Proposed Map: Domination 1941

[Black_Elk]

These days no doubt! lol

Here so real quick, just in case I get hit by a bus or my hard drive bricks it lol, here is a draft raster at 16000...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hejb20ttqkb91ih/TripleA_4k.png?dl=0

I closed in almost all the gaps at 1 pixel lines and killed most of the floating pixels, so work is proceeding apace.

There's really no great workaround when upscaling like this, even with inkscape's utilities, like at some point you have to dive in and draw the pixels and decide on some contours there. Some give and take obviously in deciding what to omit or abstract. Sometimes an island becomes a peninsula or whatever, or you just need to get a contour that reads without being too blocky. The idea being that when you pan out, unless it's your own back yard, that it looks close enough, or even if in your own backyard, still close enough that it's like 'yeah OK I get ya' lol.

The advantage is that when you downscale, you can expand the borders and make it actually look nice. Going from black to white or whatever blends in the relief, but for the utilities 1 pixel is the money spot. So anyway, that's the jam. Basically surveying the whole thing way zoomed in to clean it up 1 by 1, since it usually comes down to a one pixel gap. At this point I like to open 2 images in GIMP, the baseline and then an indexed color with like 14 colors with the paint bucket. If as I go along painting the map in indexed color to give myself ideas, if I see that a tile bleeds over into another when I fill, I know there's a hole somewhere. So that's sorta what I'm doing now.

Areas I added at the extreme north need another pass to settle on a sensible morph for the coastlines/islands there, but gives a sense.

At 1 pixel it's so light the image will appear white until you zoom in to like 10-15%, so the idea in the final relief would be to enlarge those borders all to 3 or more pixels, for the quick read at a glance. So like you'd open that indexed bitmap into Inkscape, no anti-aliasing, then trace bitmap. Then you use the vector to manipulate it how you like cause you can just expand the lines and such there, or doll it up on new layers.

It's too large (in pixels) to attach, but here's the one I'm working up just added to dropbox. I guess the idea would be to save the svg and the pull, and make a few bitmaps then add that to the package somewhere as just like a misc map tool or ref. You can see it's still being drafted, but pushing along alright. Gives you the scale though, so Europe a fair bit larger than Global in terms of space available.

[Black_Elk]

Had a few hours to kill so I cleaned it up a bit and added the oceans. It's almost dialed

https://www.dropbox.com/s/jx9ajg5znjkry3s/TripleA_4k_oceans.png?dl=0

[RogerCooper]

@black_elk I have experimented with using purely economic values for production, and it does not work. You can certainly justify giving a value to Midway to reflect the benefits of having an airfield in the Central Pacific. For the US, distance was a major hindrance, as well as the time it took mobilize. For the Germans, the failure to mobilize totally and flawed production strategies were a problem.

[TheDog]

@rogercooper & @Black_Elk
Thanks for both confirming not to use GDP that has saved me time coming to the same conclusion.

[Black_Elk]

Right on! Ok so here it is with a little paintjob...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wnwraqi1q57rnhc/TripleA_4k_painted.png?dl=0

I like to do this to double check and make sure all the tiles are closed at the borders, but it also makes for a slightly better presentation. I followed a Global 1940 into 1941-ish display, with a similar color spread to the basics just for easy viewing. I made some slight adjustments in shade to indicate some features. Like a more drab Khaki for British India, teal for ANZAC, or a more Maple hue for Canada. For the mountains and impassible or pro-side neutrals etc I just knocked the shade up a tiny bit. Or like for Mongolia gave it a slight pro-soviet hue. Obviously you could do different things in the relief like with subtle patterns and such, but just for a the simple paint to get the quick read I did it with block colors. For 41 you can just imagine most of that french blue switching to Axis/Allied, or the line on the Eastern front shifting or whatever. But least it gives an impression.

You can see that the general idea was to enlarge the TTs and particularly SZ that usually need to house more stuff. So I thought perhaps to shift the Arctic ice sheet further north. Say Svalbard and sort locking further in that way, around those soviet islands north of Siberia. This gives more room for ships that just tend to stack up there the way the gameplay usually works hehe. Or anyway, it seemed like a little more room up there would be advisable, so I left it as is for now. But you could block of the arctic with an ice sheet and some frostiness, or just crop no mercy hehe. Whatever works.

