Posts made by CrayzKirk

Once the Allies get diced, the game is gone.  Try having everything hit on West Russia and get 1 hit on offense and 3 hits in defense.  The next turn takes it out however, the reply is 3 hits again.  Lose the Baltic battle, which happens more than 75% of the time in my games and the Allies are screwed.

I’ve thought about a Japan push, even buying a carrier and fighter gives Japan a nice target to take out.  I’m not willing to think that the game is totally skewed towards the Axis however, other than one roll of the dice has resulted in total destruction for Britain.  I hit the BB, Car, 2 Fig with 2 Fig, 2 Cru, 1 sub and 1 car and lost everything 8 out of 9 times.  I bought a carrier and fighter which I used once I had to withdraw from the bad rolls.  The next roll took everything I had out with a single hit in return.  It’s frustrating to throw 8 3’s and 3 4’s and have it result in zero losses.

The Allies simply seem unable to take chances because when the rolls go badly, the game is pretty much done…

I think the subs can retreat instead of being forced to fight.  This move puts the Russian fighters, which are very expensive, at risk.  From my own experience against the TripleA hard AI, taking chances results in total loss.  Russia simply cannot afford to lose a fighter.  The German pieces are not worth the risk, in my opinion.  Much like what I consider the Britain navy, it is a distraction which if you try to reinforce it, will result in a quick loss.

I’m not sure, I know that according to the rules, that a sub may not pass thru a sea zone which has an enemy destroyer.  I don’t know what happens when the sub starts it’s move in a sea zone with an enemy destroyer.  I’m thinking that if you spend that money, Russia is toast pretty fast.

What do I know?  I can’t even beat the hard AI.  Of course, missing on 4 50% chances eight of ten tries tends to frustrate me.  I had the computer in trouble once and then I had a brain fart, or too much beer, and blew it…

CK

Plus, Russia needs everything it can muster to prevent Germany from simply overrunning it.  i have had zero luck trading territories as Germany has more airforce which leaves less units to be attacked.  My own opinion is that the Allies have a hard time winning if Germany simply buys infantry and artillery.  Infantry is the best; best on defense and absorbs hit when the tanks, fighters and bomber come in to play.

I’ve thought of buying navy for India however Japan can bring 1 bomber, 4 fighters, 1 carrier, battleship and a destroyer.  It requires the strafe to go very well and if it doesn’t, it leaves India and the Allies weak.  It just seems that with the initial board setup, the British navy is just there to be taken out with the hope that the response does more than simply damage a battleship which repairs immediately.

I would still like to explore options for KJF as it seems that Japan should be easier to limit since their income options are limited to 1s and 2s.

The only way this can work is for America to hit Japan first and Britain follow it up before Japan can resupply and regroup.

What am I missing here?  I would like to at least beat the hard AI before I get embarrassed by a real person.  Russia gets overrun by turn 5.  There is no opportunity to “trade territories”.  The AI simply stacks Ukraine and once you give up Caucasus, it’s hard to take it back.  I’ve never been able to take a single fighter from the AI, the battles always come out with the fighters surviving.  Of course, industrial raids typically call for loss of bombers with little impact.  The AI gives up Western Europe and then wipes out the navy that comes in to take the “free territory”. I haven’t tried building a big US navy in the Atlantic; the old shuck/shuck is boring to me.

I see no reason why Japan would attack Hawaii; it’s a crap shoot at best and there is no reason for the Axis to take questionable chances.

Interesting…  Not for me; it comes in with the sub, carrier, cruiser and fighter which is a total loss for the Britts.  The last time, when I retreated to India with 1 carrier, 1 cruiser, 1 fighter and added a fighter from my buy, the AI hit it with the battleship, carrier and 2 fighters.  This is 1@2, 1@3, 2@4 vs 1@1, 2@3, 1@4 which doesn’t seem like it is good odds.  I suppose destroying the transports and infantry must have made it mathematically juicy.  The AI got 3 hits and the response was 1 hit, the second round took the navy out and all misses on response.  At this point, I was ready to punch the screen.  :evil:  After all of the 3s and 4s that I had thrown (7 3s, 3 4s) I had a total of 2 hits in 2 battles.  The battleship absorbed the hit in each case which resulted in two turns worth of losses to Britain and positional loss on the board.  That’s pretty much game over.

The only time that this has been a positive, I had a brain fart and didn’t keep the pressure on Japan.  Britain went for a second navy, which was wiped out, and didn’t press against Japan.

After trying this multiple times in TripleA, it seems like a bad idea.  I’ve figured out the odds and while the Britain fleet does have the opportunity to apply a massive blow and then retreat, the typical results have not been encouraging.  Two times, a total of one hit on offense and two in defense then retreating to India water, the AI then hit it with the BB, car, 2 fig and wiped it out with one hit on response.  I tend to get frustrated when 1 out of 4 50/50 are a success, followed by 0 out of 3 50/50 are a success and followed by 0/2 2/3 odds are a success.  While a single battle doesn’t decide the game, a round of getting diced is very hard to recover from as the Allies.

