Matrix Games Forums

Paul piqued my interest in his description of this game's naval aspect akin to the Victory at Sea board game. A thinking man's beer and preztels game I hope.

But I've never really been fluent at games requiring a focus on research and production routines. Their rules lose this poor mind!

So is it true that the rulebook for this game is 130 pages? [X(] and how easy would the crew say its learning curve would be?

I'm hoping for something intuitive, strategic and in the free-flowing flavor of say a Panzer General 1 coupled with Risk [:D] with an added dose of realism, eg: no German aircraft carriers ruling the Atlantic with England still in play...

Btw the EB's Down Under and Harvey Normans don't yet list the game. So if its a buy for me, it will be DL - sigh - after Easter it seems [:'(]

(Btw I checked the forum for something on the rules and that "Manual" thread sure got off the rails didn't it!)

Thanks,
Adam.

You're in luck. You can leave production and research to be controlled by the computer, at least until you are comfortable enough with the movement and combat part of the game. After you've played for awhile, I'd bet you'll want to get involved in the production and research decisions, but don't feel like you have to do it to enjoy the game.

The rulebook contains a 12 page strategy section, 3 page table of contents and an index. I think the on CD version also contains a 10 page WWII timeline. There's still 80-100 pages of "meat", but a lot is describing the interface. We've tried to make the game at it's basic level something that you can jump into easily (especially with the help of the tutorials). Then you can add advanced rules (like advanced supply and fog of war) and take over production and research when you want more realism/depth.

The rulebook is VERY complete and has lots of historical "flavor" mixed in. To get started the basics are pretty simple. You can pretty much do the tutorial and jump right into it with simple supply (or no supply)

Your economy is based on three elements - resources, factories and population. A resource + a factory = a production point. Building something takes one production point per turn. The longer it takes to build something, the more it costs. 5 supply points cost 1 PP, as does 1 research point. When you fill out a newly built unit to the map it takes 2 population points.

So you can have more resources than your factories can use, or more factory capacity than you have raw materials, or even if you have both in large quantity, your populaiton can limit the forces you can build. Factories can have multipliers that increase as time goes by for some powers, so they can use 2, 3, or 4 resources and thus generate 2, 3, 4 Production points.

Once you have a handle on your production points you have to plan out how much to spend on research, how much on supply and how much on new units - being careful not to create an "out of balance" army with tons of supply sitting around, units that are stuck with no supply, or research going on that has little or no effect on the execution of your strategy.

Combat is a little more complex than VitP "gunning for 6's" - units have a durabilty rating of typically 2, 3, or 4 (that you can't change) and an evasion rating (2-10) that you can. SO when you want to research making your units "harder to hit" you research evasion. You multiply the evasion and durability to get the defense rating. Attacking is done by rolling a number of 6 sided dice equal to the appropriate attack rating - land attack, ship attack, air attack, or anti-sub attack. AIr and naval units can have a "bonus" torpedo attack that they can use against ships. Tanks, hvy and light fleets have armor -which reduce the number of attack dice. There are various modifiers to evasion rating and an overall DRM. The "combat detials screen shows all the shots - complete with the dice rolled (I even had the ignominity of missing a transport with a 4 dice sub - rolling 4 1's[X(])

If the total of the dice is equal to or greater than the modified defense strenght - you get a "hit" - double or more and you get two hits. One hit damages the unit (except militia - they die after one hit, but can often "soak of" more) and if it can trace a transportation path back to a factory, it goes to the production queue at the nearest factory, at a positon half the build time of a new one on teh production queue, and one population oint goes back in your population pool (so it only takes 1 population point net, to refield a damaged unit - it still takes two - it just puts one back...) If you are not adjacent to transport link back to a factory, damaged units die. (this is EXTREMEMLY dangerous for ships...that can get hung out to dry if you are not careful.) Untis get one attack roll, in each combat phase (There are several - planes for instance fight a round of Air - to Air- and if they survive get shot at by Flak, and if they survive then get to bomb. They pretty much only get to use each attack strength once. SUperior number play by reducing the evasion rating of units that were previously shot at by one - so if you have more units than the other guy, your "excess" units attack with a higher hit probabilty. If you can cut units out of supply, that is another -1 on the evasion rating.

Many areas have "Islands" in the middle of them (again reminscent of VitP) If you move through a sea area with enemy held islands you pick up "interdiction points" represnting the harrassment by PT boats and small air detachments and intel from coast watchers and such. The Interdiction value is subtracted from your attack rolls the rest of the turn, and added to your opponents - so you have to be careful in the Med and in the Western and South Pacifc just zooming through sea zones with enemy held Islands or you will get your clock leaned when you finally fight.

