Posts made by Cernel

@krieghund said in Nomenclature:

As for Classic 3rd edition, I’m not sure what you mean by “original”. There was no 3rd edition of the physical board game, only the computer version.

There is not “the” computer version: there are two computer versions. I’m very surprised you don’t know it.

Original would be the 3rd edition (called just as “Axis & Allies”), followed by “Axis & Allies: Iron Blitz”. Should we maybe consider “Axis & Allies: Iron Blitz” as the 4th edition, instead (I’m asking seriously.)?

The “original” third edition was followed by the “Iron Blitz” variant of the same. I’m not sure what are the differences, but I’m sure that “Iron Blitz” (but not the original 3rd edition) adds marines and destroyers, and this is not even an option! I would say this is a major difference between the two computer versions.

This is the original (non Iron Blitz) 3rd edition of Axis & Allies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKaz_lXxPtw

This is the Iron Blitz edition of Axis & Allies:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPkuGJvpZEc

I personally disliked the “Iron Blitz” edition (which is either the 4th edition or the 2nd edition of the 3rd edition) because being able to purchase destroyers while there are zero destroyers on the board is like saying destroyers were invented in 1942.

Now, you could say that “Iron Blitz” is an “expansion set” of the 3rd Edition, but it adds items which are not optional, meaning that (once you have it) you won’t be able to play the original 3rd Edition. I would say that you need to distinguish between the two, don’t you. What do you think?

@krieghund said in Nomenclature:

I think IL is on the right track, but some iterations are left out (even though they are not popular, they do exist). A complete list of grand strategic games would be:
Nova
Classic.1
Classic.2
Classic.3
E
P
Revised
Revised LHTR
50
E40.1
E40.2
P40.1
P40.2
G40.1
G40.2
41
42.1
42.2
14

While I agree that “.0” and “.1” might be more accurate from an academic point of view, it’s just confusing that the numbers don’t line up with the edition numbers. Also, having no number after games that have no second edition differentiates them from games that do.

Thanks for the list, but I would then rather not use the point in this case. I’m not sure what is best, but maybe the slash is.

Also, I think I’d rather call “50” as “Anniversary” before someone gets all excited about a Cold/Korean War Larry game. Also, wouldn’t you split the third edition of classic between original and Iron Blits?

My take:

Nova (Original?)
Classic/1
Classic/2
Classic/3/Original
Classic/3/Iron Blitz
Europe Original
Pacific Original
Revised Original
Revised LHTR
Anniversary
E40/1
E40/2
P40/1
P40/2
G40/1
G40/2
41
42/1
42/2

@imperious-leader I disagree. The first edition should be the 0 and the second edition should be the 1. If you call the first edition of 1942 as 1942.1, that would imply that there was a 1942.0 before that edition.

For example:

1942 First Edition = 1942.0

1942 Second Edition = 1942.1

@all-encompassing-goose said in Ways to make the game better?:

@cernel I do have a bad track record for accidentally making posts in the wrong topic but I got Spring 1942 from Ebay. Unless the seller makes a mistake and gives me the 2nd edition, I know I’m receiving Spring 1942. Also, you cannot get 2nd edition anywhere in new condition for less than $60 which I state in the post I ordered SE for $30 (with all the shipping added)

Definitely worth the money (assuming it’s like new), but your decision to pick the 1st edition does not make a whole lot of sense to me. If you wanted a game that could take less than the 1940 games and still have the Axis&Allies experience, I would think the 2nd edition of 1942 is the most obvious choice (unless you are still playing the first edition of the 1940 games).

This said, one thing that Spring 1942 has going for itself is balance: the game is fairly balanced (being only very slightly unbalanced in favour of the Axis) and can be reasonably played with no bid (and no optional rules picking) at any skill levels, which is rare or even unique for any Axis&Allies world games.

My suggestion, however, is to alter the starting set-up by relocating the American destroyer into the sea zone next to the Eastern United States territory: it near-to-perfectly balances the game (by giving a very small advantage to the Allies) and avoid the very dicey attack by the German sub in than zone on round 1 (being either a +26 or a -6 swing value for the Axis).

@imperious-leader said in Ways to make the game better?:

@domanmacgee the worst game is 1941, its too simplistic. It’s for Toddlers or animals that just learned to walk on land.

How is 1941 not a better game than Classic, at the very least? I mean with the errata added.

@panther said in Ways to make the game better?:

@domanmacgee

This category / topic is about Spring 1942 (of 2009), an edition following AA50-rules but simplified compared to AA50. You are mixing it up with 1942 second edition (2012).

