Posts made by Meijing

Well, this is only a very crude approximation, the real world isn’t always as nice and clean as a board game.

Normally your army consists of several units, the attacker has some infantry, with attacking value 1, and some tanks or planes, with value 3, the defender has units with value 2, tanks and infantry, and units with value 4, planes.

I tried to extend my aproach to other kinds of attack and came up with the following question.

If you have n tanks and you want to attack m infantries, how many infantries do you have to take at least with you if you don’t want to loose tanks? (With a probability of 50% you don’t loose any tank)

This number I will denote by f(n,m).
By scalability
f(an, am) = af(n,m)
and hence
f(n,m) = mf(n/m,1) = m*g(n/m)
I didn’t suceed to make much analytic progress, so I decided to use a battle simulator to determine g(n/m) for certain values of n/m empirically and to fit a function to the resulting data.
The result is:
g(n/m) = 108 * 10^(-n/m) + 33
I admit that this function is not very handy to be calculated while actually playing, but it might be handy if someone decides to program an AI.

Special values of g(n/m):
g(0.0) = 1.414
g(0.1) = 1.18
g(0.2) = 1.00
g(0.5) = 0.68
g(1.0) = 0.47

How to use these values:

Example 1:
Suppose there are 17 infantries in Karellia and you would like to attack with 9 tanks. The ratio 9/17 is slightly higher than 0.5 so lets considre g(9/17) to be 0.66 or 2/3. If you multiply this with 17 you get approximatly 12. This means, that if you take 12 infantries with you, you will win with a probability of 50% without loosing a tank.

Example 2:
Suppose you got 10 tanks and there are less than m<50 infantries in Karelia.
10/m > 10/50 = 0.2
g(10/m) < g(0.2) = 1
As long as there are less than 50 infantries in Karellia, if you take as many infantries with you as there are in Karellia the chance for winning the battle without loosing a tank is higher than 50%.

If you have 7 units, you roll 7 dice.
If you got 12 units, you roll 12 dice
If you got 20 units, you first roll the 12 dice, then you roll another 8 dice, for the rest of your troops. I
f you have 1 troop, you roll 1 die.

F_alk doesn’t want them to choose a theocracy, but maybe they want.
The Germans democratically chose a pacifist governement, the Turks democratically choose a moderate religious governement, the Americans, or at least some of them, choose a religious, militant president.
Deomocracy doesn’t garanty, that people choose the best, but it makes it easier to corect mistakes.

How strong does infantry defend?
The first answer might be, that it defends twice as good as it attacks. But that’s not corect, even though it’s defend value is 2 and it’s attacking value is 1, the actual number of units plays an important role. A hit by an attacking infantry takes away more strength of the oponent than a hit by a defender.
In battles of low numbers border effects are pretty difficult. If you attack one infantry with two, there’s a probabilyty of getting two hits, which won’t help you. So lets’ focus on a largescale attack, which might occur in a battle about Karelia.
if n infantries attack m infantries,
hits by the attacker:
n1
hits by the defender:
m2
The forces are of the same strength if the ratio priour to the fight is the same as the ratio after the fight:

(n/m)=(n-m2)/(m-n1)
mn - nn = mn - 2mm
nn = 2mm
n = 1.414… * m

hence the defending strength of infantry is aproximatly 1.4 time the attacking strength. Border effects of low numbers or other units present, might change this, but this number certainly gives you a clue, how many infantries Germany or Russia needs for a fight.

[Edited according to C_F’s post]

If England had attacked Germany in 1937, the result would not have been a democratic Germany.
In another thread, somebody mentioned France occupied the Ruhrgebiet, Germany’s industrial center. This stired national feelings in the Germans and resulted in bigger support for the political right.
Some people, I even heard this from Americans, think that up to the beginning of the war Hittler was a very good leader. He reduced unemployment, built the autobahnen and was able to shake off the reparations Germany had to pay at that time to France. Those people ignore that many things were mere preparations for war and Germany could not have gone on without war in 1939, it would have been bankrupt. But attacking in 1937 would have enhanced this myth an we wouldn’t live in a democratic state today.

The list of mistakes in the case of Iraq is long.
It was for sure wrong to built up Sadam in the first place.
It was wrong not to overthrow Sadam after he attacked Kuwait, at this time the support, among Europeans, among Arabians and among the Iraqis, would have been much higher.
It was wrong to try containing Sadam by sanctions, it simply didn’t work as it was suposed to.
It was wrong to haste into a war, ill prepared and with lacking support.

It’s hard to say how to fix things broken as badly as this and problems as complicated as this are unlikely to have simple solutions. But if you think war is the solution you should take the time to convince your allies, to ensure you get the support you expect and to convince your opponents that you are not going to harm them.

