Posts made by JamesG

Yes, once the DD is destroyed the planes can no longer hit the Subs so the battle would end.

And yes, since subs can never hit planes any sub hits go to fleet elements.

I guess this would form a partial exception to the “transports die last” rule.  For instance if two DDs, three fighters, and a transport attack 3 subs, and on the first round the subs get three hits, the transport would be sunk even though the fighters are still alive, since that third sub hit could only be resolved on a sea unit.

@RedHunter:

I am tired of rules changes every time I log on here. Until something becomes offical I am going to play with the standard rules.

That attitude is fair enough.  But I for one am glad Larry is taking the approach he is.  Allowing players at large into the process and making rapid adjustments based on their feedback should lead to a better playtested and balanced version faster than any method I can think of.

Though I assume that in a multiplayer game where separate people are playing the US and ANZAC, it is up to those players to decide if they want to scramble their fighters.  In fact, they could scramble their fighters even if the UK chooses not to scramble its own fighter.

@calvinhobbesliker:

@molinar13:

No more Free French Navy?  :cry:

I think that’s a typo

Yes, it was a typo - he’s corrected it.

The latest from Larry:
http://www.harrisgamedesign.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=2568&p=30797#p30797

Well some of you… especially you Foremir, will be happy to lean that the UK Government in exile idea is rather quickly fading away as a possible change. In the final annalists it simply aint Axis & Allies. I ran it up the pole to see who saluted it. I often do that… I ended up with more people going AWOL than saluting on this one.

Different subject…
I’m thinking of adding an airbase (Italian of course) to Sicily. I would then move the fighter presently in S. Italy to the airbase. This aircraft can now scramble. It protects the fleet in the same sea zone and it will prove to be an important defensive position for the Italians if and when the Americans start showing up.

@Koningstiger:

Still think tactical bombers giving a bonus to tanks instead of vice versa, would have made more sense…

Does it make a difference?  Since they have to be paired one-to-one does it matter if it takes the tank’s 3 to a 4 or the Tac’s 3 to a 4?  Either way you end up with a 4 and a 3.

@calvinhobbesliker:

@Seven_Patch:

@calvinhobbesliker:

If you put 1 inf in FIC, then the Japanese will have to use more than just the 2 Siam inf to have a good chance of taking it. This divers either troops from yunnan or planes from other areas

In Global I think Japan is unlikely to try a J1 attack since that would bring America into the war against Germany.  If that is the case then Japan has more than enough airpower to attack FIC.

Even without a J1, Japan can still attack France since a DoW on France doesn’t affect anyone else.

I think that is his point.  Since Japan won’t be attacking US or UK in J1, they will have more than enough air to deal with 1 Inf in FIC.

Note that I’m not necessarily endorsing the proposed change, I’m just clarifying the arguement.  (I hope).

Also, see this thread for some discussion of “Kill USA First”:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=16127.0

If I’m reading the final entry correctly, then the transport in all my examples in the original post would be escorted, provided the moves were done carefully.

For instance, my second example was this:
A warship and a transport starting in different seazones move into a seazone with a enemy sub and then leave the sub’s seazone via two different seazones. For example DD in SZ-a and TN in SZ-b move one space into SZ-c containing an enemy sub and then the DD moves one space to SZ-d and the TN moves one space to SZ-e.

To have the TN escorted, the moves would be:
1 - DD moves one space from SZ-a to SZ-c.  SZ-c contains an ememy sub.
2 - TN moves one space from SZ-b to SZ-c.
3 - TN moves one space from SZ-c to SZ-e.
4 - DD moves one space from SZ-c to SZ-d.

Since at no point is the TN alone with the enemy sub in SZ-c, the sub can not attack it.

Is this correct?

Quote from the FAQ, bold italics mine:

Q.  Submarines can attack transports that move through their sea zone “unaccompanied by surface warships”.  Under exactly what conditions do friendly surface warships prevent sub attacks on moving transports?
A.  A surface warship that starts its movement along with one or more transports and moves with them will prevent sub attacks.  Also, friendly surface warships that were already in the enemy sub’s sea zone and do not move will prevent attacks on transports that move through or into the sea zone.

I assume the part I put in bold italics means the warship and transport(s) must start from the same seazone.  What about these cases?

• A warship and a transport starting in different seazones move into a seazone with a enemy sub and then leave the sub’s seazone together. For example DD in SZ-a and TN in SZ-b move one space into SZ-c containing an enemy sub and then both DD and TN move one spaoce to SZ-d.

• A warship and a transport starting in different seazones move into a seazone with a enemy sub and then leave the sub’s seazone via two different seazones. For example DD in SZ-a and TN in SZ-b move one space into SZ-c containing an enemy sub and then the DD moves one space to SZ-d and the TN moves one space to SZ-e.

