Potential Rule Change

[Joel Billings]

What do you think of the following potential rule change to better balance the victory conditions:

The Allied player level of victory is reduced by one if the game ends in 1945 or 1946 and the WA player does not have Atomic Bomb capability. This is in addition to any other reductions, so an Allied Decisive victory in 1946 would be reduced to a draw if they had no A-bomb capability.

For those wondering, if the WA had an airforce of 5 heavy bombers, it would take 90 production points over 15 turns to create an atomic bomb. A 10 bomber force would take 105 production points.

[aletoledo]

its nice in some ways, because it then requires the US to tie up some of its research instead of spending it elsewhere. this would really go a long way to stopping the US from developing super-units so quickly with its lower unit counts.

[Harrybanana]

I would prefer Jan (and to some extent my) suggestion as follows:

Make
- not conquering the Axis a Decisive Axis victory.
- conquest in Sum/Fall 46 a Marginal Axis victory.
- conquest in Win/Spr 46 a Draw
- conquest in Sum/Fal 45 a Marginal Allied victory
- conquest prior to that Deceisive Allied victory

But I like your proposal to what we have now.

[Uncle_Joe]

The problem I see with this rule is that the Allies can beat themselves by succeeding. If they were able to end the game in early 46 and did so without waiting for the A-bomb, they suffer a penalty whereas if they keep the Axis standing a few more rounds before delivering the KO punch, they might get a better level of victory? Sounds extremely open to gamey play and not very good at forcing realistic decisions.

If the US has too much production, then cut that production. It doesnt make sense to me to give them the production and then force them to spend it on 'x' or 'y'. If you are essentially going to make the expense a requirement, then why make them go through the hoops?

Personally I want to see what the other patch changes do in the long haul for victory. Perhaps they wont go far enough, but I dont think kludgy rules like this are the answer. I prefer Harrybanana's suggestion if something more is necessary.

[von_Schmidt]

I would oppose the change for the reason that it forces the player down a certain path.
In that case you might as well take away the resource points from the WA and give them the Bomb automatically in Spring 1945; so the development does not go hand in hand with the HB improvement (which might be a good thing in itself).

Otherwise, at least give some additional benefits apart from the victory conditions: i.e. using it might permanently wipe out a factory and 1-2 pop points and fully damage 1-2 resources.

This will allow the WA the choice between stronger conventional forces or a nuclear capability with real punching power.

Regards,

-von Schmidt

[JanSorensen]

I dont terribly like this idea.

I assume it would be impossible to win a decisive victory without the a-bomb with it even if you took out the Axis in say 43. As Uncle Joe posts you would then have to artificially postpone winning untill you finish the research. That just does not seem right.

I also consider that the Germans did spent a large portion of the research on Wunderwaffen (V1, V2, V3, A-bomb etc) in the actual war - so if the US is "forced" into spending on the a-bomb program it would seem odd that the Germans werent required to similarly spent research.

As Harrybanana said though - its probably better balance wise than what we have now.

[aletoledo]

those are interesting points regarding the "mandatory spending".

unleashed allied production is what cause a huge problem in tech balance, combined with the low allied unit count. continuous research with only 5-10 infantry gets the allies 8/8 infantry in winter42 and 9/9 by fall43.

I also like harrry/jan's idea of staggering victory level based on date. this doesn't answer the issue of unleashed allied research spending though.

I suppose however nobody was complaining about the unleashed allied research before though, except in round about terms of super-bombers and super-infantry. implementing this A-bomb idea may just seal the fate on the japanese ever attacking before 1943. why attack the US when they're already crippled with researching the A-bomb at low production?

I agree with von_Schmidt that there is little point of getting the A-bomb for tactical reasons. there isn't any difference between 9 and 10, so why invest all the way to 10 beyond the strategic victory? I've only ever had one person build a A-bomb against me and that was because he saw he'd never take west berlin and researched it last minute. beyond that nobody has ever bothered to build it to attack with.

