i think that aura is also very important, which swan knights used to have.
the spiders are too cheap and very good in defense.
These two units now require some adjustments.

@Cyanfire said:

Combining the Woodland Realm and Lorien into the Silvan Elves was overall a good choice since the Woodland Realm in v2 didn't really do anything unique for Good.

I'm not a player of this map (yet) and do not know much about the lore of the game (and have no problem believing that the merge is good for game-play), but I've two doubts based on lore and realism.

On the other hand, I can imagine that it is particularly absurd that the two elven realms (or whatever they are: I know very little about the lore) cannot attack together if divided (but this is really a problem of TripleA which goes as far back as Classic, with British and Americans being unable to invade Western Europe together, which is however not usually solved by merging British and Americans into a single Anglo-Americans player).

After a very interesting conversation with AI, I am now considering the following system.

Aircraft are allocated to theaters, as now. For example, the Eastern Front is the Luftwaffe against the Soviet Air Force.

There is a dogfight phase. Only air superiority aircraft participate in dogfights. This means fighters, advanced fighters, jets, and (new unit type!) heavy fighters. During the dogfight phase, all aircraft fire at their dogfight values. Destroyed aircraft are removed.

Then, there is an interception phase. Fighter-type aircraft fire at their interception values. Bombers fire back at their defensive fire values. Destroyed aircraft are removed. Damaged bombers are aborted.

Any bombers which weren't destroyed, and which weren't aborted get to bomb whatever targets they had in mind. Strafing armies, attacking navies, or strategic bombing raids.

To make this more concrete: a fighter would have a dogfight value of 3 and an interception value of 3. A heavy fighter would have a dogfight value of 2 and an interception value of 4 or maybe 5. Also it would cost a little more than a normal fighter.

I don't know for sure how this will actually work without play testing. But here is what I hope would happen. The Soviet player sees that Germany is able to allocate, say, 10 fighters and 6 dive bombers to the eastern front. The Soviets have 5 fighters, a dive bomber, and a heavy fighter they could allocate. The dive bomber hides in Siberia so it won't be shot down during the interception phase. The rest of the Soviet air are sent to the eastern front. The Soviets lose more air than the Germans during the dogfight phase. But, at least the German dive bombers didn't get to fire during the dogfight phase, so that made it a bit more even. Most of the Soviet fighters survived the dogfight, earning the chance to intercept the German dive bombers. The chance to kill or abort some of the dive bombers helps balance out this air battle. This balancing out is what induced the Soviet player to participate in the air battle in the first place, instead of hiding his entire air force in Siberia.

@Vendetta said:

One of the unique techs I outlined for Germany in my set was “Flak Towers.” The effect I intend it to have is that if facility AA has a near miss against a strategic bombing raid (i.e. rolls a 2 by default, or a 3 if you have AA Radar tech), the bomber will be forced to abort its mission and go home without dealing any damage - but it will get to fly back without being shot down.

I also outlined a “Flying Fortresses” tech which would be available to everyone, but the US would have a bonus making it easier to develop. That tech would make any hit scored by AA fire against a strategic bomber require a hit on a second roll to confirm and shoot it down. If the confirmation roll misses, the bomber aborts the mission but survived and returns. The bonus would not apply against interceptions by fighters - if they score a hit, it’s a kill.

Allowing situations where the defense can succeed but the bomber can survive struck me as a good way to play with the balance of the strategic bombing game without giving the bombers extra hit points. It works easily enough on tabletop, whether it can be translated into the TripleA engine is something I’ll have to find out.

Could be a good way to fine tune the balance in your bombing war meta without ping-ponging between either the defenders or the bombers being wiped out in one sided massacres.

It would take some extra work to make it play nice with your multiple hit point system. One thought that comes to mind is having the AA/interceptors roll two sets of dice per turn. One set inflicts damage as normal, while the other forces a retreat if it hits. That way you’d end up with a range of possible outcomes - they might get through and bomb the target with or without taking damage, or they might get sent back to base with or without damage, or they might get shot down.

I don't know if you've played Axis and Allies Naval Miniatures. If you haven't, I'd strongly recommend it. It's a very good game.

The reason I bring it up is because it has the same "aborted" concept you are describing here. That game's combat system is a little different from normal Axis and Allies. Let's say you have an aa gun with a value of 8. That means you roll 8 dice. Each die roll is either a hit or a miss, except that a 6 counts as two hits. You then count up your hits and compare them against the plane's armor and vital armor. Maybe a plane has armor 5 and vital armor 7. If you get hits at least equal to a plane's armor, it's aborted. It lives, but it doesn't get to attack ships or subs for the rest of the combat round. If you get hits at least equal to the plane's vital armor, the plane is killed outright.

In my test games of Flames and Steel, I've noticed that most of the time air theaters are uncontested. The side with air supremacy is able to strafe the armies of the side which has lost control over the sky. But, some of the time, an air theater can be contested. In which case, things can get very destructive very quickly. I'm okay with that in and of itself. A game doesn't need 20 rounds of huge stacks building up to be a fun game.

I have two concerns about the way the air aspect of the game currently operates.

I can always tweak stuff for game balance. The deeper concern is the all or nothing aspect to air combat. Axis and Allies Naval Miniatures managed to avoid that problem. The sky was generally contested every round. Every round both sides' bombers would strike naval targets. I realize that Naval Miniatures is a simulation of an individual naval battle, not a world war. Even so, the "contested sky" aspect of that game is something I'd like to bring into Flames and Steel.

The way I see it I have two options.

Keep my current system. It isn't perfect, and it loses the "contested sky" aspect I would have wanted. But most aspects of the game are working as intended, and that's something which makes me very happy.

Completely rethink my approach to air. I don't know what the new approach should be. But I do know that I want the following: