Flames and Steel (official thread)
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@Cernel said:
I understand what you are getting at, and I agree with it from a game-play stand-point, but that is just completely or largely ahistorical, just to force the game into some direction.Generally speaking, I'm not a big fan of national objectives unless they are actually representing something like "Monopoly": two or more territories which are worth more than the sum of their productions if the same player or alliance owns them all.
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As I said: I agree with it from a game-play stand point, but you don't actually need National Objectives: you can just give high production values to Midway, Hawaii, the Solomons and so on to incentive just the right amount of Pacific play...You're objecting to my idea on the grounds of realism, and yet you're proposing an alternative which you already admit is unrealistic itself.
Actually, maybe I've not been clear, but, if you keep reading the whole thing, this is what I said:
As I said: I agree with it from a game-play stand point, but you don't actually need National Objectives: you can just give high production values to Midway, Hawaii, the Solomons and so on to incentive just the right amount of Pacific play without forcing the United States to go full Pacific to get Japan itself or something hard to conquer which would impose an all-or-nothing approach. The problem with that is just on the level of realism: none of the territories which I've mentioned actually had any significant production vale, meaning that none of them would have changed the ability of the United States to produce anything (beside the Dutch East Indies, which were very valuable to the United States especially for the rubber and are a good candidate to add some not too hard to get income in the Pacific) to any significant level.
Meaning that, yes, both doing it with National Objectives or production is bad in this case. It was not my intention to argue which one was worse as being both just unacceptable (so being a moot point what is the most unacceptable).
That is why I moved on saying that, if the matter is having contestable income at the borders of Japanese expansion (so to encourage doing something against Japan without having to focus fully on it - meaning an anti-Japan strategy not requiring to be a "Kill Japan" one), India (beside of course the Dutch East Indies and Australia) is practically the only place where you can manage such income distribution without discarding realism entirely.
If neither of them wins on realism, then you just have to ask yourself which one achieves the desired gameplay effect better than the other.
Well, what I actually said is that both have to be discarded (for being wildly irrealistic), but, yes, that is why I said
I agree with it from a game-play stand point
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@Cernel And yet, Italy produced more war materiel than the two of them put together, and could engineer things that were completely beyond them like tanks, multi-engine bombers, submarines, battleships, etc. GDP can be somewhat helpful in comparing two industrial economies or two agrarian ones against each other, but very misleading for comparing agrarian ones with industrial ones.
I don't know why you keep arguing with me between Italy and India / China. I've never done that (or thought about doing that in here). As I've said, I've only compared India and China on the basis of GDP.
(I've just corrected you on the basis of the data which I've used because you mentioned them being "right behind Italy" in GDP, which is not what THEY say. Nothing else. I'm sure you can have other GDP data which give different results - even across different editions of Maddison.)
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The whole major factory in India / UK Pacific economy setup is a legacy artifact from Pacific 1940 being designed as a standalone game, where they wanted the British to be able to produce a full range of units without having to write special rules where things like tanks, planes, and ships that were all built in the UK would have to be teleported in from off-map - and that model continues to be used in most people's mods out of inertia, just because it's something everyone's gotten used to playing with, rather than because it's a good representation of the wartime economics there.
Yes, that is terrible - and a very bad legacy.
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@Cernel So your answer is "it probably works, I just don't like it?"
We're discussing game design here, not simulation design, and A&A is definitely on the casual side of the WW2 grand strategy genre - it's not World in Flames or The War or Rise and Decline of the Third Reich. The game abstracts and simplifies and overlooks a million different things to give people something that's straightforward and fun to play.
Yes, the objectives I wrote might feel arbitrary, even with the head canon explanation I came up with for you, but what's worse for the game - having those, or having US players cheese the game for easy wins?
If it solves a dilemma that you've said pretty much no other map has managed to address in a fully effective way, I don't think "it's not realistic" is a good enough argument to reject it, because I could point out a hundred things about Axis & Allies that are already unrealistic. If maximum realism is the main thing you're looking for, there's at least a dozen other games out there that will do a much better job of it than A&A mods ever could - at the price of being far more complex to learn and taking far longer to play.
I feel like we're at risk of derailing the thread here if we keep going back and forth on this, so I've said my piece.
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At least according to AI, India may have actually had more military production than China during WWII. China's military production was reduced due to Japanese occupation, and because of its civil war. Whereas, the Raj served to increase India's military production due to the organizational efforts of the British empire.
