With the greatly reduced distances on Map from the War in Europe game, I would suggest reducing the movement points for units by about 1/3 - 1/2. That or increase the cost to traverse a hex. For example it used to take 2 turns for a British sub to get back to a port on the British isles from the Norway convoy route near Denmark to repair, a turn to repair, and then two turns to get back to the convoy route for a total trip of 5 turns. Now two full turns have been shaved off the trip meaning British subs are far more effective than before.

And in Russia once the initial lines is breached an armor unit can reach Moscow in about 2-3 turns. Given how hard it is to even build additional units to throw something up in front of this advance, this will be fatal to any multiplayer game and almost impossible for an AI game. Russia no longer feels like a vast steppe, land movement needs to be greatly reduced to compensate for the much smaller map.

Also it feels like the attacker is far too powerful in game now, the allies have no chance of building up their OOB's when 100% of their income goes to rebuilding losses and yet still many units are left damaged. Both Russia and China suffer this fate currently. This occurs even with max investment in industry growth and equal infantry tech to the Axis.

I routinely see the defender take 1-3 points more damage than the attacker, this is far too much, especially when it comes to air power virtually wiping out an army in 2 or 3 attacks. Units didn't seem to take such high losses in the first game, has something changed in the combat algorithms? Air power should not be able to reduce actual combat strength so much in units, rather morale loss should be its main effect with an occasional 1 point strength loss.

The Burma road in China needs to be opened from game start, China is toast as soon as Indochina cuts off supplies from the US since China takes far too many losses for its income to keep up with repairs after that. Historically the road was opened in 1938, so it should be up and running from game start. Though it should be closed from July-August 1940, as historically Britain closed it temporarily due to political pressure from Japan.

I've played the first game for years and am very competent at the game. This version feels very unbalanced and definitely does not play like the original.

Hi

Thanks for the feedback. Can you tell me what difficulty level you're playing at as this will help us?

In terms of air units, their attack values are actually lower than they were in our previous games such as WWII: War in Europe (they have just been lowered in that to bring them in line with this game). Is there an air force in particular that is doing better than others at ground attacks, and could their research and HQ support be a factor?

Bill

Normal difficulty level. I think my impressions about air power have more to do with CV air now that I've started over on a second game. Japan practically wipes out an army a turn with carrier air power due to the two attacks a turn from 4 or more carriers sitting off the coast, bad weather is my only hope of surviving against this power.

I saw a single strike kill 6 points off a low morale army, though perhaps low readiness and morale is the real culprit, it just seems too much and blows the front wide open if there are several good weather turns in a row. I think carriers should be limited to coastal strikes only and then only one attack a turn per carrier, this would possibly help China survive a lot better.

Also perhaps give all land units 1 point of AA as part of their intrinsic 0 tech level defense. The cost to first research AA and then upgrade all its armies is prohibitive to a country like China where just about every point is needed to go back into repairs almost every turn.

I have managed to do better this go around by forgoing any tech except infantry and industry for China. By leaving AA tech alone I am still losing ground but the extra cash from not upgrading AA has helped a bit. Though recently my front has become quite unstable and I am now losing most front line cities, so perhaps all I managed to do is delay the inevitable.

I did a similar thing in Russia with very minimal techs and managed to survive through the first winter. But now Germany is tech 2 inf and 3 armor and I'm way behind on tech so I suspect the spring will see my larger but still too small force get shattered again like it did in 41 in my first attempt. So again I may have simply delayed the inevitable.

Does the AI get cheats on normal? I ask because it seems the axis is way outbuilding me in numbers of units and tech. I've given Russia as much lend lease as possible but still have a good 10 armies yet to build in the production list by April 42. In War in Europe, I could have the full army OOB on map by now and be a good chunk of the way into the corp OOB list.

I should mention for readers that even though there may be some minor balance issues I'm still having an absolute blast with the game.

Thanks for this, and it's good to hear how much you're enjoying the game too!

I wonder if buying AA units for China would help? I know that losing key locations can be painful, but if that can be avoided as much as possible then one good thing is the cost of repairing their Carriers will probably be a fair amount.

Certainly the feedback I've seen on balance between China-Japan in the early years has differed widely, i.e. some players had been able to drive the Japanese back. So I'm keeping an eye on all feedback to see how close things now are to a rough balance there.

I'm also keeping an eye on the Soviet ability to hold back the Axis.

The AI may have some extra income and units, the exact setting of the former being adjustable in the options, and at that level there shouldn't be many of the latter.

There are some posts offering strategy advice on the matrix games forums that might be worth visiting, although there is a lot of fun to be had from working through it yourself!