Here's a quick preview at 25%, with the borders enlarged to 3 pixels before scaling RGB for a quick read.

[beelee]

@black_elk heh heh just kickin ass wherever he goes :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

that big red blob in china the commies ?

[Black_Elk]

@beelee thanks dude!

hehe yeah I mean that one's not strictly necessary, the whole thing was more impressionistic just so I could block in the tiles. But I figured it was on the HBG board, so might as well see if it worked. That's about where you'd have a stronghold, if one wanted to do a united front thing with soviet support lol. I got half way round the globe with France then remembered the thread title was more 41. But it's easy enough, most of the French Empire declared for Vichy after Paris fell, and the Japanese took over Indochina, so except for Equatorial Africa basically, you could just turn all that blue into German Gray or British Khaki, depending on the preferred start date. And of course any of those divisions could be reworked for the individual TTs. I just wanted to give us a place to start.

Provided you keep the anti-aliasing off, you can load up the big bitmap in any program like Inkscape, PS or GIMP or even MSPaint and just go to town with the paint bucket to try different ideas/timelines.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/wnwraqi1q57rnhc/TripleA_4k_painted.png?dl=0

If reworking the baseline you just want to make sure that's done at scale. 16000 with 1 pixel black lines, and keep it more indexed that way (no antialiasing or feathering) to make sure all the blacks stay black.

After you got the baseline you want you can make it pretty in relief however. Here it is with that tile in China handled more normally.

Or like above shows black border lines, but if one prefers white, you could make it like more this instead hehe. Or do a darker blue for the ocean, different color choices for the various factions. Whatever works. Just as long as that stuff is done after the baseline is created, after the grunt work with the utilities, you can go to town pretty much however you like.

[beelee]

@black_elk that is way cool ! Wasn't sure the white would look that good but from a zoom out looks pretty cool

[Black_Elk]

@beelee Yeah it's one of those things you almost wish was a mapview feature that could be switched on the fly. Cause it basically makes it easier to tell where the boundaries are when panned out.

I kinda prefer the black myself, but I'm also a bit of a minimalist when it comes to maps hehe. Some of my aesthetic preferences are showing here in terms of color choices, and a stripped down look, but I also think it should at least look decent with the details/reliefs turned off.

So here was my quick solution to the circles. Basically I just blobbed 'em, but tried to leave enough room so that those tiles could still fit a circle at like 200 px in diameter, like about the same amount of space. You know just so it can function for 1914-18 style games too if one wanted like with a roundel paintover or whatever, but more consistent here with the rest of the board, which doesn't have any circles. So Berlin, London etc they're still kinda circular in shape of course, but not like perfect circles, more like potatoes, which I think works a bit better for this one. Obviously we can clean that stuff up a bit, but again just to give an impression.

[beelee]

@black_elk looks awesome brother thank you

[KurtGodel7]

I'm recovering from a migraine from earlier today, so I'm not 100%. But I'll do my best to create a good post.

First, I'm glad to see the progress BlackElk has been making. Excellent work!

I'm also happy to see TheDog has started work on the XML file. @TheDog : You asked about what production values should be. For the 1941 NML map, I'd start with the 1914 NML map as a rough guide. But, Japan and the Pacific will obviously need some beefing up with respect to their production values. The U.S. also needs some beefing up, as it was more of an industrial powerhouse in WWII than it had been in WWI. Come up with something, and then we can always modify it later in play testing. I agree with the thoughts Black Elk shared about territory production values.

Separately, there is the question of production values for the second WWII game I envision. That raises some larger questions.

In an earlier post, I wrote about the difference between tactical complexity and strategic complexity. My goal is to minimize the former while adding some element of the latter. Complexity in any flavor is synonymous with price or cost. It is, if you will, a price the players pay. My goal in designing any map is to minimize price (complexity) while maximizing benefit (strategic depth).

My preferred source for added strategic depth is historical realism. Many sources of historical realism add tactical, rather than strategic, depth to a map. Supply lines, terrain effects, combat engineers, etc. can all make a game more realistic. But they are not what I'm looking for with this game.

During WWII, military aircraft production was a reasonably good proxy for overall military production. With that in mind, below is a chart which shows participants' military aircraft production in 1942 and in 1944.

