US1 (Back to What Bunnies Actually Thought, rather than What Bunnies Might Have Thought Had The Game Gone Rather Differently)
How Does Bunnies Find The Time To Write All This?
Ninety plus words a minute typing speed, and very little editing. Were I to make this a professional presentation, it would probably be shorter and funnier, with an accompanying technical manual with extensive index. That sort of editing would require going back and thinking about things, and being more thorough, and editing for clarity and conciseness. Although I like to think I’m decent at organization, and decent at writing, somehow combining the two into one time-efficient package evades me. So welcome to my stream of consciousness writing. Bunnies P Wrath . . . stream of consciousness . . . hm . . .
What about the time? Got a laptop, and I ride instead of driving myself around. So . . . bwa ha!
When Our Hero had last left off, he was looking at the board and thinking about what US and Russia would do together, as well as the general shape the game would take. Allies were going to try to KGF (Kill Germany First), Germany had lousy dice in the opening and the Allies were in position to severely limit Germany’s income in Africa. The question was how to make it all work.
Looking at the board –
Fortifying Sinkiang in Asia probably wouldn’t work what with all the Japanese fighters around to lend those 5 infantry in China hitting power. Even with a stack of Russian tanks it still wouldn’t look good.
I wanted to fly a bomber to Archangel, because it’s useful to trade territory along with the 2 US infantry that would be retreating from Sinkiang. If the Japs sent a lot of infantry to Sinkiang, 2 infantry 1 bomber couldn’t do much to stop it, but maybe the Russians could destroy the whole stack. If the Japs just sent 1 infantry in, I could use 1 infantry 1 bomber for a high probability recapture of Sinkiang, gaining income and denying the Japanese the opportunity to use the Japanese infantry on Sinkiang to attack into Kazakh or Novosibirsk next turn.
If Russia had not fortified Buryatia on its turn, Japan would have far less to worry about. But also, Russia would have had 2 infantry on Novosibirsk and 3-4 on Yakut at the end of R1. That would mean on R2 we might see as many as 5 Russian infantry there, ready to trade a stack of infantry with Japan. This is why Russia may often choose to run from the Asian coast; the infantry that run are ready to fight against Japan in Sinkiang later, and besides, a stack of infantry on the Asian coast can’t do much on R2. (As it was, I didn’t run; I stacked Buryatia.)
I knew Russia would have to think about that fat stack of Japanese infantry pretty quick, and that Buryatia stack wasn’t going to be in a position to do much. Furthermore, if I wanted to counter quickly, I’d have to think about it immediately. Moving cheap infantry to Novosibirsk would have to be done immediately on R2, so if on J2 Japan moved in force to Sinkiang, I could counter with the cheap infantry, perhaps some tanks, and fighters.
As it was, I decided to ignore Japan’s progress in Asia for the moment to focus on Germany. So even before I made the purchases on the US turn, I knew that Russia was going to build mostly tanks to pressure Germany.
That decided, was it feasible to land a US fighter on Archangel? Leaving Karelia in German hands would mean that Germany could hit Archangel with air and tanks and perhaps a couple Karelia infantry. But I figured I had 4 infantry on Moscow. If things went very poorly at Karelia, I could move up 4 infantry and an AA gun and hope for the best, as Germany sent its expensive air and tanks to Archangel. Doing that would risk Germany instead going for West Russia, and preventing Russian access to Belorussia IPCs on the next turn. (Again, it’s only 2 IPCs there, but every little bit really makes a big difference.) Still, I would be able to get a bomber to Europe, making the 2 US infantry a threat, that much sooner. I decided to go ahead and fly a US bomber to Archangel, to try to hit Karelia, Belorussia, and Ukraine, and hope for a lot of luck.
