Best posts made by DoManMacgee

@Plantageneto What specific moves are you making to accomplish Sealion so easily? IIRC the only way to pull it off turn 1 with any degree of consistency involves buying technology, getting lucky and getting “long range aircraft”.

@domanmacgee
(5/5)
Round 9:
AH - Takes Tyrolia/stacks Trieste again.
R - Dead.
G - Takes Finland, starts leaving Russia with main army.
F - Stacking.
B - Helps F with stacking but also goes into Karelia and Finland, albeit unsuccessfully (only got a contest off but the move is still enough to force the German ART to turn around).

O - Ottoman stacks get closer to India, also are back with small forces in North Africa.
I - Takes back Libya from Ottomans, took Serbia, also takes Switzerland as a desperation move (should have probably just retreated to Piedmont, although the situation was already pretty grim).

USA - Move into Serbia alongside Italians (more trying to get AH to stop sending reinforcements towards Rome).

Round 10:
AH - Dive on Venice, dive on Serbia.
R - Dead.
G - Stacking/trading Belgium. Cleaned up Karelia.
F - Stacking/trading Belgium. Take TJ to get Ottomans out of Africa again.
B - Hit Munich, stack India. Idea is to get Germany to back up to deal with disturbance in Munich.
O - All stacks converged in Persia.
I - Into Munich. Probably should have went to Piedmont in an attempt to draw the Austrians away from Rome (and if they didn’t take the bait, the FTRs could have at least escaped to Rome to get there before the main AH army). Germany was already going to go for Munich anyway and Rome needed to stay alive for the game to continue.

• Tried Smyrna too to get some extra income for the Rome defense but battle was a tie.

USA - Walked into Smyrna, continued reinforcing Albania/Serbia (to divert AH reinforcements away from Rome)

Round 11:
AH - Finished Serbia, walked into Piedmont, main stack to Tuscany.
R - Dead.
G - Main stack to Munich (left Rhur). This caught me off guard ultimately, as I was hoping for a partial moveout (so F can start an attrition fight in Ruhr while the stack was split). Walked into Switzerland.

F - Main stack to Rhur. This was a gamble but if it held Germany’s income lead over France would have been gone, meaning Entente would have eventually won via attrition.

B - British into Rhur also (see above). More stacking in India. Odds were leaning towards India holding via UK spamming INF into the meat grinder for as long as it would take to wear down the Ottoman stack.

• Canadians finally made it to the front lines. They landed in Rome.

O - All-in in India. 1st round of combat was more-or-less as expected. Cleaned up Smyrna (but at this point TJ and Arabia were in Entente hands).

I - Sneaked 2 INF out of Rome/into Piedmont. Hope was, again, to draw the Austrians away from Rome to buy time.

USA - Hit Smyrna (by pulling out of Albania) but also reinforced Rome with 4 INF.

• Probably should have ignored Smyrna and threw everything into Rome to hold the line.

Round 12:
AH - Dove on Rome. Initial battle actually goes pretty poorly for AH.
R - Dead.
G - Main stack rammed into Rhur. Very favorable dice to CP to the point where F was forced out of the territory. Tried to leave Russia again. Spare units went into Alsace and Lorraine.

F - Pulled out of Rhur. Retook Switzerland/Alsace/Lorraine.
B - Hit Karelia again to force Germany to stay. Dodged combat and stacked in India to continue the attrition.

O - Freshly spawning Ottoman units are trapped cleaning up the drops in Smyrna. Attrition continues in India but the O stack is barely over 20 at this point (started at ~39 units).

I - The last mistake. Tried attacking in Rome to wear down the attacking stack (idea was for USA to dive into Tuscany to cut off reinforcements) but AH got just enough of a favorable roll to put the full Entente stack in danger of dying.

USA - Followed the plan and hit Tuscany. I goofed and thought doing this would also cut off the FTRs coming in.

Round 13:
AH - AH takes Italy (FTRs sneaked through from Venice, as FTRs ignore contested territories). GG.

On a review the game ended up being a lot closer than it felt like it was while actually playing. I think that highlights the main issue with 1914’s balance though (I made a HUGE number of questionable and outright awful moves and still only barely lost the income lead, and ultimately the game). If I hadn’t blundered things completely in Rome it’s entirely feasible that:

1. The Entente could have held Rome for a bit longer since USA’s shuck was setup effectively setup (although Italy had lost so much ground at this point that eventually AH would have started getting 11+ INF stacks into Rome against only 6-9 land units per turn from the combined Italy/US buys).

2. UK could have worn down the Ottoman stack fighting in India and began a large-scale counterattack, meaning the game would have devolved into a race of “can UK liberate Moscow/take Constantinople before Rome or Paris die”?

