Proposed Map: Domination 1941

[Cernel]

@black_elk said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

The role of the Strategic Bomber in normal A&A play is primarily combat oriented, like for screening fleets in the dark skies approach etc. With the bombing role playing second fiddle to that.

You are certainly correct that, historically, the heavy bomber (beside some anti-fleet conceptual usage which proved highly unsuccessfull) was conceived exclusively to bomb enemy cities (not enemy armies). However, if you correctly make the heavy bomber almost useless in battle (both on land and on sea), you have to make it relatively stronger in the SBR role, and you should know well that there is plenty of people who despise strong bombing: you will alienate them all.

Think about Anniversary, which is the first game with a bomber at cost 12 (so about viable for SBR, since you pay 12 and should eventually damage for 17.5, but reaching 12 only several rounds after your expense), and the so many persons complaining about bombers being over-powered (on even broken, according to some) for the SBR that official "interceptor" optional rules were release to make the SBR almost pointless. Even in the original Anniversary, almost only Americans would buy any bombers primarily to make SBR, so a bomber that can do almost only that at that level of efficiency would be virtually never bought by 6 out of 7 powers in the game.

[TheDog]

@cernel
Thanks for the heads up and warning.

As the strategic bomber was a large part of european air war, Im hoping to emulate its use.

Only Britain and the USA had significant number of 4 engined Bombers, other nations did not invest in them.

[Black_Elk]

@thedog @cernel

For sure!

The thing I try to hold in mind, when it comes to the ass big bomber sculpt, is that it's function in standard play (abilities att 4, def 1, move 6/7, cost 12) doesn't really correspond to anything even remotely realistic as a combat unit. Instead what it is - is basically the A&A equivalent of the Queen in chess. It's like the super piece, that does just about everything.

In my view the bombers most important role in the typical A&A game is actually for stack defense. Which makes like zero sense from a realism perspective, but that's one of it's most important uses. When the player can fly a stack of hitpoint across 6 tiles, from say England to Moscow, or from wherever to India, to prop up a defense of a critical tile and push the attacker's odds out of reach, that totally dwarfs any other use. Then you add to that the crushing attack power vs navies and SBR to boot, and it becomes the go to grand strategy unit in advanced play. Every A&A game post v3 is a bomber game at bedrock. I don't know if that's necessarily good or bad, (it's probably bad I guess lol) but just kind of the reality, such that if you take that unit away, players might feel the loss pretty hard in the abstract/playpattern meta. Basically I think you need to make the tactical bomber more fun somehow, as an offset.

Ps. Basically I question the wisdom of Larry even including the Strategic Bomber as an actual physical unit in the first place. Cause he could have created the same basic mechanic/rule without necessarily needing the sculpts (sorta similar to how Rockets worked in Classic - you know but where the player pays X to make a run, and then the defender can roll to see whether it was successful or if the attacker just has to eat the cost on a failed attempt), but because those American bombers were so iconic looking, I guess he felt he had to include them? But giving everyone else the same sort of unit as well, all that made for more a super gamey and pretty unrealistic dynamic lol.

Another idea might have been to keep the 'strat bomber' unit as a sculpt, but treat it more like a G40 Airbase, or perhaps as a ground unit outside the SBR stuff. Meaning it only flies while actually conducting the bombing runs, but otherwise has to be moved like an infantry unit or an aagun or whatever - like if you wanted to change the starting location of the run/change the range, you could do it that way. I mean if one really needed to keep that idea of bombers getting blown up on the runways sometimes hehe, but not just flying them into defense positions as kinda their main purpose, say to save Moscow or Berlin or whatnot. But yeah, anyway, it's a weird unit for sure lol.

[Schulz]

I guess I am minority in this topic.

I think the best designed units are the ones that are correcly priced, simple as much as possible but most importantly versatile. Bombers designed for SBR only might be realistic but they would be pretty boring and predictable.

