"Upgrade" bidding

If you can add several bid units to same area, then yes - 2inf 1arty in Ukraine are way better than 1 fighter there.
And even if not, 2inf 1arty can help several theaters - like arty Libya, inf Ukraine, inf Belorus (or EEu).

The only difficulty would be deciding if the Pacific strategy is the right one.

This would be based on how strong Germany is:

Does she threaten Cau/Moscow?  If so, you might want to ensure some good Western Allied pressure (western, southern, even SZ14 pressure all over the med as Darth indicated)

If Japan plays it close to home fleet wise (to keep US honest), then again, a US pacific fleet may be sub optimal.

I think if Germanys a huge inf ball in their big 4/5 territories, then it might be best to be happy having them contained and go after Japan with the Pacific fleet… you have the time to do so (and the axis have proven it might be their soft spot)

@ncscswitch:

I like the logging option.

I know I did not care for the argument that brought the issue up.  And it would be nice to have had a way to drop you a note and say “Hey!  What were thsoe dice?” :-)

Okay, I have created a “Make game record page” which creates records that AACalc will soon be able to log to - another couple hours coding should do it. This also incorporates an optional bidding function.

One question that was raised about bidding in software development forum was whether we should use an “Ebay” style bid where the winning bidder gets their optimal bid - ie. if you bid 0 and the other guy bid 10, then you would get it for 9 - so your bid is how low you are willing to go, but you don’t necessarily have to go that low. It’s an interesting concept, and I could just make a choice on my page for which bid system to use.

Thoughts? Would A&A.org consider switching to this bid? It would make the bid less nerve-racking because you know you won’t be leaving money “on the table”. Eg. I just bid 7 for my round 2 game against a player who took the bid for 10 in round 1. If he bid 10 again this time, I could have had it for 9. Of course with that you can’t declare your bid placement with your bid (or you could just get the change in $ to the bank) because you don’t know exactly what it will be yet.

I am speaking of averages here…

And it is not the INF that creates the extra Russian deaths, it is the FIG and ARM living longer with the extra fodder AND the extra single roll of a 2 which gives you a 33% chance of an extra death in and of itself.

@JLord:

I thought the generally accepted rules of bidding were that you couldn’t place more than one unit in the same territory?  Anyways, that is the rule we would follow.  And the thing is, if Allies put 12 IPC somehwere, the Axis will place their bid next and can presumably counter whatever the allies do.

Yeah, it’s also generally accepted that you don’t give a bid to the Allies.

I figured you were doing your own thing, you know?

2 ICs is 14 units a round.  That equals or exceeds Russia + England’s builds and it’s ever so much easier to crush Russia.

Though, the Indian IC can be too far forward and easily threatenable by American units coming through Africa.  The Manchurian IC can dump into Sink with the FIC IC though.

Wow, what a thread!

I must say, I take NCS’s position on this one for several reasons, the most pertinant of them being that

a) While the Axis certainly CAN win without a bid, when you have players of equal skill and who are equally skilled at playing both Axis AND Allies (not just one or the other side), a bid can certainly make the difference in the early round(s) and many times it’s what happens the first 2 rounds that can help decide the game.

b) figuring out statistics is something that can only be done over thousands and thousands of games. I mean, you can flip a coin 100 times and get 90 heads. Does that mean the odds of getting tails are skewed? No, because if you were to flip that coin 10,000 times or 100,000 times the odds are it would be very close to 50/50 and 1,000,000 times or more and likely the difference would be so negligible as to allow us to say it was 50/50. While we cannot play 1,000,000 AAR games, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to suggest that a bid helps even out the game.

You know, just as many of the issues of AA Classic were worked out in AAR, I think probably in the next iteration (or version) that many of the issues we’ve seen here will be worked out as well. Maybe an extra unit here or another territory there… whatever it takes to balance the game.

To me I’m looking for gamebreaking changes in LL that would convince me that it doesn’t have any validity for analyzing overall strategies in ADS. I don’t really get stuck on very small details in very small battles in which we’re talking about efficiency in fractions of IPCs - which either side can take advantage of. I’m looking at the forest, not the trees.

I think it’s something to have to live with, but it’s still better to look at overall strategies than having every other game in ADS screwed over by some important battle going horribly wrong.