U.S.: 48,000 || 96,000
U.S.S.R.: 25,000 || 40,000
U.K.: 24,000 || 26,000
Germany: 16,000 || 40,000
Japan: 9,000 || 28,000
Italy: 3,000 || 0

Germany and Japan each had less territory in '44 than in '42; yet each was able to triple its military aircraft production. The U.S. doubled its production, and the U.S.S.R. experienced more than a 50% increase in its production.

Now consider military technology. During the 1930s, Spain was in a state of civil war between the fascists and the communists. The National Socialists (Germans) sent weapons to the fascists; the Soviet Union sent weapons to the communists. In 1936, Soviet-made planes ruled Spain's skies, giving the communists the edge. But then in 1937 the Germans began supplying the fascists with planes that were 100 MPH (160 KM/H) faster than last year's models. The fascists took control of the sky from the communists, paving the way to Franco's victory in the Spanish civil war.

Military aircraft technology continued advancing rapidly during WWII. A good example of that is the Pacific theater. In 1941, Japan's Zero planes were significantly faster and longer ranged than their American counterparts. However, American fighters had armor and self-sealing fuel tanks. Zeros omitted those features in order to increase speed and range. If it was 100 Zeros against 100 American fighters, the Zeros would win. As the war progressed, America developed increasingly powerful piston engines. 1944 saw the Marianas Turkey Shoot. By that point, American planes were faster than their Japanese counterparts, while retaining the beneficial characteristics of their early war predecessors. (Armor and self-sealing fuel tanks.) Contrary to popular belief, Japan did make major advancements in aircraft design during the war, and deployed some of these newer aircraft before the war ended. But Japan lacked industrial capacity, making it difficult for it to switch to solely producing these newer, more advanced, more difficult to manufacture piston aircraft.

The Germans and the British had, independently of each other, developed jet technology. The British had shared their jet technology with their American counterparts. Japan got a small jet technology boost from Germany, but for the most part had to, and did, develop jets on their own. The Soviet Union did not have jet technology during WWII. A pro-Soviet British government transferred jet technology to the Soviet Union after the war, despite Stalin's skepticism. "What fool would give us his secrets?" In the Korean War, Soviet MiG jets proved significantly superior to America's piston aircraft, and to its WWII-era jets. However, America's F-86 Sabre proved superior to the MiG. With its swept-back wings, the F-86 Sabre's shape had far more in common with Germany's WWII jets, than it did with American WWII jets. The Me 262 was a first generation German jet. Late in WWII, German engineers were busy designing Germany's second generation of jets. The war ended before Germany's second generation of jets could be produced.

If I wanted, I could write at similar length about advances in tank technology. At the beginning of the war, the Soviet Union had by far the world's best tank designs. Everything a WWII-era tank should have been, Soviet tanks were. In 1941, the Germans realized how outclassed their tank designs were. Over the next few years they eliminated the gap between their own tank designs and those of the Soviets. In 1944, a German general said to the Americans, "One of our tanks is worth ten of yours. Unfortunately, you always have eleven."

Toward the end of the war, the Germans were busy designing their next generation of tanks: the Entwicklung Series. The Entwicklung Series represented some level of improvement over their existing designs, while being much easier to manufacture. However, the war ended before Entwicklung tanks could be put into production.

Consider the torpedo. A standard-issue WWII torpedo had the following: diesel engine, diesel fuel, air tank, warhead, etc. Diesel engines are of course noisy. As ships' electronics, radar, and sonar became increasingly advanced over the course of the war, that noise made torpedoes increasingly easy to detect. Diesel fuel was combined with air from the air tank, and used to power the engine. That left a telltale trail of bubbles in the water. If you were up in the air, you might notice these bubble trails. In the South Pacific at night, these bubble trails could cause the water to glow. That looked cool, but it also gave away the position of the ship or sub launching the torpedoes.

The Japanese had figured out a way to separate oxygen from the rest of air. Thus, Japan's torpedoes had oxygen tanks, not air tanks. These "Long Lance" torpedoes could travel three times the distance of anyone else's, because apparently the limiting factor for a torpedo's range was the amount of oxygen it could carry, not the amount of diesel fuel. The bubble trails for Long Lance torpedoes were much weaker than for their standard-issue counterparts.