The Allies had luxury to invest strategic bombers due to having almost unlimited resources. It is hard to say that these strategic bombing campaigns were cost effective. But in a typical WWII scenario in TripleA, Allies will not have overwhelmig economic advantage due to balance reason.

[Black_Elk]

@schulz Yeah that's the other edge of the sword I guess.

For my part, the ideal A&A game would basically be a stripped down version of Global that played more or less like 1942.2 just on a much larger board and with those extra unit types like mech and tac Bs. You know with TT values adjusted upwards rather than Objectives. No weird nation specific rules, no complex production profiles, no politics - just a total war start date and a bit more of the familiar that way. I say that mainly because I can imagine actually persuading my friends to play a game like that, whereas FTF Global is like kind of a pipe dream. Everyone digs the way it looks sure, so many pieces! It's super impressive in that regard, but actually setting it up and playing it out in a reasonable timeframe with your pals, pretty tall order there lol.

I think I might be kinda boring in terms of my preferred unit roster actually. For starters, if I have to paint my sculpts or order a bunch of new sculpts from HBG just to play a scenario, that's almost a non-starter for me, at least in terms of set ups I'd want to readily explore. Just too onerous for my taste. So that becomes a bit problematic when peeps want to include Elite infantry or multiple versions of the same basic unit types, cause it's like where you gonna get those sculpts right? hehe

Then there are other preferences I have too, that sort of play in to what I like to see presented in an A&A game. On the one hand we're already sort of pushing it I think, by making a fun family-friendly game, where the player can delight in pretending to be Germany during WW2, or bombing cities to rubble in anything but the most abstract fashion. I also think it's super problematic to have SS themed combat units for example, which is just an extension of the A&A/TripleA no swazi policy in my view. There are some things you just don't want to touch really, lest the game become fraught like that. You know rather than being some quaint 1950s version of plastic army men, or a Hollywood World War 2 movie in boardgame form. I always worry about creating too many opportunities to glorify the wrong stuff with this one. I'm not a militarist or anything, so it's always kinda amusing to me, that my favorite game would be a war strategy game like A&A, but for me it's basically plastic army men, just with a built in geography lesson lol.

All that just to say that'd I'd be inclined to play it pretty safe I guess, when it comes to unit stuff. I'd leave some level of historical 'realism' at the door, for sure. Anything that might come across a bit sketch or have TripleA getting associated with revanchist hate group type stuff, I'd prefer to avoid that by a long mile, obviously lol. Like there's definitely a reason why the official A&A boardgames try to present in the way that they do, with a couple clear dodges on the dicey stuff. That's a bit of a digression I suppose, and not to get too Disney with it here, but just something to consider when thinking about what sorts of unit stuff the game should try to model. We should try to get out ahead of things and shore that up to the extent possible, at least for the standard package. Also people who really want to can always still change their units and flags, the decor and the relief details or whatever, but standard naming conventions for units are more built-in. So I think those should be more generic when possible, like particularly when it comes to the German faction/unit list.

That's me though, and the kind of A&A game I'd enjoy most. I might not be the best barometer of what's popular generally. People can do with the games whatever they like I guess, I just want the maps to look cool! heheh

There's no real need for a new TripleA WW2 game to follow the OOB straightjacket though, since we have a lot more flexibility here in the digital realm. I just wanted to get a World Projection that could work for it too, cause I know that's still TripleA's bread and butter haha. A couple birds with the same stone, was all I was thinking there. If I can draw the TTs and SZs so they work for global, that seems like a good point of reference from which to tweak it out further.

The more I look at the SZ map above, the more the East Indies annoys me. From a graphic design standpoint, I really don't like how those lines are drawn OOB. It creates weird tangents, and also makes the zones hard to adapt. You know like if you wanted to split the SZ further. Just too many diagonals converging in that area OOB. On my next pass I'd like to try a different blocking for that area of the board.