If you try to "pass through" enemy held regions they can "opfire" at you - this is how you blockade areas. Subs are limited by torpedo capacity in their Opfire though. So if you build a ton of transports you can use them to "soak off" torpedoes by triggering opfire. A costly but somethimes necessary stratgy to keep the "sea bridge" to England open.

Moving tactically (the only way you can get into combat) costs 1 supply point per unit to move one area. Moving more than that costs extra (this can get EXPENSIVE for fleets...). Armor units are teh only land units that can moe 2 spaces. Each area has a transport capacity that represents the "throughput" of that region - a supply point costs 1, regular units cost 5, tanks cost 10 and factories cost 30 (and then cost 5 supply to set back up again). Since most ground units can only move one area, (tanks can move an extra 1 for an extra SP - that can be key for exploitation, or Manstein -ike "hit and run") you need to transprot them into "jump off areas" and then you can attack with them the next turn. defending costs one supply if you were not already suplied that turn (if you move in a turn, being attacked later in the turn doesn't cost any more. 1 supply point suplies all the units in an are for defense.

Air and naval units have a range - combat radius for air and distance traveled for naval. You can increase that if you want - getting range 2 for fighters is key to doing a Battle of Britain, and for the WA wanting to escort bombers.

Areas get taken by having twice as many remaining combat fleets in a sea area (CV's heavy and light - not subs or tranpors) or "troop units" (Militia, infantry, paratroops or tanks - not arty or Flak) in a land area. You can inflict no casualties, but if you have twice as many militia as he has tnks - you kick him out of teh area. IF the area is a Fortress, you need three times a many.

You can attack in "waves" or all in one big pile - there are advantages to both depending on teh mix of troop and support units in the area. It is generall a good idea to attack with Air first as they will strip away the enemy supporting air and tend to take out arty units. Its generally a good idea to match 1 Flak to every 2 or 3 arty if you are facing superior air power. Flak pretty mych always get a hit and has a decent chance to get "one shot kills". The great thing about arty is they have a tactical range of "2". mening they get to have two rounds of combat in each battle - they exchange ire with enemy arty first (Counter battery) then al that survive attack again along with everything else. Having a large arty superiority, especially when they get 8 and 9 attack dice can decimate enemy stacks. an arty heavy strategy has proven very effective in Russia holding up Barbarossa, but can be fragile - if the Luftwaffe can get theri job done...

Fog of war limits what you can see to adjacent areas from ground units, or two areas away from an air unit. What you see, is what is there - there is no "misreporting" enemy numbers - you know or you don't.

Naval Baattles can be quirky, as all your ships will not always fight in the first round. This make sit important to atack early in your move as ships with movement remaining that haven't fought, can 'fight a running sea battle" from area to area until the defender holes up in port. Then you have to bombard him with aircraft on a port attack mission.

Air units can be assigned to attack ground units in an areas, ships in port (this is kinda a mixed bag...), air units at airbases (they fight air to air, and those that survive use gland attack against remaining defending air - this can be very deadly) or infrastructure - rail and factories (this can be key late in the war to cripple the enemy war effort).

So you invest your points in research appropriate to your strategy. It takes 5 research points to raise a category. If you are above the "stateof the art" it increases by 5 for every level you are above the "state of the art". For every 5 units you have on the map or in production, that adds 1. It figures this out for you.

You have to choose carefully what to research, or you can pour critical research down a rat hole. The WA must get Hvy bomber land atttack to 10 (atomic bombs) in order to win. (and basically corner Germany and Japan in their respective capitols (you need a 50-1 ratio of production points. This prevents what can be a Long drawn out seige when the Axis powers can have over 50 units in thier home territory and I've seen it take two years of attrition to finally capture it. The Axis neeeds to have a production level of 70. If it does they win an automatic victory. If they can hold out until the end of 46, depending on the production ratio - they can still win a marginal victory. You can play "no auto victory" and "no time limit" on victroy conditions and have to take every area on the map to win - even if it takes until 1960...Teh US can nevey fight the Russians though.

That is 90% of what you need to know to play the game!

One could say, oh ever so slightly more sophisticated that Strategic Command! Thank you gents. Paul I'm going to re-read your "manual" above again!

I think this game will await the printed manual version when it comes Down Under.

Btw I do very much like the graphics - especially the nice touch of the "fold" down the centre of the charts! Very shaby chic [;)]

I added some more detail and made the above a FAQ.