Fairly early in WWII, Germany made at least some use of electric torpedoes. These had the advantage of being very quiet, unlike diesel engines. They create no bubble trails. However, they had much shorter range than standard-issue diesel torpedoes. However, Germany increased the range of its electric torpedoes. Late in the war they had about the same range as normal diesel torpedoes. If a WWII sub captain could equip his sub with any torpedoes of the time, which would he choose? Would he pick Long Lance torpedoes with their 3x normal range and reduced bubble trail? Or would it be German electric torpedoes with their 1x normal range, no bubble trail, and almost total silence?

Both industrialization and technological advancement were of overwhelming importance during WWII. I very much want both to be part of the second WWII map, if at all possible.

Traditionally, tech systems focus on improving a unit's firepower or its cost. That's fine if you want incremental improvements in unit stats. But the technological advances during WWII were major. Suppose for example you were to pit a late war German tank, such as a Panther or a Tiger II, against a large number of early war German tanks such as the Mark I or Mark II. The early war tanks would be unable to penetrate the armor of the Tiger II, or even the Panther. Not even at point blank range. Whereas, the Panther or the Tiger II would make short work of the Mark II tanks. "Increase the firepower of the tank from 3 to 4" doesn't even begin to cover something like that. For a real world difference that large, it is not enough to increase a unit's firepower. You also need to increase the hitpoints.

Under a Larry Harris rules set, a unit with 2 hitpoints has an asymmetric advantage over a unit with just one. Why? Because a player gets to choose his own casualties. Therefore, he will injure all his two hit units, before letting a single unit die. He will look for situations in which he can fight for one round, then retreat so that his injured units can heal. That system is fine for what it is. But it is not what this second WWII map needs.

Larry Harris created a new method of AA guns firing. Instead of you choosing your own casualties, they are chosen for you at random. Thus you lose a bomber to AA fire, even though you would have preferred to lose an early fighter. I envision the following:

• Take that AA concept and apply it to casualty selection generally.
• Once a unit has taken a single hit, additional damage automatically gets applied to that unit until it is destroyed or until combat ends.

The above speeds up and streamlines combat, because you're no longer waiting on an opposing player to choose his casualties. (Casualty selection is random and automatic.) It prevents units with multiple hitpoints from being OP. But, it makes combat somewhat more luck-based. I envision the map being played low luck. The combination of low luck + random casualty selection would make it a little more luck-based than a typical LL map, but much less luck-based than dice. A system like this would allow you to have a lot more multiple hitpoint units on the board, without creating "50 injured battleships heal after the battle" type situations.

To return to the subject of industrialization.

• I don't want a "rich get richer" type system. What do I mean by that? I don't want a system which says, "The U.S. is now fully industrialized; therefore its PU income is multiplied by 2." A system like that would artificially (and ahistorically) magnify the effect of American territorial expansion and acquisition.
• I do want a path to increased production. Similar production increases to what were seen in the real war. If the U.S. doubled its production between 1942 and 1944, it should be able to do the same in this game!
• That path should involve strategic choice. In other words, sacrifice. In order to achieve a production increase, a player must forego something else of roughly similar value.

I will advance one way of achieving the above. (If others have different ideas I'm certainly willing to listen.) Suppose you were to do the following:

• Introduce a third resource type, such as research points. (This is my last new resource type, I promise!)
• Research points can be used to improve existing units.
• Research points can also be used to research improved PU income.
• After you've done the research for the improved PU income, you then have to perform some task. Normally that task would be, "spend PUs to build a manufacturing facility in a territory of your choice." A factory is for unit placement, a manufacturing facility for a boost to PU income.
• The maximum number of manufacturing facilities each nation can build is based on whatever increase in military aircraft production it achieved from 1942 - '44. Only one manufacturing facility allowed per territory.

Let's talk more about tech system. I want the tech system to have the following traits.