I wonder if the Indian/Aussie fleets are just a distraction.  In one situation, I was able to actually take out the Japanese fleet with a Cruiser left over, the other eight or nine attempts have resulted in total loss will little impact.  There has to be something better to do which doesn’t rely on the dice so much.

I haven’t found a way to prevent Germany from simply stacking Ukraine and forcing Russia to abandon West Russia or get wiped.  Germany pushes inf/art forwards and Japan pushes through China while America scrambles to get anything going and Britain reinforces with fighters in West Russia and inf/art in India.  Since the Axis are able to apply a 1/2 punch against Russia, the Allies should be able to apply a 1/2/3 punch against one of the Axis.  I haven’t been able to figure that one out in time.

One of the issues that I am having is that the Axis have the opportunity to take some major pieces off the board with little chance of things going wrong and if they do, they lose a sub or two.  The Allies, from my point of view, simply don’t have that opportunity.  There are some basic Axis openings which pretty much dictate the Allied response.  In that way, it’s like chess where if you make a bad move, game over.

What am I missing here?

I’ve never seen a need to buy a navy for the Germans.  Once Japan is rolling, there is more than enough air force to dissuade any sort of Allied naval build up.  There are usually at least 3 German subs around and combined with the battleship and transport, I don’t see much need of spending the money.

That’s a good question…  I’ve only played it against the AI in TripleA and it didn’t do much and I always lose so I’m not a good player.  I’m thinking that the strafe option is better.  Given that Japan doesn’t have a lot of transports, please explain how it is taken back on J1 with at least one Cruiser in the area for the Brits.  If there is combined effort for a KJF, this would seem like a good opening strategy.  After all, we’ve all played KGF forever.  I understand that the game shouldn’t be just a chance roll of the dice however my own analysis, which is limited, indicates that Germany can simply push forwards and will overwhelm Russia given pretty average dice.  Pressure on Japan was always a difficult option.  Japan has less starting income and less options for increasing that income.

It would seem, in my opinion, that taking pieces away from Japan is much easier than Germany.  I’ve read about the basic opening for Russia and if they go badly, the game is basically over.  I have all of the games and my friends have given up on it saying that it is so imbalanced against the Allies that it is unwinable.  I keep trying to come up with ideas for the Allies other than the basic shuck/shuck which killed the original game.  We came up with house rules of two hit battleship, bombers carrying infantry, etc.  It didn’t matter.

I guess my thinking is just too limited.  All in against West Russia and hit Baltic with 1 inf, 1 art, 1 fig.  If the rolls go badly for Russia, what then?  If you don’t limit Japan, they can just become an air force monster, buying a bomber per turn and decimating any sort of navy you have.  Even when I took 11 away from them on the islands, the Pro AI still bought a bomber per turn and once I noticed that there were 7 bombers, it was way too late.  Japan faces little opposition.  I guess I will just play the Brits as 2 fig, 2 inf, 1 art.  How boring…

shuck/shuck…  shuck/shuck…  lather, rinse and repeat…

Where is the fun in that?

BTW, the Cruiser, sub and transport can’t get far enough away to keep them from being wiped out.  Usually with 2 inf on the transport…  Run the carrier away and it takes forever to get into any sort of position to make a difference.  How long does it take Germany to push inf/art to the front line with all the tanks and fighters?

Not the way I roll the dice…  :wink:

It would feel like cheating if the Game Manual didn’t have a big sample of it stating that you could get pieces to a location that would take two turns otherwise…  :wink:

I had a crazy idea of combining the navies together and strafing the Battleship, 2 Fighters and Carrier with the 2 Cruisers, Sub, 2 Fighters, Carrier and Transport with 2 infantry.  The infantry would be faking an amphibious assault on the East Indies.  After one round, retreat to Indian water space.  It can’t unload however it might just do some major damage to Japan and if you were to buy a second Carrier, Fighter and tank for India, it might make for an interesting turn for Japan.

You can also invade East Indies with both transports and sacrifice the navies against the BB, 2 fig, car.  Average rolls will leave a single Cruiser for Britain.  The 4x2 infantry battle is about 50/50.

This assumes that Germany didn’t take out your fighter in Egypt.  Russia would need to move a fighter down to dissuade Germany from attacking.

If it goes badly, then the Allies are in trouble…  However, my opinion is that if the Allies get bad rolls early, the game is basically done.

When a Cruiser or Battleship bombards the coast on an amphibious assault, is that unit subject to fire from the defending units?

As an example, if a territory had a group of ten tanks and the opponent decided to invade with 2 infantry and 2 battleships, are the battleships at risk?

