Global 1940 and 1943 Expansion for use with TripleA

@sculpt - Glad its giving you a challenge though as this thread mentions you should update to the latest 1.8.0.9!

The Hard AI does not receive any extra bonuses unless you add them in the settings (so no cheating for it). You can always review its past turns using the history feature to prove that it isn’t cheating (‘Game’ > ‘Show history’). If you are having trouble beating it then I suggest giving yourself a small bid to start with then decreasing that as you play against it more.

More details on the Hard AI and to follow its development you can go here: http://tripleadev.1671093.n2.nabble.com/AI-Development-Discussion-tp7585227.html

I recall Veq saying that the 1914 rules presented a number of near insurmountable problems for TripleA in its present state. Frankly reading the rulebook for that game made me want to bang my head against the wall.
:-D

It departs in significant ways from previous Axis and Allies games, and adds several elements that just have no real comparison with the earlier boards. The combat rules (single combat round attacking), the unit interactions, air supremacy, the rules for movement or occupation, the colonies, the neutrals, ports, Russian revolution, income collection, placement etc, are all so different from the WW2 games, that its hard to draw any direct parallels.

Basically, having played any of the World War II Axis and Allies games, doesn’t do you a whole lot of good in learning how to play 1914. In some ways it might even confuse the situation further, because you come into it with so many expectations, that are immediately upset at every conceivable point.

I don’t like to be a downer on 1914, since it does introduce some novel ideas into A&A, but on the whole I was kind of disappointed with this game. The only experience I can compare it to, was trying to learn Guadalcanal, which was pretty headache inducing. For me the main bummer, was that 1914 attempted all these really radical rules revisions in order simulate the world war 1 feel, but I think you could have accomplished a similar feel, just focusing more on the unit roster and the map design.

I appreciate how hard it is though to attempt WW1 in the A&A framework. The Great War game I made for tripleA with Surtur presented all sorts of frustrations. And that Great War game made no core revisions to the ruleset (since obviously that wasn’t possible in tripleA at the time.) It was tricky enough just depicting “free graphics” and things like that in TripleA, since at the time most stuff was still drawn directly on the baseline maps. But in a way, I think that was helpful, because it forced us to consider what a World War 1 game might look like, using the same essential rules that all the other Axis and Allies games used up until that point.

At that point the engine could handle Classic, Revised, and the two theater games then in print, Europe 1999 and Pacific 2001. For our Great War game we could change simple stuff, like unit attack/defense values, or how far they moved, or how much they cost, but we couldn’t just up and create an entirely new combat system for them! Because the TripleA engine didn’t work like that! heheh. We could change the way territories were drawn or distributed across the gamemap, but not how they were contested, or how placement of units within them worked. Instead we had to build within the confines of rules that already existed on other A&A gameboards. So in my mind, that Great War game, still felt a lot like Axis and Allies, even if it was ridiculously large and sprawling and kind of annoying with some of the insets and whatnot. At least you could say something like “hey, you’ve played Classic or A&A Europe? Well this game works basically the same way.” And then you go on trying to fit the square peg into the round hole, and make a WW1 game that vaguely fits with the familiar ruleset.

1914 is a totally different beast though, and took a very different approach, by introducing a whole host of new rules and mechanics. Each phase in the sequence of play involved a core change of one sort or another. And even using my most diehard A&A buddy as a test subject, trying to teach it was nearly impossible. It made the 1940 game look like a cake-walk by comparison, despite having like half the unit types and half the game tiles, and after a few sessions, he was like “dude, this is frustrating, lets just play Global.”

Not to knock it, since I like many of the discrete elements and ideas it introduces, but as a cohesive whole, 1914 just felt like a completely different game to me. I’m not sure why it has Axis and Allies in the title, beyond branding purposes.

I’m not holding my breath on this one. Even though I think it would be hugely helpful to have a tripleA version of this game, just for teaching/learning purposes. Unfortunately I just don’t see the critical mass of enthusiasm for it, from either the devs or the player base, that is usually required to get a tripleA simulation up and running. But who knows? Maybe Frogg and Blumb can get a groundswell going. It would be cool to see some of the 1914 features included in TripleA, just to expand the options with the engine, and allow more customization for mods and such.

As long as we’re talking battle calc, how about allowing the user to specify OOL?  Sometimes you want that bomber on defense to be taken last and see how much that changes your chances….

Or to hold subs back and not lose them first.  Can be very significant when you have super subs, like I often do.  :-)

Meanwhile, I will continue to rely on my more detailed and versatile calculator, even though it’s designed for AA50.  It still works better for Global than the TripleA calc, even though it does carriers different and doesn’t have tacs

@Veqryn:

i guess we should leave it with solution 1.

most players will not be aware of the need to use edit mode to delete units, even if I post a giant news item somewhere

Yes, I agree. It would be difficult to bring this to everyone’s attention.
@Veqryn:

ps: triplea 1.5.1 is out

Great, I will test it this evening.

Thank you :-)

@swordfish:

For one, I could not seem to find any of the map files (such as ‘basetiles’, ‘relieftiles’, ‘games’, etc.) that are a part of the default games (which I believe there are four of, including Big World 1942) that come with the TripleA client.

When downloading maps, they are saved in the same location as the savegames (the user folder) rather than in the application directory.  For instance, on my Win system, they are in C:\Users\username\triplea\maps.

I don’t know.

When people refer to Alpha or Alpha +1 are they referring to this?

http://www.harrisgamedesign.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=2531

or are they referring to the Alphas for the combined global game?

Thanks.

It is Clauswitz’ post of April 26, 10:54 PM.

Right click, “save target as”, and then rename the file as “Temporal.properties”.  Next time you start up Triple A, viola!