Instead of rolling dice, you can fight battles in the RTS mode. The most interesting and potentially fun aspect of this mode is how conflicts are resolved. There are no naval or air units, and you can't build factories, so moving new armies from your capital one space at a time can be tedious. Your three army types-infantry, mechanized, and armor-can only move one space (there are no mechanized units in the board game, and armor could move two spaces). This is where the similarities to the board game end.
The goal of both the Axis and the Allies is to capture two opposing capitals. You'll use cash on your turn to research technologies and purchase armies, which are used to attack and capture territories under enemy control.
This turn-based mode is played on a world map divided into territories that are each worth a given amount of income. You pick one of the five world powers (Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan, or the USA) and then choose a general for that faction. World War II mode is the one that's most similar to the board game. There are four modes of play in Axis & Allies: World War II, campaign, skirmish, and multiplayer over LAN or Internet. So if you build three armor companies from an infantry headquarters, those units will be supplied as long as the headquarters survives. In Axis & Allies, a company must be attached to a headquarters to be supplied. As in Kohan II, this helps minimize the need for micromanaging a bunch of little infantrymen, tanks, and other units. Injured companies are replenished automatically in supply zones generated by both your buildings and cities. Companies comprise squads of multiple units that act as single units. Instead of recruiting individual units, you'll recruit companies. Your military is also handled similarly to Kohan II. All this actually makes it worthwhile to strike at your opponent's resource buildings to simultaneously cripple his or her economy and army. When you have no money and a negative income, then your units will begin to lose health until you overcome the deficit. Meanwhile, money accumulates if you have a positive income, and you'll use this money to construct buildings, research technologies, and build military units. You gain an increased rate of income by building ammo and oil depots, while a negative inflow of these two resources penalizes your money income. Rather, you have a positive or negative flow of these resources. You don't harvest resources in Axis & Allies instead, you have a constant income of money, ammo, and oil. Incompetent artificial intelligence and some weak gameplay mechanics hamper what could have been an interesting take on the popular board game.Ī huge Japanese army can't seem to take China.Īxis & Allies uses the Kohan II engine, so it plays very similarly to the fantasy strategy game released a little more than a month ago. Unfortunately, this different spin doesn't equate to a refreshing change. Developer TimeGate Studios, which recently produced the great Kohan II: Kings of War, has put a different spin on the concept so that battles are resolved in real-time skirmishes rather than with rolls of dice. The new computer game is not the game of old, however. In addition to being a new real-time strategy game, Axis & Allies is a cult classic board game that pits the Axis powers against the Allied powers at the height of World War II.