Axis and Allies for Windows

If you are a frequent Epinions reader and have run into some of my reviews, perhaps you've noticed that one of my interests is military history, with an emphasis on World War II. Many of the books, movies, and even music CDs are World War II oriented, so it's only natural that my computer game library contains several games that use history's greatest armed conflict as a setting.

Most of them are weapons systems simulations, ranging from old (and now obsolete) DOS based MicroProse offerings such as Silent Service II (U.S. fleet submarines vs. Japanese Navy and merchant fleet) and B-17 Flying Fortress to Windows compatible offerings by Microsoft (Combat Flight Simulator: World War II series).

As much as I enjoy zipping across the flak-filled skies of Europe and the Pacific in my virtual fighter planes or running silent and deep in my Gato-class subs, I also enjoy strategic level games set in World War II, and Infogrames' Axis & Allies is one of my current favorite diversions. (As of this writing, it's also -- admittedly -- the only big-picture strategy game I own!)

I should state outright that Axis & Allies isn't a game of recent vintage. It's actually been around for, oh, six years, having been first released as a MicroProse offering just as that pioneering software publisher was being absorbed by uber-company Hasbro...which also had absorbed Milton Bradley, the maker of Axis & Allies' original board game incarnation. As a result, it's not exactly state of the art graphics-wise; indeed, it is a bit of a retro game, somewhat like its Hasbro/Infogrames stablemate Monopoly Star Wars Edition, only a bit less sophisticated in the animation department.

WHY I LIKE AXIS & ALLIES: Part I -- The Board Game

I first played Axis & Allies almost 20 years ago when Milton Bradley first published it as a board game. It was heavily promoted in Playboy magazine with an impressive print ad campaign, and when Hector Perez, a college buddy of mine, and I were looking for an intellectually challenging pastime, I suggested we look for a copy of Axis & Allies. Even though it was pretty pricey for my budget ($30.00 at Toys R Us), Hector and I went "halfsies" and bought a set. We ended up playing Axis & Allies all afternoon and well into the night, with the Axis (under Hector's command) triumphing over the overmatched Allies (yours truly).

Axis & Allies has many virtues as a board game. It is set in the spring of 1942, which was the "high water mark" for the Axis powers (Germany and Japan; Italy is, for simplicity's sake, not a player). Germany and Japan are at the height of their military potential but financially vulnerable, while the Allies (USSR, United Kingdom, and USA) are militarily weak but industrially strong. Each player had color-coded troops,ships, subs, planes and tanks, plus industrial complexes and anti-aircraft guns, all of which had to be placed on the mapboard as indicated by each nation's quick reference card. Each player had a certain starting income measured in Industrial Production Certificates (IPCs) based on the total value of the territories under his or her control. Each player placed his forces as indicated, then went through several steps -- Weapons Development, Unit Purchase, Combat Moves, Non Combat Moves, and New Unit Placement -- during a turn to carry out his or her country or coalition's strategic goals (to defend own turf while grabbing enemy territories and more IPCs in the bargain). After either a military victory (each coalition capturing two of the Capitals) or an Axis Economic Victory (based on a particular increase of IPCs), the game would end.

The board game, of course, required quite a bit of time to set up. Units had to be set up "just so," not placed at a player's whims. The mapboard could accomodate stacks of units and even had extra spaces to ease the confusion between land and sea spaces or to solve "overcrowding." Still, even with the game's reference cards to serve as a guide, this stage of the game still took about 15 minutes, sometimes more. There was also the matter of moving the forces from the main mapboard to the battle board, and keeping track of national markers to reflect changes in territorial ownership and IPC levels required patience, attention to detail, and dexterity. As in most board related war games, units had attack/defense factors built in (Infantry, for instance, attacked at rolls of 1 but defended at 2) and the factors defined both strategy and battle results, since "combat" was resolved with throwing dice. For each unit on the Battle Board (where you placed your pieces in a Combat Move) you had a die, and each unit was placed on the Battle Board according to its attack/defense number. You rolled dice by category (Infantry first, because it had low roll numbers, for instance), so if you had five infantry units, three tanks, and one bomber (with attack values of 1, 3, and 4, respectively) you rolled five dice for the infantry, then the tanks, then the bomber. If three of the five Infantry dice resulted in 1, three defending units were hit. If the tanks rolled 3 or less, they'd hit...and so on. The defender would then place his/her "killed" units behind the casualty line, roll for ALL the units (since combat was considered to have taken place simultaneously), and if he/she scored hits on the attacker, both players would then remove their "dead" and the attacker would decide if he/she would continue the attack or retreat, based on the casualties and remaining enemy strength. (Amphibious attacks and submarines had special rules, as did AA guns.)

Once the player had enough IPCs to warrant the gamble, he/she could set aside 5 IPCs for one attempt to develop new technology. For each attempt one had to buy a die (at the expense of buying a combat unit), and in order to "develop" something the roll had to be a 6. Then the die had to be rolled again to determine what new tech the player had discovered. Most players skipped this step in early stages of the game in order to buy combat units, only risking IPCs when they had a comfortable advantage over their opponents.