To be clear, it was not meant to be a maximum realism suggestion. It was meant to be a realism compromise, where you could add production (mainly in the sense of income) with some basis of realism.
For game-play (realistic or not - and I would say not too much if not), it would be necessary for India to have very low placement ability (factories) (and being able to place little TUV, meaning being restricted to placing infantry (a good number but not too many of them - whether realistic or not, I know there were many Indians in the British army) and hardly anything else - kind of like China even though the situation was not as bad as China after 1937), while having fairly high production (income) and being part of the British Empire - meaning sharing its income with the United Kingdom - so that India is mostly a British cash-cow that Japan can take and the British cannot defend alone, thus pressure from the United States in Pacific is needed, or the Japanese take India.
I don't intend to enter any discussion about how much of the income of the British Empire India should be, at least not now or in here. I'll just say that the British were screwing around big time with the money (to India's disadvantage) so to be able to purchase stuff from India with relatively very little of their money and selling to India at very high prices and borrowing from (meaning accumulating public debt towards) India however they wanted - so do not look too much at nominal GDP if you want to look at it at all (I'm not.).
Likewise, you've correctly stated that Japan's military production should be significantly less than Germany's. Here is a link to military aircraft production during WWII.
Military aircraft production can be used as a decent proxy for overall military production. This metric will understate British and American military production, because both nations produced a significant portion of heavy bombers. A heavy bomber, with its four engines, is more difficult to produce than a one - two engine fighter.
I don't remember that. I think it was @schulz, but I agree, probably even less than that because I guess Japan was focusing relatively more than Germany on aircraft - not sure.
Both Japan and Italy are usually way over-valued in TripleA games.
Yes, it makes more sense to count the engines rather than the number of aircraft. I'm not saying that a four-engines bomber is exactly or very closely 4 times the cost of a single-engine fighter, but it surely gets closer than just counting per aircraft.
Interestingly enough, the Japanese Zero (obsolete later in the war) required 10,000 hours to manufacture. Whereas, Japan's late war Ki-84 Hayate plane (modern by the standards of 1944) required only 4,000 man hours to manufacture. The Zero had not been designed with large scale mass production in mind. It had a lot of custom work needed for it. Whereas, the Ki-84 Hayate--the "Frank"--was designed to be more easily manufactured in large numbers. A total of 3,500 Ki-84s were built, compared to nearly 11,000 Zero carrier aircraft.
I don't know about this, but you need to know the time of those statistics. Maybe it's just different years. It is easy enough that, after one or two years, the same aircraft can be produced with half the man-hours than it used to require. Also, beside the added cost of folding wings and everything else which carrier-aircraft needs, it can be that you need to have extremely high standards for carrier aircraft because, if anything bad happens on a carrier, it is much more of a problem than if it happens on a field. Besides, a carrier costs much more (and takes way more time to become operative since laying it down) than the total cost (and time) of the maximum number of aircraft it can carry (contrary to what usually happens in TripleA).
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With India having high value but low placement, why would Japan fight in the Pacific instead of rushing to take India and dealing with the Americans later with the Indian income?
Also, the USA being able to stop Japan from taking India while still spending most of its income to defeat Germany sounds overpowered to me. If the USA primarily focuses on Germany, their commitments in the Pacific shouldn't provide more than defending Hawaii/Australia, so defending India is mostly up to the British.
Even for Australia, I think Japan should always take it if the US doesn't make a significant commitment in the Pacific.
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At least according to AI, India may have actually had more military production than China during WWII. China's military production was reduced due to Japanese occupation, and because of its civil war. Whereas, the Raj served to increase India's military production due to the organizational efforts of the British empire.
To be clear, it was not meant to be a maximum realism suggestion. It was meant to be a realism compromise, where you could add production (mainly in the sense of income) with some basis of realism.
For game-play (realistic or not - and I would say not too much if not), it would be necessary for India to have very low placement ability (factories) (and being able to place little TUV, meaning being restricted to placing infantry (a good number but not too many of them - whether realistic or not, I know there were many Indians in the British army) and hardly anything else - kind of like China even though the situation was not as bad as China after 1937), while having fairly high production (income) and being part of the British Empire - meaning sharing its income with the United Kingdom - so that India is mostly a British cash-cow that Japan can take and the British cannot defend alone, thus pressure from the United States in Pacific is needed, or the Japanese take India.
I don't intend to enter any discussion about how much of the income of the British Empire India should be, at least not now or in here. I'll just say that the British were screwing around big time with the money (to India's disadvantage) so to be able to purchase stuff from India with relatively very little of their money and selling to India at very high prices and borrowing from (meaning accumulating public debt towards) India however they wanted - so do not look too much at nominal GDP if you want to look at it at all (I'm not.).
