The way I see things is this.
I am unwilling to accept an outcome in which the U.S. goes all-in on either KJF or KGF. I don't want either to be the dominant American strategy.
I am unwilling to add significantly more complexity to this map than I have already created. Once someone gets used to the map, I don't want it to feel any more complex than Global. Ideally a little less complex due to being less technical.
A solution which might make sense for some other map, such as choking off unit placement, might not be a good fit for this map. In WWII, German and Japanese military aircraft production roughly tripled between 1942 and 1944, while American military aircraft production doubled. My map doesn't simulate the entirety of that, but it does simulate a good portion.
I feel that my biggest contribution to the community is the new rules set.
I don't want people to think of this particular map as the end-all, be-all, with respect to this rules set. If someone else wants to create a different map using the same rules as Flames and Steel, I'd highly encourage them to do so!
This map does need to be fun, and a good representation of the rules set.
You don't get much benefit from technology in the early game. That's not the way the map is designed. You have a strategy for your technology, but that strategy needs time to unfold. As the game progresses your technological strategy becomes more relevant.
This map will not work as intended if the U.S. goes either KGF or KJF. Japan just got an exciting new technology which improves its Yamato battleships? Great! Wonderful. Too bad Japan lost its entire navy two rounds ago. Now it's just hoping to hold Tokyo for as long as it can.
This map is the first to use this rules set. (Or anything remotely like this rules set.) That means I need to be very careful about the risks I accept. The map could fail because the rules set wasn't what people wanted. Or because the GUI fell short. I can minimize those risks but I can't avoid them. But there are other risks which are completely avoidable. The risk the map becomes another KGF or KJF map. If I create more complexity to avoid KJF/KGF, the map could get rejected due to the added complexity. There is the risk that the added complexity might not actually prevent KGF/KJF. There is no reason for me to accept risks like these when I have the option of avoiding them.
There is a time and a place for accepting the risks I'd described in 9. If Flames and Steel proves itself, if it develops a loyal group of players, then someone could come along with a map based on the Flames and Steel rules. Maybe this new map has one United States instead of two, and maybe it has subtle but effective ways of preventing KGF or KJF.
KGF/KJF make the world smaller. They make the game simpler, less interesting, with fewer fronts. In late game WAW, Germany has a fleet in the North Atlantic and an army in Asia. European Axis supports that army and that navy. The Allies have their own opposing army, and their own opposing navy. A simplified game like that is far less interesting than the early game had been. Everything wrong with late game WAW could have been fixed by one simple expedient: splitting the United States in half!
