G40 League House Rule project

[gamerman01]

@JWW:

Or it takes a bit more skill & a strong plan to properly play & win as the allies?

That’s my point.  You have to be better than your opponent (or luckier, of course) to win with the allies with 8 or 9.  Hence, you are handicapped with a bid of 8 or 9.
What I’m saying is quite simple, JWW.  If you take the Allies with 8 or 9, you’re betting the Cubs can beat the Yankees this time.  (Or that you’re a lot better than your opponent)

But what I suspect is people are still ignorant or in denial that a fair fight requires a higher Allied bid.  Much higher.

[gamerman01]

Analysis complete.  This is amazing.  Thanks JWW for inspiring the research.

[gamerman01]

You can study the data yourself.  I have added it to the far right of the results matrix.  Included is a comment in each cell you can hover over to see which players were involved in the Allied/Axis wins/losses.

Here are my observations, generally moving down the standings from top to bottom:
Several allied wins were due to OBG quitting in the middle of several games.  He was Axis in all of them.

Tyzoq has an impressive 7-0 record, but…… 6 of the wins are with the Axis.  Not as impressive now.  :-) (I don’t know Tyzoq and have never played him.  But just an observation)

Darth does have wins with the Allies.  Two.  One against me where he got very good luck  :-)
Darth is 8-2 with the Axis.  He lost to OBG and… Yoshi.

I beat LL with a bid of 19 (but it was close - although I had poor luck in the early going) and Maxo with a bid of 21.  Both of my wins with Allies were against the #14 player, although I did have small bids.

SouL is 6-1 with Axis.  1-1 with Allies.  One of those allied wins against #14 player.

And you, JWW.  You are 7-0 with the Axis and 2-4 with your precious +9 bid with the Allies.  Dude, if you had never taken the Allies, you would probably be #1 in the league right now  :lol:

[gamerman01]

I would argue a big reason DM is in the top 4 is because he’s riding the Axis.  Just like I did in 2011.  I only had the Allies once.  Probably has a lot to do with my success (although I did win with them in the championship game)

OBG had a dominant record with the Axis before his meltdown.  Also, OBG owns an impressive 6-2 record with the Allies.  Let’s see, who did he beat…
#14, #13, #17, #3, #14, #19.  Yeah, not so impressive there either now.  #3 was Darth - see first sentence above  :-)

Boldfresh and Lucky!  Boys, we all know you’re better than your record shows.  Well guess what.  Your biggest sin, even bigger than having bad dice, was choosing the disadvantaged side.

Bold is a perfect 2-0 with the Axis.  He is a miserable 2-7 with the Allies, partly because he bravely picked matches with Yoshi and then got diced to boot.  Looking over Bold’s losses with the Allies - most of the names are good players.
And Lucky is a respectable 3-3 with the Axis, but… bravely or foolishly took the Allies too many times.  A 1-7 record with the Allies, but ALL against top players!  We certainly can’t accuse Bold or Lucky of padding stats.  These boys took the Allies a lot and they played stiff competition and… well, the record shows it.  :-)

[gamerman01]

Here’s another interesting stat!
dJensen is 4-1 with the Axis, and 0-9 with the Allies!

EB is 3-7 with the Axis, 0-4 with Allies

And TDJ…. don’t know him either but maybe you should throw your nets on the other side of the boat.
Never played as Axis, 0-6 with Allies.  You’d probably have better luck with the other team, man.

[gamerman01]

Here’s the spreadsheet.

What do YOU think?

2012 League standings.xls

[boldfresh]

Some brilliant commentary, had me smiling throughout!  You are right on point sir…  Allied bid should be 12 at least.  I have recently enjoyed fighting for the underdogs and i have paid the price!

Now with all the aa50 knowledge it is onward and upward to the new frontier of tripleA global, a whole new world to explore!  :-)  of course cow already has it all figured out but for the rest of us i mean…

[gamerman01]

Thank you - that’s what I was hoping to hear

If you ever need a partner for Global1940 on battlemap let me know  :wink:

[boldfresh]

@Gamerman01:

Thank you - that’s what I was hoping to hear

If you ever need a partner for Global1940 on battlemap let me know  :wink:

hmmm, you don’t see tripleA as the future of Global?  I don’t see consistently having the time to play a Battlemap game on this scale.  :|

[gamerman01]

TripleA probably is the future - I didn’t mean that.  It’s just not my future

There is insignificantly more typing for battlemap than in AA50.  I don’t even notice it.  I spend waaaay more time trying to figure out what to buy and what to do than typing.  But I guess we’re getting off topic.  You can PM me if there is any more discussion…  I don’t want people to miss the findings about Axis v. Allies I made below…  thanks

[Yoshi]

I would add one point to your comments : do people know how to use the bid efficiently ?

When you speak of your 19 and 21 bid for instance, it was including expensive units like a fgt in Buryatia (just memories, I might be wrong). Imagine 1inf in Egypt, and 5 or 6 units on the russian - german front… suddenly Germany has to worry !

As I do not want to play always the same side, I started bidding higher. At this time, the bid (in my games) usually finishes between 9 and 11. I think that if you reach 14 or more, the axis player will need some new strategy to have a chance.

Since I arrived on this forum, I believe that the axis play improved. The allied one too, but not so much. So at this date, yes, allies need a bid help.

I remember playing the allies with a 0 bid on my first games here, including league games in 2010. I would not try that anymore. That makes me believe that the axis play improved.

I stop here, teaching is waiting…

Yoshi

[gamerman01]

How good to hear from the great Yoshi on the topic

I am not saying 19-21 bid is the appropriate amount.
I am saying that 9 is definitely not enough.