Japan did not have two fighters on a carrier at Hawaiian Islands. So US could run its battleship and transport towards Panama without needing to join the US destroyer there. I moved the US infantry from Western US to Panama on the US transport. (If Japan did have two fighters on a carrier, US might want to either risk the 2 Japanese fighters, or leave the US destroyer at Panama there to help protect the US battleship. Japan might risk the fighters were the US battleship and transport left unprotected; that would be a lot less pressure for Germany to deal with, would strand 2 US infantry on Panama, and would also kill a US transport that US would have to buy. (It isn’t an “extra” transport; I usually want around 8 transports with US very quickly, so it’s a transport that I didn’t want to have to buy).
Why move infantry to Panama? Because that frees them to move to Brazil on US2, via the sea zone northeast of Brazil. Why move them to Brazil on US2? Unless Germany had a couple bombers on Western Europe or a Mediterranean carrier, a US2 battleship north of Brazil would be pretty safe. From there, it could drop units to the south of Africa on US3 without having to worry about any light Japanese or German threats, or it could move to Western Europe on US3 to threaten a bigger drop there. In contrast, moving the battleship/transport to Eastern US at the end of US2 would only allow the US3 battleship/transport to hit Algeria. Much slower and less efficient.
With the US destroyer freed, I could send it to Eastern US immediately for a threatened US2 landing on Algeria. The planned US fleet was 1 destroyer 1 cruiser 1 carrier 2 fighters. This was very light, but again, I was playing extremely aggressively and taking a lot of chances, just because I felt like doing so. Considering this might have to stand up to 2 subs 4 fighters 1 bomber, for 7 attack dice, and considering that were the German sub northeast of Canada to move to the sea zone west of Algeria and get a hit, I might be down to 1 destroyer 1 carrier 2 fighters; 4 defense dice against 7 attack dice! Even with the addition of a Russian sub, the odds would still be wretched, with a stack of US transports as the prize. UK was NOT in a position to reinforce US at the sea zone west of Algeria. If Germany stacked Western Europe, US would be on its own.
Could I prevent Germany from stacking Western Europe? Typically Germany can be discouraged by a threatened UK landing to Germany. But UK had only one transport. Just a few infantry and a stack of fighters could have kept the US away.
Still, I went with a minimal fleet. With the German units in Africa probably dead very soon, a quick US landing was not, I thought, essential, especially since there was a good chanced that were Germany to move into Anglo-Egypt, I could use the UK Trans-Jordan infantry along with assorted UK air to try to whack them before they caused any damage. Besides, I could probably in the worst case move the US fleet to the sea zone northeast of East Canada on US2. The German subs probably wouldn’t be in range after having been chased away or destroyed by the Allied destroyers, and a lone German bomber on Western Europe wouldn’t be a problem. (since Germany hadn’t built any bombers on G1, it wouldn’t be able to have any but its starting bomber on Western Europe on G2).
The rest of the US income went towards transports and units to put on the transports.
US built 1 carrier, 2 transports, 2 tanks, and 1 infantry. Usually I build a lot of infantry and/or artillery, setting up a situation in which US has more than its transports can move around. The extra ground units move to Eastern Canada, then the US transports start offloading from Eastern Canada to Algeria every turn, or moving from Eastern Canada to London, as the case may be. But in this game, I was pushing the envelope. I wanted a lot of tanks in case Japan decided to get cute in Africa, and tanks were something that I could use to aggressively push around Europe, and I was all about the rabid attacks this game.
At the end of the turn after placement, my units looked like this:
Infantry on Midway and Hawaiian Islands. Too much bother to retrieve. US sub at Hawaiian islands. I “attacked the Japanese sub and cruiser there, but submerged immediately. I could have destroyed some Japanese hardware, especially using the Hawaiian Islands fighter, but taking a hit would mean losing the US ability to harass Japanese shipping, or losing a valuable US fighter, and I wasn’t going to do either. Nor was I going to move closer to Japan, considering its destroyers west of Japan; sneaking closer would just get the US sub blown up by Japanese destroyer, sub, and cruiser. I used the US sub to exert pressure from the east, and the UK sub to exert pressure from the south. Neither were anything to worry about, but they were inconveniences that would force Japan to stay aware.
