Pointlessly Broken

[vonLettowVorbeck1914]

No offense, Gamerman, but OOB is not the issue here.

I was well aware there were problems with OOB, but what startled me was that Alpha 3/2e had a very easy route for Japan to take USA. It is a big deal that as long as A3 has been out, no one has tried the USA crush or at least reported their findings publicly until now. That suggests that it was something that went untested in the A3/2e playtests.

UK/ANZAC running rampant doesn’t mean much when they can’t take Japan before Japan gets back from the USA.

I am not saying I have the best allied counters, so my game I posted if I played myself might get torn apart, so would you be interested in taking the Allies on TripleA sometime?

[vonLettowVorbeck1914]

BTW, I can’t recall OOB all that well, so I really can’t speak to the differences. My guess is that it would be even easier in that.

One thing to keep in mind, this might be obvious but I want to put it out there; If the allies do something that causes Japan to abandon the USA crush but then win easy another way, the game is still broken. Even with the allies selling out though, Japan can get 75+% odds without too much trouble.

One more thing Gamerman, I know it was a while ago but this is critical to the strat. Did Japan move to 14 USA 1 and did USA block Aleutians and Alaska?

[gamerman01]

@vonLettowVorbeck1914:

No offense, Gamerman, but OOB is not the issue here.

Point taken - I was starting to realize that as you saw

I was well aware there were problems with OOB, but what startled me was that Alpha 3/2e had a very easy route for Japan to take USA. It is a big deal that as long as A3 has been out, no one has tried the USA crush or at least reported their findings publicly until now. That suggests that it was something that went untested in the A3/2e playtests.

I see.  This is a new animal - I would be willing to check it out for you.

UK/ANZAC running rampant doesn’t mean much when they can’t take Japan before Japan gets back from the USA.

You could very well be right - haven’t played 2nd edition P40 yet

I am not saying I have the best allied counters, so my game I posted if I played myself might get torn apart, so would you be interested in taking the Allies on TripleA sometime?

At your service.  I’ll have to go find the 2nd edition P40 module for Triple A first - don’t think I have it yet.

[gamerman01]

@vonLettowVorbeck1914:

BTW, I can’t recall OOB all that well, so I really can’t speak to the differences. My guess is that it would be even easier in that.

Hmmm…. Then your technique needs to be better than Tragedy’s, because like I said, I trashed his  :-)

One thing to keep in mind, this might be obvious but I want to put it out there; If the allies do something that causes Japan to abandon the USA crush but then win easy another way, the game is still broken.

Absolutely.  We’ll figure that out too.

Even with the allies selling out though, Japan can get 75+% odds without too much trouble.

Well, if that’s indeed the case, and if it is also the case that the Allies have no hope after losing WUS, then the game is definitely broken, yes.  I guess this is what we need to find out for sure first, before Krieghund gets out his rulebook pen and fixes something that ain’t broke.

One more thing Gamerman, I know it was a while ago but this is critical to the strat. Did Japan move to 14 USA 1 and did USA block Aleutians and Alaska?

Yeah, I don’t remember.  Take me to school in-game.  I’ll go download the 2nd edition P40 module.

[Eqqman]

Something that alarms me is that HBG is apparently willing to make changes to the game based on the word of one guy (no offense intended to vonLettowVorbeck1914, you could be 100% correct, that’s not the point here).  It’s not that uncommon for game designers to actually be bad at playing their own games, so I can easily envision a situation where the game design staff just misses something and slaps down a rule change that then creates another imbalance someplace else.  Hence my advice to see how many top league players think they can hold out as the USA in this situation (allweneedislove comes to mind in particular).  If somebody that can consistently clobber you has some advice, that is probably worth more than your own guesses.

Hopefully there is in fact some kind of rigorous process in place to vet issues before rules changes start coming out the door.

[gamerman01]

I agree with Eggman.  Let’s not be too hasty to change rules, here.

Starting a game with VonL to test this.  Here is the game thread for anyone interested.  Feel free to give me advice - after all, I’m playing against an unstoppable strategy.

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=29837.0;topicseen

[vonLettowVorbeck1914]

@Eggman:

Something that alarms me is that HBG is apparently willing to make changes to the game based on the word of one guy (no offense intended to vonLettowVorbeck1914, you could be 100% correct, that’s not the point here).  It’s not that uncommon for game designers to actually be bad at playing their own games, so I can easily envision a situation where the game design staff just misses something and slaps down a rule change that then creates another imbalance someplace else.  Hence my advice to see how many top league players think they can hold out as the USA in this situation (allweneedislove comes to mind in particular).  If somebody that can consistently clobber you has some advice, that is probably worth more than your own guesses.

Hopefully there is in fact some kind of rigorous process in place to vet issues before rules changes start coming out the door.

Didn’t Krieghund also  say that after reviewing the situation he saw a problem?

[gamerman01]

@Krieghund:

We’ve got around half a dozen possible fixes we’re considering, but we’d like to wait a little while and see if someone comes up with a counter (slim chance, I know).  If no counter is forthcoming in a reasonable amount of time, we’ll publish a fix for testing.

He also said this.  Give me a chance to come up with a counter.

[vonLettowVorbeck1914]

Then please play me live. I have been at this for almost 3 hours now and have 1 turn of the first round to show for it. Otherwise I will just throw up a few of the savegames I happen to have from other tests, if I can figure out how to do that. This is increasingly ceasing to be worth my time and effort.

To be honest you are coming across as a little arrogant (The “enter gamerman” comment was worthy of at least one scoff) and that is also a big turn-off. I don’t really care whether you are god’s gift to balance testing or not, I am not going to spread out over days what can take merely several hours.

