I like the "Switzerland is impassable" rule.

You gotta respect the time that he puts into these videos. Great script and great editing, lots interesting and insightful information here. Probably the best a&a content on theis webisite. I dont think I've felt this way about an axis and allies channel since i found corporal clegg's videos

Another great series on Axis & Allies. Learned a lot from it - thank you. Just picked up my first copy and have played only 1 game so far, but both my son and I really enjoyed it and look forward to our next one. - Great shout outs to the Community as well.

And yet another Axis & Allies 'brain puzzle' solved. This was a great series. The thing about WW1 1914, is that even if both sides play the optimal strategy every time, the game doesn't become boring. The tactical depth in this game adds so much, which makes it very engaging and tense. It would be cool if Renegade Games listened to your video and implemented the balancing changes in the reprint you mentioned!

I haven't even played the game yet but I have listened to your amendments carefully and even without experience, I think you have really understood the game and made some excellent changes to balance the game up. Well done.

Great series man! Cant wait to see what you jave in store next! Hilltop is a real gentleman, i got the pleasure to play with him once because i won a contest, had a great tike even though i got absolutely smoked. He said he do a rematch sometime i just havent found the time yet.

I just set this game up today. Ive never played, so Im looking for videos exactly like this! Thanks. I know many of the A&A games are not balanced, and Im glad there is a large community of players like you.

A well done conclusion to this series. My friends and I look forward to playing the game with your recommendations for rebalance. In addition we would look forward to your analysis of playing the game with tournament rules. In the mean time, we will also play the tournament rules game and applying your recommendations for rebalance.

I feel like the Gen Con tournament rules are much better then the rules you showed in this video. Atm we find that a bid of 12 to the CP balances it fairly way. Great video mate!

A five star series! Truly well done and likely the best resource for any players of A&A1914. The layout, the depth, the sound and video quality. Congratulations on a truly exceptional set of videos!

Im in round 11 of a solo game and the board looks almost exactly what you predicted. Aye aye Captain!

Great insight

I really enjoyed the series

Another idea for the neutrals is the g40 rule about attacking neutrals. If the opposite side attacks a strict neutral then they will join the side that did not attack them.

once again, thanks for the link on the TripleA map, I've tried it (playing vs myself, to see the game mech etc), and I can say it's a REALLY hard game! And yes, it is Allied favored, I agree. I've even had quite a strong Axis opening, excellent fleet dice which postponed any Allied fleet engagements (even having some German fleet in port threatening northern Allied lines), Axis managed to take Moscow eventually without too many losses (still a 3-4 round battle) and Ottomans managed to defend in Mesopotamia for a long long time, then even repulsed the British in Constantinople (with taking AU casualties on the initial British attacks), AU has a massive stack in Trieste, even pushed Germans midgame through Switzerland to take out Rome (which Italy expedition I now believe was a strategic mistake, they eventually lost it to US and thus lots of the best troops gone, Switzerland was fine though).... Still France outpaces Germany in production (twas AU's task to take out Russia so it reaped the IPC benefits). So Germans are on defense all the time, with some German territories contested continually (at least not Ruhr). But I definitely agree that the possibility that UK builds as many as they wish in India, outpacing anything the Ottomans can produce at a huge margin, and the involvement of the US pretty early is a major problem for the Axis. This even as I had to sacrifice a round of US produce to make 4 more transports in order to contest immediately the Germans in Italy (well payed off in the long run since they did get wiped by US infantry numbers). Another thing with taking Russia as Axis: yes it pays off, but again the UK can always land troops in Karelia via the north passage and recreate Russia in 2 rounds. So, AU must keep a number of defensive troops all the time there. Also AU had to sacrifice a huge amount of troops to save Constantinople (again, vs a great Ottoman early to mid game) and now it's Russian possessions are under threat fro India too... Hard to take and hard to keep Russia, as UK always has a 2-3 rounds attack on Moscow from any factory, while Axis can buy troops only in their own capitols (and are constantly fed towards the West or Albania)... Had I mentioned the Allied didn't even have the time to take Greece?!? Geez

I’ve watched the whole series and this culmination video. Awesome job on the entire effort. There is a dearth of in-depth strategy content for 1914 on KZfaq so thank you for filling the gap! We have taken your recommended balancing rules after playing normal out-of-the-box rules for our first game. The second game with the balancing was somewhat one sided in favor of the Central Powers but I think that was mainly due to ridiculous luck that knocked out Russia on turn 4 and a massive culling of French forces in the West. Additionally, the German navy survived into turn 4 parked in the English Channel (bad die rolls for the Entente) and basically delayed Great Britain being able to land the BEF in Europe until turn 5. Finally, overall inexperience of all players lent to the somewhat one-sided nature of the game. I played as Germany and my friend played as Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire after having watched your entire 1914 series. I think this gave us a leg up out of the gate while the Entente players suffered from plain old bad luck and tentative play all around. For instance, Great Britain made no move against the Turks until turn 3, giving the Ottoman player a surprising defensive wall next to Persia by the time the British forces attempted to break through there. All in all, I really like your balancing recommendations, but the Entente players were salty so we’re going to try out-of-the-box rules again and see how that goes now that we know the game a bit better. Funnily enough, the American/Italian player was most salty about the rule that shuts down IPC production in a contested territory. Being an original rule, I thought it funny he had issue with that one. I think the abstraction of the grinding nature of fully industrialized warfare manifested in the one round combat combined with no IPC production is a great example of why this version of A&A is fantastic. Can’t wait for your next series. I know a lot of folks have asked for you to consider looking at the 1914 tournament rules. I would ask that, if you have access to the game (understandable if not), you consider providing a breakdown of Larry Harris’s War Room. The mechanics that game features are very deep and satisfying while being presented in a relatively easily digestible ruleset. I think your mind applied to that game’s puzzle would be endlessly fascinating. Regardless, I look forward to your future videos, whatever the topic. Great job and thank you!

Thanks CAPTAIN

Necessary to balance the game and to comply with historical rigor is that Italy enter the war in 1915 (second turn). With this addition, it is not necessary to postpone the entry of the United States into the war until 1918, but to leave it as it historically was in 1917. I agree with the need for the United States not to acquire IPC until its entry into the war, the same thing that should happen with Italy

My thoughts on tanks are a bit more negative. I thought at first it was the best unit in the game, but I wanted to find out for sure so I did a bunch of tests with the battle calculator. I set a number of 105 IPCs and bought several different types of armies from it, ranging from 35 infantry, 14 inf + 14 art + fighter, 17 tanks and one infantry, a balanced army, and so on, up to a number of six armies in total. I then put all six armies against each other and used the TripleA battle calculator to calculate the TUV swing, both for an attack as well as a potential counter-attack by the defending army, to find out which combination of units was the best. It turns out, that the army of 17 tanks is the only one that has a positive TUV swing when attacking 35 infantry. That sounds good, but when the remainder of the infantry counter-attacks the tank force, the TUV swing starts swinging heavily in favor of the infantry. This is because defending tanks are so extremely bad, and are quite expensive compared to the other units. In the end, the tank army performed worse than most other armies. The army that performed the best was the 14 inf + 14 art + fighter army. That one was almost on par with attacking the 35 infantry and only pulled off victories against the other armies. So what I think is the best army composition, is an army containing a more or less equal amount of infantry and artillery (preferably a bit more infantry than artillery to soak up hits so that the artillery won't get killed in battle), and as many air units possible because the air supremacy is very important. I think tanks are only better if you attack someone with an inferior army. That way, the tanks will be able to absorb all the hits when attacking and the enemy won't be able to inflict as much damage when defending. However, if you are attacking an army that is almost as strong as yours, the tanks will fight like paper during the counter-attack, and in the long run you will become at a disadvantage just because the numbers aren't in your favor.

14:25 Thanks for sharing this. I never knew about this rule! I am sure I have done this wrong several times in my games lol. Thanks a lot for doing this series. A&A 1914 is a special game and feels very different compared to other A&A games. It's very interesting to see what your thoughts are on this version. I am glad that I took part in this, and I enjoyed our games a lot. I feel like when I play the Entente, the Americans are not fast enough to bolster the frontline. What then happens is that the CP units outnumber my troops and start slowly pushing back, often causing problems. At some point, they break through Switzerland or Burgundy, and then I have a hard time defending all territories. I feel the same in our ongoing game (sorry for just leaving that game, I was getting very busy at the time and the game was becoming so complex, that I had to spend a lot of time on my moves. I wanted to take every possibility into consideration, and didn't dare to make a move, because it maybe could lose the game). I also feel that this might happen in my game with Ragnell too. In the middle and late stages of the game, I always find the scariest, because one bad move and the CP might break through and pose serious problems. You mentioned that the game is more balanced if you make USA weaker by removing their starting money and allowing them to join on turn 5. In that case, there must be a better way to defend the Western Front, because even without the debuff I am having trouble lol :) My strategy is to just build lots of infantry, and keep building and building, hoping that the economic difference will eventually pay itself off, but even with OOB rules, I find it hard. Maybe it has to do with making absolutely sure that Switzerland doesn't fall, but I always fear that Northern France is then susceptible to attacks. Anyway, if you feel like continuing our game, I'd be happy to pick it up again. If you prefer, we could start a new one as well. P.S. If you want to dive into Anniversary 1942 at some point, I would love to play a game of that with you. I've been playing a couple of games against opponents online, and I really like the 1942 setup. I think it's a very interesting game and also a very different experience compared to 1941.

