Posts made by Avin

It is possibly one of 2 meanings… Derived from Evan (meaning Warrior) or the Hebrew Avinoam (Meaning Blessed Father)

Well, if my parents made it up then it can’t possibly have any derived meaning…

Avin is my first name. I used to used various usernames for online gaming for several years growing up, but finally got tired of it while in college as I was sick of having an online identity that felt seperate from my identity in real life, so I decided to go by my real name to help myself not segment out my life so much. Fortunately my real name is unique enough that I don’t have to add a bunch of numbers to it to distinguish myself, so that’s what I’ve used for the past few years now.

As for the meaning of Avin itself, I have no idea. I was born in Sri Lanka, but Avin isn’t really a Sinhala name; my parents aren’t even always clear where they got the name from or if they made it up.

Yes. Any 1 on 1 battle is exactly the same in LL or ADS.

Yeah, I’ve definitely been interested in seeing that game play out. But obviously I don’t know what’s taking him so long … I don’t think he’s scared though, since he wasn’t afraid to lose 4 or so games in a row as he played switch, me, and DM. Losing one more wouldn’t be that big a deal.

switch, AS has played several games on these forums.

Switch, what you’re talking about is flexibility once again. When I refer to logistics, I am excluding flexibility. Sorry if you are used to using the terms differently or something, but you have to understand that there is a seperate component to strategy completely unrelated to flexibility that is in some ways inversely proportional to it. In chess, you can have perfect “logistics” but no flexibility and win every time; in poker you can completely ignore logistics, but you have to be extremely flexible to react to the cards you are dealt and the way your opponents are bidding or acting. Axis and Allies involves both, but ADS requires more flexibility and less logistics, LL requires more logistics and less flexibility.

I think this discussion is mixing up two important aspects of strategic planning - logistics and flexibility. Here I refer to logistics as the aspect of strategy that involves how to move units and conduct battles so as to achieve short term and long term goals, and flexibility as the ability to adapt your goals and replan logistics based on events external to your control.

It’s certainly true that with ADS dice, good play requires much more flexibility than with LL because of the nature of how the dice work and the rapid swings in power that can happen. Because you never know what’s going to happen, a player basically needs to replan what the optimal moves on each country’s turn. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, this is achieved at the expense of almost completely negating any need for good long term logistics. While there are certainly important things on the tactical level to be considered every turn, you simply cannot achieve the same level of multi-turn logistics you can in games without such random events. Comparing again to chess, good players can “look ahead” several turns, considering all possible moves an opponent can make and plan their current move based on those possibilities. Theoretically, a computer that was capable of perfect logistics, in other words, infinite look-ahead, would require absolutely no flexibility, because everything could be planned at the start of the game. LowLuck solves the problem of the shallow logistics involved in standard A&A by decreasing the randomness factor. Certainly this decreases the requirement to achieve a high level of flexibility, but it’s certainly not as bad as games with no luck such as chess.

Good job, Bashir! That is indeed the correct answer as well as the correct reasoning for it. For a bonus, you could try to show why that is the ONLY answer possible, (you can prove it mathematically) but I’ll count the problem as essentially solved.

For your problem, what do you mean by the statement that two cannibals cannot paddle across together? Can a single cannibal paddle across alone, or can only missionaries paddle?

He can eliminate B+C, because if A=B+C => B and C are both 25… He would have known immidietly…
So Alex knows it is B-C

I’m not sure what you’re saying with this. If you are saying that A=B+C necessarly implies that B and C are both 25, that can’t be right: B could be 1 and C could be 49, for instance.

I’ll give you a hint. What you know is this:

• A has a 50 on his hat. We know this from the end of the problem.
• A does not have enough information after looking at B and C’s numbers to figure out his own number (in otherwords, he doesn’t see two of the same number.)
• Knowing that A doesn’t see two of the same number, B still does not have enough information to determine the number of his hat. This means …. ?
• Knowing the conclusions B might have reached from the previous step, C still does not have enough information to determine his own number. This means … ?
• Knowing the conclusions C might have reached from the previous step, A is now able to determine that his number is 50.

http://www.daak.de/lowluck/lowluckregel.php?sprache=e should contain everything you need to know. You can also use the LowLuck dicey on DAAK to make a few trial combats if it isn’t clear as well. By the way, if you need to create a game, you can use my DAAK username (AVIN) since I noticed you have an account there too, that way we don’t have to enter each other’s emails each time.

Regarding bids, I am fine with whatever. We could simply do straight blind bids if you’d prefer, but I was thinking it might not be too hard to just come to a common agreement. If you’re ok with it, I already have a couple bids in mind (one for LL, one for ADS) and I can just post them and we can negotiate, not auction style were you’d be forced to bid lower but just whatever we agree on - for instance, if you were set on playing Axis for one of the games and had a bid that was higher than what I was offering, I might still be OK with it. This way if you have a more creative bid you’d like to try, like say 2 BB BAL, you could propose it.