[gamerman01]

Oh, please.  Look who’s bragging about how he’s broken the game - found by a newbie, no less.  Somebody who’s never played the game just waltzes in and shows it’s biggest flaw.

I come along and contend that perhaps it’s not all it’s cracked up to be, and now look at how you’re talking.

Why did it take almost 3 hours to make a J1 playing by forum, and it takes so much less time playing “online”?  It’s the same program, and you make the moves the same way, don’t you?  I don’t understand your problem.

Dude, I have played way over 100 games of A&A in the past few years and consistently win over 80% of the time.  I think I have reason to be confident.  If you decide I’m arrogant, well that’s up to you.  If you’re going to get all huffy and whiney and not just play the game with a challenger, then you need to shut up about your grand strategy that you spent well over 3 hours typing it all up painstakingly to tell us.  I don’t know what to make of you…  Can we just play the game without further comments, or not?

[Eqqman]

@vonLettowVorbeck1914:

Didn’t Krieghund also  say that after reviewing the situation he saw a problem?

Yes.  The other part of my comment was that (sometimes) game designers are not the best players of their own games, so their own opinions can also be unreliable.  This doesn’t mean I don’t think Krieghund is a good player or not, since I couldn’t say.  I just mention it as a possibility.

[vonLettowVorbeck1914]

@Gamerman01:

Why did it take almost 3 hours to make a J1 playing by forum, and it takes so much less time playing “online”? Â It’s the same program, and you make the moves the same way, don’t you? Â I don’t understand your problem.

I ran into numerous issues with passwords, email registration, and plain  learning the darn PBF format.

Had you met me in the TripleA lobby like I had suggested we would already be done with the first game.

Again, please correct me if I am wrong about your “enter gamerman” comment sounding extremely arrogant.

Lastly, I am not convinced if Pac is worth spending a week on just one game. As you said in another thread “Few people give a crap about P40 anyway.”

Playing by forum simply does not seem to be worth my time. My invitation for a live game on TripleA still stands, as it has for a long time. You told me PBF would be a lot easier that I thought, but sorry, it’s not. It’s incredibly tedious, and I just don’t care for checking back all the time over the course of the week (or more) when I can finish the same game with the same moves in a few hours. You challenged me, so my terms are that we play live if we are to play. In my opinion it is unreasonable for you to challenge me and expect me to invest  immensely more time than I have previously offered.

Perhaps I am scared of playing pbf, but it’s not because I am scared of your counters. In fact, I am sort of rooting for you to find a counter. I don’t like rule changes after release, and it would be good to avoid having to do that. I just hope that there are no better strategies than I have for this type of strat. What I am “scared” of in PBF is wasting colossal amounts of time.

[Imperious Leader]

As soon as Gamerman01 whips your idea into ashes, perhaps no more arrogant threads like “Pointlessly Broken?”

Perhaps saying less would be a better idea.  :roll:

[vonLettowVorbeck1914]

Here’s two games, don’t really remember who was allies and who was axis in all of them. I am not claiming that the optimal Japanese or Allied strats were done in any of these. Part of my problem is that I name most games by who was playing them, so there are probably more saves in there somewhere, but w/e, the basic idea is here

Pac Broken Sword J7.tsvg
Pac Broke 2 USA Block UK Dec J5.tsvg

[Eqqman]

@vonLettowVorbeck1914:

Here’s two games, don’t really remember who was allies and who was axis in all of them.

Thanks!  In which of these do you think the Axis player performed most effectively?

[vonLettowVorbeck1914]

Probably the sword one (I think that was the one after we switched sides), but IMO the allied play in that one wasn’t that good.

[gamerman01]

I see in one (the one that goes up to J5), on USA1 he moved 3 infantry and an AA gun to the Aleutians and blocked it off with all kinds of blocking ships.

I haven’t studied it long enough to see what that accomplished, but I note that those 3 infantry and AA gun reduce the odds on WUS on J5 from around 80% to around 40%.  No doubt there was a method to the “madness” of defending the Aleutians to the teeth on US1, but those 3 infantry and AA ended up stranded after that.

I might look at the other one too, but really the only way to test it is to have other players try their hand at it and play out more games.  I’ll move the Allies in round 1 tonight, and hopefully you’ll respond with a J2 after that.

[vonLettowVorbeck1914]

Just let me know when you got 2 hours free, and we will save a lot of time. I have alread explained earlier in the thread why I think that move is important. Please don’t expect me to commit several days to this game when you won’t read what has already been posted on the subject. Fair?

[Zhukov44]

couple random points without having read the whole discussion

-Trying to figure out an effective counter to a devastating strategy is something that takes time.  Which means its ideal for pbem.  It’s also ideal for triplea live, since there are no timers and most players are quite patient.  But either way, something like this can’t be rushed.  If you play pbem you ought to give each other a day to make moves, especially during the workweek.

-It’s not really fair to ask a live player to test a strat with a pbem game or vice versa.  So somebody has to compromise.  Live is the shiz niz, but pbem gives each person plenty of time to think and fits well into busy schedules.  It’s a matter of taste and experience.

-Pacific happens to be ideal for pbem–Japan-Allies-Japan-etc.  So any Pacific pbem should move along fairly briskly.

Pacific is unbalanced and needs a bid whether Hollywood works 100% or not.  I suspect the Hollywood strategy does work but I’d need to study those maps to be sure.

[vonLettowVorbeck1914]

Good point about the compromise, I posted an idea for one awhile back in the other thread.

In the meantime, if anyone is looking for a live game as the allies (or as the Axis if you are doing a similar J1), PM me so we can work out a time.