[SeaMonkey]

I'm of the opinion, we still need to wait. After the next patch, not the TCP one, things may clarify.

The game is still too new, refer to the diversity of opinions addressing this matter. Once the next patch has fixed some gameplay issues, we can examine additional features that need fixing.

More PBEM and TCP experience and results will disclose possible problem areas and once those idiosyncracies have been reduced to a minimum, the final "Rules for Victory" will cement themselves.

At this point, if I had to offer an opinion, victory conditions should be based upon the actual WW2 timetable. Once all the belligerents have joined the battle, the degree of victory would be determined by a timetable of conquest based(loosely) on what was historically required.

But currently, the Potential Rule Change, is in my opinion, premature.

[Joel Billings]

I understand some of the problems with the rule. I was looking for something that would actually give the player some choice as if they thought they would win early, they could forego the A-bomb. Taking the production away from the WA is not easy in coding terms anyway so that wasn't an option (we are dealing with large chunks of production that we can modifiy, i.e. postpone x4 WA production to 1944, etc.). In general I agree that we need to wait for the last set of data changes to get a sense of exactly where the victory conditions will turn out. I also noticed that if you take out one player that seems to always win while playing the Allies and never playes the Axis, the Ladder board is actually even between Axis and Allied victories (if I'm reading the results correctly). Keep voting though as I'm interested in the results and comments. My own opinion is that the data changes will not impact the late war problem and that we will still have to do something to adjust victory levels in the late war. I do realize the problem that the game encourages Japan to avoid attacking the WA until 1943. I don't like that but have a hard time finding a way around this given historical hindsight. Of course you can add a random chance that the WA will enter sometime in 1942 if not attacked, but that opens up other issues and we wanted to avoid die rolls on major events like player entry into the war.

[Forwarn45]

Part of the reason we don't see too many A-Bombs is that the current victory conditions make it quite possible to take out Japan by '45 or early '46 as has been pointed out in other threads. I aslo note that currently most people play with no Allied AV in anticipation of a fix of the Axis AV. I think it may well be too easy - and perhaps ahistorical - to take out Japan by conventional means. I have read that the Japanese went to extraordinary lenghts to ensure their entire populace would resist the expected invasion. Maybe if an invasion of Japan was more difficult (more units popping up or something?), that would also help balance the game and encourage A-Bomb development rather than risk Japan holding out for too long.......

[JanSorensen]

I was actually considering suggeting given Japan 2 or even 3 MIL per pop when home provinces are attacked. That would atleast make it a bit harder. It also has the virtue of being extremely easy to change.

[Forwarn45]

I don't know how the free units are coded, but it might also be interesting to consider giving the Japanese something other than or in addition to militia - such as regular infantry and artillery. The Japanese had all kinds of plans for the invasion, including underwater suicide divers to destroy allied ships on landing! And then there were the regular kamikaze squadrons, which there is no way to properly represent in the game.

[JanSorensen]

From the scendat40 file:

// Free chinese troops in attacked region (N free militia)
MAKE_MILITIA,PLAYER_CHI,China,2,0
MAKE_MILITIA,PLAYER_UN,United States,1,0
MAKE_MILITIA,PLAYER_UN,UK,1,0
MAKE_MILITIA,PLAYER_UN,Canada,1,0
MAKE_MILITIA,PLAYER_GER,Germany,1,0
MAKE_MILITIA,PLAYER_JAP,Japan,1,0

I need to test what the 0 does - maybe that has some use too. As you can see though it would be very easy to change the 1 mil per pop to several mil per pop for Japan.

[SeaMonkey]

I was actually considering suggeting given Japan 2 or even 3 MIL per pop when home provinces are attacked. That would atleast make it a bit harder. It also has the virtue of being extremely easy to change.

An excellent suggestion, and historical too.

This is exactly the kind of modifications that should be explored before a change of "Victory " conditions evolve.