Are we including tech in our ADS game?

I’ll counter-counter-counter offer you

GREAT! I am really excited to hear that we’re finally going to be playing. Sure, 2nd edition both ways works for me too - as I said, I’m totally willing to put my personal preferences on hold for a bit as long as you’re willing to meet me the other way too. I have to say I was a bit afraid that you would never be willing to compromise, but I’m glad I misjudged you. And I do genuinely hope that we can both have fun in BOTH games, not just the game of our preference!

I’m definitely fine with waiting until you’re done with DM. I’m pretty busy myself this weekend, and I’m also currently playing two other games. Whenever you’re ready, we can start with either game.

I was also interested in learning a few things about Revised with you by the way, but I probably will just wait again for a while. One reason I haven’t been interested in playing Revised much is that I am still learning new things about 2nd edition, and having a lot of fun with that, and I figure why switch over and try to master two games at once? It was only a year ago that I started playing online and so while I think I’ve gotten much better over that year, I know I have a lot to learn still and a lot of things to try. However I figure I’ll probably eventually have to switch to Revised if the activity level on the Games forum here is any indication - feels like more and more people are switching and it’s sometimes harder to get interest in 2nd edition!

So are you interested in the offer I made above?

Basically it comes down to this: You are not willing to play LL, because of prejudice you have against it without trying. I am not interested in playing ADS because I have played both and prefer LL. I am offering that both of us overcome our dislikes or prejudices, not for the sake of making a point or childishly getting our way, but so that we could both learn something and have fun. I am willing to meet you halfway - I will play ADS if you will play LL. I feel I have the most to learn from you via ADS in AAR, hence my offer. Are you willing to meet me?

The sea zone is seperate from the land, just like everything else. There are no exceptions to the rule.

Also, the defender chooses the casualty for the sub sneak attack. There are also no exceptions to this rule!

switch, that’s completely ignoring the idea of compromise altogether. That’s just the same offer you’ve been making for months. Haven’t you realized that we will never play against each other if we keep at that standstill? I have an open offer to you to play LL, you have an open offer to me to play ADS. Neither of those offers are going to be fulfilled unless we compromise in some way.

Yes, I know you will have an edge in Revised because of my lack of experience with the game. Yes, I think I would have an edge in LL, but not because of you not knowing the intricacies of LL (there really are no “intricacies” to speak of except the SBR rule) because I don’t think there’s anything about LL to “pick up” if you’re familiar with ADS, but because I do think I am a better player. However I am proposing we play to have fun, NOT as a grudge match. I don’t see what we could gain from that. I will regularly play games that I can predict who will win, for fun. For instance, I played Maddogg not because I didn’t know who would win, but because I thought it would help to teach him a few things. I’ve played many highly ranked players at DAAK despite the fact that I was fairly certain ahead of time that they would win, and I thoroughly enjoyed the games because I learned a lot and saw some really interesting strategies played out. In fact I probably enjoy playing games where I lose more than games where I win if I am challenged by some good strategies I hadn’t thought of before. Which is why I would be interested in playing you in AAR, and therefore am willing to play on your terms.

Sorry Maddogg, as you can see I indicated that DM was clearly on the right track. If you’re interested in trying to solve the problem, you might want to consider what he was saying and try to think about it more rather than just dismissing the problem as bogus. This problem is in some ways similar to the problem you posted in that it’s a word problem that yields a system of algebraic equations which, when solved, yields the correct answer. Unlike your problem though, this requires some abstract deductive reasoning, hence it being a logic puzzle, in order to arrive at the equations you need to solve.

You know, rather than it being a grudge match DM, I have an idea for a friendly compromise that I hope we can both enjoy:

I’ll play a game of AAR with ADS with you switch, if you play a game of 2nd Edition LowLuck with me. Since I know you’re much more experienced than I am with AAR, I would welcome the chance to play you there and learn a few things about Revised, and I would be willing to play ADS in that since it’s your preference despite my own dislike if you would also be willing to play a 2nd edition LowLuck game with me despite your dislike, since that is my preference. I expect I will enjoy our Revised game despite the dicey and will learn some things from you, and I hope you would be willing to allow yourself to enjoy the 2nd edition game despite the dicey and learn some things there as well.

Switch, this is the problem with your post: you are not engaging the arguments I am mentioning, what you are attacking is a FAKE version of LowLuck that does not exist. You make it seem like LowLuck does not involve dice - it does!. You make it seem like in LowLuck certain situations cannot occur, which they can. You are creating a false version of LowLuck and then attacking that, so most of your points are rather invalid. For instance:

But the game, ALL versions of it have DICE.

So does LowLuck. So there is no point saying that LowLuck is invalid because it does not.

