Best posts made by DoManMacgee

@The_Good_Captain Wait I screwed up the FTR movement in Europe. Can you edit 1 French INF from Alsace back to Lorraine?

Those are pretty common gripes with this version in-general. To be fair, if the Allies under-perform in those battles (especially the SZ37 fight, if UK goes for it) the Axis are basically guaranteed a free win. Just yesterday I lost a bit too much on the Ukraine fight (took everything that could reach, only the 2 FTRs survived) and that giant loss of units through no fault of my own basically assured my loss by round 5.

My take is that you shouldn’t get too up-in-arms over getting your ranking up. Just set achievable goals and strive for them. It’s just a videogame-based-on-a-board-game, and said board game wasn’t really ever intended to be played hyper-competitively, at least I don’t think it was, anyway (doesn’t stop me and others from doing it anyway, though).

Your best bet is to just hold out hope that Beamdog starts adding other maps down the line. 42SE (the map AAO uses currently) is one of the most poorly balanced maps in the series, and lacks the charm that other poorly balanced maps have (G40 has its sheer size/scale + interesting political scenarios + tons of playable countries, AA50 has Italy/China, NOs and better overall balance, Classic has the allure of being “the original”, etc.). Beamdog is apparently open to the idea, but is struggling with getting the rights/licenses, since Larry Harris no longer has any affiliation with Wizards of the Coast (the people who own the rights to A&A).

@Topmat Gah. That’s terrible news! I’m glad your safe, at least. Good luck in your other tournament later this month!

@domanmacgee

Bombardment got a hit in Egypt (your coastal barrage got 2 of my INF). German INF dead OK?

@Dimitri It’s better for the bigger size and unit/strategy variety, but the balance is awful, even compared to Classic. IMO, the Axis-Favored games are more unbearable to play than the Allied-Favored ones because you’re basically stuck in a situation where you’re going to win/lose in 4 turns no matter what you do. At least in the Allied-Favored games it usually tends to take a long time before the Allies can actually kill you, which gives both players a lot more time to make mistakes that can swing things one way or the other.

@Slip-Capone Haven’t played it myself but it looks like it’s worth checking out at least.

@the_good_captain TripleA wants a casualty selection for Bombardment before resolving the rest of combat but I can’t find anything in the rules that mandate that you need to select the casualty before the rest of my attacking units fire. I’m just going to tentatively select the German INF and do the rest of my roll. If you want the German INF alive after the dust settles we’ll just fix it in edit.

side-steps the arguing and ranting and raving about dice and whatnot

@JuliusBorisovBeamdog If you want a good reference point for the “Stabilized Dice” feature you’re planning on implementing I’d recommend looking into the “Low Luck” (“LL” for short) house rule that this community has implemented over the years. In a nutshell, it works in the following way:

Each round, do the following:

1. Add up the Combat Value for all units in a fight on each side (ex. If I attack with 2 INF/1 ART/1 TANK against 4 INF, then the attacker’s “Combat Value” is 8 (1 (the unpaired INF) + 2 (the paired INF) + 2 (the ART) + 3 (the TANK) = 8 ) and the defender’s “Combat Value” is also 8 (2 (the INFs) * 4 = 8).

2. Divide the “Combat Value” of each side by 6 and note the remainder (Attacker would be 8/6 = 1 Remainder 2, Defender would be 6/6 = 1 Remainder 0).

3. The number you got when dividing the Combat Value by 6 is how many hits you score as a baseline.

4. For the remainder, roll a D6 and compare it to the remainder. If you rolled less than the remainder, you get one extra hit on top of the value you got in step “#3” above.

5. Both sides remove casualties, attack has the option to retreat (just like in regular A&A).

So basically, each side can get a rough estimate going in of exactly how a battle will play out. This makes the game more chess-like than normal A&A (where big swingy battles can single-handedly decide the outcome of the game), which has its own perks/flaws (the game’s a lot more predictable this way, for better or for worse).

I’d hesitate on having any mode with this setting replace the core “ranked” ladder though, as it’d be a good way to get purists mad. However, a separate ladder for low-luck may appeal to people who are upset by the dice (not naming any names, but you’ve been putting up with us long enough to get the idea).

Thanks as always for popping your head in here and taking the abuse you take. I don’t envy you.

EDIT: Minor cleanup of post structure.

@The_Good_Captain LMK if that’s good for you and I’ll pull the trigger on the attack.

@CPT-Flint Give me a bit and I will get back to you. I don’t play 42SE much these days but I might be able to pull up some old notes.

Are you asking for AAO (or online play in-general), or for IRL Face-to-Face play (i.e. 6 turn time-limit, etc.)?

@the_good_captain No, I forgot to edit the “Political Relationships”. Try setting those as needed and you should be okay. It’s on the “Edit” Tab.

@the_good_captain That’s fine. The dice added up over the course of that Rome fight so it’s about time for me to give this one up anyway.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@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.

@the_good_captain Game History

Round: 5

    Puchase Units - Germans
        Germans buy 4 artilleries, 2 fighters and 4 infantry; Remaining resources: 0 PUs; 

    Combat Move - Germans
        Turning on Edit Mode
        EDIT: Changing ownership of Kazakhstan from Russians to Contested
        EDIT: Changing ownership of Moscow from Russians to Contested
        EDIT: Changing ownership of Belarus from Russians to Contested
        EDIT: Changing ownership of Finland from Russians to Contested
        EDIT: Changing ownership of Karelia from AustroHungarians to Contested
        EDIT: Turning off Edit Mode
        Turning on Edit Mode
        EDIT: Adding units owned by Neutral_Central to Moscow: 1 infantry
        EDIT: Removing units owned by Germans from Moscow: 1 infantry
        EDIT: Turning off Edit Mode
        1 artillery moved from Moscow to Ukraine
        4 artilleries moved from Ukraine to Galicia
        1 fighter moved from Ukraine to Galicia
        3 artilleries and 2 infantry moved from Galicia to Bohemia
        1 fighter moved from Galicia to Bohemia
        3 fighters moved from Berlin to Munich
        4 fighters moved from Ruhr to Munich
        5 artilleries and 2 infantry moved from Berlin to Hanover
        3 artilleries and 1 infantry moved from Silesia to Hanover
        3 artilleries and 2 infantry moved from Hanover to Munich
        13 artilleries and 13 infantry moved from Alsace to Ruhr

    Combat - Germans
        Battle in Munich
            Germans attack with 3 artilleries, 7 fighters and 2 infantry
            Italians defend with 1 infantry
                Germans roll dice for 3 artilleries, 7 fighters and 2 infantry in Munich, round 2 : 4/12 hits, 5.33 expected hits
                Italians roll dice for 1 infantry in Munich, round 2 : 1/1 hits, 0.50 expected hits
                1 infantry owned by the Germans and 1 infantry owned by the Italians lost in Munich
            Germans win, taking Munich from Italians with 3 artilleries, 7 fighters and 1 infantry remaining. Battle score for attacker is 0
            Casualties for Germans: 1 infantry
            Casualties for Italians: 1 infantry

    Combat Move - Germans

    Place Units - Germans
        4 artilleries, 2 fighters and 4 infantry placed in Berlin

    Turn Complete - Germans
        Germans collect 39 PUs; end with 39 PUs

Combat Hit Differential Summary :

Italians regular : 0.50
Germans regular : -1.33

1914-game-5-g5.tsvg

I flipped one of the German INF in Moscow to “Neutral Central” also, just to avoid needing to constantly flip said INF back and forth between German/not-German every turn for the rest of the game.