Maybe I wouldn’t be a good leader, I rather think twice before I act, if you ask me for a quick simple solution I can’t tell you, I’m no man of deeds. If I play a game, my opponents sometimes complain, that I’m too slow, that I think too long, but in the end it’s often me who wins the game.

If the USA would retreat now, the result would be something nobody wanted, Saddam would be stronger than ever and bombs have allready delivered hatred.
It was wrong to start that war in the first place, but it’s too late to stop it now.
I must adimt that I’m not wholeheartly with the American troops. When I hear of Turks going to invade, when I hear of street fighting in Um Quatar and Basra, when I hear of Apaches downed, when I hear of riots in Cairo, I have to think, I said so, this war is a mistake. Let’s hope burning down the house, doesn’t set the whole quater on fire.

My worst fear would be an nuclear attack by Israel, but that’s pretty unlickely to happen. I expected more oil fields to be set aflame, on the other hand I expected Basra to fall more quickly. I also expected a north front.
When I heard that the Turks sent troops to Northern Iraq, I expected my second worst fear to come true, but as far as I know, they only reinforced their troops allready deployed in the border zone and didn’t make any advances.
Turkish troops in Northern Iraq would be a problem with American forces present, without them, it would be a nightmare.

I think it was bad to start that war in the first place, but to leave unfinished would be even worse.

What about changing the map, like splitting the british sea zone and thus increasing the distance from Canada to Norway to three?
The German Russian border is pretty static with not much space for tactics, it might help to split caucasus and ukrain, opening a southern route for Germany.
Did anybody try these or similar changes to the map? What was the result? Is something else more effective?

Sorry, wrong thread. Moved to
Have settled on some rules……

Though in one of our first games, Russia was able to attack Germany, the axis normally find out quick, that the most important unit is infantry. With lots of infantry in Eastern Europe, you wouldn’t even survive without the help of England and USA.

I agree if Britain builds an AC, the USA has to move it’s fighter to Europe and can’t counterattack. And Pearl Harbour makes sense. Though I would rather loose a battleship than a fighter. In the case Britain doesn’t build an AC I still wouldn’t attack Pearl Harbour.

That’s exectly what disussion should be about.
And this site certainly helped me to get better.

The organication which did most for reducing world output of CO2 is th OPEC. Every single drop of oil produced will get burnt in the end. You can research alot about more efficient technologies to burn oil, if you burn more oil you produce more CO2. And this is exactly what the USA are going to do. They are just about to fight a war, which if everything goes according to plan, what I doubt, will destroy the OPEC, encrease the world production of oil and reduce its price.
I’m currently staying in Birmingham, Alabama and I notice the following. There’s hardly any public transportaion in an area of one million inhapitants. Ulm in Germany has 100,000 inhapitants and has a good net of busses. The gas is much cheaper than in Germany. All you can see are pickups and sport cars. Yes, you need air condition in the summer, but Germany is colder in the winter and I don’t need as much heating as I need here.

Imagine you are playing Axis and Allies for the first time. Your playing Russia a friend of yours is playing Britain. He wants to build an IC in South Africa. You don’t think that’s a good idea and tell him so. He calls you a wimp and a weasle. You argue it might be better to build up an AC and transport Infantry to Europe. He is insulted and tells you, your not his friend anymore. You tell him, that you don’t want to offend him and you still consider him as your friend, but if he buys that IC the Axis will most probably win. He spits you in the face and declares war on you.

If I would think that a war against Iraq is the only way to bring democracy and peace to the Middle East, I would wholeheartly support Bush’s stance for war. But I don’t think so.

The first damage is allready done.

The Iraq situation was developing (and was being logistically planned) before North Korea even declared that it was restarting it’s nuke program.

What would you do if Bush set you on a list of three enemy countries and is just about to attack the first one?
Get a threat big enough to prevent him from attacking you as long as his busy with the first country.

Bush declared he is going to bring democracy to Iraq. But did he bring it to Afganistan? Karzai is not elected democraticly. And allthough he not a tyran, his effective rule is restricted to the area international forces are defending, that is, Kabul. More troops would be needed, French, German and American, to ensure Afganistance way to a democratic country. But nobody is willing to pay these costs and America prefers to attack the next country. By the way, in most parts of Afganistan, the Shria is still law.

The people in the Middle East are not likely to welcome the “Crusade against Evil”. The last Crusade they experienced was slaughter and opression. Bush’s “diplomacy” failed to convince his allies, how do you think he will convince his enemies?

I expect your second load of inf goes to Africa?
As far as I reasoned, I couldn’t see why to ship tanks anywhere but maybe to Africa. Two infs are much better in defending than one tank and never underestimate their attacking power, especially when backed up by some planes.

Well next time I will have the chance to use that tactic to set an end to the domination by the Axis.