It wasn't a game that required a degree in modern history, obviously, nor did knowledge of the actual war matter, but a certain amount of patience and analytical skills was essential. Players had to be aware that a certain mix of units was necessary to defeat an opponent; sending Infantry units alone, no matter how numerous, against an enemy territory defended by Infantry, Armor, and Fighters was and always would be suicidal, and sending a Fighter or Bomber to attack a space defended by a single Infantry unit was a waste of effort, since even if the defender was destroyed, the air unit could not occupy the territory desired. So a player with a head for numbers and some tactical savvy could nearly always defeat a player who knew his/her history but was clueless about random numbers and attack/defense ratios.

Nevertheless, I thought Axis & Allies (the board game) was a good game and loved to play it, even though I rarely did once my friend Hector moved out of town. I introduced it to a few friends of mine, with mixed results. Some liked it and played when they had a free day, while others found it nice to look at but tedious and time consuming to set up. Thus, my battered box now sits in my closet, a casualty of the passage of time and lack of interested players.

WHY I LIKE AXIS & ALLIES: Part II -- the PC Version

Fortunately, Axis & Allies was popular enough that the now-vanished MicroProse Software (original publishers of Sid Meier's Civilization series, as well as Silent Service II and the F-15 Strike Eagle series) adapted it to the more versatile and easier to manage CD-ROM format in the late 1990s.

While the board game's highly stylized (and simplified) map and its bright color coded spaces remain the same in the computer version, memory constrains forced the MicroProse/Hasbro Interactive/Infogrames programmers to make some compromises. For instance, infantry units in the board game were made to resemble soldiers of their particular nation-state; British soldiers wore their distinctive WWI-style helmets, while German soldiers wore their coal scuttle "Fritz" head gear. In the PC game the soldiers are generic but color-coded. (However, to make up for this, players' planes change their appearance when Weapons Development attempts result in long-range or jet-powered aircraft.)

While the PC game doesn't dispense with the board game's rules or even the way combat is resolved (the dice are still used and turns are still divided into the Purchase/Combat Moves/Combat Resolution/Non-Combat Moves/New Unit Placement phases, MicroProse/Hasbro's designers did go the extra mile to make the PC version exciting.

First, they added "cutscenes" or mini-movies of various "special situations" related to either combat or industrial development. For example, a submarine's presence in a naval battle ensures that players will see a sub making an approach on a surface target (complete with a look through a periscope) and firing a torpedo. A bomber's inclusion in a player's attacking force calls for a cutscene showing a bombing raid, complete with engine noises and the familiar whistling sound of falling bombs.

Second, each country's turn has an optional musical theme that reflects its nationality; the Russian theme sounds a bit like a militarized "Volga Boatmen," although the tune is probably originally composed for the game. The British theme has hints of Scots Highland martial music, while the Americans have a robust yet cheerful Sousa-like march.

Sound effects are a mix of what you'd expect to hear while playing the board game, i.e., rolling die, and battle-related sound effects (tanks firing, warship cannon booming...but no horrible human screams!).

Otherwise, the basics of the game remain the same. Players can still build up their forces and launch multiple campaigns. In fact, it is actually easier to plan and carry out multiple attacks, since one can't knock over stacks of units over while moving troops, tanks and planes from one space to the other. (The computer version also addresses various previously foggy issues on rules, namely amphibious landings from the United Kingdom onto Norway or Western Europe.)

Combat is still resolved by rolls of the dice, and the results are still determined by each unit's attack/defense points.

The beauty of the PC version is that you can play it solo against the PC or in multi-player mode over the Internet or even as a "hot seat" game. Setup is no longer a tedious chore; just place the disc in the drive and you are good to go. You can save the game at any point during a turn, something not easy to do in the board game (unless, of course, you have a dedicated game room and took notes on what transpired during the last turn!)

Axis & Allies' artificial intelligence player(s) can be adjusted from Easy to Difficult by choosing a particular general and rank (Eisenhower and five stars being the best for the Americans, just to give you an example), so this version is good for novice players as well as veterans of the original board game. (The AI, though, is not exactly all that intelligent after a while, as it tends to become predictable and not very flexible once it gets into the third round or so.) Furthermore, the cinematics used in "cutscenes" -- showing, say, a submarine making an attack or a squadron of bombers carrying out a raid -- are, even for a 1996-98 vintage game, impressive.

Because Axis & Allies is an old game by PC game standards, even though I ordered it at www.amazon.com I had to buy it used from a Marketplace seller, so I did not get a handy manual that explains the rules (although the board game rules can be a helpful substitute, the PC game's rules have resolved some nagging issues that plagued board game players) or the various FAQ's about mouse controls and the like. Not that it's hard to figure out...I am no tech wizard and I have figured most of those issues on my own. Infogrames (which owns what once was MicroProse/Hasbro Interactive) also has a download section on its website (www.infogrames.com) that has patches to fix a few bugs that affect both the game's appearance and playability.