't like the way the game favors the attacker, the counter balance to this is the fact that all those attacking units use up supply (defenders only use 1 per area defending instead of 1 per unit). That's why the game really is balanced for the use of supply rules.