My hunch is that @All-Encompassing-Goose actually bought the 2nd edition of 1942. It sounds like he ordered a new copy, and I guess they are not selling the 1st (Spring) edition any longer.

So I guess let’s see if I’m right and be ready with that “move topic” button.:slightly_smiling_face:

@imperious-leader said in More Announcements from Renegade:

They should team up with Beamdog and make online E40 and P40 as well as Global

Why not just only Global, completely ignoring E40 and P40? I think it’s fairly obvious the only reason they exist is commercially to split the Global game (and its price) in twain.

It appears that is all the P-63’s pilot’s fault: what I understand is that the pilot encroached on the air-space of the B-17, and, upon noticing it, he hastily tried to go back within his fly zone, but, in so manoeuvring, he made himself blind (due to the limited visibility afforded to him by the aircraft) to what was on his flight path, so he crashed into the B-17 without even seeing it.

I hope the families of the men who died in the B-17 will have a fair monetary compensation.

Most of us probably heard about how Japanese pilots were suicidally ramming American heavy bombers. Not a Japanese plane nor (of course) anything voluntary, but unfortunately we got a close demonstration of how that may have looked like.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Wings_Over_Dallas_airshow_mid-air_collision

On November 12, 2022, two World War II-era aircraft, a B-17 Flying Fortress and a Bell P-63 Kingcobra, collided mid-air and crashed during the Wings Over Dallas airshow at Dallas Executive Airport.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdek9VV0_Zo

There were six persons on the aeroplanes.

@domanmacgee said in Stopping the Allies?:

@thedesertfox Are you playing with NOs on or off? As @OLA mentioned, which side is favored in the 41 setup swings based on whether NOs are being used. Off = Allied-favored, On = Axis-favored. It boils down to the starting income gap being easier to mitigate when Axis have access to their NOs.

Not sure if German navy is the right way of going about things. In higher level games it’s usually Japan that ends up winning the game for the Axis while Germany/Italy hold the line.

I’ll add the following rule-of-thumb.

Assuming every other option is off,

• no options on: slight Allies advantage
• interceptors on: balanced
• National Objectives on: marked Axis advantage

Using Low Luck (a popular house rule) possibly balances the game when played with no options on or else gives an additional slight advantage to the Axis.

@tmtm1 It does not have a rule-book. I’m not a player, but I know everyone just plays it as the TripleA program makes it work beside what is detailed in the game’s notes.

So, if you want to play it as “people” do, practically, you have to know the TripleA behaviour and make yourself a “mental rulebook” out of it, then collate what is detailed in the World At War notes as if they are “erratas” of this “rulebook” given by the program’s behaviour.

Obviously, persons also except for the program’s problems (mainly whatever obvious bug), but this may become a highly disputable matter.

@redrum is currently the owner of the map (unless he is not any longer), so, if you need an “official” ruling whenever you and your opponent are in disagreement, I guess you may make a question in the official map’s thread at the TripleA forum and hope for an answer (just like you would ask any map-maker how his or her game is supposed to work).

The politic (beside the usual wrong “Axis&Allies style” thing of giving a red field to the German “roundel” (The Swastika should have it.) and the use of the WW1 Italian roundel instead of the proper WW2 one, I suppose to avoid Fascist symbolism) part seems decent for a game, even though I’m a bit annoyed by approximative names like “Western Germany” for what is only the northern part of it and, similarly, a very generic “Western Russia” for a small and northerly part of what may be western Russia (as the primary meaning of Russia in 1936 is the Russian SFSR, so western Russia can be practically everything west of the Ural mountains). Even if we assume we are thinking to the western part of European Russia, Great Russia or Russia proper, Moscow is still in the western part of it and, for the far western part, I’d rather think of a portion of territory centred in Smolensk. Easily better names could have been, respectively, “Northwestern Germany” (or “Hamburg”, being the second most important city of Germany) and “Kalinin”.

On the politics, the only major annoyance I’ve spotted so far is the absence of Kuybyshev (unless it has been placed somewhere too much to the east), which would eventually be the back-up capital of Russia in 1941 and until 1943. If the river which in the map is joining the Volga is the Samara, then I guess the Saratov territory could be renamed “Kuybyshev” or “Kuybyshev - Saratov”. Besides, both the Kuybyshev city and its oblast had a bigger population than Saratov city and its oblast, according to 1933 and 1939 data. It would have also been a nice touch to see the Volga shaped as to show its characteristic Samara Bend, by the way.