I bid 11 for the league championship and won largely because of bad round 1 Axis dice.
I suspect that 12-15 is the appropriate bid for 50/50 success.  I hear other very experienced players (Darth, Bold) saying the same.
I think most of us are quite a ways down the “learning curve” on AA50 for Axis or Allies either one.  I think the 2012 league results are very telling.
And I think you, Yoshi, need to ignore your personal experience because you mow down anything in your path no matter what bid there is.  You destroyed Bold twice and djensen with Axis - 2 times with 11 bids.  You are 4-0 with Allies.  After about 5 of your very short games, you admitted that dice were very much on your side.  :-)

All I’m saying is, you would need to play against yourself several times to find what the appropriate bid is.

But we have a lot of data here from the 2012 league, and it’s pretty clear that if 2 players have comparable skills and experience, the Axis player will almost always win with a bid below 10.  And I am just marvelling at the fact that players not named Yoshi, will again and again accept the Allies at 8 or 9 and lose, lose, lose  :lol:

Have a great day

[Yoshi]

I’ve been reading this thread since the beginning, and downloaded your ranking a few times ;)

There are usefull informations inside :) For an official ranking, the definition of the tiers would need some rules and not being subjective, but such a rule dos not look obvious, and as this is just a FYI ranking, this is imho perfectly fine.

What would you say about OBG score with the allies otherwise ? Looks like a good one, and he is not Yoshi :p

Anyway, what I wanted to add this morning : there are some long term allied strategies that I saw in LL (aka Lucky Lindy) games that I believe to be very interesting. And I did not see them outside from LL’s game. I dunno if this has an impact because the strategy is not common, thus induces a surprise factor that is better than the strategy itself or because this is really something tough to counter. But this would be interesting to see what it could lead to in the future.

AA50 induces quite often long games that we rarely saw in Revised (up to my knowledge). If there is no big cap between two players, you can easily go to 15 rounds or more before having a difference that will call the game. Difficult to define a strategy that will go for so long… and usually, this is the allied work to define the way the game will go. Axis just need to defend and adapt. Much more easier.

I agree that axis has an advantage, and currently a strong one. But you can already do a lot with a 9-11 bid. The highest is the bid, specially a russian ground bid, the safer the axis need to be at the beggining. But if they are too safe, an agressive allied play might take the win.

My experience of the game tells me that everything can change on some tiny details for two opponents of the same level. Some minor choices can change a win into a loss after a couple of turns (if the difference was not too big at this time of course). And usually, such details are choices that are almost unique each time (because of the previous choices / dices). Try to get a reliable strategy from that…

[gamerman01]

A very high quality post again, there Yoshi.  Thank you for your excellent insight.

LL indeed had a wicked (or was it surprise factor, as you said?) approach to KJF in the early rounds and I definitely would have lost to him if he had more experience and had not given up on the Pacific right when he had me in trouble.

[666]

Regardless of the facts and reasoning mentioned earlier, I have FAITH  :-D :-o, that with our due diligence we can continue to refine the allies play including bid placement, strategy, etc… so that the current axis advantage is lessened. I attempted that this season, and did lose a few games, but I currently have two more allied games going with Darth & Gamerman that still look like possible victories for me and the allies and this would bring my allied record to 4-4, against some pretty stiff competition. If I pull out those “W’s” it would be quite the statistical anomaly!

SO…I don’t discount anything stated earlier but I know we can do better with the allies. I haven’t found ANYONE willing to give me +12 with the allies yet… I don’t think I have… :mrgreen:

[gamerman01]

You keep having faith and we’ll keep winning with Axis.

I have to say you lucked out on Sealion (although I shouldn’t have tried it) AND you lucked out on an Italian can opener that would have very likely let to Moscow falling and defeat.  In other words, you dodged 2 major bullets and you still have a good chance of losing.  I didn’t want to have to say this, but really had to tell the other side of the story, there.

Nevertheless, 7-0 and 2-4

Those are the facts.  You have a lot of faith.

[gamerman01]

I’m asking myself if you even seriously believe in what you’re saying, or if you’re just having fun yanking my chain, JWW  :-)

The results of 1 or 2 games means little to nothing.  My conclusions were drawn from data from 83 games all played in the past year under the same rules (Dardanelles open).

The Cubs do win against “stiff competition” sometimes.  But smart money is not on a 1-1 odds bet on the Cubs when they’re playing the division leader.

And yes, I pick on the Cubs because I’m a life-long Cardinals fan.  And we’re swimming in champagne yet again, baby!  :-D

[DarthMaximus]

Go Cubbies!  (next year of course)  :-D

Great discussion guys.

Just to add in my two cents.  I have been pretty much “riding” the Axis this year.  I really haven’t been doing it on purpose, but it more has to do with bidding.  I think I have a “shot” with the Allies at 11, but won’t go lower and I’m not comfortable giving up 12 (b/c of 4 units to Russian front), but it seems that a lot of players will bid 10 or possible 9 so I’ve been getting the Axis a lot.

I’ll also add that I think a lot of players like playing the Allies b/c of the challange thus they’ll under bid.  It’s just more fun.  I remember this from Classic.  It was always more fun to be the Axis b/c it was a bigger challange.  The bids could be 24 and you’d still have people playing with 15 or 18, just b/c they wanted the challenge of winning with the disadvantaged side.

I do think the Allied play has gotten much better, but I think bidding tends to still be low.  I also think players like trying new things with the Allies so that might drive bids a bit lower.  But IMO there is pretty much no reason to consider playing the Allies with less than 11, certainly not less than 10.  And for me I draw my cutoff at 12 right now.

[gamerman01]

Updated

Were you at least winning, DM?  :-)

2012 League standings.xls

[DarthMaximus]

I haven’t looked at the map in a while but EB probably had a slight lead.