[Schulz]

@black_elk I tend to like more "elegant games" too. The basic concept is achieving the most replayability value with the least complexity as much as possible.

I think elite infantry is the one which provides the most HP per buck which means conscripts or basic infantry. :face_with_tears_of_joy: Other expensive ones have some niche uses but they are generally situational and not as versatile as bacis infantry.

A&A has always been only loosely based on WWII. Realism is gone the moment when I can see what is being produced in New York with 100% accuracy as Axis player. :face_with_tears_of_joy:

[Black_Elk]

@schulz said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

@black_elk I tend to like more "elegant games" too. The basic concept is achieving the most replayability value with the least complexity as much as possible.

I think elite infantry is the one which provides the most HP per buck which means conscripts or basic infantry. :face_with_tears_of_joy: Other expensive ones have some niche uses but they are generally situational and not as versatile as bacis infantry.

A&A has always been only loosely based on WWII. Realism is gone the moment when I can see what is being produced in New York with 100% accuracy as Axis player. :face_with_tears_of_joy:

@schulz So true! hehe Honestly a fog of war just by itself, would be enough to make the regular Classic scale game pretty interesting. Of the 3 things I've spent the most time thinking about, the ones I puzzle and ponder most are...

1. Same Time Axis and Allies - eg. some for of collapsed turn order. Either by side, or all together with both teams moving at at once.

2. Random start - to the turn order sequence. Sort of the funhouse mirror inverse of the above. So basically you have a set turn sequence like we do now, but the starting position or first nation to go in sequence, changes based on an initial roll. With standard income adjustments to accommodate for that based on position in sequence.

3. Fog of War - Hiding the location of forces, hiding the forces but not their location, or vice versa, or something like that with, vision cones/cups to block the view for the board? Who knows, but foggy!

I've never managed to get a version of 1 or 3 that I liked, but I did get a version of number 2 that worked in AA50. It was my favorite ever A&A idea! But when I posted it on A&A org it just sank like a lead balloon lol

ps. I'm going to work on just blocking out the rest of the Globe for the sea zones. We can go back in a fine tune the shapes, or subtly shift locations of islands to make it cooler, but I just want to get the connections mapped out in a rough. Then we can tweak the rest of the geometry. Here give me like an hour. I'll finish banging it out and then we can start thinking about how to break them in 2 for the subdivided type scale.

[RogerCooper]

3. Fog of War - Hiding the location of forces, hiding the forces but not their location, or vice versa, or something like that with, vision cones/cups to block the view for the board? Who knows, but foggy!

Fog of War can have a downside as well. In the game, Wars Across the World, the fog of war increases the incentive to build mega-stacks.

I have seen board games implement it well such as block games (and the game Fog of War), but the game has to be build on the fog of war, not retrofitted.

[Cernel]

@rogercooper said in Proposed Map: Domination 1941:

3. Fog of War - Hiding the location of forces, hiding the forces but not their location, or vice versa, or something like that with, vision cones/cups to block the view for the board? Who knows, but foggy!

Fog of War can have a downside as well. In the game, Wars Across the World, the fog of war increases the incentive to build mega-stacks.

I have seen board games implement it well such as block games (and the game Fog of War), but the game has to be build on the fog of war, not retrofitted.

Fog of War, in its normal form, is a terrible idea for a game like TripleA basic set in 1941 or later, which starts with an already highly developed setup. You would spend the first and few following rounds having to check the initial setup to try to guess where the units are now (because, for some rounds, it will be a partial fog of war: you can have an idea of where the units are if you were seeing them all at the start of the game, knowing the starting setup). Moreover, it would make absolutely no sense that you know exactly where everything is at the start of the game (because you would know it if the starting setup is not random, and it cannot be highly or fully random in a historical game), like if there was no fog of war up to that point, and the fog appears magically at the start of the first round.

