Technology

I was seriously planning to leave this thread, but the statements about scripted strat is not just wrong, it is a lie! It is the same as saying the world is flat.

The reason why you cannot use scripted strats is that every single game is different regardless of LL or reg.dice, or tech. There is no player who do exact the same in each game. If you’re facing an IC in India or a German naval build, you have to act accordingly, and LL or reg.dice doesn’t alter this fact. My overall strats are the same regardless of game settings, be it LL or reg.dice or tech.
I believe KGF is more efficient than KJF, that a German naval build is bad for axis etc. These strats are irrelevant for the game settings. I use the same overall strats regardless of game settings.

To use a bomber and 2 infs against 1 inf in LL is not a strat, is a single battle which have no influence on the outcome of the game. The only difference from LL vs reg.dice is that you have to use more overkill when attacking. But this is tactics, and is not related to overall strats at all.

A while ago I asked the (imo) best Revised (LL) player in the TripleA lobby about strats and tactics, and almost every answer was: “it depends…”.
Except from a few standard opening moves, WR/Ukr R1, Egy G1, Ukr, J1 sz59, China etc etc, he always played according to the moves and buys of the opponent. LL or reg.dice doesn’t have any effect on this fact.

I feel like a scientist (which I am not!) arguing with young earth creationists.

@gamerman01:

The point is, if you play LL (and no tech, for that matter), you’re destroying one of the greatest things about wargames.  The simulation of unpredictability, and very surprising results.

All of my LL no-tech games have been unpredictable, and guess why? B/c I can’t predict the future, I never know what the opponent does before he makes his moves. Chess is also unpredictable b/c you never know what moves the opponent will make.

@gamerman01:

@Funcioneta:

That reminds me Bailen, 1808: crappy equipped Spanish army toasts overconfident french invaders. Or Midway in WW2!  :lol:

Absolutely.  Midway, Thermopylae (battle of the 300 Spartans), Alexander against the Persians, and I’m leaving out who knows how many others.

The point is, if you play LL (and no tech, for that matter), you’re destroying one of the greatest things about wargames.  The simulation of unpredictability, and very surprising results.  In real life, the side that is “supposed” to win, does NOT always win!!!  Boo hoo!  :cry:  If WW2 was played with LL dice and no tech, the Japs and Germans would have won easily!

The reason for most of those victories has more to do with technology, tactics, intel, and other force multipliers.  These things are not modeled in axis and allies.  If the battle of Thermopylae would have taken place in an open plain, they would have been slaughtered.

@gamerman01:

The point is, if you play LL (and no tech, for that matter), you’re destroying one of the greatest things about wargames.  The simulation of unpredictability, and very surprising results.

Another problem I have with the variability of this incarnation of tech in AA50 is non-directed tech.

What scientist/researchers/whatever you want to call them would be working on trying to develop a heavy bomber and WHOOPS!  We created super submarines instead!

Silliness.

Yea yea, simulation and what not… researchers are abstract concepts of people researching weapons, I know.  But it really doesn’t make much sense to get a tech you didn’t really want.

IF the techs were more balanced, I could live with this indiscrimiate way to choose which tech you get once you get a break thru…but they are not, which makes them less than desirable to using in this game.

Keep in mind as well, with the topic being ‘technology’ most players who dislike tech in some fashion would avoid the topic, I know I would have had I not been quite so bored.

@gamerman01:

No one is stopping you from making your own house rules.

Right, and it is a fact that many many A&A players started using house rules from Classic, continued in Revised, and also AA42 and AA50.

Almost all TripleA players plays/played w/o tech in Revised, and almost all TripleA players use bids to balance the game. Technically, bids are house rules b/c it is not an official optional rule.
Without one or several “house rules”, A&A would be completely boring and almost no one would wanted to play, especially b/c no A&A game is perfectly balanced like chess.

Even if most players who voted on this tech poll, voted for tech, I strongly doubt that tech is favored by most experienced A&A players.

@gamerman01:

I really don’t give a damn why you don’t like tech, or why you don’t like regular dice, or any of that.

funny coming from you, who:

• Encouraged people to post their own modified tech (some reasoning / basis would most likely be included in one’s house rule post)

• Defended Tech as superior to LL and/or No tech

• Sent me a PM saying Thanks for Posting our Tech House rules!

and NOW, NOW you say you don’t want to hear peoples thoughts about Tech?