Thanks, I understand statistics pretty well.  Given the total rolls involved, I’m sure they balanced out to average.  After all, if I hit the 1/16 bad roll and the other guy hits the 1/16 good roll, then they average out.  It just doesn’t feel that way.  A simple example is rolling 4 dice hoping for 1/2/3.  1/16 you get 0, 4/16 you get 1, 6/16 you get 2, 4/16 you get 3 and 1/16 you get 4.  If you play by the low luck rules, this roll always yields 2 however, I prefer the randomness of the rolls.  Some people will feel that they should get 2 50% of the time.  Like flipping a coin 4 times.  I prefer to take the chance of missing completely as an initial indicator of when to battle.

Just like in bowling where you can throw a great ball and get a solid 8 pin and the next guy throws it dead down the middle and they all fall down.  Them’s the breaks…  They even out; they just don’t always even out the way you want them to.

I’m still having trouble adjusting when a large battle goes terribly wrong for the Allies.  ;-)  I’m sure the random number generator is just fine.  My perception is skewed.

Maybe it’s just TripleA that’s unbalanced…  I’ve never seen so many horrible rolls for one side followed by excellent rolls on the other.  As is usual, I’m sure that I only remember the bad rolls however I rolled at least 12 1 inf, 1 fig vs 1 inf and the computer hit 90% of the time and I missed 70%.  I thought the odds were 1/3 and 7/12.  It sure makes it difficult, even against a computer, to win when you lose so many small battles.  Not to mention that Russia simply can’t afford to lose that many infantry without any sort of reward.

I understand that it’s possible for 1 fig, 1 bom, 1 des to lose to 1 cru; however, this happened while Russia got 0 hits on 2 rolls with everything except 1 fig in West Russia.  I don’t even want to discuss Baltic.

By the time I lost, I was laughing at it because it was so unreasonable.

I still think that it is very hard to win with Allies.  Especially if the rolls go horribly.

CK

P.S.  even through all of this, I managed to hold West Russia for at least 10 turns.  I got stupid with Britain and bought a navy instead of 2 fig, 1/2 inf, 2/1 art for India.  America had the Philippines and all of Japan’s navy was gone.  I should have gone for a KJF instead of a KGF due to the starting rolls.  Britain had East Indies and Borneo to offset Germany in Africa.  I kept trading France when I should have been landing those 8/10 units in Morocco and pushing towards Caucasus.  I guess you just can’t fix dumb…  ;-)

Thanks for the replies…

I think I understand the idea of strafing off the infantry as Russia, one issue that I have is that the defending pieces have the advantage in firepower.  The supply lines for Germany are long and even with the starting advantage, Germany cannot afford to trade tanks for infantry.  Unit balance is probably also a key, the artillery would seem to be a likely unit for Russia as it doubles the firepower of matching infantry making them as strong on offense as defense.

The map changes and having Germany’s starting naval units being able to hit the Allies really makes is difficult to get a navy going.

Hi,

I am a long time lurker; reading the various forums on each of the games.  I have a friend that I played the original Axis and Allies with which we determined was totally unbalance in favor of the allies.  We have played Spring 1942 and found that it was still unbalanced towards the Allies.  The next game comes out and now I have been told that it is balanced against the Allies.  In fact, I have been told that it is impossible to win with the Allies playing with dice.

Looking at the map, the Germans have superior numbers against the Russians.  And due to the increase in naval presence, the Allies have a very hard time making any headway against Germany.  The board does appear to be set up for attacking Japan however it still means a losing proposition for the allies.

I have played a game as allies against the 1.8.0.5 AI and lost.  I made several bad moves which involved not landing fighters on newly purchased carriers.

Is it possible to win with the Allies given average dice?  I tend to think that we are looking at the game to simplistically; that there is more to it than meets the eye.  Of course, that might just be me wanting there to be more to the game given the $50 price tag.

What does everyone else think?  Can Germany simply overrun Russia regardless of UK and USA?

Thanks.

Kirk S.

Ok…  If you want a bug report, here is what I have seen in 1.8.0.4:

During non-combat move, Hard AI will move into territory that was taken during the combat phase.  Also, left a large number of bombers in Norway with limited support.  It might have been bait however that was a big loss.  Round 24 Germany in Anglo-Egypt, combat followed by non-combat move into same area.  I have saved the game if you want it.  I did let the game go past normal victory.  Where are the log files saved?  I can save those as well if you would like to see it.  WW2 V4 1942 Spring.

Kirk S.

Thanks…  Didn’t think it was malware or a virus, just never seen Chrome do that.  I downloaded it with IE and installed.  I am interested in the AI code; pathmaking, unit selection, etc.  Seems like an interesting task.

Kirk S.

Ok…  I am confused.  The latest version was shown as malicious and Chrome blocked it.  Please explain…

I have been able to get the maps to work by removing the newer tags in the map files.  It’s a slow process, however it works.  Alternately, I could modify the Java code adding dummy methods which would simply skip these tags (isAirTransportable, isAirTransport, etc.).  I noticed that the never versions of the installed program contains a folder with older versions of the program jar file.  Are these executed automatically or do I need to create short cuts.

Thanks…

Kirk S.