I had the same problem with French troops in Albania as early as round 4/5. Really annoying to have to deal with that if you haven't taken Russia.

Just playtested a game. You're right, it's definitely much easier for the Central Powers to win and it barely affects the game.

Nice series, one question though about the AAA 1914 games you mentioned you played: which map are you playing on?!? I can't find this map and rules applicaple on the download tab of AAA, thus I ask. Thanks in advance! EDIT about the proposed changes for balance: 1. US should enter later anyway, even historically better 2. I understand from the playability point of view, still I strongly disagree due to the historical importance of Greece, namely the Thessaloniki (or southern) front being one very important front in Europe, with UK, French, Serbian and even Italian troops fighting AU, German and Bulgarian troops very hard until it got broken by Entente in late 1918. Maybe another way of dealing with the added IPC gain that Entente gets from these invasions could be reducing the IPC value of these territories along adding defensive troops in them, so the punishment vs the gains would make Entente much more reluctant to take these neutrals, especially if mainly planning on getting IPC advantage (but would still be able to for strategic purposes, while actually losing lots of IPC value in troops for it) 3. The Sea of Marmara was and always will be dependent on the owner of Constantinople / Istanbul. There is no historical way of getting anything through if one does not control the land around the Straits, so totally historically correct along being a welcome change of balance 4. Same with the SZ 18 border: the AU navy spent its time as a fleet in being, at Kotor / Cattaro, and it's mere presence completely prevented Entente's navy entrance through Otranto (the strait between Italy and Albania) that is the entrance into the Adriatic (the new proposed line btw). Any Entente landings in Albania or core AU territories would have been completely broken by an exiting AU navy, thus they weren't even planned. The proposed expanded SZ 18 is the Adriatic sea and it is by definition it's own body of water connected to the Med and always was strategically a whole, since it is rather small and in reality can be traversed in its length by a navy in cca a full day of sailing under steam, and across in less than a night. Meanwhile the SZ 17 as original is a much larger body of sea in the Med and has a choke point towards the Adriatic, and this should be addressed. 5. The Italian Isonzo front opened in 1915. historically never moved an inch towards Austria, in fact 10 offensives got completely broken and then the AU (with German help, again...) did their one and only offensive, broke through the Italian defenses and took 150km of territory and nearly walked into Venice, where they were finally stopped on the banks of the Piave river. Even more important, the Italian front was a "sidefront" for the AU since they had extremely good defensive positions and didn't really have to spend lots of troops and supplies (comparing to East and South fronts) to hold, so it is very historically inaccurate to have Italy as a gigachad nation that can break at will AU defenses and waltz into Tyrol or Trieste. So, again, definitely yes :)

Very informative series of videos, I played the original AandA back in the early 90s, I have not played in years but would like to get the 1914 game but how do you find people to pay with ?

Great series I just finished! I’m no where near as experienced but I do have a few questions. 1 is focusing india as the central powers impossible? Britain has a good economy but they can’t hold off the ottomans and Austria in the mid game by themselves right? And the multi national mostly infantry army on the western front seems horrible for putting up enough pressure to stop them. Faking it should at least make the French make offensive units right? It’s definitely pretty far out of the way and maybe I’m misjudging Germanys ability to hold France and Italy back. 2 have you ever tried alt history set ups? Me and my group do these every now and then and it definitely keeps it interesting. Germany France the ottomans USA vs Britain Austria Russia Italy and other sorts of mix up keep the map always interesting to us. (Also we get to be less competitive for a game lol). How would you rank each nation in which order you would pick them if you were picking for a alt history. Basically what’s your nation tier list. Thanks so much for the series I’ll definitely recommend it for new players getting into WW1! And feel free to ignore my goofy questions.

The Veteran played with you? I'm playing a Global 1940 house rule variant with him on TripleA. Am surprised that he played so much with you. Unfortunately he hasn't responded in a month, I hope he's doing okay. Glad to learn more about Ragnel804. Very cool that you played with him. I assume me and Tamer of Beasts were one of those 11 opponents? Shout out to me, SuperbattleshipYamato, and Tamer of Beasts (if that sounded weird, I'll just say I guess I was doing the shouting out for him, because, as he mentioned, he didn't have the time).

