Posts made by Arthur Bomber Harris

@Cornwallis

1. The United States is obviously at war in that Farmboy match which is why his units can come to Africa and Gibraltar. Germany built only ground units which is the common G1 strat now as they can reach Bryansk on the G5 which is very pivotal part of the game, forcing Russia to turtle in Moscow for the mid-game. Over-spending on German navy is a common mistake of novice players and one of the main reasons why people fail to consistently win as the Axis in OOB matches.

2. Italy could have gone to Syria on I1, but getting that nice Greece/Southern France bonus is wonderful for their economy. I usually find that Italian forces in Iraq get quickly overwhelmed by the British without too significant of casualties. Planes can hit it easily from Egpyt and India making the location difficult to defend in the early game. Personally, I like using the transports to take Cyprus and Malta which are expensive for the British to reclaim without losing transport/ground units themselves and is a major drain on the UK production until the mid-game. I am not saying your idea is bad, I just haven’t seen it successful enough to make much of an impact.

The Adam-Farmboy match is Balance mod so there are additional incentives for both Axis and Allies to hold the islands in the med.

Let me expand on the reasoning for a risky I1 attack that has a 13% odds of success like in the top picture above. Farmboy is a significantly better player than me so my estimated odds of winning at the start of the game will be about 20% if I had a fair bid, and only 6%-ish in an OOB match with no bid. Yeah, I would need a dice miracle to pull out that victory.

Hence, I get odds tables like the one shown below. If I attacked either Egpyt or the fleet and get great dice, my odds go way up of victory. If I get diced as the Italians on I1, it isn’t that big of a change since the Italians were not expected to contribute much beyond the can-opening in the Eastern Front which they still can do even after loss of the fleet. When you look at the overall chance of my winning the game, it goes slightly up in a “fair” bid match and way up in the no-bid scenario.

Lesson of this story: take the gamble when you are playing against a superior opponent or if you are playing OOB Allies with no-bid. If the dice are absolutely awful for the Allies on turn 1, concede the match or find another crazy-risky attack to have a chance of winning. Playing conservatively against a superior opponent will inevitably make you lose the game.

Some opponents hate my aggressive under-dog play style and won’t go against me unless it is Low-Luck. I won’t play low-luck against a superior opponent since there is no way to come back against minor mistakes.

@Cornwallis I am not a fan of marching American units through French West Africa to support the British. I like to have my Allied fleet closer to Western Europe to force Germany to be at least partially defensive with land units to defend the Fatherland.

If Germany buys some fleet in G1, you definitely want to be able to combine the UK Med fleet with the American fleet with airbase support in Gibraltar. Gibastion is risky in a no-bid game, but you have to take risks as the Allies since you start off with such a disadvantage.

Here is the end of Turn 1 in the Adam514/Farmboy playoff (BM). The UK fleet then moves SZ110 on turn 2 with the protection of a new aircraft carrier that is built that turn, along with assistance of a couple American planes. The strong protection in Algeria was a key part of the turn 1 moves as it prevents the Italians from taking the territory and allowing a landing spot for the German airplanes to attack SZ92. Truly genius gameplay by Farmboy.

I see the main weakness is the Italians could attack either SZ92 or Egpyt on I1, with a 13% chance of victory that would essentially mean “game-over” if the Allies get diced.

I would be tempted to take that gamble if I played against Farmboy and indeed I did a bold early-game attack on SZ92 in last years playoffs when he slightly miscalculated the required defenses. He faced a tough decision: scramble for a better odds of defense, but if he lost his UK fighters then Egpyt would likely be crushed. He opted not to scramble and the devastating losses were impossible to recover from. Small mistakes are game-changing on the UK opener.

@Cornwallis I agree with the game plan to avoid the Ethiopia attack on UK1. If the dice go wrong, Egypt can easily fall on I2.

Getting diced in Africa to Italy is a horrible way for the Allies to lose in the opening turns as the Italians generally only have the role to provide a canopener in Russia and make sure they don’t lose their capitol.

