Slitherine

So as not to hijack an AAR thread I'll repost aussem's comment here:

"I note a few comments about 'gamey' uses of the Armistice rules and "is it worthwhile to program an exception to deal with this or that circumstance?" plus "I do know that we want the conditions for activation to be a deterministic set of conditions and not based on any random draw". I very much disagree. I believe some of the political intrigues of our game and indeed in real life, are very much changeable and unpredictable just like the weather. Therefore, just like the weather (and in our game we have a fairly simple Weather Chart), we could easily put together a 'Political Chart' that could put some variability into Country activations and really make the game interesting ! Why not ?"

This idea has come up before and been summarily dismissed. OK, so maybe the elite players (for whom the game is all about clever calculations) aren't that interested. But some of us are! We WANT it to be unpredictable. We WANT to worry, as the real leaders did, that Spain or Turkey or Vichy or whatever might do something crazy - and try to be prepared for it. Surely if there's enough interest (poll?) 'less predictable politics' could be programmed as an option? After all, there are plenty of other 'optionals' in GS - most of which are such obviously good ideas that IMO they should be automatic features.

Yes, I realize this means the outcome of a game (with the options on) could be decided by a random factor - which won't appeal to those who see the game as a kind of chess. To me, looking at it first and foremost as history, that just makes it more interesting - less predictable and therefore more re-playable.

I disagree about randomness, but some things could be reconsidered, e.g. Turkey activation. They activate for the Axis when they no longer need them, thus depriving the players of an interesting strategic choice. Spain activation works fine IMO.

Cybvep wrote:I disagree about randomness, but some things could be reconsidered, e.g. Turkey activation. They activate for the Axis when they no longer need them, thus depriving the players of an interesting strategic choice.

I like that, as a separate question from the randomness issue. It might be tricky, though, not to make things too easy for the Axis.

Some ideas for starters: instead of the Axis having to control the whole list of cities to activate Turkey, they only have to control X number of them (adding perhaps some or all of the following: Basra, Batumi, Beirut, Cairo, Damascus, Jerusalem, Mosul, Odessa, Rostov, Sevastopol, Tabriz and Tehran)? And/or have a certain number of troops in the Middle East? Now that's a thought - if getting a large German army into Palestine means activating Turkey, that gives the Axis a reason to go for it - and the Allies a reason to fight hard to stop them, giving fresh life to the in-game irrelevant North Africa theatre. Hmmm... how about the formula "the number of Axis-controlled cities in the above list PLUS the number of Axis corps in the Middle east must be equal to or greater than X"? A few cities (like Athens, Bucharest and Sofia) should probably be 'musts'.

The general consensus is that the Middle East campaign is a waste of time and effort, so if it was up to me, I would try to change Turkey activation to sweeten the ME route a bit. This:

instead of the Axis having to control the whole list of cities to activate Turkey, they only have to control X number of them

actually sounds quite good. However, I would like to hear the opinions of other players about this.

ATM activating Turkey is almost impossible. I mean, Athens, Bucharest, Sofia, Moscow, Baku and Baghdad? Seriously?

After Germany and USSR signed the R&M pact (08/39), Turkey signed a treaty with Britain and France for financial aid. (10/39)

Then in 41' Turkey signed a treaty with Stalin guaranteeing that the USSR would not attack Turkey. (03/41) Then in (06/41) right before Barbarossa Turkey signed a treaty with Germany guaranteeing they would not attack Turkey. So Turkey did not want to be involved in the war on either side. They did in 45' so as to be a participant in the new United Nations. I believe the current trigger conditions are correct.

Spain also maintained neutrality. That doesn't mean that it wouldn't change no matter what. Also, there are gameplay considerations, too.

I always favor probabilities. This could be e.g.
=> Paris add 25% and each NA city (west of Tripoli) add 10% for Spain activation for one of the side (Axis or Allies). Or to make Casablanka the balancer it could add 25% and other cities in NA only 5%.
=> Same for Turkey: 25% for Moscow, 25% for Baghdad, 25% for Basra + Suez, Cairo, Alexandria, Beirut, Damascus +5% (nice flavour for Axis if they control Egypt that Turkey may join, gives an incentive for Axis to go for Egypt and strong incentive for Allies to defend it)

IMO these cities should count towards Turkey activation:
Suez, Damascus, Baghdad, Teheran, Sevastopol, Moscow, Stalingrad, Baku, Athens, Bucharest, Sofia

If we want to make Turkey activation more random, it could work like this:
1. The Axis needs to control at least 5 cities from the list.
2. Base activation chance is 10% every turn.
3. Every city above 5 increases the activation chance by 15%.