Likewise, you've correctly stated that Japan's military production should be significantly less than Germany's. Here is a link to military aircraft production during WWII.
Military aircraft production can be used as a decent proxy for overall military production. This metric will understate British and American military production, because both nations produced a significant portion of heavy bombers. A heavy bomber, with its four engines, is more difficult to produce than a one - two engine fighter.
I don't remember that. I think it was @schulz, but I agree, probably even less than that because I guess Japan was focusing relatively more than Germany on aircraft - not sure.
Both Japan and Italy are usually way over-valued in TripleA games.
Yes, it makes more sense to count the engines rather than the number of aircraft. I'm not saying that a four-engines bomber is exactly or very closely 4 times the cost of a single-engine fighter, but it surely gets closer than just counting per aircraft.
Interestingly enough, the Japanese Zero (obsolete later in the war) required 10,000 hours to manufacture. Whereas, Japan's late war Ki-84 Hayate plane (modern by the standards of 1944) required only 4,000 man hours to manufacture. The Zero had not been designed with large scale mass production in mind. It had a lot of custom work needed for it. Whereas, the Ki-84 Hayate--the "Frank"--was designed to be more easily manufactured in large numbers. A total of 3,500 Ki-84s were built, compared to nearly 11,000 Zero carrier aircraft.
I don't know about this, but you need to know the time of those statistics. Maybe it's just different years. It is easy enough that, after one or two years, the same aircraft can be produced with half the man-hours than it used to require. Also, beside the added cost of folding wings and everything else which carrier-aircraft needs, it can be that you need to have extremely high standards for carrier aircraft because, if anything bad happens on a carrier, it is much more of a problem than if it happens on a field. Besides, a carrier costs much more (and takes way more time to become operative since laying it down) than the total cost (and time) of the maximum number of aircraft it can carry (contrary to what usually happens in TripleA).
I wanted Flames and Steel to be a big step towards realism. But realism wasn't my ultimate objective. My objective was: a game with more strategic depth than normal Axis and Allies, as well as better period flavor.
To give a concrete example. In Axis and Allies, aircraft have attack, defense, and range. If you're designing new unit types for a map, it's hard to squeeze too much out of just that. This is not just a wasted opportunity for strategic depth, it is also a lack of realism. In the real war, aircraft specialized in different roles: fighter, heavy fighter, dive bomber, torpedo bomber, medium bomber, strategic bomber, as well as some others. The current version of my rules gives planes like dive bombers a bonus against land targets, while other planes get a bonus against naval targets or even subs. This allows for more specialization of roles for aircraft. Also, some planes were harder to shoot down than others, and this is reflected in me giving some airplanes more hitpoints than others. Fighter type aircraft have dogfight values and interception values. None of this is embracing realism for the sake of realism. It's embracing realism in a way which promotes strategic depth.
A tech system is only as good as the overall game mechanics. Meaning, if the game mechanics only allow aircraft to have attack, defense, and range, then any tech system associated with that can only improve those three things. (As well as cost.) But, if my aircraft have land combat values, surface ship combat values, sub combat values, dogfight values, interception values, air defense values, hitpoints, strategic bombing values, and range, then there's a lot more there for a tech system to improve. Yes, this comes at the cost of added complexity. But this is a rare instance where the added complexity is justified because it greatly enhances strategic depth.
I want to move the game in the direction of realism, but I don't want to be dogmatically fixated on realism to the exclusion of other competing priorities. For example: I've given America a large income, relative to the other participants. But not quite as large as would have been historically justified. I nerfed America's income somewhat to create a more balanced game. More generally, my intention is to be mostly realistic. But not always 100% realistic, because I might need to give up that last 20 - 30% of realism for game balance, simple and streamlined play, or to prevent the U.S. from maxing out on one front while ignoring the other. I've set the following criteria, by which my level of success should be evaluated.
- Does the game provide more strategic depth than a typical Axis and Allies game would?
- Does the game feel more like authentic WWII than typical A&A?
- Can the game be played smoothly and quickly, without the player being taxed and burdened with a lot of technical stuff?
- Is it a legitimately fun game to play? If you had just one weekend to play a TripleA map before becoming busy for the next six months, would Flames and Steel be high up on your list of maps you might choose?