• I want it to be deep. Meaning, that I don't want a situation in which you research one tank-related technology, and then there's nothing more tank-related for you to research. There should be many levels of tank-related tech for you to research.
• Not everything you research needs to create a big gain. Maybe researching tanks level 3 doesn't help you at all. Maybe tanks level 4 helps you only a little. But tanks level 5 gives you a big boost, such as +1 hitpoint to your medium tanks.
• I want to avoid outsized rewards for narrow focus. For example, suppose a player says, "I'm going to focus all my research on four categories: industry, jets, tanks, and infantry. As the game progresses the rest of my unit types will be increasingly obsolete, and I don't care. I will only be building things from those four categories!" A poorly designed tech system would give players strong incentives to think like that.

The way I see it, you have two options for a tech system. (If anyone sees a third option feel free to chime in.) The two options I see are a straightforward tech system and an interlaced tech system. By "straightforward" I mean that you research tanks tech to improve your tanks, single engine piston tech to improve your fighters, dive bombers, and torpedo bombers, and sub tech to improve your subs. Whereas, an interlaced system would have categories such as engines, aerodynamics, armor, etc. By combining advances in different categories, you could build better units.

The advantage to an interlaced tech system is that it naturally lends itself to solving the problem of narrow focus. The advantage to a straightforward tech system is that it's, well, straightforward. Easily understood. But if you're going with a straightforward tech system, you absolutely, 100% must address/prevent the problem of narrow focus. Right this instant, I don't see a great way of solving the narrow focus problem by using a straightforward tech system. That's why I'm leaning toward an interlaced tech system. That said, I'm more than willing to listen to ideas others might have about tech systems.

While I'm feeling better than I was at the start of this post, I'm not 100%, and am in no shape to be creating a tech system. Nonetheless I will do so anyway, at least as a (very rough) draft. I welcome others to submit their own ideas or revisions.

Armor: improves the hitpoints of your tanks, single engine piston aircraft, strategic bombers, surface ships, and submarines.
Engines: improves the hitpoints and attack value of single engine piston aircraft. Improves the naval combat value of surface ships, subs, and torpedo bombers. (Better engines for torpedoes.)
Jet engines: allows you to build jet aircraft. Improves the hitpoints and air combat value of your jet aircraft.
Rockets: Improves the air combat value of your aircraft. (Air to air missiles.) Improves anti-land and anti-naval combat value of your aircraft (air to surface missiles).
Fluid dynamics: improves your piston aircraft to some extent, and your jets to a greater degree. Improves your submarines.
Industrialization: allows you to build more manufacturing facilities.
Explosives: improves your infantry, tanks, artillery. Improves your planes' anti-land and anti-naval values.

Um. Now that I've created the above tech system, I'm not fully satisfied with it. Yeah, it could be something good if implemented. But part of me is wondering if maybe I should give a straightforward tech system another chance? The reason I decided against it earlier was the problem of narrow focus. But what if there was a way to eliminate that problem, or at least mitigate it?

The goal here would be to force players to broaden their tech focus somewhat, but not make it so broad that they're forced to research everything more or less equally. Suppose you were to do the following:

• Each tech category has 20 levels. Not every level necessarily creates an improvement.
• There cannot be more than a 3 level gap between your best tech and your 8th best tech.

Um. I'm not satisfied with this. You're basically telling a player, "Pick eight techs. Those are your techs! Your research will be slower than you'd like, because your research money is being diluted amongst eight different techs. All eight will advance at roughly the same speed."

I'm tired. In fact, I'm out of energy. I'm not going to solve the problem of a good tech system tonight. If anyone else sees a solution, or has a potentially helpful suggestion, I'm all ears.

[Schulz]

@black_elk Very nice map. I would like to add somethings.

• Could you redraw Iberian peninsula? I think curves do not look good on maps.

• Wouldn't it be more realistic if the shortest route from Germany to Paris went through Belgium?

• I think Mediterranean is too small. Africa could be moved to south a bit. Also Red sea can be widened.

• Turkey, Iraq and Syria should be redawrn more realistically.

• Finland had a coast to the Arctic Ocean.

• Afganistan borders China.

• Burma and Andaman islands were part of British Raj. But Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Nepal weren't.

• I think the territory up to Indo-China and Burma should be divided.

• Leningrad-Novgorod border is too short. It would be very easy to miss this connection.

[Black_Elk]

@kurtgodel7 Lot's of good stuff there. I'll have to reply when I'm less exhausted hehe

@schulz More like this?