Therefore, if everything goes historical, Turkey won't join, but if the Axis is more successful in Russia or in the ME, then there will be a chance that Turkey will join. Several REAL strategic options would become available, as the Axis player would have a nice incentive to be more aggressive in some areas, most notably in Greece, Africa, the Middle East and Crimea.

avoran wrote: We WANT it to be unpredictable. We WANT to worry, as the real leaders did, that Spain or Turkey or Vichy or whatever might do something crazy - and try to be prepared for it.

To me, looking at it first and foremost as history, that just makes it more interesting - less predictable and therefore more re-playable.

Yes, yes. Ooooh, yes please. That I would pay for!

Not sure that I am so worked up about Turkey, as has been pointed out, historically it was unlikly to enter the war. (Unless DoWed.) But some unpredictibility re Spain, Vichy (by the by, why is Syria, entirely unhistorically, allied. It would be far more interesting if Vichy Syria were a separate minor power, and the allies would have to DoW if they want it, as they did in fact) Iraq sounds excellent and historically justifiable. Players who don't like it or who want an unhistorically balanced game (which is fair enough) can just toggle it off.

All these ideas talk about how the powers may join the Axis. But there is not talk about how the Allies would react. It is like they will continue on with the original timeline while the Axis timeline can vary. If Turkey would join the Axis early what would the allies do? Would the USA join earlier? Would the convoys be increased ? The conversation IMO is one sided.

If Turkey would join the Axis early what would the allies do? Would the USA join earlier?

Considering that it would activate only if you advanced deep into the SU and/or in the Middle East, I don't see how that would be a problem. The USA joins in 1941, anyway. Historically they joined because of the Pearl Harbour attack - before that they were rather isolationistic and Turkey isn't important enough to force them to join. The USA doesn't join early even when GB is conquered by the Germans, so...

pk867 wrote:All these ideas talk about how the powers may join the Axis.

Not strictly true, see the poll thread.

But that said, yes, I tried to come up with ideas for countries randomly joining the Allies (other than the way Spain and Turkey already can) and none of them seemed very plausible. Except possibly Vichy. Or maybe (a bigger stretch) Portugal.

It makes sense there is current talk of nations joining the Axis side because the Axis has momentum early in the war. Once this momentum reversed then neutral nations (and axis satellites) would be more likely to join up with the Allies. Unfortunately this is a rich-get-richer situation that will always be at odds with game balance. I think Grand Strategy does a pretty good job of allowing Spain to join the axis without impacting game balance - in fact I would argue axis attempts to get Spain to join them actually helps the Allies more than the Axis in most cases, so this situation changes up the typical game without leading to a dramatic increase in momentum that would make the game unplayable.

It would be more difficult to get Turkey involved though. They would only consider joining the Axis side if the Axis was doing much better in the east (and in North Africa/Middle East) than they did historically. The only way I could imagine including this game option while retaining some game balance would be to apply a boost in USSR forces (EG: Free spawned units) if the Axis was able to sway Turkey to their side. This boost in forces could represent additional emergency lend-lease assistance from the west as well as the backs-to-the-wall recruitment desperation for the Russians. That's one idea anyway, but whether that enhances the game a lot is up for debate. One positive aspect of this idea would be to encourage more game play in North Africa & the Middle East (that is assuming the net gain of Turkish forces > the free USSR units value). A negative aspect to this idea is that 'more' is not necessarily better, and just having more units to push around might not be worth the play testing time required for this enhancement.

Another idea, this time helping the Allies, would be to allow Italy to switch sides as they did later in the war. The Allies would need to be on Italian soil already, and Germany would have to keep a certain number of units stationed in Italy to prevent this. Not sure if this is technically possible in CEAW-GS since Italy is a major, but an alternate idea would be to just have Italy surrender early instead of switch sides, and all it's units would disappear from the map. That would be more programmatically possible and somewhat historic as well, since Italian units did not play a particularly vital role on the Allies side anyway at that point in WW2.

Regardless of any proposed changes related to Turkey or other nations, I do love the idea of in-game user risk/reward options like the Axis decision to accept or refuse the French armistice, and I think it would be great to have a few additional choices like this during the game for both the Axis & Allies. This would certainly mix things up from game to game.