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With India having high value but low placement, why would Japan fight in the Pacific instead of rushing to take India and dealing with the Americans later with the Indian income?
Also, the USA being able to stop Japan from taking India while still spending most of its income to defeat Germany sounds overpowered to me. If the USA primarily focuses on Germany, their commitments in the Pacific shouldn't provide more than defending Hawaii/Australia, so defending India is mostly up to the British.
Even for Australia, I think Japan should always take it if the US doesn't make a significant commitment in the Pacific.
Yes, Japan would need not to be able to rush-taking India early on but building up forces to do that (which cannot do if it has to spend to match the United States spending). For that, India would need to start with a powerful enough army but very scarce ability to place any more units (I would say China should also be in a similar situation.). To avoid Japan just ignoring the United States, it would have to go together with valuable Dutch East Indies (a few also for Philippines, Formosa and Indo-China) and enough advantage of naval movement over land movement (maybe even something like movement 4 ships if infantry moves 1 - would need testing, and there is the problem of aircraft carriers (like needing a new feature for being able to launch aircrafts after moving - that would be great)), but it would be realistic beside of course if we start thinking about trains and such) so that going through the Strait of Malacca to India is much faster than having infantries walking there from China or Indo-China.
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I would say that, for game-play, the more valuable the Dutch East Indies are, the better. Of course, realism will have to put a cap to that (but they were indeed important). Obviously, the Dutch East Indies should be purely or almost purely there as money-makers - in a game where PUs is the only resource (no armies production there or very unworkable to start any).
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Also, some planes were harder to shoot down than others, and this is reflected in me giving some airplanes more hitpoints than others.
I guess your are not doing it, but it would be good if you split the heavy bombers available since start game at least into two different units, one mainly representing the Avro Lancaster and the other one mainly representing the B-17 (and the B-24 too if you don't want to split in 3) (I'm not talking about other future/tech ones like the B-29). The B-17 should have more hit-points and more defensive power than the Avro Lancaster, but the Avro Lancaster should have a slightly bigger bombing power (not much). This can be balanced by making the Avro Lancaster cheaper (whether or not this is the case) or just letting the United States have an advantage in heavy bombers over Britain.
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I have tested my game with movement 4 ships; it doesn't work.
The USA could invade Japan in 2 rounds, the UK can invade Italy in 1 round, Japan can invade Australia in 1 round, etc. It's basically unplayable, even though my map's sea zones are even more numerous than World at War's sea zones.
Even with a movement of 3, I feel like you need new rules like "no using captured factories" and "no building new factories" to avoid games being too snowbally and ending too quickly.
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I wouldn't call them Avro Lancaster and B-17/B-24. I would use generic names, like "pure heavy bomber" and "fortress heavy bomber" or such.
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I have tested my game with movement 4 ships; it doesn't work.
The USA could invade Japan in 2 rounds, the UK can invade Italy in 1 round, Japan can invade Australia in 1 round, etc. It's basically unplayable, even though my map's sea zones are even more numerous than World at War's sea zones.
Even with a movement of 3, I feel like you need new rules like "no using captured factories" and "no building new factories" to avoid games being too snowbally and ending too quickly.
Sure. That was just a "maybe" and would have to be tested once the map is available. It depends on the map. It's easy enough to change movement values, see how it goes. A main problem, however, is that carriers would move too fast with respect to their aircraft (which may work but would be silly), so a new feature for allowing carriers to launch aircraft after moving would be needed (arguably).
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@Cernel said:
For game-play (realistic or not - and I would say not too much if not), it would be necessary for India to have very low placement ability (factories) (and being able to place little TUV, meaning being restricted to placing infantry (a good number but not too many of them - whether realistic or not, I know there were many Indians in the British army) and hardly anything else - kind of like China even though the situation was not as bad as China after 1937), while having fairly high production (income) and being part of the British Empire - meaning sharing its income with the United Kingdom - so that India is mostly a British cash-cow that Japan can take and the British cannot defend alone, thus pressure from the United States in Pacific is needed, or the Japanese take India.I think Kurt actually set himself up to handle this pretty easily if he wants since he split MP and PU into two different resources. He can do something like the conscript model he has for Italy/USSR/China (call it Colonial Infantry instead of Conscript for flavor here) where it’s a unit that only costs MP but is limited to only being produced in India, and India has high MP resources but relatively low PU.
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Also, some planes were harder to shoot down than others, and this is reflected in me giving some airplanes more hitpoints than others.