• A warship and a transport starting in different seazones move into a seazone with a enemy sub and the transport leaves the sub’s seazone while the warship stays behind. For example DD in SZ-a moves one or two spaces to SZ-c and TN in SZ-b move one space into SZ-c.  SZ-c contains an enemy sub. Then the TN moves one space to SZ-d while the DD stays in SZ-c to fight the sub.

Is the transport in any of those cases considered escorted by the warship, or does the sub get a free attack on the transport?

@WILD:

@Stoney229:

@Stoney229:

@Vareel:

My question is, lets say on US1/AN1 they both moved boats into the same SZ, and UK attacked japan starting war.  IF japan were to attack the SZ containing US/AN units would the US units fight or just be there but do nothing?  I’m assuming the later.

I think that’s a good question.  Perhaps japan chooses if (s)he is attacking both or just AN.

still curious to know the answer to Vareel’s question.  any ideas?

I would think that if Japan attacks a sz it attacks the entire sz. So if US ships are there then that’s a declaration of war on the US.

I disagree.  If Japan is only at war with UK/AN but not with the US, then Japan should be able to attack just the AN units. The US units also in that sea zone would be ignored.  Otherwise the US player could make sure it had a sea unit “escort” all UK/AN sea units in order to “protect” them from Jap retaliation in the event of a UK/AN attack on Japan.  Which seems a little cheesy to me.

This is just my opinion, I don’t have the game yet so don’t know if the rules address this.

@AxisOfEvil:

what is ASW?

Anti Submarine Warfare.  The anti sub abilities that Destroyers have.

@F6FHellcat:

I have problem with fighter attacking navy beyond range of AC by non combat move that is allowed by same turn navy battle.  I not use program in many year so that only move I remember.

Well, if you can’t rememeber any illegal moves it let you make, you probably should not have claimed it let you make any.  The legal move that TripleA does not allow regarding the fighters and AC has already been discussed on this thread, including the workarounds for it.  And that comes up so rarely that to complain about it is really a just a quibble.

Have problem with posting site solved?  Have problems with dice place solved?

To be honest I didn’t really understand what you meant by these issues so I can not really comment on them.

Have rules been set to online rules?

I don’t know what “online rules” means.  It supports out of the box rules, and some LHTR rules.

Map program not have these problem.  Just need play with other site dice that send email.  But more sites do this now than before so less problem than was.

Map programs are fine for what they are.  You can use them to track moves, but nothing more.  They make no attempt to verify that the moves are legal.  They won’t run the game for you like TripleA will.  You need to run the game yourself with a Map program.

F6FHellcat,

Sorry to hear you had stability issues, but if you last tried it several years ago you might want to check if the current version has fixed any of those.

@F6FHellcat:

Program allow illegal moves.  Program not follow any game rules way they are written.  Not follow the rules in game.

Can you please give examples of the illegal moves the game allows?  The only thing I can think of is it allows moves that are technically “non-combat” moves in the combat move phase, but that is hardly a game-breaking issue.  Can you give an example, other than the fighter/carrier thing already talked about, of a legal move not allowed?

@Cmdr:

(BTW, Battlemap will track your currently owned land totals as well as composite army and navy strength two features I miss when I do kick around ideas with TripleA.)

Umm, TripleA does track your land totals, unless I misunderstand what you mean.  It also tracks your TUV and total number of units, but does not divide them up between army and navy.  That actually would be a pretty good feature.

To anyone who has not tried TripleA yet,

Please do not let Jen’s tirades against the program dissuade you from giving it a try.  I’ve never encountered any of the problems she’s described in my use of the program with two exceptions.

1. The program does not implement the rules for carriers and fighter range properly, in that you can not tell the program “I’ll move my carrier here in non-combat to pick up surviving fighters.”  TripleA calculates legal fighter moves based on where your carriers are, not where you plan to move them later.  A fairly minor issue with a number of workarounds.  Black_Elk already went over this in great detail in a post on page 1.  I’m not aware of other instances where it does not “follow the rules” for the AAR OOB rules.

2. The AI is awful.  But the TripleA makers never made any claims that it was any good.  They have always acknowledged that the AI was something they threw together and improving it is fairly low on their priority list.

If you do encounter the other issues she describes, post here.  I’d be interested to know if they are common, or rare (I suspect rare).

@Cmdr:

When the Russian attack goes off with average results (two fighters down, Russia with 32 IPC, no Russian fighters lost, 1 or 2 ground units left in Ukraine and Norway, 4-6 in W. Russia) it is quite devastating.

I agree that those results are pretty devastating for the Axis.  But by your own admission, the odds of getting results that good are less than 1 in 3.  In fact, odds are one of those attacks outright fails more than half of the time.  So to say that’s what things look like with “average” dice is disingenuous.