Furthermore, no out of the box game has bidding in the rules, but you seem to accept bidding as an acceptable compromise of something that we should do, because the game “ought” to be balanced in order to be fun, right? Similarly, we accept LowLuck as a standard house rule, to address the over-randomness issue without changing the fact that randomness can exist. There is no reason to worship the out of the box rules or the intent of the designers. When I play a game, I do so to have fun, and I don’t care if the person who created the game says I can’t do something when I’m playing their game - as long as there are people interested in playing with me the way I want to play, I’ll do so and have more fun.

Do I hit Ukraine with just those forces, which wins 60% of the time (absolutely A-OK in LL, but in ADS, 2 games out of 5 it is NOT enough…

If there is a battle that is winnable with 60% odds in ADS dice, then it will be winnable with about 75-80% odds in LowLuck. I would probably not conduct this battle in LowLuck either. So your example bears no weight. The only reason I might conduct this battle is if I intended to strafe, not take the territory, the unit composition of attacking and defending units was acceptable, and I was more concerned with killing units at potentially equal cost to the units I would lose.

Things like the Miraculous Defenses that have made “Yukon Jack” one of the most famous INF units… A recent game I played where a US INF held against “sure loss” forces in Asia… THe Screaming Causack that repels the German amphib landing…  NONE of these things happen in a LL game.  They CAN’T… all just math, and every battle’s outcome is known +/- one unit as soon as the movement is declared.

Actually, ALL of these things CAN happen in LowLuck. It is possible for a lone defending bomber to win against 5 attacking infantry … in LowLuck! I don’t know where you’re getting your ideas about LowLuck from but every single one of the situations you named are possible in LowLuck : as I mentioned before, you are attacking a FALSE verison of LowLuck.

…DICE are how these events are translated into the game.

And as I said, THERE IS DICE IN LOWLUCK! So all your historical examples of things going wrong apply just as well in LowLuck as in ADS. The only thing is that in LowLuck, one infantry cannot win against 500 (although one infantry can win against 2), unlike ADS. It would be absurd to say that there exists sufficient unknown variables in war that such a thing could happen, keeping in mind that the lone infantry is not supposed to represent an elite sniper unit, it represents a group of infantry, and no matter how well trained they are, that cannot happen in a single battle.

In terms of the game… it allows for “desperate strikes”… where your back is to the wall but if you can win this ONE battle… a battle you only have a 40% chance of winning, you might be able to come back and pull the game out.  In Low Luck, there is no point in even TRYING that gamble, because you will lose.  But in ADS, 2 times in 5 it will WORK, and then it is up to YOU to fight back and make that gamble pay off in the long run.

Once again you are attacking a FALSE LowLuck. Similar to what I described above, if a battle has a 40% chance of success in ADS, it probably has a 25% chance of success in LowLuck, so the same situation applies: if your back is to the wall in ADS and this is your best shot at winning, take it by all means! However if you are getting absolutely crushed to the ground like Maddogg was against either of us, an attack that would have 3% chance of winning in ADS would not have any chance in LowLuck - and I can’t see any justification for wanting something that extreme to happen - would you have been happy if Maddogg had come back and won against you in either of the games you played against him if he had tried to do such a battle and got lucky enough to win? Say he had thrown every German unit he had toward Karelia and then Moscow and won despite overwhelming odds, and the money he got there was enough to beef up Germany’s defense to repel off the US and UK until Japan took over the rest of Asia, etc? Would that have been a satisfying game?

I could echo your last sentiment exactly with the idea reversed:

“If Avin wants to play me that badly… If is he so certain of his ability to defeat me… then why be afraid of DICE?”

If you want to play me, why are you afraid of STRATEGY?

Keep it up, you’re on the right track, DM. Now you just have to figure out how Alex eliminates one of his two options (B+C or B-C) on his second “turn”.

I suggest you start by considering how someone would eliminate one of their two options without hearing anything from the other two people (which Yanny seems to have gotten), then how B might have eliminated one of his two options after hearing A’s first turn, then how C might have eliminated one of his two options after hearing both A and B, and finally solving the problem itself.

It’s possible I omitted something, but after rereading it, I don’t think so. The reason I liked this puzzle is that it seems like it shouldn’t have a unique solution, because it seems like you need more information, but everything necessary is there.

Once again, the first time Alex spoke, he did not know what number was on his hat. Since he is a perfect logician, what that means is that he did not have enough information to determine what number was on his hat.

However, the second time Alex spoke, he did have enough information to determine that his number was 50. It was not a guess, he knew it for certain, given that Bob and Chuck were also perfect logicians. So their lack of knowledge about their hats must have told Alex enough to figure out what was on his own head.

So consider your suggestion of 25 and 25: if Alex saw that, then he could reason as follows: either my number plus 25 is equal to 25, or 25 plus 25 is equal to my number. Since the former cannot be the case because that means my hat is 0, then my hat must be 50.

However, Alex would have been able to apply this reasoning immediately: if he had seen 25 and 25, he would never have said that he did not know his number. Therefore, 25 and 25 is incorrect.