That SZ 98 sea/air battle is dicey for the British. Here is the results for 20 simulated attacks of the 6 UK planes against that fleet. Assuming the Italians build a fighter or transport on I1 to support an I2 attack, the British will need at least 4 remaining planes to be able to adequately defend Egypt with high probability. There is about a 30% chance of that happening which ain’t good odds.

If the Italians get diced, it isn’t a big deal for them as they often aren’t a big factor in most games anyway.

I will take my 80% odds in Taranto as victory usually means loss of a significant number of Axis planes that are crucial to typical strategies.

Hi Corwallis,

I see two responses from Italy after that UK opener. Note that I haven’t fully optimized the moves but more highlighted the key concepts of the Italian turn.

1. take Gibraltar and reinforce it with German planes as necessary to prevent Allied recapture until turn 4 or 5. This gives Germany plenty of time to attack into Russia without too much concern that the Allies will attack Western Europe until quite late in the match. It also give Japan time to expand as the United States needs to build a fleet big enough not only to withstand the German airforce, but also take a heavily defended Gibraltar. UK also has to deal with a strong Italian navy that will require an expensive attack, and likely expensive counter-attack.

2. pressure Egypt on the Italian turn (reinforcing Alexandria with German planes). If UK dice are unlucky during the first couple of turns, Egpyt will fall and the game is essentially over for the Allies. With good game play, the Allies will survive but it will delay their ability to reinforce Moscow or prevent the Germans from driving their tanks down into the Middle East.

I also see a huge weakness with your plan is the requirement to divert Indian planes into Africa. With the loss of those aircraft, India will likely fall on J4 or J5 against a competent Axis opponent. I don’t think that your opener is nearly as good as either Taranto or moving the fleet to Gibraltar.

Back from my trip. Thanks for you patience

@gamerman01 not glad you are in my bracket. This year OOB playoffs have an elevated level of competition with so much interest. We have had challenging round 1 opponents.

@GeneralDisarray scramble the fighter

Exciting match!

FYI: I am going to be travelling from July 24th to August 24th. My sincere apologies, I won’t be able to do any moves for those four weeks.

@Stucifer I find it fascinating that we probably only have a decade before a good AI is developed for Axis and Allies, one that can consistently beat the top players. Even an AI that can identify all major weaknesses 3 turns ahead would be a massive tool to take gameplay to a much higher level. Moscow falling a turn earlier is a game changer.

Chess has mostly managed to keep their top ranks honest, but I don’t think we will be able to maintain the League for very much longer. We are counting down the days of top human players.

@axis-dominion Here is a breakdown of BM4 game results that I pulled from the results spreadsheet. Player 666 is 1 win and 20 losses for players with ELO above 1800. You should be able to beat him 95% of the time if he has not massively improved in recent times. ELO looks to be working in this instance.

Looking at your record (since 2020), you have a weakness against low ranked players and it wasn’t primarily due entirely to bad dice. Against the Simon (ELO 1394), you were distracted by other games and didn’t move additional planes to reinforce the main Russian stack, and he got a bit lucky in the 60/40 Bryansk battle that couldn’t be recovered from. Without that mistake it looked like you would have easily won the game. In the other noteworthy loss against me (ELO 1497), you could have easily won if you played more conservatively instead of offering battles which were dicey.

If you want to maximize your ELO ranking, the 1900+ ranged opponents is probably your sweet spot as the occasional blunders hurt you in the matches against inferior players. Sadly that only gives you 3 opponents who will help you improve or maintain your ranking. The challenges of being one of the best in the world…

@axis-dominion you are 500 ELO points better than 666. You should be winning 95% of the time against him, a player who has 46 wins and 45 losses, the definition of an average opponent. If you don’t think that you could have that type of odds then you aren’t a 2100+ player.

