Canned Strats

Well CS,

I am not going to get into this a lot further because…
1.  This thread is now dreadfully off-topic
and
2.  You are not likely to admit error.

Now, I am going to correcft you on your final post, then allow my previous words to stand.

As I said, there have been a number of posts regarding C-Sub strats here to allow folks who are not members of your yahell group to read them.  You claim that I am picking nits when I distinguish between advocating a core concept and state that you are using canned strats, what you called a “script.”

I stand by that distinction, and will allow others to decide if my distinction is valid.

Example of Caspian Subs canned strats/scripts…
From:  “The Z42 Progression: One Island Hopping Plan for Japan During KGF”

Round 1: Build 3tra 1tnk
Round 2: Take 2tra of gear and a battleship to Hawaii (Z52).
Round 3: Take 1tra of gear to Australia (Z46) and 1tra of gear to New Zealand (Z41).
Round 4: Move gear toward Africa (1tra to Z42, 1tra to Z25).  (Now go figure out the sucker punch before you read further)
Round 5: Hit the sucker or take Brazil/Africa

From:  “Cracking the Canadian Shield”

The basic move is this:

Round one do a 3tra German opening (Policy Paper #11) and buy 3tra 1tnk with Japan.

Round two unite your German fleet in Z07 and buy 1tra 3tnk 3inf with Japan and shuttle gear to Buryatia; between Buryatia and Japan you should have 5inf 5tnk.

Round three take the Germans and land 5inf 5tnk in E. Canada through Z09.  Take Japan and land 5inf 5tnk in W. Canada.  Unless your opponent is prepared for it you ought to get DC or LA.  Capturing either US city should get you a win.

Now compare these to “core concepts” posts…

From:  Japan Strategy Concepts

South Asia:  To my mind, this is perhaps one of THE best avenues of attack for Japan.  UK is likely to use their India forces to hold Africa (giving up 3 IPC’s to keep the 9 in Africa from Egypt south.  Again this allows Japan to advance quickly, with the risk of advancing too quickly and being decimated by a small strike of USSR forces coming south from Caucuses.  The south Asia avenue of attack can be supported with an IC in FIC, as well as by 1-2 transports that scavenge INF from the islands (Phillipines and East Indies in particular), and later with “tranny exchange” where a loaded tranny brings forces to FIC from Japan 1 round, then travels back the next round to “bridge” forces to Bury or Manch, being replaced by another loaded tranny heading to FIC from Japan.  Thus all trannies are able to ferry forces each round.  The south Asia strike has two additional advantages that make it such a strong threat to the Allies.  The first is that it adds a second threat to the Russian IC in Caucuses.  With Germany pushing via Ukraine, and Japan pushing through India and Persia, Caucuses becomes an issue for Russia.  And control of that IC by either side, with supporting defensive forces flowed in by the other plus subsequent builds, means that Russia is in serious trouble.  If Caucuses is too well defended, you can possibly slip some forces past and move on into Africa.  But again, be careful, if Caucuses is well held and you move past Persia, Russia can strike at your supply line and even back toward your FIC base while your advance forces are cut off in Trans Jordan or Egypt.  An IC in FIC should probably be the first built by Japan since it allows for use on 2 otherwise slow to supply avenues of attack.

Now, let’s let the readers here decide which is more valuable…
An XYZ script that is easilly blocked by even simple (and shall I say traditional?) Allied moves?
Or a post that discusses the basic outline of a strategy and allows the player to flesh it out in details and timeline, with FIVE OTHER optional concepts listed in teh same paper in the event South Asia is blocked?

That is a single battle, and no more of a canned strat than attackign West Russia on R1.

A Canned Strat goes beyond a single opening round battle, and starts to details specific equipment purchases, 3, 4 or 5 turns into the game.  No one can predict that far ahead, not in ADS anyway.

Hell, the cumulative odds over 5 turns of even being able to ATTEMPT a specific move move that far down the line are nearly astronomical, since not only do you have the cumulative variable of about 70 battles by then, but also the cumulative effects of every single unit in NCM.

For example “take Africa” on Turn 5 in that Z42 move on Turn 5… OK, sure, I’ll hit Africa on Turn 5.  But what if the US has been landing there in a North African Dominance strat for the past 5 turns?  Or just a T2 South Africa Interdiction?  And if they are, then hitting Brazil instead is a 1-turn gain of 3 IPC for Japan since the US can turn from SZ12 to SZ18 the next move and obliterate half of the forces you ahve been staging with the past 5 turns.

They are, by and large, presetned as fairly detailed blueprints.

So he won a Tournament.  So have I.  So he has beat some good players, so have I.

But when your strategy relies on moves and builds 5 turns into the game, THAT is canned, no other way to say it.

Well heck, I was going to log in again to give you credit for starting a new thread, so I figure I may as well post a real post.

A) Good idea for a new thread.  That’s good moderatin’.

B) Ok, you quote the Canadian Shield paper which says, “The basic move is this”.  Doesn’t that imply immediately that there are other ways to do it as opposed to the move only being a script? Â

More importantly, doesn’t the paper go on to detail many variations of the basic move?  So that’s not a script, that a discussion with a starting description of the basic concept.  It’s weird that you’re trying to split this semantic hair.  Must be the influence of that darn post-modernism…

C) You write “You are not likely to admit error.”  1) Like you are?  I admire your undaunted self-righteousness in the face of evidence to the contrary.  2) In fact, this may be one of the ways we are most different.  In the link Squirecam posted you can see that I give him credit for several points and say that I’m going to go back and work on a couple of concepts.  We were having a good debate (though later on in our history we did get a little raucus.  Heh  :-D).

You, on the other hand, have a track record of starting debates off like a knob.  And I quote: “What this idiot who wrote this paper misses when he advocates the 3 tranny build…” Â

See http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=5719.msg85316#msg85316

I don’t usually push back hard on folks, but when you’re both wrong AND obnoxious it tends to get my dander up.  I tend to try and look for things to give people credit for (evidenced in a vatiety of threads), you tend to look for things to call people idiots.

I guess you must feel like you’re succeeding.

And Jen I do believe that i stated, twice so far in this thread, that those essays are valuable in terms of sparking thought.

What they are nearly useless for though is taking them verbatim and trying them against an experienced player.

That was my initial point (of taking C-Sub with a grain of salt), and remains my consistent point throughout this thread.

Not a problem Jen :-)

Let me sum up a few of my earlier points, in case tehy did not cross over from the original thread, and just so folks understand me…

The C-Sub essays have some good info.  They present ideas that folks may not have considered.  Many of them have some great statisitcal analysis of specific units, and others have some good analysis of specific combat situations you may encounter.  On that last item, it is not so much the specific analysis that is valuable (except of course for the Round 1 analysis, since beyond that too many variables creep in), but HOW to analize that makes them worthwhile.

They are a good jumping off point.

But they are not then end-all and be-all of how to win Axis and Allies.

And, trying to use them as many of them are presented, as a blueprint for what builds and moves to make to achieve victory, is more likely to cause you a lot of grief than it is to be of any real benefit to you or your game play.  Thus, take them with a grain of salt.

I am in north central North Carolina.  That Tournament is about a 20 hour drive from here…

Sorry folks…

If Crazy Straw wants a run at me, he knows where to find me… right here, on the forum, where everyone can see the moves and watch whichever side will win, with it recorded for all posterity so long as the site exists :-)

Tournament is over in 2 months, so I should have plenty of time then…