@Cernel said:
I understand what you are getting at, and I agree with it from a game-play stand-point, but that is just completely or largely ahistorical, just to force the game into some direction.
Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of national objectives unless they are actually representing something like "Monopoly": two or more territories which are worth more than the sum of their productions if the same player or alliance owns them all.
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As I said: I agree with it from a game-play stand point, but you don't actually need National Objectives: you can just give high production values to Midway, Hawaii, the Solomons and so on to incentive just the right amount of Pacific play...
You're objecting to my idea on the grounds of realism, and yet you're proposing an alternative which you already admit is unrealistic itself.
If neither of them wins on realism, then you just have to ask yourself which one achieves the desired gameplay effect better than the other.
My suggestion is a straightforward punishment to the US player if they let the Axis expand beyond its historical limits in either theater. It presents a very clear and honest instruction to someone playing the US - don't let Japan get this far, and don't let Germany get that far.
Pumping up the territory values instead is trying to steer player behavior passive-aggressively through stealthy implications rather than putting up clear signposts. It also distorts the macroeconomic balance when you start throwing more IPCs into the mix than there were to begin with - if I pump up the Allies by making their territories in the Pacific more valuable, than I have to inflate Japan too to keep it strong enough to compete - but then the Allies have extra resources they could turn against Germany if they want, so I have to pump up Germany too, and then I have to pump up Russia... on and on it goes. My idea doesn't inflate anyone's economy and require a wholesale game rebalancing like that, it just penalizes the US if they play with a cheese strategy.
Finally, does your proposal even accomplish what you mean for it to do? If you give India a bunch more IPCs, the UK Pacific will just pump out a lot more units and defend itself - the US isn't going to have to do anything. And what about the reverse problem? How do you fix it if the US does KJF and leave Germany unchecked? Now you have to go mess around with a bunch of territory values on the Europe map, and deal with all the endless balance headaches that causes. And then at the end of the day you're probably going to have a bunch of realistically-minded players like yourself complaining about how the map is a mess and all the islands are overvalued.
My strategy is a simple one and done. Simplicity is your friend.
If you want some sort of in-universe justification to explain it, imagine the fall in US IPCs representing the loss of public support for the war effort when the Axis seems to be completely dominating one theater or the other - the people have lost confidence in your direction of the war and they're not putting in as much effort or overtime for you.
@Cernel said:
This said, a realistic way by which it is possible to force a moderate amount of Pacific play exists: as per your first objective, it is called India. Using National Objectives is not necessary. Making India very valuable (to a limit) as a matter of normal territory production is quite realistic (India was economically important back then: it was economically about as important as all of China, actually, contrary by far to what every TripleA game is depicting.).
The way this can be done is by making India very valuable and balancing everything so that a modest amount of United States effort in the Pacific is all that is required to avoid Japan taking India (which would be critical if India is valuable enough and Japan is powerful enough to take it if the United States do nothing in Pacific), so that the United States have advantage in just spending on Pacific the minimum necessary to avoid the fall of India (or assuring the British or the Soviets to be able to take it back) while investing the rest in the Atlantic against Germany and Italy.
Can I point to a map which does this. Sorry, no. India's production being (ahistorically) much lower than China's production is pretty much a given in every map I know.
For example, using Maddison, China for 1937 is given as 528 something GDP (GDPpC multiplied by Population) and India as 400 something GDP, so there is all the margin to have the production of India anywhere between 50 and 100% of the production of China (and by China I'm saying summing up all the production of Chinese as well as all Chinese territories occupied by Japanese comprising Manchuria. I guess not Formosa/Taiwan, but I'm not sure if Maddison's China comprises it).
If you want to get off onto that whole tangent, GDP and wartime production are two very different statistics - which is still true today, and even more true in the time period we're discussing. From a GDP perspective, India and China would rank as great powers, right behind Italy.
In terms of wartime industrial production, however, they were deep down in the minor leagues. Neither of them built a single tank during the war. They could only assemble planes from knock-down kits or license some very basic foreign designs - trainers or low-powered early war fighters (India assembled a few dozen, China a couple hundred). India could only build small trawlers and patrol craft, China could build gunboats and very small, basic cruisers before the war but lost control of its shipyards. India assembled a few thousand Indian Pattern carriers, but that was fitting a locally manufactured armored upper body onto an imported chassis and drivetrain - they couldn't manufacture the engine or other complex automotive elements domestically.
China and India could manufacture rifles, ammunition, basic infantry equipment, mortars, and light artillery at significant scales. But in advanced manufacturing of things like heavy artillery, armored vehicles, high-powered aircraft, and warships, they were not just light years behind the major powers, but miles behind even minor European powers like Poland, Hungary, Sweden, etc. - whom they'd crush by 10:1 or more in a GDP measuring contest.
Realistically, UK Pacific would be stuck with very similar production limitations to China - able to build lots of Infantry, a few Artillery and Mechanized, and nothing else.
India's real economic importance to the British Empire came more from supplying raw materials to fuel the UK's industry than from independent manufacturing of its own. So if you wanted to represent that more accurately within the limitations of A&A, you'd write an objective for UK Europe that gives their economy a big penalty if they lose India (or a secure sea route to it), or a bonus for when they do hold it, rather than adding a lot more raw IPCs to India, which would be used to inflate unit production there directly.
I put sort of a soft cap on UK Pacific into the Optional Rules section on my TRO thread, where you need a major factory to build aircraft carriers, battleships, or strategic bombers, but UK Pacific only gets a minor factory in India instead. They get a second minor factory in West India, so they can still train Infantry and other cheap units in decent numbers, but it stops allowing the UK to materialize capital ships directly into the Pacific theater.