If the game was weighted towards the Axis, for even a 50/50 shot, then a high risk, all out attack like this might be warranted.  But I feel that even with a one unit per territory bid of 9 to the Axis a well executed KGF will win the game for the Allies more often than not.  So to my mind it makes little sense to launch an attack like this, since with average to slightly below average dice the door is opened for an Axis win that otherwise would not be there.  Sure 1 time in 3 this will work out so well that the Allies win in a cake walk.  But a decent number of times the Allies will be shooting themselves in the foot instead.

@newpaintbrush:

NO WAI.  Let me propose a simple game.  You take ten coins and flip them.  Every time you have more heads then tails, or more tails then heads, you remove the “extra” heads or tails.  (So if you flip the ten coins and get six heads and four tails, you remove two of the “heads” coins).

Now according to Low Luck, your game is going to last, well, forever.

See how long your game REALLY lasts.  Then ask yourself how well Low Luck would have predicted your game.  Yeah, see what I mean?

OMG Low Luck is NOT the way to play if you want to test a strategy, UNLESS you’re trying to test a LOW LUCK strategy!

I don’t find this a compelling argument at all.  Comparing A&A and your theoretical coin game really is apples to oranges.  The rules between the two are so completely different that noting how one reacts to LL as compared to other is basically worthless.

Let me say it explicitly, if you make an incredibly GOOD LOW LUCK STRATEGY, that SAME strategy will get its a** handed to it in an ADS game if the opponent is skilled!

I don’t know, I think KGF is a pretty great strategy in both LL and ADS.

good low luck players are NOT necessarily good ADS players, and vice versa!

Here I agree with you, completely.  A player can be a great long term planner and odds calculator but be sucky at adapting to unlikely events that occur.  Such a player would be good at LL but not good at ADS, except in those ADS games where the MAJOR battles do not skew far from average.  Likewise a player could be average at best at long term planning but be great at recognizing and taking advantage of sudden changes in board conditions when a big battle goes much worse than average for their opponent.  Such a player would be good at ADS but not so good at LL.

A BAD strategy will get its a** handed to it in Low Luck OR in ADS,

No, sometimes even a bad strategy will succeed in ADS because of crazy good dice on the part of player using the bad strategy (and/or crazy bad dice for his opponent).  This is MUCH less likely in LL since LL greatly minimizes the effects of crazy dice.  This is why I think LL is a good tool for quickly weeding out the good strategies from the bad.

@Lucifer:

Some tactics and strats work both in LL and ADS. I didn’t say that absolutely all strats which works in LL also must work in ADS.

While I agree that there are some minor tactical differences between Low Luck and ADS (mainly involving strafing) I actually think any strategies that work well in Low Luck will work well in ADS, just not with the same reliability.  Hence I think Low Luck is great tool for testing strats, even if I don’t prefer playing real games that way.

I can summarize my opinion on Low Luck and ADS as follows:

Any GOOD strategy will succeed more often in Low Luck than ADS, because there is less chance of wacky bad dice causing the strat to fail.  But in both Low Luck and ADS a good strat should succeed more often than not, over the long term*, assuming opponents of equal skill.

Any BAD strategy will fail more often in Low Luck than ADS, because there is less chance of wacky good dice causing the strat to succeed.  But in both Low Luck and ADS a bad strat should fail more often than not, over the long term*, assuming opponents of equal skill.

• By “over the long term” I mean over the course of many games.  Though it should take fewer Low Luck games than ADS games to determine if a strat is good or bad.

Kill America First….
I don’t see much point in having any more discussions with you, after you claim that KAF works in LL.

Amen brother, amen.

Jennifer,

In one of your diatribes against Low Luck you said (paraphrasing) that strategies such as Kill America First and Kill UK First, and other bad strats, “work” in Low Luck but don’t work in ADS.  I’m curious if this statement was based on playing those Low Luck games against the TripleA AI?

@Cmdr:

As for TripleA, Kill America First works in TripleA, not a stellar program if you ask me.

By “works in TripleA” do you mean works against the Artificial Intelligence in TripleA?  Is that how you judge if some of your harebrained strategies “work” or not, by trying them against that AI?  The TripleA AI is known to be not very good, even the maker of it acknowledges that.  Its really just there as a placeholder until someone has the time and skill to create a good AI.  It should NEVER be used to test strategy.  Pretty much ANY strategy should work against it.

And you should really stop knocking the TripleA program in general just because you can’t seem to get it to work right.  It is a great program that hundreds of people have used to play thousands of games on the TripleA WarClub Ladder.  Plus I’m sure many, many more non Ladder games have been played using it.

In summary:
TripleA AI for playing the game solo - not great (or even good)
TripleA program itself, for playing other people - GREAT