Just losing the US and UK subs quickly means Japan can send its fleet through the Suez Canal, from the Indian Ocean to the Mediterranean. Lone Japanese transports can go to Caroline Islands and Solomon Islands to pick up infantry. They could also start screwing around with Australia, New Guinea (which UK had captured), New Zealand, French Madagascar – basically, the Allied subs couldn’t kill anything if Japan stayed defensive, but doing so locked up Japan’s fleet. Using a 6 IPC sub to affect the movement of a 20 IPC battleship is good news. Making Japan want to build 8 IPC destroyers is good too.
Infantry from Alaska and fighter from Hawaiian Islands in Western Canada. An infantry in Alaska doesn’t do much; if Japan tries to land on Alaska, it will bring at least 2 ground units and kill a lone infantry anyways. From Western Canada, though, it could move to Eastern Canada, which is where most US transports would be trying to pick up and drop off from. The Hawaii fighter couldn’t get to any more useful places; from Western Canada, it could at least reach London next turn if need be, or various sea zones, including the sea zone west of Algeria. Western USA had 1 AA gun on it (for no reason, usually I move the AA gun up towards Western Canada).
Battleship, transport, and 2 infantry at Panama.
2 US infantry at Kazakh. 1 US bomber at Archangel (unprotected at the moment). The infantry wouldn’t survive if left at Sinkiang, and would inflict almost no casualties in return to the Japanese. Kazakh is closer to Persia and Caucasus, where the US infantry might be of some use. Novosibirsk is pretty useless. Usually if Japan lands in east Asia, they have power to spare; a couple US infantry probably couldn’t do much of anything. Japan usually can’t take Persia with a lot very early, and at Caucasus, US could watch for an opportunity to hit Germany.
At Eastern US, 4 infantry, 2 artillery, 3 tanks, 1 AA gun, 4 transports, 1 cruiser, 1 destroyer, 1 carrier, 1 fighter.
On UK carrier northeast of London, 1 US fighter. Before the US fighter landed, Germany could try for a lucky shot on the UK fleet. After the US fighter landed, Germany would need a LOT of luck to whack the UK fleet. They probably wouldn’t even try.
America collected 40 IPCs and ended its turn.
In our next thrilling episode! Bunnies charges in with Russia again and gets suspiciously lucky dice results again! As ROUND TWO starts, Russian tanks ROAR INTO ACTION! (rahhrr!)
I reckon I will let this go a while though eh. Lotta reading.
Maybe I’ll write a nice short focused series for beginning players.
Someday . . . :roll:
Impressive, in particular as it was done sans editing. With your US builds you mention “US built 1 carrier, 2 transports, 2 tanks, and 1 infantry”, of course you meant artillery, gotta hate it even with 90 wpm your fingers lag your mind as you were thinking about what you usually build.
It almost a pity that this scenario started out in a generally atypical state after R1. If you were to do a tutorial then perhaps laying out a typical, perhaps a poor choice of words, an idealized game with more statistically average dice rolls. Of course when the first dice are rolled all planning often goes out the window and one should never lock into a plan. There would be a combinatorical explosion if too much attention was given to statistically less likely scenarios so what to do?
I’m having troubles getting TripleAA to work so as to review spring 42 games there and worse, the older games played here are gone. Our local group is having a tough time against the ‘Fortress Europe’ strategy Hobbes outlined here.
I feel bad for my Allied opponent, last night in game 1 of 2, the typical R1 2 attack into Wru and Urk 2 tanks each, the russians cleared Ukr with only 1 Ftr remaining the rest of the rolls were slight axis favoured up until the end of G1. Game 2, Ukr was hit with 3 tanks in the usual R1 2-attack mode, great, he won with 3 tanks, inf and art. Then next was Wru….in with 9 of 11 possible units, captured with 1 of 9 attacking pieces left. I open with a 5 Inf 5 Tank build for G1 usually and generally follow Fortress Europe and while I am not in the top 25% I don’t make too many mistakes playing the Axis. But I also don’t play the allies that well nor do my friends we don’t know what to do to beat how we play the Axis.