However, if this map is supposed to picture 1936, maybe the map-makers (or the map-maker) should have used a period map for the topography too… They certainly didn’t, otherwise I would not be seeing the Rybinsk Reservoir (that big “lake” the map has in the “Western Russia” territory), which was just starting getting water in 1941 (and this is supposed to be a 1936 map)…

Now (with internet) is really exceedingly easy to find maps. I found this one (in German, but I’m looking at the topography) in about one minute now (courtesy of Google), for example:
https://www.etsy.com/it/listing/554542239/1936-mappa-vintage-della-russia?ref=sold_out-10&frs=1

I’ve also checked a 1940 original atlas I own and there in no water there.

Gameplay wise, it might be worth merging the two south Italy territories into only one: historically, they fell shortly together and I can see there is not much space there for pieces with this drawing. Similarly, it may be preferable merging the Netherlands and Belgium, as they are small and got attacked about at the same time. Estonia and Latvia could be merged together too. Conversely, “Central Romania” could really be split into at least in two territories (on the Carpathian mountains) or into three if drawing the borders so to show the borders of what would eventually be the historical Hungarian annexation of part of Roumania (not meaning anything like this should actually happen in the game). The same can be said of that huge northern Swedish territory.

By the way, I’m almost sure that the name “Central Romania” is wrong: that country was called either “Roumania” (British English) or “Rumania” (American English) at the time. However, it was “Romania” on Italian and Romanian atlases at the time, and I cannot exclude it may have been the same on some English ones too.

@goekawar I’m not doing anything here (beside giving suggestions). To be clear, I’m not and have never been part of any ones of the projects presented at this topic.

Moreover, how about if someone would argue that the casualties must be chosen immediately?

For example, Timmy is playing against @The_Good_Captain and is attacking with 20 infantry. He rolls the 12 dice, obtains X hits and demands @The_Good_Captain to select as casualties X units before knowing what the result of the remaining 8 infantry to roll may be. @The_Good_Captain tells Timmy that “casualties are applied after each column is rolled” and asks him to roll for the remaining 8 infantry before any casualties are selected (so that the process would be the same as rolling 20 dice at once). Who is right between Timmy and @The_Good_Captain and how can one convince the other one based on the rules-book?

@fido Very nice video.

@ryandascienti Looks cool, but I think Europe is both too crowded on absolute terms and having too small territories with respect to what most of the rest of the world has.

I think you would be better either further increasing the area Europe occupies on the map or decreasing the number of zones into which you have split this area. For example, you could represent England (comprising Wales) as a single territory (instead of the current two), have a single territory (instead of the current two) for northern Italy and have two territories (instead of the current three) for the Italian Peninsula, and so on.

The Urals are rather small mountains and are economically important as a source of minerals: I’m alway perplexed when I see anyone having them impassable.

@krieghund said in Submarine withdrawal question:

@cernel OK, I see what you’re saying. However, I don’t think the statement, “If retreating with other naval units, the attacking sub must withdraw first…” means that subs cannot retreat with other units. Since this is under the heading of “Submarine Withdrawing”, I believe it applies only when subs exercise that option. In other words, if a sub (or subs) opts to withdraw on the same round that the attacker retreats, it must do so before the other units retreat, and any subs that do not opt to withdraw separately (as is stated earlier that they may) retreat with the other units to the same sea zone.

Thus, in the round that the attacker retreats, any or all subs may opt to withdraw separately (to one sea zone), and the remaining subs may retreat with the main force (to one sea zone). There is also nothing stopping both of these movements from being to the same sea zone.

So, have I covered the matter fully when I wrote
@cernel said in Submarine withdrawal question:

on any round of combat in which one or more defending units remain,
if one or more (possibly all) of the remaining [attacking] naval units are submarines, I can (referring to the attacking units only)
normally retreat all naval units (comprising all submarines) to one friendly or unoccupied [sea] zone
or specially withdraw one or more submarines to one friendly or unoccupied sea zone
or both specially withdraw one or more submarines to one friendly or unoccupied sea zone and retreat all other naval units (comprising any submarines which I have not withdrawn) to the same zone or to an other friendly or unoccupied [sea] zone.

?

About what attacking naval units may do when withdrawing or retreating, does my text (I just quoted) give at least the same amount of information that the entire “Submarine Withdrawing” section of the http://smo63.fatcow.com/pdf/ClassicSuppDoc.pdf intends to give from the phrase “Subs may retreat as above” to the phrase “BACK to one adjacent friendly or unoccupied sea zone.” (39 lines in total), beside stating that the sea zone to which “the attacking sub must withdraw” must be one “from which any of the attacking units came”?