I tried to squeeze a little more blue into the med. I think it's kinda diminishing returns at some point, cause the morph gets a little stretchy. I think I may have made Spain a bit too narrow overcompensating, but tried to play with Iberia a bit on the tilt, and did the Africa slide to make a little more room. We can refine it more when I'm not quite so zonked hehe

ps. detail with some quickie units included, for relative scale. I feel like it's hard to appreciate how big it is otherwise, if just looking at the 25% view lol.

[TheDog]

@black_elk
Map 25%, units at 25% ?

You have 13 units and it looks crowded.

If you can get 9+ units in a TT, then I would say that's OK and a win, what do you think?

[Black_Elk]

@thedog Yeah I wanted to see how crushed it would get if I used the larger units and just put in like way too many tank types at once hehe. Honestly I think with units at like 80% you could get pretty comfy. Just depends how far people want to push it. This many TTs is a little bit nutso for my taste, like I know the map will work for Global and the somewhat larger TTs, but with a more divided up board, probably makes sense to keep the roster pretty lean or perhaps redraw a few spots to give enough room.

I'm off to catch a snooze, but here's one with some flags thrown in just for flare lol.

Catch you on the next one!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ns0255q59w824t4/TripleA_4k_painted_flags.png?dl=0

[Schulz]

@black_elk

• Paris connections are now defeinitely more realistic but territories were looking better in the previous map imho. Maybe Paris-Belgium-Germany route should be the same as Paris-Lorraine-Germany.

[Black_Elk]

@schulz yeah kinda how I was feeling too. It's a bind, cause the further I stretch the harder it becomes to label too, or like for someone else to come along later and actually know what's meant to be what, in case they want to redraw it in the future. I suppose we could probably do some kind of narrow Maginot Line as like a little terrain feature, like an impassible sliver to throw up a roadblock along one of the paths? But then I guess that also depends if anyone even really wants to bother with France as playable faction hehe. I find myself wanting to redraw a few things for sure, cause it got a little clown balloonish in a few spots there lol. I feel like some of these tiles could get nixed/collapsed into slightly larger territories, and it would still be pretty nuanced compared to G40.

ps. Thinking on flags, and roundels and such... for decorative elements I'd probably go pretty sparse. Like I pasted in some quick flags just to show the 'capital' locations there in the draft guide, but I don't think they're really necessary. Or rather, if the spot is so tight that units are just going to cover it up anyway, then I'd just as soon not see a flag there, if that makes sense lol. Kinda same deal for factories, like the simpler the display on that stuff the better probably. If it doesn't move, like a fun unit, then I think it needs to be kinda mission critical to take up the valuable real estate. Only the essentials, I'd think, since it'll be busy enough with units.

[Black_Elk]

Oh one last thought, cause sleep is impossible lol.

So looking over the baseline, I think we should pull France a little to the left. Like just the Coastline of Brittany/Aquitaine, so it squares, off again with Iberia a bit better, which can drift a bit left too I think on the new slant. Then we take all of Africa and drop it just a little bit further down and more to the left. We'll compress Sinai and have it be weird there to offset. Then take all of South America and just slide south too, so it won't look as weird relative to the new African position. I think that should buy us the space we need to make France/Normandy more Fortress Europa/D-Day capable, without looking too wonky. I'll carve it up tomorrow, and slide a tile between. The break on North America could a bit to the right too, or just stretch the gulf of Mexico. Basically spliting it at the Mississippi and having that be the leftmost line. Also when doing Indochina and Burma like mentioned earlier, we should split Vietnam as well, while we're at it probably, for potential Cold War watchmen riffs hehe. Anyhow, keep em coming. I'll knock it out when I get the few hours down

Best Elk

[TheDog]

@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

Only the essentials,

An Elk after my own heart

[KurtGodel7]

In my last post, I left a problem unsolved: tech systems. So back to discussing that!

I envision units being grouped into the following categories.