Fog of War would be acceptable only if the game starts in 1939 or before if it is an Europe game or if it starts in 1936 or before if it is a Global or Asian game. Practically, it needs to start some time before the actual war starts (so that you have a few rounds of no-war build-up under the cover of the fog before anyone can fight) or at the very most when the war starts.

Otherwise, a Fog of War in a traditioral TripleA basic game needs to be turn-only, that is getting lifted for every power at the start of the turn of the power (so that you always know exactly where everything controlled by that power is at the start of its turn: you just don't know what he or she did during the latest turn if the moves are beyond your visual). However, this would not be an actual Fog of War... just delayed knowledge, similar to having everyone acting at the same time, revealing all the moves at the same time.

[beelee]

yea i added Elk's SBR idea to Global 40 House Rules a while back. Tested it a lot. Over 100 games but all solo.

Bombers are now a A0 D0 M6 +1 w/AB C5 unit. They may perform SBR attacks only. They do not participate in the Air Battle with Interceptors. They do 1-6 damage. They no longer receive a +2 to an SBR attack.

The one thing that triplea can't do is change the dice number for Air Attack (it can but you have to change it for the whole game then). Otherwise having Air Attack use a D 12 would allow the bmbrs to have a 1 in 12 defensive roll giving them a realistic chance at Defense but not overpowered. Doesn't work with 1 in 6. Too powerful at Cost 5 and tweaking the Cost doesn't make the SBR worth it as they still fly through AA.

The Air Battle still only lasts 1 rd . I found Ftrs Escort at and Intercept at 2 and Tacs Attack at 1 worked best. If there are any Defending Ftrs it forces one to use Ftrs to Escort even if the Defender doesn't Intercept. It especially forces the Luftwaffe to defend W GER tying up a lot of resources which was Historically accurate.

For the most part, only USA, UK and Germany used them. Sometimes JPN would hit India and depending on the late game, pound stalingrad and moscow late. Takes a while to get there though, as i also use a Limited Factory rule where they can only be built in Tokyo.

UK is a little problematic, because they have to attack alone and aren't strong enough to crack the German Air Defense. They can sometimes hit smaller French Factorys. I toyed with a Night Bmbr version, does less Damage, can't be Intercepted, still susceptible to AA, but it didn't quite seem to work. I can't remember why, I'll have to revisit it.

Anyway TLDR I thought they worked good. Definitely made Tacs more valuable and Fleets less vulnerable.

Also added a LR FTR so USA could Bomb Berlin with Escort if they had a Mainland European Base.

[beelee]

I think with "Fog of War" you'd need some sort of surveillance/espionage component that would allow a certain chance to detect Enemy Forces.

Otherwise, at game start, as Cernel mentioned above, the Attacker could concentrate and the Defender would almost be forced to max protect there most valuable area as they can't defend it all. Most likely anyway. Would definitely need some tweaks.

It'd be a lot of fun finding them though

Edit
Actually one should be able to see who is adjacent to you. So, behind the lines so to speak, would be where the "Fog" would come in.

Where are those damn Panzers !!! lol

Even then you could go with probabilities. Especially game start

[Black_Elk]

Ok so how does this feel for G40 sz divisions?

I did the blocking so the connections would be the same, I think hehe. I tried to preserve some of the sweep of the OOB sz shapes without having to move too many islands/TT out of position. Obviously there's a fair bit of distortion on the South Atlantic/Pacific OOB, but I tried to get close. Let me know if I goofed anything major.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9f3tanjxa2485uo/TripleA_4k_baseline_G40_sz.png?dl=0

So what I tried to do, was give us some options to bisect various sz in half, so that they could split islands or just to add another zone. So the smallest tile shown above for each ocean, would be about as small as one would want to go for that. Right now they can each fit about 18-24 unit typesat 54px depending on how tight we want to make the centers.

