Flames and Steel (official thread)

Cernel

@Schulz said:

Just because Revised and WaW failed to provide the US with a balanced strategy between two fronts doesn't mean it can't be done on other maps.

You can still have an undivided USA and make pursuing both oceans simultaneously as viable as KGF or KJP. It's simply better to give the US player the option of how to divide their resources between the fronts.

WaW failed to achieve this due to:

The Hawaii factory.

The USA being closer to Japan than Germany/Italy.

Japan being divided while Germany is not strong enough.

All you need is to not make the same mistakes that WaW did. A much stronger Germany will already naturally force the US player to commit at least part of their resources to Europe.

I did not say anything because did not want to be too assertive but completely agree with @schulz here. I think that splitting the United States into Atlantic and Pacific is a very crude and historically wrong way to have this country going both oceans. It is true that in many games you see the United States unhistorically focusing almost exclusively on Atlantic or Pacific, with at most the choice to go in one direction or the other, but it would be much better to find other less forceful ways to allow that to happen. One way, for example, may be making Pacific into the better choice (by giving value to the Dutch East Indies and having the Japanese Empire being much weaker than the United States, so that the United States can handily win in Pacific using less than half of its total production) but making possible to place only very little in there through severe placement limits especially for ships. Having very low placement capabilities and even production in the West Coast is actually not necessarily unhistorical as back then the western part of the United States was a lot less populated than today both absolutely and relatively to the East Coast, so much so that most ships used in Pacific were actually launched from the East Coast. For sure, Hawaii should not be able to place anything at least at start game.

KurtGodel7

@Cernel said:

@Schulz said:

Just because Revised and WaW failed to provide the US with a balanced strategy between two fronts doesn't mean it can't be done on other maps.

You can still have an undivided USA and make pursuing both oceans simultaneously as viable as KGF or KJP. It's simply better to give the US player the option of how to divide their resources between the fronts.

WaW failed to achieve this due to:

The Hawaii factory.

The USA being closer to Japan than Germany/Italy.

Japan being divided while Germany is not strong enough.

All you need is to not make the same mistakes that WaW did. A much stronger Germany will already naturally force the US player to commit at least part of their resources to Europe.

I did not say anything because did not want to be too assertive but completely agree with @schulz here. I think that splitting the United States into Atlantic and Pacific is a very crude and historically wrong way to have this country going both oceans. It is true that in many games you see the United States unhistorically focusing almost exclusively on Atlantic or Pacific, with at most the choice to go in one direction or the other, but it would be much better to find other less forceful ways to allow that to happen. One way, for example, may be making Pacific into the better choice (by giving value to the Dutch East Indies and having the Japanese Empire being much weaker than the United States, so that the United States can handily win in Pacific using less than half of its total production) but making possible to place only very little in there through severe placement limits especially for ships. Having very low placement capabilities and even production in the West Coast is actually not necessarily unhistorical as back then the western part of the United States was a lot less populated than today both absolutely and relatively to the East Coast, so much so that most ships used in Pacific were actually launched from the East Coast. For sure, Hawaii should not be able to place anything at least at start game.

I definitely hear what both you and @schulz are saying. You guys are not wrong. Also, I'm not going to object to anyone providing honest feedback about this. I've never done anything like this before, I'm going to make mistakes, and it's valuable feedback when people point out what they believe those mistakes to be.

However, in literally every map I've ever played, the U.S. goes KGF or KJF. No mixed strategy, pretty much ever. Okay, maybe Global, with its victory conditions for the Axis, is a partial exception. But number 1, I didn't want my map to have Global-like victory conditions. Number 2, even with Global it's normal for the U.S. to send enough to one theater to dominate it, while sending just enough to the other theater to prevent the Axis victory conditions from triggering.

I will grant that maybe the WAW map could be tweaked to induce the U.S. to produce a mixed strategy instead of its usual KJF. Maybe. What you've described in your post is a method of achieving that which might or might not work. Even with your modifications, I believe that the U.S. could still pursue a version of KJF. It would build more expensive units to optimize unit placement capacity. Air for the U.S. Pacific Fleet's carriers could be flown in from the Eastern U.S. Land units could be built in the Eastern U.S. and plod their way west. This would mess with the U.S. Pacific unit mix big time, it would make KJF more cumbersome, but (especially if you're weakening Japan's income) this would not necessarily solve the problem of KJF.

As individual maps, NWO and The Rising Sun have a divided USA. Germany deals with the eastern half of the U.S. in NWO, and Japan deals with the western U.S. in The Rising Sun.