Top players often have to find meta settings to keep up their ranking, perhaps finding the sweet spot for ELO rank difference and have rules like Low Luck to minimize dicing. Or you could just play games and not care about ELO ranking if you find chasing top-positioning takes away from the enjoyment.

@Gargantua It was a 15%-outcome for the Axis. Certainly not an unlikely outcome.

We all have had far worse dice beatdowns in pivotal battles. Those 1% outcomes in Paris on G1 are awful, and all of us have had 0.1% results that just seem implausible.

That dice was tough, but I would say that Pierce made the right decision. About a 20% of a game-ending outcome, another 30% where he loses a bunch of ground units but retreats his air without a massive game-affecting outcome, and 50% where he loses a bunch of ground units and is now in big trouble. I would take that gamble against a top player like Axis-Dominion (which is why he doesn’t play me any more).

If a top player is going against a much weaker opponent and doesn’t want to have a negative expected change of ELO ranking, low-luck is the best choice. I would bet that Axis-Dominion would have won more than 95% of the time in a LL game and have a slightly positive expected ELO boost. Very slight.

This game has made me superstitious. I am happy to build up karma by getting diced during a non-playoff match. Andrew has been crushing me in 50/50 attacks on Moscow. I am thrilled because that means I will get lucky in the playoffs. Well, maybe not but such thoughts are the only way I stay sane after diligently playing for dozens of hours only to have bad dice hand me the L.

Hi Booper: Here was my gameplan against Farmboy last year. He did not have the Scottish fighter which made it safer to do SZ110 and SZ111 but the dice were not very kind in the second battle. He had a very strong defense of Moscow so I bypassed it down to the oil fields of the Middle East. India fell on J6 which was the crucial battle for the Axis. Perhaps you could have had a much stronger focus on capturing India in the mid-game, even allowing China to get out of control strong if that accelerated the destruction of UK Pacific.

https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/topic/40891/l24-arthur-bomber-harris-vs-farmboy-a-41-oob/226?page=10

@gamerman01 I looked at the map after turn 5 and it was a very high probability of loss, needing a huge blunder by Farmboy to even have a chance of victory by that point. The victory would have been virtually guaranteed by the end of turn 1 if the Yunnan attack also resulted in disaster.

There is a reason why Farmboy has the ELO ranking he has earned. His mistakes are infrequent and minor, and to capitalize on the errors requires the game to still be close.

There are not too many game-changing battles where luck plays a major portion of the outcome after the first turn. I make the opening as dicey as possible when playing against better opponents like Farmboy or Andrew.

@Booper I would master the Cow opener, with more fidelity to his plane. You got almost everything correct on J1, and I agree with you attacking Yunan and SZ62. However, you did not take Borneo which meant your fleet was out of position for a critical extra turn allowing the Allied fleet to give you a bunch of headaches.

There was a risk that UK India could counterattack, but you should have welcomed the chance for him to get diced.

I definitely would have sent the battleship to 110 to soak up plane hits instead of the subs. I disagree though that it was a bad choice to do the SZ110 + SZ111 attack: Booper had about a 7% chance of winning this match based on ELO differences so an audacious/game-changing turn 1 is often necessary to change the odds to something better than 7%.

Here is the odds for the net planes lost (10 German vs 5 Allied scramblers)

45% disasterous (-1 relative planes lost)
20% not good (0 to +1 plane outcome)
25% good (+2 to +3 plane outcome)
10% amazing (+4 to +5 plane outcome)

Sadly for Booper, he got -3 plane outcome which made this game a Loss on G1, but I think he would have had a reasonable chance of winning in the 35% of outcomes where he gains 2 or more planes in the exchange, and would have a net increase of his expected win rate on average.

@gamerman01 let’s see what happens.

When I battled against Andrew and Farmboy in past years, I only was able to win with audacious gambles and copious amounts of dice luck including invincible bombers. They both are quite a bit better than me, and I have a feeling that the dice lords will smile on them this year after some previous bad luck.