Ideas to improve gameplay

In the interest of keeping a descent game pace when playing Revised ,it has been suggested that we put a 5 minute total time limit on the "purchase new units" and "combat movement" phases of each countries turn.It would not be fanatically enforced and it should allow us to get thru a 4 or 5 player game in a more descent amount of time (5-7 hrs).If a player has already made his purchases during the previous players turn, this would give him 5 minutes to move his units into combat.After the "combat movement" phase there would be no time limit for the player to complete his turn.
Any comments or suggestions on this idea or any others would be appreciated.

like that idea, it got hard to stay with the game, after being there for 8 hours and seeing no ending in sight. How did you guys pull off the win?

I like the idea Dennis.

Geoff, Joe asked me a similar question but from when he had to leave so I will answer both questions under my "Andrew's Axis and Allies Thread" under Messages as this one is for new ideas.

Good idea. As long as we keep it friendly, a rough time limit will encourage everyone to be planning ahead a bit. This should help keep the game moving along....
I will say that some countries (Russia) will be a lot easier to keep under the time limit than some others (Germany, Japan). So, we should keep that in mind.

been trying to think of ways to finish games in an acceptable timeframe now that gameplay is getting better and better:
Heres a couple ideas, let me know your thoughts:
1. Stop playing at 1 or 2 am at the latest after the Americans go, then write down piece positions,cash and players in hopes of continueing at a future meetup.(done this in the past and ended up with a lot of "draws" as the players never seem to get back to the game).
OR
2. Stop playing at 1 or 2 am at the latest after the Americans go, Winner is the side with the highest total of territory+money on hand+equipment in play.

been trying to think of ways to finish games in an acceptable timeframe now that gameplay is getting better and better:
Heres a couple ideas, let me know your thoughts:
1. Stop playing at 1 or 2 am at the latest after the Americans go, then write down piece positions,cash and players in hopes of continueing at a future meetup.(done this in the past and ended up with a lot of "draws" as the players never seem to get back to the game).
OR
2. Stop playing at 1 or 2 am at the latest after the Americans go, Winner is the side with the highest total of territory+money on hand+equipment in play.

This is getting to be an issue Dennis. I still think we could try and speed up play a little, and as some of the newer Players get a hang of the rules, strategy and tactics better I think things will go faster; but as they and everyone gets better the games do just get longer. The play is getting tough which is great but that is leading to longer games.

I would not be in favor of a money + territory + equipment victory scenario as that might change the way people are playing the game to just to win. In fact a person could actually slow the game down to win that way.

Though we have had three (all three I was involved in) games where we were not able to finish the game in one night and we never were able to play them again (thus the three draws) I still think this would be the best way to go. I say this because:

1) The three games were with people who pretty much dropped out of the group, and that is why we never finished them. It seems to me we have a better core of consistent Players now so hopefully that will not happen.

2) More importantly we are not as picky about Players as we were before. Before the reason we did not finish was we insisted the game could only be finished if we had exactly the same people that started the game initially and all of them. Now people are leaving and others are taking over for them anyway. So we could just say that the game would be finished as soon as most of the Players were able to be together for the finishing game.
For example, Lynn, Joe and Dennis against Andrew and George. Next session Joe and George are missing so Lynn, Dennis and Andrew finish the game.

As long as we tried to finish a game the next session or at the very longest the following session from there I do not think we would end up with any draws.

Comments?

I up for giving "multi-night" games another try.
Maybe we can offer the "open" slots of any missing players to any other meetup attendee on the night of continuation.

Although there is no perfect solution to the time problem, this does sound like a good way to go. We could at least give it a try once or twice and see what we think of it.