[Joel Billings]

Yes, give them 3 miltia per time attacked and it would mean that Honshu has 15 built in militia each turn attacked. You wouldn't be able to attack it until you had a large force built up. Kyushu would have 6 militia which would certainly help it defend itself. I like the idea, although I have to admit that the fact that you get it every time the area is attacked is not realistic. Certainly increasing this value to at least 2 per pop instead of 1 seems justified.

[SeaMonkey]

I do realize the problem that the game encourages Japan to avoid attacking the WA until 1943

Let's examine this......why did Japan attack early? If IIRC it was due to their dwindling natural resource supply(specifically petroleum) and the inability to sustain their economic expansion and world influence.

How do we simulate this with game mechanics? One possibility is through a phased timely reduction in PPs after the historical PH attack date. The longer the attack is delayed the more fractional reduction in the Japanese PP allocation occurs.

If we can use a factory(integer) multiplier, why not a fractional one also, with rounding of course?

[JanSorensen]

Japan attacked once the US, CW and NEI all decided to make an embargo on strategic materials (oil). Both the English and NEI had severe reservations about doing this but went along with the US.

In terms of WaW thats the 3 resources you no longer get after Summer 41 - which isnt enough at all to make the Japanese declare war.

The problem is that if Japan declares war early the Axis is a in much worse situation - and they are already doing worse compared to the Allies.

[mcaryf]

I understand why you might want to make the game more interesting by giving the Japanese fanatical extra militia but of course the truth is the Japanese were virtually starving in mid-1945 and could not realistically hold out much longer anyway.

I do not know if players regard the Pearl Harbour opportunity as valuable - I have only played Japan once and that versus AI and I chose not to do Pearl Harbour. However, might there be a thawing in the US frozen areas after Winter 1942 so that the US Pacific forces are still locked into an area but can move about more within the Pacific and hence be increasingly less vulnerable to Japanese surprise attacks.

Another possibility, which irl upset the Japanese, would be some opportunity for the WALLIES to lend lease to the Chinese if not at war with Japan. Thus Japan can only interdict this flow if declaring war on WALLIES.

Mike

[SeaMonkey]

Good point Jan, I had forgotten about that resource reduction.

Well.....with historical hindsight, I believe we would all opt to delay the Japanese attack, but without actually feeling the anxiety of their position, it is hard to speculate on the consequences of that alternative decision.

If we still feel that the need to stimulate an earlier Japanese attack from the game perspective as Joel denotes, then we need a feature to catalize that action. Perhaps something that does not effect the Axis player.

Are we sure the USA would have DoWed Germany/Italy if Hitler had not instigated hostilities first? I have my reservations about the imminence of the act, yet not the finality. Perhaps it should be approached from a more independent direction?

I, for one, am in agreement with a possible delay of the X4 multiplier for the WA as has been suggested, but that may compound the perceived "problem" of late Japanese entry.

This is one of those "things" that hopefully will be clarified as the gameplay progresses, maybe it won't be a problem, at the moment I don't have a competent suggestion. Heck, I'm not really convinced it is a problem, just trying to participate in the "think tank", maybe I need more in-game experience to comment.

[aletoledo]

Yes, give them 3 miltia per time attacked and it would mean that Honshu has 15 built in militia each turn attacked. You wouldn't be able to attack it until you had a large force built up. Kyushu would have 6 militia which would certainly help it defend itself. I like the idea, although I have to admit that the fact that you get it every time the area is attacked is not realistic. Certainly increasing this value to at least 2 per pop instead of 1 seems justified.

I agree that a minimum of a 2 militia is a great idea. 3 would really require the US to build up forces prior to attacking. as axis, I have a hard enough time attacking northeast USA with 6 militia, let alone 15!! remember that japan is going to see it coming, so add to the 15 the militia production from one turn and you're at over 20 militia and this doesn't include anything else left behind from regular infantry to defend with. at a minimum you're going to need 10 units attacking in one form or another.

definitly some play testing is in order to determine 2 or 3 miltia per pop, but speaking as an axis player, I think 2x seems more fair (3 would be just gravy).