• Infantry (Light infantry, regular infantry, heavy infantry, possibly mechanized infantry)
• Artillery
• Tanks (15 ton, 25 ton, 50 ton, 75 ton)
• Single engine piston aircraft (fighters, dive bombers, torpedo bombers)
• Multi-engine bombers (medium bombers, strategic bombers, Superfortresses)
• Jets (Jet fighters, jet fighter bombers, possibly the flying wing)
• Surface ships (Destroyers, cruisers, battleships, Yamato battleships)
• Aircraft carriers (Carriers, fleet carriers)
• Subs (subs, possibly Type XXI U-boats)

The goal is to encourage players to build as many of these categories as possible. If the Soviet player doesn't want to build aircraft carriers, that's fine. But I do need the Soviet player to build infantry and artillery and tanks. I don't want the Soviet player to say, "I'm pouring all my research money into infantry and tanks. I won't be researching better artillery, and I won't be building new artillery."

For that matter, there is another problem. Late in WWII, Germany deployed a small but significant number of jet aircraft. Had the war lasted another two years, the proportion of the Luftwaffe consisting of jets would almost certainly have increased. Britain and the United States also deployed jets during the war, albeit in small numbers.

How to create a situation in which those nations, and possibly Japan, are allowed to deploy some jets, without allowing them to ahistorically switch all their new production over to jets? One way of accomplishing that would be to limit jet unit placement. If you upgrade a manufacturing facility into a jet manufacturing facility, you can place one jet per turn. If you have four jet manufacturing facilities you may place four jets per turn. There is a nation-dependent and tech-dependent limit on the number of jet manufacturing facilities you can have. This way you're allowing 3 - 4 nations to build jets, without allowing them to swamp the skies with jets.

Nations will build infantry, because manpower points can be used only on infantry. If using a straightforward tech system, that leaves the following unsolved problems:

• If a nation is in a major land war, force it to build both artillery and tanks; rather than choosing one or the other.
• You want Britain and the United States to have strategic bombing/bombers research as a viable path, instead of dumping all their air research into single engine piston or jets.
• In the Pacific, you want the U.S. and Japan to build a combination of surface ships, aircraft carriers, aircraft, and subs. Actually, I'm okay if the American player neglects subs, but other than that I want to see a mix of those things getting built!

A couple ways occur to me of solving these problems

• Lump tech categories together. For example, tanks and artillery could be lumped together into the same category. Likewise for carriers and surface ships.
• Give a nation bonus units of one type in exchange for building units of another type.

The former idea doesn't sit well with me. It means reducing the number of tech categories; and hence, reducing the amount of strategic choice associated with the tech system. That leaves the latter idea: giving nations different-category bonus units. Let's discuss that a bit to see how it might play out.

Suppose you tell the U.S. and Britain: "For every ten single engine piston aircraft you build, you will receive one free strategic bomber. Once the U.S. learns to build Superfortresses, the American bonus changes to 1 free Superfortress for every 12 single engine piston aircraft." Likewise, Germany and Japan could be told, "You receive 1 free medium bomber for every 5 single engine piston aircraft you build." With something like this, you're creating a situation in which those four nation will have multi-engine bombers coming onto the board, and therefore will receive a benefit by researching multi-engine bombers tech.

You could do the same thing with land units. For example, you could take the Soviet player aside and tell him, "For every 3 medium tanks (25 ton) you build, you receive a free artillery. Also, "For every 3 artillery you build, you receive a free medium tank." With something like that, you're ensuring that any nation engaged in a major land war will always be building a combination of tanks and artillery. And will therefore receive a benefit from both tanks tech and artillery tech.

Suppose the U.S. player builds 7 single engine aircraft a turn. Over the course of 3 turns, that's 21 single engine aircraft; and therefore 2 strategic bombers received. To achieve this there should be a counter. "You've built 7 single engine piston aircraft this turn, which means you're 70% of the way to receiving your bonus strategic bomber. Whenever you feel like building those last 3 single engine piston planes, your bonus bomber will arrive."

I don't feel the need to force anyone to research jet technology, or to build jet aircraft. Jet aircraft will be flat-out better than their piston counterparts, especially in air-to-air combat. They will provide significantly more bang for the buck. Players are welcome to respond to that however they like, as long as they're prevented from building too many jets.

With all this being said, I'd like to create another rough draft for a tech system. If you see ways it could be improved upon, modified, or even replaced with a better tech system, feel free to speak out!