So now imagine this. You're combining NWO and The Rising Sun together, with a few simplifications, to create a WAW map. Imagine having to choose between two options. Option 1: you combine the two halves of the U.S. together. This means the U.S. will always choose KJF or KGF. Option 2: you keep the U.S. divided into two halves. The eastern half is anti-Germany, the western half anti-Japan. This results in a European theater playing out kind of like NWO, and a Pacific theater playing out kind of like The Rising Sun.

I know you'd want an Option 3, which you described in your post. But if Options 1 and 2 were your only two options, which would you prefer? Option 1, with American conquest of Japan, German conquest of the Soviet Union, and a late game Axis stack and Allied stack competing against each other in Asia? Or option 2, where you're legitimately getting a late game Pacific theater and, separately, a late game European theater?

Even if your Option 3 was implemented perfectly, I'd say it has a less than 50% chance of doing what you'd want it to do. And that would be assuming you're using Revised rules, as WAW does. The rules I'm actually using have nothing to do with Revised. If I'm using your Option 3, then with every technology, I'm asking, how does this affect the U.S.'s ability to go KJF? Industry adds +2 to factory unit placement capacity. Strategic bombers techs make strategic bombing raids more effective. P-51 Mustang tech adds +2 to the range of American advanced fighters, and allows those advanced fighters to escort bombers for strategic bombing raids. (With a max of four escorts per factory being hit.) The Superfortress tech gives the U.S. access to a very powerful strategic bomber type as a special unit. Compared to a normal strategic bomber, a Superfortress has more hitpoints, longer range, and does far more PU damage when bombing.

Your Option 3 is a delicate balancing act. That balancing act is far more difficult to achieve when you have technologies like these increasing the U.S.'s ability to go KJF.

Yes Option 2 is heavy-handed. No question there. Ahistorical? That's more debatable. Historically, the U.S. dedicated about 33 - 40% of its war effort to the Pacific, and the remaining 60 - 67% to the war in Europe. Option 1 gives you one United States (historical) which always goes KGF or KJF (ahistorical). Option 2 gives you two United States (ahistorical) which forces the U.S. to fight on both fronts at once (historical).

Schulz

There is nothing wrong with the US being able to pursue KJF.

The issue is KJF (or KGF) being a no-brainer option every single time, while the balanced approach is arguably the worst one among them. They should all be equally viable.

I tried to tackle this issue in my map as well by implementing these features. The goal is to introduce natural disadvantages for both KJF and KGF.

If the US tries KJF: Japan is farther away than France and North Africa. The US can land in these places in 2 rounds, but Japan's mainland is 3 rounds away. (ships move at 3) There is no Hawaii factory and no ability to purchase new factories either, so everything has to come from California. Japan also starts with a bigger army and navy, so they will have plenty of time before a potential collapse. The US will be taking a huge gamble, (almost) sacrificing the survival of the Soviets (and even Britain) if they try KJF.
If the US tries KGF: The US Pacific Navy is rendered useless, as they can neither fight the Japanese nor reach Europe in a reasonable amount of time. Losing the Pacific—including Australia—is guaranteed. On top of that, taking Germany is even harder.

I also gave fighters the scramble ability without needing an airfield. This means you can still protect a smaller navy with fighters without investing in naval units. This feature is intended to prevent the UK from being immune to a German naval invasion, while also ensuring the German navy is not doomed to fall.

TheDog

@kurtgodel7
A lot of what @schulz & @cernel said has been solved in 1941 Global Command Discission

Black Elk and I went through the same issues when starting out, he is a veteran of A&A and I brought a clean slate.

1941GCD has

Hawaii factory with a Truk factory to offset it.
USA is closer to France/Germany
Japan is whole, so is USA, there are only 8 playable factions

I will bore you with some details.

Factories/Industries have builtin invisible railways that +2 move to 1:Move units & +1 move to 2:Move units this enables reinforcements to cross continents in a reasonable time. There is a trans Siberian rail link.
Factories have low output, forcing placements to spread out.
VCs are capitals as well as Oil production TTs and other choke points, they are also spread-out so the USA should go east and west, if they dont the allies will lose.
Bunkers litter the map and are hard to take, so USA must invade with a large force or suffer losses.
USA has a massive production compared to a lot A&A maps.
Axis must win before the USA gets into full production or lose

Cernel

@KurtGodel7 There is also option 4. Make KGF the better option per se so that the US would want to go full KGF but add some political restrictions by which it is forced to do at least something in Pacific. For example, the restriction can be that the US cannot invade any enemy territory so long as any part of the US plus Hawaii (so not comprising Alaska) is in enemy hands. This way, while going for KGF, the United States is forced to do the minimum necessary to keep Hawaii (need splitting it in more than one island to avoid this being done just by piling up land defence, or you can add that also warship presence near the West Coast counts as a no-no as well). Not a big fan of political restrictions though.

