The Axis Advantage is Bigger Than You Think.

ehh, I find a lot of value in watching my opponent make his moves, I feel like I gain an understanding of his thought process that way, and that time between my moves is when I do my planning similar to the time between forum post moves.

I find my strategies to be more disjointed and less fluid when days go by between plays, especially when playing more than one high level game at a time.

Again, this isnt really a criticism in any way, just a personal preference.  I migrated over to triplea from GTO, where both formats are used extensively, so I’m familiar with the merits of both.  I’ve had this discussion with people before, its simply an agree to disagree kinda thing.

Right

I always review every move my opponent has made, going through the history, one move at a time.  I normally get a good idea of the thought process that way.

As for days going by, this can be largely controlled by who you play.  There are many players who will give you multiple moves every day, and others who are much more leisurely (like I am these days).

If you want the game to move along and you want to play a good player, I recommend Allweneedislove, Wheatbeer, Boldfresh, or Karl7, all very active league players.  There are other good players who play quite regularly as well, this is just a short list.

Ooo! Ooo!  I send in multiple turns on at least 5 different games a day.  :-D

He all,

I really believe that many people are strongly influenced by their own experiences and often prematurely derive game imbalances from that.
I cannot say in chess “panov-attack against caro-kann is imbalanced because I always lose against it”.

Unfortunately data bases in A&A are small so Gamerman posted the only objective data we have from the league archive, at least a couple of 100 games, not much but not nothing.

This data states that Axis “seem” to have a slight advantage (in the whole population), so “seem” means that with >500 games this is probably true with a probability of >90%, it could also be variance but quite unlikely with that sample size.

That’s it if you ask me. A&A is too complex to find out which side is stronger if both players played perfectly because no one soon will ever play even close to perfectly. I dare to say that the absolutely skill level (compared to chess) in A&A makes the best player in the world the one-eyed man in the country of blinds. I dare to predict that in a world in which humans would play A&A to the extend they play chess in reality in the past 100 years the dominant strategies could be entirely different from what we do today and consider it as standard. And maybe in this world even the Allies would have a heavy advantage. Maybe just nobody (except very few players) do simply know how to play the Allies? Maybe yes, maybe no, we simply don’t know for sure.

To me the current data is sufficient not to discuss any rule changes or additional NOs - at least not for balancing (one could do such stuff to create a new game e.g.)
From here bids are a self regulating system and imo work perfectly. And we meanwhile see that in very competitive games bids are usually 12-16 in the recent games –> There is a decent change that 12-16 might make the game even.

And then lets wait for next year. Maybe we even discuss in the other direction and suddenly Allies are too strong in case people like gamerman, hobo, AWN inspire other players to win with the Allies more:)

Cheers,
Tobias

P.s.: To me bids are even a nice strategic layer of that game. I could imagine a A&A variant in which I would on purpose create the standard setup in they way:
this is the placed Units and Axis/Allies can place units worth XX$ under the restrictions xyz.
So I do not even see a crucial need to aim for a starting setup which does not require bids at all.

Recent developments btw. showed that bids are going up. Axis discovered that playing for economic victory can be more attractive and more difficult to stop than all-in strategies on Europe victory.

I expect average bids of +20 and higher for the G40 2014 play-offs.

@Karl7:

After playing 20+ games on the forum and off, most as the allies, I say that the Axis advantage is not slight… its huge.  I’d say at least, AT LEAST, worth a 15 bid for the allies, if not more.

Well then, I guess Karl saw it 2 years ahead of the rest of us, although I don’t think his bidding history supports this statement, does it?  :-)

I am a bit fed up of how easily Russia is brought down to 20 Income, whilst Germany is consistently earning 62+. Seems ridiculous  that Germany is rewarded for holding political victory cities or regions, but Russia isn’t for holding the same historically fought over ones.
I agree that taking Moscow is not as important to ultimate victory as going South and starving Russia of income, while Germany maintains enormous wealth.
I have always favoured playing the Allies, but will have to start accepting  the Axis, or risk losing most games.

If you play the game without NOs, it will balance things out a little. Germany won’t be making quite so much more than Russia, although I imagine it will hurt Russia some not getting that Archangel NO. In most of our games, Russia will get that one for sure for several rounds, even if Germany is attacking them and taking a lot of territory. The reason being is that Germany tends to not be able to get a warship up to SZ 125. They do make subs but they mostly go south to either convoy raid England or try to threaten the American fleet. Once Germany gets Leningrad though, Archangel will fall the next round. That always happens. By that time Russia is turtling in Moscow.

Another idea we had is to give Russia a few small NOs. Basically, when Russia is at war in Europe, they get 2 IPCs for each victory city they control. This includes their own cities so even if Russia doesn’t get any German territories, they will still get 6 IPCs per round for a while and 4 IPCs for a few rounds after Leningrad falls. It helps out Russia a little, gives them a few extra men to hold Moscow.

Morning Knp. Thank you for your post.
I was whining, is all . Is just not historical. Stalin placed as much importance on Stalingrad an d Leningrad as did Hitler. Russia weathered the storm, then went on the offensive never to be stopped. There should always be income for Inf units.

Agree with Wittman