Pointlessly Broken

What baffles me most is no one noticed this when the game came out.  I remember “Operation Hollywood” being quite popular in Revised…so it’s surprising no one tried it early on.

Or even better, you can run through this in TripleA and upload the file.

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.

Man, what a lot of reading.

Yes, the KUSAF strategy was touted years ago.  I challenged the guy who said it was “unstoppable” and I trashed him.  IIRC he had maybe a 40% chance on WUS when it came time to strike.  UK and ANZ were going crazy - I won’t just accept the statement that it’s game over if USA falls.

Anyway, as Eggman said, run a few rounds of this “unstoppable” strategy on tripleA and upload it so we can analyze it.

I’m skeptical, but if Krieghund and Zhukov think rule changes are in order to fix this, then I think I definitely need to revisit this issue.  Maybe there’s something you came up with that this other guy (forget his handle) a couple years ago did, and 2nd edition is maybe a little different than when we were playing OOB?  At least I think it was OOB - I don’t remember.

But I REALLY don’t want to take the time to read all your ruminations.  Just show us the “final” “whiz-bang” strat that you’ve “fine-tuned”, and I’ll see if I can stop it.

I’ve never seen an “unstoppable” strategy with 90%+ chance of winning every time like you are claiming, in any of the A&A games that I have played extensively, which would include Revised, AA50, P40, and G40, so forgive me but I find this hard to believe.

@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.

Enter Gamerman  8-)

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=17497.0

And the game is decided on J3.  US and ANZAC remaining forces - 3 ANZAC fighters, 5 USA fighters, and 2 USA Tac bombers.

One Japanese Strat bomber limps away from the battlefield, and all that’s left of the Japanese fleet, a damaged battleship, a destroyer, a cruiser, and 3 transports face imminent destruction in USA3.

This pretty much concludes the J-1 –>Alaska; J3 Game Over thread.

It’s Game Over, all right.  For Japan.  Fastest way they could possibly lose.

Thanks for the demonstration, Tragedy, it was fun and interesting.
I recommend strongly against a KUSAF strategy against a good opponent.

In the put up or shut up game, Tragedy had to shut up.  I completely destroyed his KUSAF strategy.  Maybe you have a way better one, I don’t know yet.  Show me on a game board (tripleA or a series of ABattlemaps)

Stoney, it’s a bit early to say this, but since you just posted -

I am waiting for J3 in our test game.  There is no requirement to attack J3, but as I said in the game thread, it’s probably the best option at this point.

The “all-out” defense of the allies to defend against a possible J3 attack of Wus is really not even that inconveniencing.  I sent 3 ANZAC fighters to Wus that don’t have anything to do anyway, and the US has bought 11 infantry and 4 fighters in her first 2 rounds.  Units that could be put to good use if the J3 attack does not happen.

No, I think the J1, 2, and 3 attack on Wus is a pie in the sky idea.  It’s not practical, and is not high percentage.  Whether Japan attacks on round 3 or pulls back like it was one big bluff, Japan is in a poor situation.  As you said, an India rush (or really, any combination of attacks on India, China, and ANZAC/USA) is preferable.  After 2 rounds, well, let me get the current map for you.  In my estimation, it is not looking good for Japan at all.

Now if J can get USA’s 60, that will help their cause, but J will lose an awful lot of material taking Wus.  China is already getting to be a beast, and without J airpower, will continue to take more territory.

China has 18, UK has 28, ANZAC has 28, and J is clear up in Alaska.

In the 20% or so chance that Wus falls, the minor allies are actually still looking good, I think.  But like I said, let’s wait for J3.

@Imperious:

LOL. The game was declared broken 3 days after it was released, which began the process of Alpha 1,2,3.

We spent over a year developing ideas for larry, which finally resulted in 2nd edition Pacific and Europe.

@Zhukov44:

What baffles me most is no one noticed this when the game came out.  I remember “Operation Hollywood” being quite popular in Revised…so it’s surprising no one tried it early on.

Nonsense!  I guess you missed the big discussion and series of test games.  See the link I provided to the discussion thread.  Unfortunately, I can’t immediately view the map files that were uploaded, but you can read the commentary.  Also, I think the games are old enough that they have been purged from the site?  Link Stoney provided was broken, anyway.

This was all hashed out in 2010<yawn></yawn>

I guess the main thing I don’t know, is how is the starting setup of 2nd edition different than the old OOB?  Didn’t the number of aircraft even get trimmed back along the way?  I guess if the starting setup or a rule change has had a significant effect on Kill USA first strategy in P40, then all the discussion and play testing we did a couple years ago is irrelevant to the 2nd edition “problem” you are describing.

@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.

@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.

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.

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