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Played some Triumph & Tragedy today and we're finally at the end of 1938. AFTER FIVE HOURS Germany declared war on the West basically in the first turn and I've been chilling in the East as the Soviets trying to industrialize to win via economy collecting peace dividends while using diplomacy actions to try to keep things even between the fascists and the decadent west. 
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Jan 2, 2024 03:42
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 05:21 |
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Raenir Salazar posted:Played some Triumph & Tragedy today and we're finally at the end of 1938. Any notable weird politics in the game? A quick glance shows that Japan isn't in the game, which is a big omission
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Jan 2, 2024 17:15
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Triskelli posted:Any notable weird politics in the game? A quick glance shows that Japan isn't in the game, which is a big omission I mean, the full title of the game is "Triumph and Tragedy: European Balance of Power 1936-1945" so that may explain some omissions.
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Jan 2, 2024 17:36
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Triskelli posted:Any notable weird politics in the game? A quick glance shows that Japan isn't in the game, which is a big omission It's a very interesting game to think about in terms of history; and its geopolitics, I haven't chewed on it much but there's a lot of interesting design choices. For one, it definitely seems to kinda sorta heavily internalize in its gameplay the Soviet/Russian imperial view of Eastern Europe. You're literally supposed to look at the board from the right side of the board looking towards the opposite side; and a lot of mechanics basically reward you (as well as the other players) for setting up puppets in your near abroad as a tripwire.  Arrows drawn indicating the way you're supposed to look at the board. So if I'm looking at how to defend the USSR, especially from the Germans, they look to be my main thread, which my force posture reflects. From there I'm also setting up friendly neutrals/protectorates so they have to dow me to attack them; and in order to win, I need to dominate enough of the world for resources/population to win by Economic Victory. The game does reward me for staying out of WW2; I gain victory points each turn for staying at peace, the victory points gained are random, between 0 and 2; so no one can know for sure when you might have secretly won the game. However being at war makes it faster to industrialize, so between that and a military victory (you need 2 enemy capitals to win, i.e Germany wants Paris and London or Paris and Leningrad), there's a risk one of the belligerents can win the game before I can. Right now the war (slightly older picture) was very touch and go, Germany struck first, invading the Low Countries and Blitzing into Paris, and then tried to Sea lion Britain a couple of times. Britain was on the backfoot until the US entered the war (Britain got lucky and turn 2 was able to influence the US into their action, I tried lightly contesting it but failed). It being so touch in go made me SUPER CAUTIOUS, full papa stalin roleplaying here of just moving very carefully avoiding even twitching to prevent one side from winning, and interfering with who had the upper hand. This meant 1938 I mostly worked to boot Germany from Scandinavia through diplomacy cards to sabotage their resources (your industry is how you buy action cards, build/upgrade troops, or build new factories and is set to the lowest ticker between resources, population and industry) while UK was still trying to retake the initiative, they abandoned India and quickly won Africa/the Med to threaten Germany in Italy and have enough breathing room to raid Low Countries. Basically if you military invade a neutral country (i.e if I invade Poland), both my rivals gain extra action cards equal to the population of its capital, soPoland gives 3 action cards to both players. I saw that the German player seemed to be constantly burning through action cards so while they were winning I didn't want to fuel their war machine so I instead focused on flipping neutrals with diplomacy. Germany fighting the West super early not only drags out how long the game takes (lol) but also has very interesting effects on the rest of the game; because it potentially hands me the game if one of them can't win decisively, it dragging out is giving me a pretty decent chance to win, but the West is regaining the upper hand (DDay was successful and Paris is liberated and they're now ahead of me in industry and ahead of Axis), so I might have to do something soon, like hopefully flip Persia or maybe I might have to just straight up invade and not gain any other victory points from being at peace. The thing is it kinda seems like you're incentivized to attack whoeever the 3rd faction is, because once theyre dragged in they can't just freely get resources, and need to rely on what they can get from their friendly neutral club. But it does also make building factories cheaper as they switch to a war economy and even more cheaper if they end up at war with both. It kinda seems like as historically you're best off as the USSR doubling down on the Five Year Plan trying to speed run your industry instead of contesting neutrals and also maybe better off ignoring techs because the tech cards are also industry investment cards and I went and picked up two secret techs which while strong, could've maybe gotten me 2-3 more IC which would've been huge by around now. Without context for what the military situation and the economic situation I made some inoptimal buys I think, also when Germany took Paris and had a big army sitting in France I got nervous that they were