I guess your are not doing it, but it would be good if you split the heavy bombers available since start game at least into two different units, one mainly representing the Avro Lancaster and the other one mainly representing the B-17 (and the B-24 too if you don't want to split in 3) (I'm not talking about other future/tech ones like the B-29). The B-17 should have more hit-points and more defensive power than the Avro Lancaster, but the Avro Lancaster should have a slightly bigger bombing power (not much). This can be balanced by making the Avro Lancaster cheaper (whether or not this is the case) or just letting the United States have an advantage in heavy bombers over Britain.
The initial strategic bomber is the same for all nations. The final version is different for each. (This includes America Pacific vs. America Atlantic.)
America Pacific's final strategic bomber is the Liberator. America Atlantic's is the Flying Fortress. And Britain's is the Avro Lancaster. Of the three, the Avro Lancaster has the hardest hitting power, due to the "Tall Boy and Grand Slam" tech. Uniquely among the three, it can benefit from Window tech, which adds -1 to the interception value of enemy air. The Flying Fortress has the most ability to defend itself against interception. The Liberator has a longer range than a Flying Fortress. Germany, Japan, and the Soviet Union each also get their own final version of strategic bombers, though their final versions are below those of the U.K. and U.S. Japan's version is a little better than Germany's version or the Soviet Union's version.
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@Cernel said:
For game-play (realistic or not - and I would say not too much if not), it would be necessary for India to have very low placement ability (factories) (and being able to place little TUV, meaning being restricted to placing infantry (a good number but not too many of them - whether realistic or not, I know there were many Indians in the British army) and hardly anything else - kind of like China even though the situation was not as bad as China after 1937), while having fairly high production (income) and being part of the British Empire - meaning sharing its income with the United Kingdom - so that India is mostly a British cash-cow that Japan can take and the British cannot defend alone, thus pressure from the United States in Pacific is needed, or the Japanese take India.I think Kurt actually set himself up to handle this pretty easily if he wants since he split MP and PU into two different resources. He can do something like the conscript model he has for Italy/USSR/China (call it Colonial Infantry instead of Conscript for flavor here) where it’s a unit that only costs MP but is limited to only being produced in India, and India has high MP resources but relatively low PU.
I like this idea.
I could see this going in one of two different ways.
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Let's say I give India 5 MPs. These are used to buy five colonial militia per turn, which are placed on India. A colonial militia would be a conscript by another name.
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I give India five MPs. These MPs are added to Britain's general pool of MPs. They don't necessarily get spent in India. Britain could use them to buy more infantry for London, for example, with which to prepare an invasion of Europe. Britain could have used the MPs for colonial militia for India. It just chose not to.
I like 1) a lot more than 2). Once my weekly usage limit resets, I could have a conversation with Claude about this.
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KurtGodel7 said:
@Cernel said:
For game-play (realistic or not - and I would say not too much if not), it would be necessary for India to have very low placement ability (factories) (and being able to place little TUV, meaning being restricted to placing infantry (a good number but not too many of them - whether realistic or not, I know there were many Indians in the British army) and hardly anything else - kind of like China even though the situation was not as bad as China after 1937), while having fairly high production (income) and being part of the British Empire - meaning sharing its income with the United Kingdom - so that India is mostly a British cash-cow that Japan can take and the British cannot defend alone, thus pressure from the United States in Pacific is needed, or the Japanese take India.I think Kurt actually set himself up to handle this pretty easily if he wants since he split MP and PU into two different resources. He can do something like the conscript model he has for Italy/USSR/China (call it Colonial Infantry instead of Conscript for flavor here) where it’s a unit that only costs MP but is limited to only being produced in India, and India has high MP resources but relatively low PU.
I like this idea.
I could see this going in one of two different ways.
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Let's say I give India 5 MPs. These are used to buy five colonial militia per turn, which are placed on India. A colonial militia would be a conscript by another name.
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I give India five MPs. These MPs are added to Britain's general pool of MPs. They don't necessarily get spent in India. Britain could use them to buy more infantry for London, for example, with which to prepare an invasion of Europe. Britain could have used the MPs for colonial militia for India. It just chose not to.
I like 1) a lot more than 2). Once my weekly usage limit resets, I could have a conversation with Claude about this.
Okay, I feel silly. The obvious way of solving this problem is: don't allow India to give Britain PUs. Instead, Britain receives free bonus units for India. These bonus units will be colonial militia. I should probably make Britain research tech to unlock the free units.
In fact I have something like this in the game already, except that Britain is getting free infantry for India. I need to change that to colonial militia and increase their number.
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