I just picked up this game and got my first game in. I had the advantage of watching your series and took the central powers to victory. Is there anyone out there that makes a larger version of the game board?

I'm surprised you mentioned Greece when talking about neutrals. What is the significance of the territory, why should you invade it, and why did you not mention it at all in your videos? Thank you!

I found the 1914 Calculator. Knowing the typical odds certainly makes a difference. This is a game of infantry, artillery, and fighters. The attacker needs a force of 2:1 Infantry to Artillery and at least 1.5x as much as the defender overall. Once the attacker has sufficient artillery they need infantry to soak up battle casualties so there is no point in purchasing additional artillery unless creating new spearheads. The aggressor should maintain air superiority on all attacks. The defender needs less artillery, about 2/3 as much (3:1), but enough to make a difference should the defender achieve air superiority. The defender should continually try to wrest air superiority from the attacker to blunt their offensive. Tanks are useful only on offense and should not be purchased before attacker air superiority becomes unshakable.

Would it make sense to change Persia from a strict neutral into an Ottoman aligned neutral instead of exempting it from the strict neutrals proposition?

How many times have you placed tested your solution? And what would you have the Americans do now that you’ve taken away in your house rule the one thing you have the Americans doing?

Can you pls make a video series on A&A G-40?

Next will you go over the 1942 second edition strategies?

I’ve always wanted to try bringing in the 1940 global neutral rule. Where if one of them is invaded the rest become alined to the other power. Not sure how much that would help but it seems to me like it would really disincentives attacking them yet still make it viable.

Awesome! Is the game in background the new one or the old one? Also, if you don't mind me asking, how old are you? Thank you!

I'd be interested to see you give the LHTR a whirl, as they're rather elaborate and effectively create a completely different game from OOB due the huge number of mechanics changes (which is unheard of for patches authored by Larry, which usually just boil down to messing with the starting setup or lightly modifying some mechanics like AA Guns). Unfortunately there's no good way to actually play it at the moment without seriously torturing yourself on the already shoddy TripleA setup for this map. That aside, good series as always. It's amusing to me that when you started this trek you barely had any games in on this version but at this point you have ~3X the number of games played that I do. I can't really argue against any of your points although I was surprised to see you recommend physical changes to the game board (revision #4) as you typically stray away from that sort of thing. Personally speaking, I'd keep USA at 20 IPCs + letting them join on turn 4, but I would just have them 100% skip their first 3 turns. It achieves a similar goal to what you're proposing but is ever-so-slightly harsh on them as they don't "start" with 60 IPCs of value to slam into the Central Powers from the second they join the game. Might also incentivize naval play for Central Powers but I highly doubt they can actually manage anything against long-term.

This game really could use an upgraded version. Maybe Renegade could do a revised version with updated rules and an improved map.

By the way, when you rolled that one dice for unrestricted submarine warfare, did you hit or miss? Thank you!

To clarify on the Dardanelles balance rule: A sea combat unit (say, a battleship) in sea zone 17 or 19 can engage an opponent's ships in sea zone 20, even if the opponent controls Constantinople? So on Turn 1 the British cruiser can attack the Ottoman starting ships? Thank you!

In the real war germany could have won the war in any of these years. 1914, 1915, 1916 and 1917. The game does not show that. Still a great game.

Unless I'm forgetful, I think you have never explained why you decided to go with the out-of-the-box rules instead of the tournament ones, I'm wondering. Do you intend eventually to play with those as well?

I agree that it's much harder to win as the Central Powers to win than the Allies using out of box rules. When playing against myself, while it doesn't require that much work for the Allies to win, it takes quite a lot of major Allied mistakes to allow a Central Powers victory.

Hit me up when you start a samurai swords or twilight imperium series.

How have you been playing the physical versions of axis and Allies so much? Do you have a bunch of friends who also happen to have a lot of experience? Or is there some kind of game convention you go to?

Hey, I'm thinking of buying another A&A in addition to my Anniversary Version. I'm wavering between Europe 2nd and 1914, which game would you recommend? How are the playing times for both? Thanks for your reply.

I'm well into my first game and I have a number of proposed house rules. I don't know if anyone will like them but here they are. Britain's navy is ridiculously underpowered on Turn 1. It is unlikely the German navy could so easily have sunk the British home fleet in the opening days of the war. With these changes you are more likely to get the intense land war the designers intended. 1) Switzerland is impassible. 2) The power that owns Constantinople controls passage through the Dardanelles Straight. 3) Britain gets an additional Battleship in Sea Zone 9 on setup. Germany gets 4 extra infantry in Berlin. 4) When playing the Russian Revolution, it can only be triggered when Moscow is contested at the end of the Russia turn. Moscow counts as an allied capital taken should The Revolution come.