going to immediately turn on me so I kicked their influence out of Poland and spend some industry building up my military and reinforcing Leningrad as thats all they needed for victory. Which worked, as apparently the German player said it actually deterred them and London looked easier to take. I wonder if its actually better for the Axis to either stay at peace and wait for the West or Soviets to dow first and build up because they have a higher starting industry but lower resources and spend time trying to secure more neutrals, or go East after the Soviets. It kinda seems like there's a sorta incentive for the West and Axis to cooperate on facing the "Bolshevik menance" first because so far it seems like the moment the Fascist Hitlerites and the Decadent Western Democracies fight each other it takes a lot of pressure off the USSR to be ready for an invasion. Not helped by the multiple times one of the Axis or Western players are like, "Heya wanna have a truce to take care of the bigger threat?"  It sure made me deploy some stuff near India just in case haha. Soviet troops also only have a maximum strength of 3 pips but Axis and West can have 4 pips as their max; and start with more troops at or near max; so there's a stronger incentive for the Axis and maybe the West to strike first; while the USSR starts at basically low strength units and isn't in any position to invade anyone. You can also only upgrade a unit once a year, so casualties really heavily erode your combat capability as the war drags on and building up a military from scratch is painfully slow. So there's some stuff that's pretty historical and other stuff that is Very Interesting.
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Jan 2, 2024 17:55
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Randalor posted:I mean, the full title of the game is "Triumph and Tragedy: European Balance of Power 1936-1945" so that may explain some omissions. There's a pacific game called Conquest and Consequence which handles the Pacific side of things, though the linking rules are still a wip. This bifurcation in ww2 games is pretty common- Advanced Third Reich got a pacific expansion called Empire of the Rising Sun in the 90s to finally handle the Pacific side. Axis Empires had Totaler Krieg based on Krieg! from the 90s, and updated through the years, and Dai Senso first dropped in 2011 (with some serious balance issues) before being revised for Axis Empires Ultimate. The main reason is basically it is very difficult to make a map that works for both and is generally acceptable with the level of detail these grog games expect. A3R in fact uses different movement costs and ranges to accomodate an entirely different hex scale in the Pacific, and Dai Senso just has entirely different land units for each theater with different movement allowances to handle that. Panzeh fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Jan 2, 2024 |
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Jan 2, 2024 20:36
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Got to play Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory over the weekend. Definitely an odd duck. I jokingly called it "Root For Boring People" and while that's meaner than deserved, it's not far off.:strip_icc()/pic5715770.jpg) Each player is one of the classes of the society of a small faceless country. Working Class, Capitalist Class, Middle Class, State. If you have fewer than four then the State dips out first, then the Middle Class. The politics of this one are fascinatingly materialist but bland. I played the role of the State, and my main goals were raising my legitimacy and avoiding IMF intervention, with some bonus points awarded for meeting the agendas of whichever parliament was just voted in this year. There's a matrix of laws on the main board that allow for higher or lower wages, taxes & tariffs, determine the price of government healthcare and education, and allow for more or less immigration. All of these things naturally have an effect on the different classes. Ultimately I wound up in the middle of most of the Law sliders in order to respond left or right as needed, but the Middle Class wound up winning the game handily that way. But the perspective of the game is resolutely mechanical. The Working Class can provide Workers and can agitate for better working conditions through strikes and bill proposals, but not much else. The Capitalist Class can create businesses that hire workers. The Middle Class feels like a fusion of the Capital and Working Classes, while the State also has businesses. All these businesses spew out resources that the lower classes buy up to meet their needs, while the Capitalist class tends to export everything from grain to iphones for a better profit. There's no violence or coercion in the game. The closest thing are strikes, which didn't wind up happening at all in our first playthrough. I'd like to try it again, but for something as loaded as politics Hegemony feels more like an exercise than a statement
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Feb 20, 2024 20:30
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 05:21 |
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I foud Hegemony as a game to be kinda boring, but i think it'd be more interesting to play in a group that got through it a few times and actually knew the dynamics well enough to play against each other than play multiplayer solitaire (which i find to usually be worker-favored). Which itself is an interesting statement. I do think the lack of violence in its political economy is telling but i can't imagine getting it anywhere near right at a reasonable level of complexity- the logic of war and violence in general works differently from the sociological ant farm that is the systems in Hegemony.
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Feb 23, 2024 13:21
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