However, given how badly the Rhur fight went, it’s also possible that Germany would have just pushed France all the way back to Paris and won the game in that way.

That’s about all I got. Sorry I nuked the thread with all this but if I DM’d it to you I would have gotten rate-limited lol.

Conversely to your example, I haven’t had any wins/losses by timeout yet. Anecdotal evidence is just anecdotal at the end of the day.

NOTE: I didn’t bother addressing your concerns about Japan/the Pacific because, as you said, we’d just be getting ourselves bogged down into an endless discussion on the entirety of AA50, which is way outside the original scope of this thread, which was defending Egypt as UK in the 41 Scenario (I already kind of dragged us out of it by harping on NOs, so sorry about that).

@the_good_captain said in [Game 4] TGC (CP) v DoManMacgee (Entente) -oob, no bid, RR:

For me, the ideal conditions on when to do one or the other are not crystal clear. However, I feel confident that the conditions on when to accept RR or brush it off will become more clear with more playing.

That’s an interesting point. From my side Russia’s entire gameplan ends up revolving around dealing with the threat of RR firing (whereas in a normal game the plan would just be to fall back to Moscow and wait for the Americans to show up/the Entente to start making progress in other parts of the board). The rule forces Russia to actually deal with the “will they/won’t they” mindgame which is created by the Central Powers’ ability to decline the revolution. At this point, I’d probably say that RR is basically mandatory to give the game any chance of being balanced, not unlike the old “USSR can’t attack R1” rule in Classic.

I lost 7 INF Vs. 2 INF the other day. That was a fun one.

@AndrewAAGamer tl;dr to the above post. I was wrong to say that the Axis have a neigh-unbreakable advantage when playing with NOs turned on, but I still believe that they do have a palpable advantage, and that the game as a whole would be better off being played without them. The scenario as a whole, NOs or not, is much more balanced than I originally thought, though.

@the_good_captain It might have been different if I was ferrying the UK guys in earlier in the game (either from a boat lift or via Mesopotamia). The issue from my perspective is that Germany was getting the better IPC trades every round after the first battle (~turn 3). It’s probably less about diving on Ukraine in the first place (that was probably fine, since you had AH eat most of the casualties, which made them a non-factor in the area) but trying to 1v1 Germany with Russia with no support for an extended period of time was just asking for trouble IMO.

Yikes. Looks like that game is going to take a while to grind out. Looks more like a Cold War scenario at this point than a WW2 one.

@tasos Japan doesn’t have a transport in range of West USA on the first turn in the 41 scenario. If they start moving transports + their entire navy towards you, just buy 10 INF and move all of your starting fighters into West USA. They shouldn’t be able to break that, meaning they’ll need to either withdraw or amass more transports (in which case you can just buy 10 more INF). Japan should never be able to actually take West USA. If your opponent is trying to do that, they’re not expanding in Asia like they need to, and it should be an easy win for the Allies.

@the_good_captain Oh I thought you were “hitting me with the entente”.

If possible, I’d like a go at Central Powers just to get the experience in, since I usually play Allies in most A&A Versions with my face-to-face friends.

Gonna file the two glitches I found in two separate threads.

First, the QoL changes and addition of ranked mode have breathed new life into this game for me. Thanks a ton for implementing both.

Anyway, this glitch is something I call “Sub Vortex”. Allow me to explain:

Scenario: USSR has a sub in SZ7 (English Channel). I Combat Move my German Sub into that SZ to attack. Both the Allies Player and myself have my Combat Profiles set to “Submerge Subs if no Destroyer Present”.

• Battle Occurs, battle is canceled because Soviets submerge.
• USSR Player’s turn, battle is canceled because Germans submerge.
• Germany Player’s turn, I should have the opportunity to have my Submarine leave the hostile Sea Zone. This is where the possible glitch comes into play.

For whatever reason, I cannot leave the SZ with the Soviet Submarine. I can click the sub and see SZ7 come up in “yellow”, but the surrounding SZs are not “blue” and I cannot click any of them to move away from the Soviets. As this is a ranked game, I do not know if my opponent is also experiencing this glitch, or if it’s only affecting me.

Not a huge bug, but a bug nonetheless.

Thanks for listening.

@tasos What you said is true, but I think you may be misunderstanding how the Combat Move Phase works.

The transports in SZ51 (Caroline Islands Sea Zone) can’t move through SZ53 (Hawaii) because the US Battleship is a hostile enemy “Surface Vessel” (i.e. anything that isn’t a Submarine/Transport). Even if you send the Carrier Group and its Fighters to attack the Battleship, your transports can’t ignore the presence of the Battleship. They have to stop in SZ53 for the turn, and can’t move again until the following round, which gives USA a turn to buy 10 INF as I stated above.

I mention this because going from SZ51 -> 53 -> 56 is the only way to get from the Caroline Islands to West USA in one turn.

