Defending aircraft on A/C with long range tech.

I have seen a few Allied players skip the Flying Tiger attack. It is not a move I agree with. I will sacrifice Japanese planes I CAN REPLACE to take out that plane that can not be. It gives China a chance at offensive attacks and some defense.

I see no reason for Japan not to attack China. While killing all the Chinese troops in round 1 of a '41 game can be a bit of a stretch, the flying Tigers and some other territories should be attacked. While Japan may not want to spend the effort to totally eliminate China it is worthwhile to reduce them to just Chinghai. This way they can not produce any troops and are no longer relevant.

From the Allied side it is worth Russia’s troubles to send some forces to China to delay the Japanese. If China can be held to 2 or 3 territories they will produce free infantry and increase the amount of forces Japan has to commit for an advance through the central Asian front. In most games Russia will eventually have to retreat it’s forces as the Japanese become too numerous to hold out over China and its infantry, but again the whole idea was to delay Japan anyway. As far as other Allied liberations occurring these are very rare. Normally this will be done by the US and it will also normally be after all the high value UK territories and the Philippines have been liberated.

I would say just come to grips with the reality that China is a good idea badly implemented in AA50.

@squirecam:

@questioneer:

Yes, by round 4 technically.

I’ve always been of the belief that if games are ending early, either its a particularly bad dice outcome, or the other side is not playing very well.

Questions:

What did each of you buy as Germany?

When you were allies, did he attack you, or vice versa?

Q1  I bought like 4inf, 4tnk, 1ftr.  He bought something similar

Q2  Russia went too strong the first round and it backlashed quickly.  The 2nd game seemed more like the normal Eastern Front stuggle- eventual stack on either side but the Allied planes came in to defend and bomb just in the nick of time.  This is why I think Allies have the advantage.  Against a strong KGF, there are just too many fronts for the Axis to defend- the new map with chopped up territories doesn’t allow it.

I didn’t completley ignore Japan though.  I simply left a small annoying force to sail south and become a potential menace- but I put all my money and builds towards Europe.  Japan is way to slow- you need more builds to get to Russia because it takes forever.  That’s why I think the NOs help balance it out more because they help the Axis more than the Allies on the onset.

In the first game, he did have some dice whoopings.  The 2nd game seemed pretty normal.  Tech really didn’t effect the games much because the games ended fairly quickly (4 rounds).  They are a lot of fun though and pretty balanced I think because both sides can invest in them- especially with NO’s.

nope, never have.

Sounds like an awesome slugfest.

Like two fighters in the late rounds, wheeling about in the the ring backpedaling away from each other, trying to hang on, trying to land the decisive one punch to end the contest and trying not to lose the match!

@shifty:

What kind of “program” are you writing?  What equation/algorithm are you using?

It’s written in BlitzMax. The source below should (hopefully :)) not be too hard to understand - if you have questions, feel free to ask:

' Compares 2nd ed. A&A tech dev cost/rate with Anniv. ed. A&A ' 20 turns to test; record turn number that a total of 2 breakthroughs were achieved.  Test 1 & 2 rolls/turn. ' If two breakthroughs aren't achieved, "turn 0" is recorded (ignored for graphing & turn average) ' (When going for two breakthroughs, two aren't achieved in about 2% for both 2nd and Anniv.) Strict Local breakthroughs, totalCost, turn, totalTurns Local answer[21], prefix$, graph$ Local breakthroughLimit = 2 For Local rolls = 1 To 2 ' actual rolls for 2nd Ed, Researchers for Anniv. Print;Print; Print rolls + " Tech Roll(s)/Researcher(s) per Turn:" Print; Print "2nd Edition" totalCost = 0 totalTurns = 0 For Local c = 0 To 20 answer[c] = 0 Next For Local test = 1 To 100000 ' a hundred thousand tests for accuracy breakthroughs = 0 turn = 0 While breakthroughs < breakthroughLimit And turn <= 20 turn :+ 1 totalCost :+ rolls * 5 ' each roll costs 5 IPCs For Local c = 1 To rolls If Rand(6) = 6 Then breakthroughs :+ 1 Next Wend totalTurns :+ turn If turn > 20 Then answer[0] :+ 1 Else answer[turn] :+ 1 EndIf Next ' display results For Local c = 1 To 20 graph = "" ' divide results by 1000 so each asterisk represents one percent For Local cc = 1 To Int(answer[c]/1000.0 + .5) graph :+"*" Next If c < 10 Then prefix = " " Else prefix ="" ' extra space for single digits Print prefix + c + " " + graph Next Print "Avg turn = " + totalTurns / 100000.0 Print "Avg cost = " + totalCost / 100000.0 Print; Print "Anniversary Edition" totalCost = 0 totalTurns = 0 For Local c = 0 To 20 answer[c] = 0 Next Local researchers ' researchers accumulate from turn to turn For Local test = 1 To 100000 researchers = 0 breakthroughs = 0 turn = 0 While breakthroughs < breakthroughLimit And turn <= 20 turn :+ 1 totalCost :+ rolls * 5 ' each researcher costs 5 IPCs researchers :+ 1 * rolls ' accumulate 1 researcher per "roll" Local success For Local c = 1 To researchers If Rand(6) = 6 Then success = True ' only one regardless of # of sixes rolled Next If success Then researchers = 0 ' eliminate accumulated researchers when successful breakthroughs :+ 1 EndIf Wend totalTurns :+ turn If turn > 20 Then answer[0] :+ 1 Else answer[turn] :+ 1 EndIf Next ' display results For Local c = 1 To 20 graph = "" ' divide results by 1000 so each asterisk represents one percent For Local cc = 1 To Int(answer[c]/1000.0 + .5) graph :+"*" Next If c < 10 Then prefix = " " Else prefix ="" ' extra space for single digits Print prefix + c + " " + graph Next Print "Avg turn = " + totalTurns / 100000.0 Print "Avg cost = " + totalCost / 100000.0 Next

I release it into the public domain (modify it as desired/convert it to the language of your choice).  breakthroughLimit is initially set for 2, which generated the first set of graphs in this thread (I hand-rounded the accuracy to a single decimal place when copy/pasting results in the thread). Setting it to 1 (i.e. stopping after getting one breakthrough) produced the second set above. I also made another, slightly tweaked version to generate the “only buy Researchers on turn 1” version for wodan46.

@TG:

@Romulus:

Casualty system in A&A is part of the success of the game.
Simple enough for not being too much time consuming but at same time allows for cannon fodder and protection of the expensive units.

If we condsider the real battle attacker do not “know” who are they firing. WW2 was not fought with Napoleonic style battles where 2 armies lined up one in the face of the other.
In WW2 units are camouflaged, entrenched and hidden. When and if a unit is discovered by the enemy it can be target of fire, but attacker is not “selecting” the target among all the defending unit, only the one that has become visible.
So to some extent is the defender, positioning an moving its units, that allow the attacker to fire.

The more “correct” way of picking casualties is the one used in Battle of the Bulge, random selection, with the possibility of overkilling one unit and totally missing another.

If we can not have random casualties then we should stay with the “defender pick the unit to be removed” mechanism.

I am Moses Obama and I endorse this message.

Thank you!

I think that in Anniversary it is the right system. House rule or other ruleset may use different casualties removal system  but it is the right thing for the “standard” game.

So Italy really wasn’t a large factor? Did they conquer all of Africa? What were their builds?

Italy built 1 trs and 1 CV and then mostly land units, adding 1 DD later on. Africa wasn’t important, Germany sent a tank down there which manoeuvred to avoid 2 UK infs (landings in West Africa were not done but probably would have been a good idea). Italy was a factor in that it distracted from attacking the Germans and I think a balanced approach by the US and the UK is probably more effective, i.e. landing in both Norway and Algeria, having fleets both in North/baltic sea and West Med, SBR against both Germany and Italy, and this necessitates a lot of US involvement.

For such things as India IC, this is a detail which o/c we just have to try and fail to see if it can be held, more than 4-5 rnds?

In this game there was no India IC, India survived because Japan focused on China and Australia. In an other game an IC was built and defended with the help of some Russian troops but the jury is out on if this really is viable if the Japs really go all-out vs. India. I hope there’s more UK ships to start with since that would make defending a built IC so much easier! We’ll see very shortly when we get the UK set-up.