Germanman01, your posts remind me of split personality poster.  Open to discussions and thought exchange on day, then very closed minded and defensive to others with differing views another.

Ok everybody had their say. Please stay on topic.

If you got house rules for Tech , post them in the proper section.

It is a GAME it is supposed to be FUN! If the variability that tech provides does not appeal to you then don’t use tech but please do not pretend that those who actually enjoy that factor are backwards and poor strategic players. Same with LL. No one can deny that LL and reg dice are totally different games, just as tech/no tech are as well. I do wish that tech was more balanced, but this version is superior (IMHO) than others so things are movin g in the right direction! maybe AA40 Global will nail it evne better!

@Subotai:

Almost all TripleA players plays/played w/o tech in Revised

I think that’s the most important thing to taking into account: in Revised, tech haters negated totally to use tech. Since tech in Revised was crappy anyway and only good in some rare cases, we tech fanboys didn’t cared much and prefered spent energy in playing rather in trying to save a crappy weapon. But now in AA50 tech is a very good weapon many games, so we tech fanboys will fight for tech!  8-)

Save the tech!  :mrgreen:

I’m going to venture to make a prediction, which is quite likely to be wrong, since at present most AA50 players on TripleA or elsewhere prefer tech.  In one year, if AA50 is still popular, tech will be significantly less popular, because people will be more skilled at the game, and will want to test their skills against other players without the random variability of tech determining game outcomes……

But I could well be wrong about this.  I would wonder…when Revised first came out, was it popular to play with tech, or was tech immediately unpopular?

Good post above by Critmonster…what people enjoy playing is a totally subjective thing.

The single biggest problem with tech, is the 3-4 extremely powerful gamebreaker techs, much more than the tech system itself.

It is practically the same as, if you’re a boxer or wrestler etc, and participate in a tournament, but instead of the way it is now, you could meet any opponent from any weight class…! Decided by a dice roll.
So even if you’re the world champion in boxing, weighting 65 kg, you will lose big time against an average boxer weighting 95 kg.
That is the effect of the 3-4 power techs in AA50, for the 5 biggest powers, UK, US, Russia, Germany and Japan.

Even with the current system, sometimes, a boxer is K.O’ed in the first rnd, and then we might ask if he was ready to face a relative strong opponent, but there is a reason we got weight classes, and that’s b/c we don’t want to have built-in asymmetric fighting and competitive abilities.
The power techs in AA50 is exactly that, a built in mismatch if any side gets one or more power techs than the opponent.

One idea could be to get rid of paras, mech inf, HBs, and LRA. Then if one side gets a tech, the opponent can decide to by the same tech directly for twice the price, and get the tech immediately, or wait one rnd and buy the same tech at the same price. Then the tech system would not be as flawed as it is now.

Even a “fair” system where you could buy a tech achieved by the opponent at once at the same price, but with the powertechs, all tech games would always be influenced by techs and not the standard abilities for the units in A&A.

Some TripleA mods have elite units which costs more (i.e. heavy tanks attack/defend @4), although I don’t play the custom mods, this is a much better system for changing the unit abilities than any tech system.

@Subotai:

One idea could be to get rid of paras, mech inf, HBs, and LRA.

It’s possible, or maybe better doing them delayed techs. However, I think is a more pressing issue solving the unbalanced setups annyversary has: of course, if Germany or Japan get some of those tech early is game over, but more due the default advantage they have than effect of tech. Allies have enough to struggle defending trannies and such to spend money in tech; specially for UK, every IPC must be spent in units or boats, and the same goes for USSR. USA can afford at least one tech but without doubt Japan and Germany have much more money to spend on tech teams and that means tech usually favors axis

The most important problem of the game is that you cannot hold India and China at the same time even in a non tech game: one of them will fall in 42 scenario early, and both of them in 41 scenario. If it were round 5-6 I’d have no problem (Japan needs a decent chance of taking them), the problem is they fall usually round 1-3, and axis achieves economic advantage too early. USA has not enough money to support the two front war allies must fight, and in 1942 scenario Germany gets a free IC at Karelia from round 2-3. I find this more important than techs being random or not, and for resolve this, we should do at least two of these: delete Karelia IC in 1942, making China playable (both scenarios) and changing order of turns so Japan plays after UK (both scenarios)

Later we can make some techs delayed if really really needed. Anyway I don’t see techs being more unpopular in a couple of years: modified slighty, maybe, but not fully deleted