The split between America Pacific and America Atlantic.

The East Indies

America Pacific is capped at two SPCs, and America Atlantic at three. They each get two research centers.

The Dutch don't get a turn. Those purple infantry can never be moved or replaced. If Japan owns the East Indies the income goes to Japan. If the Allies control the East Indies the income goes mostly to the Dutch, which means it goes to no one.

On turns 1 and 2 the U.S. is at peace, which means it gets very limited income. On turn 3, America Pacific gets, I think, 70% of its full income, while America Atlantic gets 30%. Each turn, both Americas go up by 10 percentage points until they reach 100%. I may need to adjust this income nerf, depending on the need for game balance.

@KurtGodel7 said:

My thought process here is as follows.

I need to develop this into a fun map to play. Then, I need to go to the main developers and show them the finished product. Or at least the somewhat finished product. Hopefully by that point there will be some users willing to speak up in favor of this map. "I've played this, it's really fun, and it's worth adding these new features to standard TripleA."

Once you are at point 3, you will need to release your own version of TripleA, and users will have manual to install both your version of TripleA and the map. This is going to exclude the vast majority of TripleA user, but I do wish you to find enough players to get some play-testing as you describe. I've never seen anything like this happening in all my years around TripleA, but I do wish it does.

@Vendetta said:

@KurtGodel7 Yeah, players are relentless optimizers, so min-maxing is always a tough problem to try and get rid of. The one thing you really want to prevent is players feeling too railroaded, where it feels like there is only one possible strategy you can use if you want to win. If the Soviets can only survive by playing a very specific build order, people are not going to have as much fun playing them as they do with another nation that gets more choices.

One more idea... have you tried testing what happens if you reverse the order on your air turns? What if everyone does a blind allocation on their fighters first, you reveal those, and then you commit your bombers once you've seen where the fighters are? That would allow players of a weak air force to do some misdirection (send your fighters one way but your bombers another) , or take advantage of vulnerabilities where your opponent didn't send enough fighters.

Or, since you've included heavy fighters alongside normal fighters, you could further differentiate their roles by having one type get allocated in the first round, and the other type in the second round - the fighter is an aggressive unit you commit blindly, the heavy fighter is a reactive unit you send after you've seen where some of the enemy air force is going.

You could also split the different bomber types between the two rounds - medium bombers and strategic bombers go in the first round so that strategic bombing raids are telegraphed and easier to respond to, but dive bombers and torpedo bombers get to sneak in on the second round and become harder to defend against.

Not sure which particular combination would be best, but shaking up which types go in which order seems like a good approach to investigate.

I've come up with an idea which might solve the problem you're trying to solve. The idea, which I borrowed from Axis and Allies naval miniatures, is that you can have a maximum of four air over any one territory. Well, four fighter type air, plus four bomber type air. This will allow the Soviets to strafe German land units.

To give an example, the Germans send four fighters and four dive bombers to a Soviet territory they want to strafe. Likewise, the Soviets send four dive bombers and four fighters to a German territory they want to strafe. The Germans and the Soviets each also send four fighters to defend their own territories.

Things happen as follows. There is a dogfight, in which only fighters participate. The fighters fire at their dogfight value. Then, there is an interception phase. The fighters fire at their interception value, the dive bombers fire at their air defense value. Let's say one dive bomber is destroyed and another is aborted. The remaining dive bombers get through, and are able to strafe their land targets.

For strategic bombing raids the following is true. Up to four strategic bombers can be assigned to any one factory. However, the defender is allowed to have an unlimited number of aircraft defending any given factory. Normally the attacker cannot send escorts into strategic bombing raids. Therefore, it behooves the defender to use plenty of heavy fighters to defend against raids. A normal fighter has a higher dogfight value than a heavy fighter. But the heavy fighter has a higher interception value. For this air combat there is no dogfight, due to the lack of any fighter escort. Only an interception.

Later in the game, the U.S. will be able to unlock the P-51 Mustang tech. This will allow the U.S. to send up to four advanced fighters as an escort to each factory it wants to bomb.

I haven't play tested any of this yet, so we'll see how the GUI will be.

I've played New World Order. It's a very good map. I've also played The Rising Sun a few times. It seems like a very good map as well, based on my limited experience with it.

But when you combine the two together, it becomes possible for both the eastern and western half of the United States to go after the same target. Usually that target is Japan. This cannot happen if you were playing a game of New World Order and, separately, a game of The Rising Sun.

I see three options here.

I hate to choose option 3, but I think it's the least bad of the three evils. Let's say it's a game of WAW, and the U.S. is pursuing its usual strategy of KJF. Japan can have some fun initially, but as the game progresses it gets less and less fun for Japan. The Japan player is focused on delaying the American advance as long as possible, extracting maximum casualties as he loses his armies and his fleets, moving stacks to safety, and holding his capitals as long as possible. Late game Japan in a game of WAW is not nearly as fun to play as late game Japan in a game of The Rising Sun. More generally, late game WAW is a largely a dance between the Axis stack and the Allied stack, both of which will generally exist in mainland Asia. I'm desperate enough to avoid it that I'm even willing to take extreme measures, such as dividing the U.S. in half.

But as partial compensation for the divided U.S., each half can send munitions to the other. These munitions are converted into cash. At first, each half can absorb up to 8 PUs of munitions per turn. That cap can be increased to 16 PUs per turn through research. If one half of the U.S. wants to help the other half, it can--but only up to a limit.

As for German late game economic strength, some of that comes through research. The research does three things. 1) Increases Germany's PU income. 2) Allows Germany to have SPCs, which spawn one special unit per turn. 3) Germany has a unique tech called "Speer's Industrialization." This causes each German SPC to generate one Panther tech per turn, in addition to whatever special unit it provides. If Germany has, say, four SPCs and Speer's Industrialization, this means it's getting four Panthers per turn, plus, say, three jets per turn and one King Tiger.

Like Germany, the Soviet Union can research techs that generate free PUs. Also the Soviet Union can build SPCs, and these can be used to create heavy tanks, early jets, or jets. The Soviet Union does not have an equivalent of Speer's Industrialization. Instead, its late game conscription techs cause its factories to auto-generate free conscripts. (The underlying territory must be worth 9 PUs, and the factory must be on originally Soviet soil.)