The fact remains that it is not possible for Japan to invade West USA on its first turn. America will always have a turn to buy 10 INF and ward off any attack.

@the_good_captain said in [Game 5] TGC (Entente) v DoManMacgee (CP) -oob, no bid, RR:

@domanmacgee I’ll go ahead and play off this but…I see you didn’t get the updated file. Probably bc the messages all pretty much came on the start of page 2.

Correct. My bad.

Would an okay compromise be if we:

1. Kept the I Cruiser dead.
2. Do a series of rolls for a simulated battle in Tuscany. 1 BB + 2 INF Vs. the 1 I INF? I would take 1 INF away from the current Albania stack (which would have no impact on the overall game as far as I can tell).

That should be enough to restore the gamestate to where it ought to be prior to G3, as I don’t think the results of the hypothetical Tuscany fight would have much of an impact on your R3 move.

Gonna file the two glitches I found in two separate threads.

First, the QoL changes and addition of ranked mode have breathed new life into this game for me. Thanks a ton for implementing both.

Anyway, this glitch is something I call “Phantom Fighter Move”. Allow me to explain:

Scenario: I have two separate stacks of German Fighters. One in Karelia, the other in Germany. During Combat Move Phase I move both of them to attack Caucasus (2 moves away from Karelia, 3 moves away from Germany).

• Battle Occurs, all of my air units survive.

• NCM Phase: I should only be able to move my Fighters that started in Germany one more space, and my Fighters that started in Karelia two more spaces. If I individually make my moves, this will work as intended. After I’ve individually moved each of my Fighters with two moves left, I will only be able to move the remaining Fighters one space.

• However, if I use the new “SHIFT+CLICK” feature to move the entire Fighter Stack at once, the glitch comes into play.

For whatever reason, SHIFT+CLICK"-ing the Fighter Stack in Ukraine lets me move all of them 2 spaces, even though some of them should not be able to move that far. This trick allows for illegal Fighter Movement that is earth-shatteringly overpowered in arenas like the Pacific, where fleet positioning is entirely based on the limited air range of opposing FTRs/Bombers.

NOTE: I do not know if this occurs for Bombers as well as Fighters. I have not tried it because building additional Bombers is usually poor play and I am only playing Ranked Games at the moment.

If this bug is not reproducible on your end, it may have just been a one-time thing for me. Sorry for the false alarm if that’s the case.

Not a huge bug, but a bug nonetheless.

Thanks for listening.

@thedesertfox said in Allies strategy:

Even if you lose Karelia G1 by the Germans the UK landing in Norway and Finland will be inevitable so it won’t be permanent.

Generally, going for Karelia G1 via an all-in takes away too much from your overall gameplan (i.e. you’d need to send multiple air units that are better used taking out the British fleet + attacking Egypt).

@the_good_captain TBH I just made you do it because I was out pretty much all day today for work-related reasons. Will get to G3 tomorrow morning.

If you have enough money with UK to fill 4 transports you may want to consider 1-2 FTRs + fill 3 transports instead. This lets you slowly-but-surely accumulate a stack of air units for UK that can be staged in West Russia/Moscow with the purpose of picking off small stacks of 1-2 German/Japanese land units in Russian territories. That way, on Russia’s turn, the Soviets don’t have to commit as many units to retaking the now-empty territories. This puts less strain on the Soviet economy, as instead of sending 1-2 INF + air support to retake 1-2 IPC territories, you’re instead just sending 1 INF, or even a TANK while it blitzes to a different territory (or back to the stack, even!). The reduced strain on the Soviets means that they’re free to either make additional attacks/trades, or build up their main stack more quickly. Both make for a stronger Soviet force that will take a longer time for the Axis to break, if they can break it.

tl;dr your UK navy alone can only hit Norway/Finland/Karelia/Baltic States/Northwestern Europe/France. Adding an airforce on top of that lets you threaten/strafe all of the inland Russian territories (Belorussia/Poland/Ukraine/West Russia) + Moscow’s “back door” (Kazakh/Novosibirsk/Ural/etc.).

Welcome to AA50. What you just described is the entire point of the 41 Scenario, and to a large extent it showcases the exact horror/despair that the IRL Western European Nations (Netherlands/Belgium/France/UK/etc.) must have felt when Germany/Italy/Japan rolled out at the start of the war in the 39-41 period.

In all seriousness, there’s not a ton UK can do against the initial assault. Your priority needs to be on rebuilding/maintaining the British Navy against repeated German Air Attacks while you wait for the US to build a navy and get in position.

For the Pacific, you have it rough. You’re not getting Indonesia (The combination of “Borneo”, “Dutch East Indies” and “New Guinea”, we call them “the Money Islands” for short) back anytime soon, and Australia is likely going to fall as well. Your best bet there is to buy land units in India and try to hold the line until the US Navy can arrive in force.