I need to get over the learning curve of TripleA I guess and see what occurs there, but then so would all my friends in our local group, not going to happen too easily I am afraid. It was hard enough to get them to start visiting here, imagine that!
Perhaps an emulation of how the games play out here including maps but keeping ‘dice rolls’ outside the statically unlikely range.
Our local group is having a tough time against the ‘Fortress Europe’ strategy Hobbes outlined here.
I’ve seen ways of countering it…
Well I have yet to see people talking about requiring a bid for the allies so there is obviously something we are missing.
I seem to be missing some map files or something for the tripleA software. The files you guys have provided I can load, but then…… I try play and get a screen full of errors:
I can load the file “HobbesMay0611.tsvg”
The UI for TripleA says Game name World War II v4, game version 2.6, filename HobbesMay0611.tsvg
The play command button is not active but quit is. So…I can press Start Local Game and I see a list of 5 players and all Human so…I can now press Play and a text window pops up displaying:
"ava.lang.IllegalStateException: Could not find file for map:World War II v4
at games.strategy.triplea.ResourceLoader.getPaths(ResourceLoader.java:67)
at games.strategy.triplea.ResourceLoader.getMapresourceLoader(ResourceLoader.java:33)
at games.strategy.triplea.ui.UIContext.internalSetMapDir(UIContext.java:189)
at games.strategy.triplea.ui.UIContext.setDefaltMapDir(UIContext.java:162)
blah blah blah
So, I am missing a map somebody said…tried googling for maps and ugh… tried a few and gave up without success.
So what am I doing wrong?
Well I have yet to see people talking about requiring a bid for the allies so there is obviously something we are missing.
Well if you guys want some pointers I can give them but it should be more fun to discover them for yourselves :)
I seem to be missing some map files or something for the tripleA software. The files you guys have provided I can load, but then…… I try play and get a screen full of errors:
I can load the file “HobbesMay0611.tsvg”
The UI for TripleA says Game name World War II v4, game version 2.6, filename HobbesMay0611.tsvg
The play command button is not active but quit is. So…I can press Start Local Game and I see a list of 5 players and all Human so…I can now press Play and a text window pops up displaying:
"ava.lang.IllegalStateException: Could not find file for map:World War II v4
at games.strategy.triplea.ResourceLoader.getPaths(ResourceLoader.java:67)
at games.strategy.triplea.ResourceLoader.getMapresourceLoader(ResourceLoader.java:33)
at games.strategy.triplea.ui.UIContext.internalSetMapDir(UIContext.java:189)
at games.strategy.triplea.ui.UIContext.setDefaltMapDir(UIContext.java:162)blah blah blah
So, I am missing a map somebody said…tried googling for maps and ugh… tried a few and gave up without success.
So what am I doing wrong?
When you start TripleA one of the options on the menu is: ‘Download Maps’. Click on it and then copy/paste the following url on the window and click List Games:
http://sites.google.com/site/tripleaerniebommel/home/mods/TripleA_Quality_Mods_EB.xml
When the map list appears, you’ll want World War II v4
PS - You’ll need version 1.2.5.5 to open the saved game. However that version has just been discontinued and replaced with 1.3.1.0 but you may still download it.
