Stacking Limits

[Flashman]

Aldertag's reaction to my map -

"too many areas, too many sea zones, too many IPCs"

led me thinking that, if we do have all of these things, do we also need some kind of stacking limit per territory?

The reason is that the game could become dominated by a number of "super-stacks" of the kind that ruined AAE. In other words players might use this extra income to build large field armies which stomp around the map sucking up undefended lands until they collide with each other in mega deathmatches. Quite fun, but not Axis and Allies.

So perhaps a limit of ten units per area, maybe 12 with the presence of a General?

[Larry]

Starting to sound contrived...

[FleetAdmiral]

I disagree, a 12 unit stacking limit would be difficult, especially if using National Advantages such as Joint Strike.

Stacking limits are good in Operational scale games such as Battle of the Bulge. But such imposing such limits on Axis and Allies were you build your units instead of receiving them as reinforcements would take away from the fun of building those mega armies.

No stacking limits have another advantage, it helps to ensure that players can be penalized if they have their forces out of position when their opponents attack.

And lastly, large stacks of men help to keep an interesting game going, instead of ending early by forcing an opponent to disperse his forces due to territory stacking limits.

[Hefsgaard]

A larger number of zones (sea or land) will proberly force players to disperce the megastacks to cover multiple accessroutes/attacklanes.

[Flashman]

OK, just an idea.

But I don't want to end up with another AAE superstack clomping all over the map. Say a power has a three-territory border with it's main opponent. I want a game where his forces are likely to be distributed more or less evenly across those territories, rather than just one big stack for killing anything that moves. There's little point in having a larger map if victory comes down to controlling the same few territories by building the biggest single stack.

[davion76]

This is why I would like to see a simple supply rule added. At the beginning of a turn, check to see if there is a line of territories back to an industrial complex and/or a victory city. If you wanted to include sea territories, a transport would be required (or maybe more complicated, #transports available * X units are in supply). Units that aren't in supply get attack/defence value -1) This would do two things at once - reduce the number of uberstacks, and 2) make the blitz potentially more effective by surrounding troops and cutting off their supply.