@krieghund said in Submarine withdrawal question:

Moreover, the firstly aforementioned passage of the “Classic Support Document” appears to say that attacking submarines cannot even regularly retreat when they would be retreating with other units. Indeed, after having said that “Subs may retreat as above, or they could “withdraw,””, the document, on the same section, goes on stating that (as I’ve already quoted) “If retreating with other naval units, the attacking sub must withdraw first and must withdraw BACK to one adjacent friendly sea zone from which any of the attacking units came”.
These two sentences appear to be in partial direct contradiction of one an other: the first sentence is telling me that I can choose either to retreat my submarine as normal or to withdraw them under their special rules, whereas the second sentence is telling me that, if I choose to “retreat” my submarines with other naval units, I must instead “withdraw” them, assumingly under their special withdrawing rules. So, literally, this means that I can normally retreat submarines only if all remaining naval units attacking in the battle are submarines, otherwise submarines must specially withdraw if they want to leave the battle together with non-submarine units.
Is the sentence “If retreating with other naval units, the attacking sub must withdraw first and must withdraw BACK to one adjacent friendly sea zone from which any of the attacking units came” meaning the same as saying “If retreating with other naval units, the attacking sub must use its special withdraw ability” or not?

What difference does it make? Even if the subs are forced to withdraw first, the remaining units can retreat to the same sea zone they did.

One difference, which we already clarified (by you calling it “obviously an oversight”), is that the rules as written allow regular retreat to friendly and unoccupied zones, whereas they allow special withdraw only to friendly (not to unoccupied) zones (unless the submarines are “several”), but we already sorted out we should read all occurrences of “friendly sea” in the withdraw rules as “friendly or unoccupied sea”.

Once we turn all mentioned “friendly sea” occurrences to “friendly or unoccupied sea”, the differences generated by the presence of a rule which (unclearly, in my opinion) says something equivalent to “if retreating together with one or more non-submarine naval units, every remaining attacking submarine must use its special withdraw ability” (Is this what the rule is actually stating?) would have the consequences that, within a same round of combat, if there are one or more non-submarine attacking naval units in the battle after “defender fires remaining units”,

• I cannot have one or more but not all attacking submarines withdrawing to one zone while all other attacking submarines retreat to an other zone (together with all attacking non-submarine naval units),
• and I cannot decide to wait to see how many defending submarines are withdrawn and where they are withdrawn before deciding if and where to retreat either all attacking submarines or the part of them I haven’t withdrawn.

@cernel said in Playing in 2017 still, General Strategy/Discussion:

That submarine is making a battle with an average +10 value swing there (140% the value of the attacking force!), which is more than sending it to kill the lone British transport

Actually, sending the German submarine which is in the North Atlantic to kill the transport next to Eastern Canada (average +7) instead of taking the shot against the 1 cruiser and 2 transports next to Eastern United States (average +10) is some less than a -3 difference since, if using it to kill the British transport, then nothing can kill the submarine on the same round, whereas the 50% chance of the submarine surviving next to Eastern United States implies the ability for the Americans to make a battle with 1 destroyer, 1 fighter and 1 bomber (or even more units) against 1 submarine, which is an about +4.4 value swing, to be reduced to +2.2 on the account that the submarine will be there only 50% of the times. So that covers at least most (2.2/3) of the difference between the two options the submarine has if you actually think that having that submarine alive next to Eastern Canada at the start of the second German turn is actually worth its value or more. Opinions?

In any case, the battle next to Eastern United States is certainly a good option which your opponent may take and, in this case, it will be a 50/50 on either:

• Germany having 1 less submarine for nothing.
• America having 1 less cruiser, 2 less transports and having to invest units to kill 1 German submarine, with slightly more than a 1/6 chance also to lose 1 destroyer in the process.

@domanmacgee Winning with 1 submarine against 2 transports and 1 destroyer in Revised is actually less than 1%. On the other hand, attacking 1 cruiser and 2 transports with 1 submarine in Spring 1942 is a juicy 50% chance of sinking 1 cruiser and 2 transports while your submarine survives!

Either Larry Harris didn’t see that when he switched the rules of the (almost) Revised map to the (almost) Anniversary ones, or he thought that it was a fun way to represent the “American Shooting Season”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Happy_Time

If that was intended, I don’t think it was a good and fun idea: it is a very dicey battle which is not much optional because it is, on average, a very good take. That submarine is making a battle with an average +10 value swing there (140% the value of the attacking force!), which is more than sending it to kill the lone British transport and also more than whatever reasonable betterment of odds you can obtain by adding the submarine to an other battle. You can still decide not to do it, but only if you think it is a good idea to lower the average effectiveness of your opening turn in exchange for decreasing its risk, which is something you should do only against opponents whom you believe are worse players than you.