Thanks for the help Hobbes. This is not moving along easily. So, I loaded the file, selected the map as per instructions. Had to restart TripleA as per its instructions, now when it loads but before I touch the user interface I get another text box listing a few pages of errors:
"Could not parse:jar:file:/C:/Users/Randy-Tv/triplea/maps/World%20War%20II%20v4.zip!/games/WW2v4%20Six%20Army%20Free%20For%20All%20v2.xml
games.strategy.engine.data.GameParseException: No setter for attachment option. Setter:isAirTransportable Class:games.strategy.triplea.attatchments.UnitAttachment
at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.setValues(GameParser.java:1181)
at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.parseAttachments(GameParser.java:1101)
at games.strategy.engine.data.GameParser.parse(GameParser.java:125)
at games.strategy.engine.framework.ui.NewGameChooserEntry.<init>(NewGameChooserEntry.java:27)
at games.strategy.engine.framework.ui.NewGameChooserModel.createEntry(NewGameChooserModel.java:163)
"
I am running version 1.3.5, is that incompatible with:
http://sites.google.com/site/tripleaerniebommel/home/mods/TripleA_Quality_Mods_EB.xml
I see I need 1.2.5.5 to open saved games, but what about tripleA all by itself?
We should probably fork this thread off……</init>
I am running version 1.3.5, is that incompatible with:
http://sites.google.com/site/tripleaerniebommel/home/mods/TripleA_Quality_Mods_EB.xml
I can’t find any version with that numbering. Can you confirm it?
You actually should try to get 1.3.1.0 first. Their lobby isn’t working at the moment but the lobby for 1.2.5.5 has been closed today.
You might be running a older game version that is conflicting with one of the new v4 scenarios for 1.3.1.0. Looks that way from the error message. Are you sure you were running 1.3.1.0 when you tried to load it?
I just recently installed the software, about 1 week ago. I start triplea via start menu and right away the error message list is displayed, the user interface shows Game Version 1.3.5. I wonder if this is a newer version based on version numbers, perhaps a beta?
Ah, the properties for triplea show it as 1_2_5_5, I wonder what the discrepancy is about?
I see, the game version was for the version of the map the 1.2.5.5 software was running, by default the triplea software is using World War II Revised version 1.3.5 game to run, I can select one of 5 games under Choose Games
World War II v4 is not an option, unless I goto download maps, select that site you mentioned and press list games and re-Install World War II v4, it says I have version 2.7 installed and to replace it with the same, so I press Yes. It starts to download and…its stuck downloading for the last 5 minutes…OK, successfully installed, restart tripleA before playing so…OK, Quit, Restart and list of errors along with the tripleA software running with the same 5 default games available to play…Ugh
I used to write software that ran/runs on fortune 500 computers, I’m not the same since an accident but I should be able to get this to run.
Game Version 1.3.5. refers to the version of the scenario currently loaded
Thanks for pointing that out to me :-) So the newer version of the software works fine, didn’t have to download maps to get the V4 map but of course it won’t run those saved games. The older version continues to have issues so I will uninstall it and reinstall it.
Well, I un-installed both versions of the software, deleted the folders, reinstalled 1.2.5.5 and it works fine. I then followed the listed instructions, downloaded maps, used:
http://sites.google.com/site/tripleaerniebommel/home/mods/TripleA_Quality_Mods_EB.xml
Selected World War II v4, it downloaded, installed fine, instructed me to restart the software and I did, and now I get the same errors again since I downloaded that map. I guess i will have to ask in the forum at http://triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki.
Well, I un-installed both versions of the software, deleted the folders, reinstalled 1.2.5.5 and it works fine. I then followed the listed instructions, downloaded maps, used:
http://sites.google.com/site/tripleaerniebommel/home/mods/TripleA_Quality_Mods_EB.xml
OK, I think I figured it out. You need to remove 1.2.5.5 and install TripleA game engine 1.3.1.0 - the World War II v4 scenario available for download has already been updated to version 2.7, which is not compatible with game engine version 1.2.5.5
Thanks for clearing that up Hobbes, greatly appreciated. But a pity, so all the sample .tsvg files here can never be viewed by me as I can’t get 1.2.5.5 map files to work with them and those files cannot be read by 1.3.1.0 I guess there isn’t much call for conversion software to upgrade the .tsvg files to newer engines.
So I guess I must wait for new games to be played on tripleA then view them? I haven’t tried doing this yes but I understand this is possible?
I’ll save my next game, as soon as the server is back online. :)
I can host a game if anyone is interested
