As some may have noted, I am directly computing the odds of winning various engagements with small numbers of ships and aircraft. As I slog through the permutations, I have to assign a value to the result. Currently, I am using the ‘unit cost’ to make the final rating. But this is not really a good ‘Battle Damage Assessment’ in AAG unless you are playing a total elimination game, which I am sure is quite fun in its own right. But in the OOB AAG rules, the game is played on a timeline of about five or six turns. A damaged ship in the second to last round, is essentially a kill. A lost supply token far from your home base might take two or three turns to buy and transport to the destination, costing you two or three victory points. Do you have any mathematical tools for measuring these situations? I have noticed for example, that in a late round, you can sacrifice many ships for a chance to inflict damage on an enemy capitol ship, and there is little down side since losing those ships does not count against you (just don’t over expose your own capitol ships to an air attack). Another example, since losing bombers and fighters doesn’t count against you, go ahead and send them on that suicide attack at the end of the game. Maybe you won’t win. But you might enjoy sinking your opponents capitol ship. I find it a challenge to really assess the situation on the board when I am used to looking at total force levels and strategic position. These have so much less importance in this game. An airfield with a supply token in reserve and a stack of infantry is money in the bank. Add an AA gun or two and your opponent is probably going to wince at the thought of sending an airstrike your way. What do you think?
Well don’t forget that Bombers might be able to damage an enemy airfield and Bombers do have an air attack so they could be used defensively to prevent your opponent throwing a bunch of stuff at your capitol ships trying to snag a point.
I’m not much of a stats guy but it would seem you might want to use some sort of factor for which sea zone the units are lost in. You need a value for turns from base.
The trouble I see there is you can spend points to rapid deploy the units to a further spot on the board. A bunch of ships on the damage zone aren’t neccessarily out of it late in the game if you are ahead on points and not in danger of losing control of your airfields. You can spend all your points on supplies to repair the units and fast deploy them to the board.
I guess the converse is true as well. If you aren’t going to catch up by airfields you almost have to spend all your reinforcement to get ships on the board in an attempt to destroy enemy capitol vessels.
I tend to agree that a once you have supply at a built airfield you are in a strong position especially with some artillery to back up your AA. Don’t forget that artillery can shoot at boats as well.
I guess the converse is true as well. If you aren’t going to catch up by airfields you almost have to spend all your reinforcement to get ships on the board in an attempt to destroy enemy capitol vessels.
Unfortunately you haven’t enough time to drive a naval strategy, I think. If your opponent (mainly the japanese player as it’s easy to install a supply chain to New Georgia) invest heavy into supply token and build airfields very fast, the game will not last long enough to bring naval units into game. I mean, you need to buy naval units, bring them to front and need an enemy who is willing to take some naval battles. I think, if you buy many ships, you are short on ground units which means that the other player could decided to fallback the capital ships to base card as they are no longer needed to intercept incoming trannys and support land units with naval barrage.
That’s a little disadvantage with AAG: The game is fast. Ok, it’s a advantage too, because your games (when playing face to face) can end on one evening. But you haven’t enough time to bring a strategy to work, you have to use your units tactical.
I tend to agree that a once you have supply at a built airfield you are in a strong position especially with some artillery to back up your AA. Don’t forget that artillery can shoot at boats as well.
Yeah, if an airfield is covered with one or two AA and one or two artillery and some inf it’s nearly impossible to successful get control over that island, because it’s you can’t kill all enemy units fast enough.
Nearly all games that I have play end around turn five or six, the longest takes nine turns, but that was much luck by the american player: succeeded in kill an aircraft carrier with one shot of a sub, damaged an airfield in the following round that coult not repaired by japanese instantly and kill a BB in the next round.
Alas, the american lost that game too because of the lose of many air units while bombarding that airfield and lost nearly all remaining aircraft and all fleet except capital ships while attacking the enemy fleet to sink that BB. Was not able to get complete control of an enemy island and lost because the japanese has one airfield more.
But it was a very funny game! :)
Croggyl, you hit on it when you said you have to use your units tactical. In Guadalcanal your overall strategy is already set with how you score points to win the game–control undamaged airfields.
Everything else is an under circumstances choice. What did the opponent do? What did I lose? Where are the biggest fleets?
Guadalcanal isn’t a battle of attrition, it is a race.
Guadalcanal isn’t a battle of attrition, it is a race.
And this is the point of my question. I am computing the ‘value’ of an air attack based on the economic value of the damaged and destroyed units. But if a ‘damaged’ ship can never be brought into contact with the enemy to any substantive extent, then it may as well be a full kill. What thoughts do you have about other ways to establish the value of killing or damaging an enemy unit? For example, a cruiser might be worth 1 point for each turn it can help control an island with its ground phase attack. A battleship would be worth two points in this case. Infantry and artillery would also be worth one point each. But how much would a point of ground attack be worth compared to the cost of buying a plane? This game causes us to completely reevaluate our priorities. Of course, a battleship and a carrier are worth a real victory point also. But they can only be killed once. Assigning a number in this case is all new ground for me.
Sorry to have been off the grid for a lot of days for me. Dinosaur you bring up a bunch of things that I will give some additional thought to.
Off the top of my head I suggest units have a value for ‘turns from enemy contact.’ This value could be for each phase and then add to some sort of base unit type value.
Also maybe the whole scale should be in some sort of relation to Victory points?