• Infantry
• Artillery
• Tanks
• Single engine piston
• Multi engine bombers
• Jets
• Surface ships
• Carriers
• Subs
• Industrialization (increases PU income)
• Land production (decreases land unit costs)
• Air production (decreases air unit costs)
• Naval production (decreases naval unit costs)
• Rockets (improves your air units, and possibly some of your ground units)

With respect to the above list, there are two separate questions one could ask. 1) What did a nation achieve prior to December 1941? 2) What did it achieve after December 1941?

As of December 1941, the Soviet Union's tank design achievements were amazing. The T-34 and other Soviet tank designs were clearly, far and away the world's best. But what did it achieve after December of 1941? During WWII, it upgraded the turret of the T-34; resulting in the T-34-85. That tank had three men in the turret instead of two. Its 85 mm gun gave it a longer range, and better armor penetration, than the original T-34. Late in WWII the Soviet Union began producing small numbers of T-44 tanks. However, as late as 1950, 85% of Soviet medium tank production still consisted of T-34-85s. Why? Because the T-44 had too many problems, and was not a good enough tank to justify switching over. In 1950 the Soviet Union began producing T-54s at its Omsk factory. The T-54 was a good postwar tank design.

The T-34 was significantly inferior to German Panther tanks. The same was true of the T-34-85, albeit to a lesser degree. Germany's Entwicklung tanks would have been simple to manufacture and mechanically reliable. Based on my research, and on data which are often more limited than I'd like, my best guess is that Germany's Entwicklung tanks--especially the E-50 and E-75 Standardpanzers--would have been superior to the T-54. And would have gone into mass production much sooner than 1950! If the goal is to be historically accurate, the Soviet Union should start with much better tank tech than Germany. But Germany should be able to research tank tech at a faster pace than the Soviet Union.

Starting nations off at different tech levels is easy. But how to go about making nations good at researching specific techs? I'm open to suggestions. The idea which pops into my head at the moment is that if a nation is good at researching a tech, it should pay 2x the usual cost to get 3x the usual benefit. Also if you are good at researching a particular tech, you cannot research it two turns in a row, to prevent your tech level from growing too quickly.

With that in mind, below are my thoughts about which nations are good at researching which techs.

U.S.S.R.: Land production.
U.K.: artillery.
U.S.A.: artillery, multi-engine bombers, carriers, industrialization, air production.
Germany: infantry, tanks, jets, subs, rockets, industrialization.
Japan: industrialization.

The Soviet Union did an excellent job of simplifying land unit designs, thus increasing production.

Later in the war, the U.K. and U.S. developed HEAT ammunition for their artillery.

The U.S. developed the Superfortress bomber late in the war, which is why I made the U.S. good at multi-engine bombers. The U.S. was the only nation with fleet carriers; hence the U.S. being good at carrier research. The U.S. doubled its air production from '42 - '44, which is why I made it good at both industrialization and air production.

Germany developed assault rifles and Panzerfaust handheld anti-tank weapons. (The later versions of which were much better than bazookas.) That's why I made Germany good at infantry. Germany being good at tanks is explained above. Germany is good at jets research because its jet designs were better than their British or American counterparts, and because its second generation jets would have been a major improvement over jets such as the Me 262. Germany is good at subs because of the Type XXI U-boat. That sub was ahead of its time. A number of Type XXI U-boats were in the working up phase when the war ended. Germany had the world's best rocket program. Germany is good at industrialization because it tripled its military aircraft production from '42 - '44.

Japan is good at industrialization because it also tripled its military aircraft production from '42 - '44.

The subject of electronics, of radar and sonar, is a tricky one to handle from a game play standpoint. In general, Britain and the United States had the world's best electronics, with Germany usually close behind. As the war progressed, American ships generally had an increasingly large electronics advantage over their Japanese counterparts. As electronics shrank, aircraft became increasingly sophisticated with their electronic and mechanical computational gear. How much in-game acknowledgement do I want to give Britain and the U.S. for this? Hmm. I feel like the U.S. has a big advantage over Japan already, due to the former's production advantage. Do I really want to make the U.S. good at surface ships as well? Maybe making Britain good at surface ships would make more sense, on the theory that British tech was good enough that it deserves more acknowledgement than just artillery, and on the theory that making Britain good at surface ships would be less disruptive to game balance than making the U.S. good at it.

Japan deserves credit for its Long Lance torpedoes. But I envision that being a nation-specific advantage. A bonus to Japan's submarines and cruisers.