[beelee]

@black_elk you need to add one more off Northern TTy so Celebes farther away

[Black_Elk]

@beelee Good eye! Geez that's sort of a weird one isn't it lol

OK what if we went for something more like this? Little more room for the ships that way too.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9f3tanjxa2485uo/TripleA_4k_baseline_G40_sz.png?dl=0

Here is the bitmap with all the extraneous borders removed to just show the G40 lines.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1j7omf0s69t1r3k/TripleA_4k_G40.png?dl=0

[beelee]

@black_elk That looks way sweet Plenty of room to mix it up. Dutch boys can even join in lol

Also got room for the Ancient Alien nazi base in Antartica lol

[Black_Elk]

Word! heheh

Here it is with a quick G40 paintjob. Borders should be closed up proper now

[Cernel]

@black_elk Am I understanding correctly this is supposed to be a map-skin of WWII Global? Meaning that it gives the same game as the original, just with a different visual.

If so, the non-Dutch part of New Guinea should be a single territory.

[Black_Elk]

@cernel Ah thanks! I'll fix it in the baseline right now

Yeah that was the idea. First get one that looks aces for Global.

Then we can make another version with subdivisions once we know that G40 one looks correct. At least in terms of the connections and such!

Ok got it, fixed the bitmap image in the dropbox link and the painted reference post above. Let me know if there's anything else you see that I missed.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1j7omf0s69t1r3k/TripleA_4k_G40.png?dl=0

Catch you guys tomorrow!

Best Elk

ps. here's a more 40-into-41-ish vibe on ownership, but with the 'regular' G40 TTs.

[Schulz]

@black_elk

If there will be another version with subdivisions;

Japan is shown to close to Vancouver as much as it is to Vietnam. Northern Pacific can be shrinked for gameplay reason. But if realism is the top priority, Japan should be closer to Vietnam than Vancouver.

Also you might want to divide Southwestern Dutch Guinea because Japan never captured southern part of the island.

[Black_Elk]

@schulz Here it is with those earlier tiles overlaid with the White/Black switch again.

For the Pacific, my impression was that by shrinking the Americas in A&A, the idea is that all those coastal sz tiles represent much larger distances than the tiles in say the South Pacific.

The warp on this area of the OOB board is even more extreme than in Europe, with the North Pacific compressed by almost 50% and the South Pacific enlarged by almost 50%, and obviously many of those smaller islands and sz are made fairly gigantic along the way OOB hehe.

I'm not sure of the best solution if what you want is just to have Japan even further from Vancouver, beyond expanding the width of the entire board in that area. It's possible to insert more ocean, east of Hawaii if one wanted. It's also possible to slide the Americas down a bit, which might create a similar effect. My main goal was to minimize unnecessary dead space in the oceans by focusing the warp on the areas of major activity.

I guess I was definitely prioritizing gameplay over realism there, or at least trying to find some sort of happy medium between the OOB gameboard and the real world.

I'd think maybe the best approach would be to create the impression of more distance by inserting more sz tiles. Or else to increase the width of the map slightly, which kinda throws off the 16:9 aspect, but then maybe maybe that's not super important anyway. I'm not sure how much of the Antarctic region in the far south one wants to retain either. I don't like scrolling past too much deadspace on the map myself, especially when you're right on top of it. So if the distances feel more abstract anyway, and it's more important to just be able to see what's happening at a glance, I kind feel like we can get away with it, provided the Pac is at least still wider than the Atlantic at a glance. That might just be me though and more the way I play. I think OOB and Bung's version both show a ton of compression on the West Coast of North America. Since I didn't distort the shape of North America as much, it's probably reading a fair bit larger and contributing to that sense of the shorter distance. They're not that far off actually, this map compared to Bung's, but the rest of the West Coast is shaped pretty differently here than in OOB, you know where Mexico displays like North of Japan lol.

I'd say for every large sz or sz with an island, we could try to do some splits and see how it starts shaking out.

If ya got any thoughts on fun splits for the sz divisions, bang out the red marker and we'll go to town hehe