News flash: AXIS & ALLIES ANNIVERSARY EDITION due out oct 23 08

Taht is good to know.
If you ever wanted a game with members on this site, there is one every three months in Derbyshire. PM Private Panic or look in the Events thread.

@toblerone77 A bit late to the party here but anyway…!
The sculpts are made in a lighter plastic than later versions and the Japanese infantry sculpts, for example, really show this. Lots of them have half their helmets missing and their rifle stocks are too thin and are thus often bowed or malformed. Another example is Italian tanks which have smaller and far inferior sculpts to the europe 1940 version.
This is my favourite Axis and Allies version regardless and I have swapped out all the pieces with better sculpts from other version. Its probably cost me a fortune in potential re sales but I don’t care.

Gents

Thanks for all the input.  Much appreciated.

@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.

Wow… I remember when this poll came out.

No prob dude!

yea his comments are crap. typical just typical.