Am I missing the link to that guy you played? The Veteran?

I too saw that this game is kinda unbalanced. I noticed that German force in Africa where outnumbered, therefore I evened both sides and eliminated allied transports at the start in the Mediterranean. Now Germany has a chance to conqueror Africa or at least get more territories there. What do you think?

A major historical problem with inaccessible neutrals is that the Allied push from Greece into (Bulgarian controlled) Serbia (more specifically, Vardar Macedonia), knocking Bulgaria out of the war (under the Armistice of Thessalonica), was of relatively major significance. All that Balkan part of the war (already hardly visualizable at all in the current game) would be just ahistorically erased under the assumption of a permanently inaccessible Greece. Again, I concede that whatever historically based argument is inherently very weak when it comes to any Axis&Allies game, and I'm not saying that the game-play would go anywhere like that anyway, but taking Greece out of the playable map would make such matters even worse in principle. Would you consider remaking the present video excepting both Persia and Greece in your second custom rule?

Wait, what? I thought you said it was practically impossible for the Axis to win in Classic using out of box rules.

Instead of banning invasion of unaligned neutrals could you simply say that the Entente powers cannot collect IPCs from controlled unaligned neutrals? That gives more options, has fewer exceptions, and still helps the income disparity.

I think its "imbalanced" by design. The Central powers arent meant or likely to win long term wars. The same way that WW2 A&A dont have the same stakes and does have some points of no return too - so it is so with WW1 1914 A&A. In your analysis, i struggle to quantify the IPC/or state of the game. Is it like in your map in which Russia is conquered and the Ottoman almost out? The allies do have to deal with other realities that this IPC difference that you mention isnt really that relevant for some time. As for the neutral countries part: It should be *similar* to the rules in 1940 global: if you invade a neutral country, all the other ones joins the opposite faction ( with troops equal to the IPC value) Balance isnt just based on IPC amount, like the start of the game - not everything is "balanced" from numerical standpoints - there are trade offs. The question is, do the CP have enough forces early to compensate or enough turns before the US joins or Russia leaves? Thats all part of overall balance and not simply "at this point int time, its imba because the IPC is different" Thats not a good way to judge balance in a game.

I think that the British should not b able to build only infantry in India, there were no factorys or machine tools to produce anything else , plus Belgium should be allied to the British !!!! as the invasion by Germany was the reason , excuse to join the fighting .there's some cards for this game which should spice things up as well , plus on a diplomatic front Turkey wanted to join on the other side!!! but obviously england didn't want a victoris turk in their area !!! which means italy would have joined central powers as Turkey is their no 1 enemy , very interesting options to explore,

I've played 7 games and all of them rhe Central powers won. I've even checked with friends to make sure im playing it correctly. So...

I don't see how the Allies can possibly win with the OOB rules. Once Russia and the Balkans are conquered, the Ottomans take Bulgaria and Sebastopol, and Austria takes Italy, the Central Powers have a 40 point lead in IPCs. Paris is toast. It seems to me Austria is overpowered and the US, Britain, and France are underpowered. Also the British Atlantic Fleet is significantly understrength at the beginning of the game.

The funny thing about what you say happens arround the 12th turn is nothing else than a clear depiction of historical reality. WW1 was not "balanced", the central Powers never had any fighting chance, and most of their victories and initial conquests were, to tell the truth, the result of the fact that many Entente leaders were even less competent than the Austro-Hungarians ones, which should have been a technical impossibility. If the game shows this reality... then... it is a very accurate historical simulation. The only way to make it more fun is to polay it unhistorically - e.g. italy does not join the Entente, the US does not enter war ... etc

Its good to use these rules and implement them with the larry harris modifications? Also after playing a while against other players as almost always CP , i came to the solution that ottomans should start with 1 battleship with 2 cruisers as usual, and remove russia navy, russia is already pretty strong, giving them a free navy is pointless,and make no sense , overall great video👍👍

Those American colors in the Q&A looks weird.

Congrats on your effort but permit me to disagree. 1) The unbalance is an essential element of the game and shouldn't be seen as a negative: the game is a race against time for the Central Power (or Axis in WW2). 2) Instead of messing up with the game with ever crazier house rules, hyper-experienced players should consider retiring from A&A and explore other games or hobbies.

Ottoman's should at least start with 2-3 more icp in my strong opinion I get maybe it's supposed to be scripted but not very fun to play something scripted and ottomans are one of thee most unique factions in game and in history so it seems dishonest to me to portrait them as very weak as occurred in game

No it is not. Enetnte should win as is. I have not seen the CPs win.

First.