Also, historically, ships and especially transports kept doing back and forth between Pacific and Atlantic service. Many of the transports ships which were used on D-Day were taking part in the liberation of the Philippines a few months later.

Cernel

@TheDog Interesting, but I'm a big hater of Hawaii having a factory (especially one spamming carriers and/or battleships). It's by far my number 1 issue which makes Big World unplayable for me.

TheDog

@Cernel
In 1941 GCD, there are 4 types of factory.

Industry-Hvy: Carriers, Battleships, Cruisers, in home TT
Industry-Med: Convoy/Transport, Destroyer, in Hawaii & Truk
Industry-Lgt: Infantry, Artillery, no ships
Base-Camp: Infantry, no ships

Cernel

@TheDog said:

@Cernel
In 1941 GCD, there are 4 types of factory.

Industry-Hvy: Carriers, Battleships, Cruisers, in home TT

Industry-Med: Convoy/Transport, Destroyer, in Hawaii & Truk

Industry-Lgt: Infantry, Artillery, no ships

Base-Camp: Infantry, no ships

Eh, I'm not an expert, but I doubt that a single transport or destroyer was ever built in Hawaii during the war. I would be surprised if there was any artillery production either. Without knowing the facts, I feel almost sure Hawaii should be either a Base-Camp or nothing at all just based on my superficial knowledge of what was Hawaii at the time.

TheDog

@Cernel
You are correct, no ships were produced, but a lot were repaired and resupplied, same for Truk.

Not my choice but there for game play.

Even so, the map can be edited to your taste.

KurtGodel7

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!

Cernel

Well, it's not that splitting the United States in half is on its own certainly avoids focusing on one ocean only, especially not on the Atlantic. If you go with historical productions at the time (As I said, the western part was a lot more backward, underpopulated and poorer than it is now not only absolutely but also relatively to the eastern part.), on the account that in 1940 Pacific (meaning California + Oregon + Washington) had 9,682,781 inhabitants and Mountain (meaning Montana + Idaho + Wyoming + Colorado + New Mexico + Arizona + Utah + Nevada) had 4,128,042 inhabitants, for a total of Pacific + Mountain equal to 13,810,823 against a total for the entire United States (back then not comprising Hawaii and Alaska) of 131,669,275, your "West USA" will only have about 10% of the production of your "East USA" (and arguably less since Pacific and even more so Mountain was backward), meaning that "East USA" can still do KGF using directly the 90% of the total production power of the United States which it has and use the 10% of West USA just to produce bombers to go make bombing raids on Germany or some other things like that. Moreover, of course, whatever fleet is already present one side or the other can be sent through the Panama canal in either case, and doing so in a split USA scenario might even be worthwhile for can-openers.

All this means that, in order to go both oceans by splitting USA in two, you will not only have to take the historically wrong decision of having two USAs but also likely distributing production between these two made-up polities in a very unhistorical way.

All this said, I see your point, and I agree that seeing usually the United States playing only one ocean is lame, and I'm not able really to point at a game that fixed that at least amongst the ones I know. (I have not yet taken a deep enough look at @thedog's game, did you? Maybe he did.)

Cernel

Also a "West USA" playing Pacific mostly or only on its own is largely unhistorical. Most of what was used in Pacific was produced in the East, especially if we assume that the East comprises anything east of Panama like Texas, but even only the East Coast was really commissioning most of the ships by far. If you seemingly partially fix it by having Texas and Missouri and such as part of the east, that may bring the west up to 25% of total (have not calculated it), but then I wonder if that does not have the risk that a player may decide to place ships in Texas and New Orleans and go full Atlantic with both West and East together.

Schulz

A divided USA would make the game more disjointed.

Like with a single US, Japan could punch above its weight and force the US to commit more in the Pacific, thus indirectly (and historically) helping Germany by diverting American attention away from the Atlantic. But with a divided US, you can't do such a thing because the US's Atlantic commitments will be fixed, and Japan will be able to do nothing against it.