If you still find yourself getting crushed with this (admittedly vague) advice, try either playing without National Objectives, or adding some units to the initial Allied setup (this is called a “bid”. You can mutually agree how much free stuff the Allies will be getting).

I don’t know how new you are to A&A, but here’s some general advice just in case you are a newer player:

• Buying cheap, expendable units is typically best. This means INF/ART for land units and Destroyers/SUBs for Sea Units.

• Buying Bombers, Cruisers, Battleships and other expensive units is generally not advised. Just use the ones you start with to the best of your ability.

• Focus on killing Germany/Italy first. They’re typically the far more threatening Axis Powers. Clean up Africa/Scandinavia before you go for Europe proper. This will cut off Axis National Objectives/secure your own.

@the_good_captain Game History

Round: 5

    Puchase Units - AustroHungarians
        AustroHungarians buy 4 artilleries, 1 infantry and 2 tanks; Remaining resources: 0 PUs; 

    Combat Move - AustroHungarians
        Turning on Edit Mode
        EDIT: Adding units owned by Neutral_Central to Karelia: 4 infantry
        EDIT: Removing units owned by AustroHungarians from Karelia: 4 infantry
        EDIT: Turning off Edit Mode
        8 infantry moved from Livonia to Belarus
        7 artilleries and 13 infantry moved from Ukraine to Belarus
        3 fighters moved from Ukraine to Bohemia
        2 artilleries and 2 infantry moved from Vienna to Bohemia
        6 artilleries and 9 infantry moved from Trieste to Tyrolia
        8 artilleries and 5 infantry moved from Vienna to Tyrolia
        3 fighters moved from Vienna to Tyrolia

    Combat - AustroHungarians
        Battle in Tyrolia
            AustroHungarians attack with 14 artilleries, 3 fighters and 14 infantry
            Italians defend with 1 infantry
                AustroHungarians roll dice for 14 artilleries, 3 fighters and 14 infantry in Tyrolia, round 2 : 17/31 hits, 17.33 expected hits
                Italians roll dice for 1 infantry in Tyrolia, round 2 : 0/1 hits, 0.50 expected hits
                1 infantry owned by the Italians lost in Tyrolia
            AustroHungarians win, taking Tyrolia from Italians with 14 artilleries, 3 fighters and 14 infantry remaining. Battle score for attacker is 3
            Casualties for Italians: 1 infantry
        Battle in Bohemia
            AustroHungarians attack with 2 artilleries, 3 fighters and 2 infantry
            Italians defend with 1 infantry
                AustroHungarians roll dice for 2 artilleries, 3 fighters and 2 infantry in Bohemia, round 2 : 4/7 hits, 3.33 expected hits
                Italians roll dice for 1 infantry in Bohemia, round 2 : 1/1 hits, 0.50 expected hits
                1 fighter owned by the AustroHungarians and 1 infantry owned by the Italians lost in Bohemia
            AustroHungarians win, taking Bohemia from Italians with 2 artilleries, 2 fighters and 2 infantry remaining. Battle score for attacker is -3
            Casualties for AustroHungarians: 1 fighter
            Casualties for Italians: 1 infantry
            Turning on Edit Mode
            EDIT: Removing units owned by AustroHungarians from Bohemia: 1 infantry
            EDIT: Adding units owned by AustroHungarians to Bohemia: 1 fighter
            EDIT: Turning off Edit Mode
        Battle in Belarus
            AustroHungarians attack with 7 artilleries and 21 infantry
            Russians defend with 9 artilleries, 5 fighters and 16 infantry
                AustroHungarians roll dice for 7 artilleries and 21 infantry in Belarus, round 2 : 14/28 hits, 11.67 expected hits
                Russians roll dice for 9 artilleries, 5 fighters and 16 infantry in Belarus, round 2 : 16/30 hits, 15.67 expected hits
                14 infantry owned by the Russians and 16 infantry owned by the AustroHungarians lost in Belarus
            Russians and AustroHungarians reach a stalemate
            . Battle score for attacker is -6
            Casualties for AustroHungarians: 16 infantry
            Casualties for Russians: 14 infantry

    Combat Move - AustroHungarians

    Place Units - AustroHungarians
        4 artilleries, 1 infantry and 2 tanks placed in Vienna

    Turn Complete - AustroHungarians
        AustroHungarians collect 31 PUs; end with 31 PUs

Combat Hit Differential Summary :

Italians regular : 0.00
Russians regular : 0.33
AustroHungarians regular : 2.67

1914-game-5-ah5.tsvg

For what it’s worth, the Spanish are “”“German”“” but I doubt that’s going to actually matter.