Posts made by Pelanderfunk

I’ve been using it for my global games without any problems since Alpha +2, but I’d like to have everybody’s feedback before I declare it “glitch free”.  :-)

I created a Macro-enabled worksheet to help with the banking in AA Global, Alpha +2. It keeps track of income, bonus and banks for each of the 9 countries (with separate banks for UK), and has a handy purchase calculator for tracking your buys. I’ve recently added an archive sheet, so you have a visual representation of the economies.

Installation:

You’ll need Excel 2007 (maybe 2003 will work, I’m not sure) to use this spreadsheet – make sure to enable macros.

1. Download the spreadsheet.
2. Rename the extension from .xls to .xlsm (I had to change it to upload it to this forum).
3. Open the renamed spreadsheet.

Use:

There are three macros within the spreadsheet: “ResetGame,” “EndTurn” and “PurchaseUnits.” “ResetGame” resets all the game data to the Global 1940 starting positions, “EndTurn” advances to the next player’s turn, and “PurchaseUnits” sums up the purchase and subtracts it from your bank. Each macro is assigned to a button on the sheet.

At the beginning of each game, you’ll want to reset the banks. To do this, press the “Reset Game” button.

Now that the game has started, Germany can enter in the number of each unit they’d like to purchase in column L. Once the purchases are finished, press the “Purchase”. If you make a mistake, you can always manually reset the current funds for the country (cell B4 for Germany, for instance) and redo the purchase. UK has separate banks for Europe and Pacific.

When the UK’s turn comes up, the European purchases are made first, then Pacific. Hitting “Purchase” for UK E makes that purchase and sets up the purchase area for UK P. UK P then loops back to UK E when you’re finished. If you make a mistake in one theater, finish the purchases for the other theater then you’ll automatically be back at the first theater.

When all the purchases are done and combat has been resolved, make sure to adjust the Income and Bonus values for each country. Using the “End Turn” button will add the income and bonus to the current bank and advance to the next country (remember to manually adjust the current funds for convoy disruptions and whatnot). Hitting the “End Turn” button after France resets the country to Germany and advances the turn. If you make any mistakes or get lost, you can always manually enter the country and turn in cells C10 and D10 respectively (the cells with the country and turn in rows 15 and 16 are just for display, any adjustments need to be made in the smaller cells above).

Remember that if you make any mistakes or need to adjust the setup at all, you can make manual adjustments to the income, bonus, current funds, country or turn number.

Other Features, Quirks:

-The second sheet in the workbook contains an archive of each of the banks at the end of each turn. Excel will automatically graph it as you go along, so you can watch the rise and fall of the various economies. It will record anytime you hit “End Turn”, so if you hit it by mistake and go back, you may find duplicate archive rows. You can delete the contents of any erroneous row and the graph will update itself.
-Rows 19 and 20 contain the total incomes and banks for the two teams, giving a quick look at the overall economies.
-The big cell around 24C gives my approximation of the year and season based on the turn number.
-If you update the current funds for a country, it won’t immediately be reflected in the purchase section, even though when you hit Ctrl-P it will use the updated value. You can always manually enter it in cell K24 if you need it to help with your purchasing.

I wrote this program to help out with my games, so it’s not extremely user-friendly. Please let me know if you have any suggestions or notice any mistakes.

AAG40_Bank_Alpha2.xls

I don’t know what the official name is, but I looked around the internet for a long time before I broke down and made my own.  You can get “croupier sticks”, which are what the croupier uses to collect the dice in craps, but it doesn’t really have that “war room” feel to it.

I just bought some wooden dowels and balsa strips from a craft store, then I cut the strips into rectangles and wood-glued them to the ends of the dowels.

But digging around for that last German mech is my favorite part of the game!

I think the biggest change in gameplay for alpha 2+ is the increase of options for the Axis player. I played a ton of OOB Global games, and the Axis start with such an economic disadvantage and so many guys that the only viable strategy I found was to blitz my opponent and take as much territory as fast as possible. The allied economic might inevitably grinds away any slower strategies.

With the alpha +2 scenario, I’ve been able to take a slower approach with the Axis. Since the Allies are forced to defend both theaters, I can “bail out” Germany with Japanese offensives. The USA’s spread out NOs mean that a lot more of the map is in play. Basically, the options available to me as an Axis player are multiplied.

I agree. The games I’ve played against my opponent have been close, but we can always find the flaw in our strategy that lead to defeat – it never seems like it was just “the dice”, unless Germany rolls really bad in some of the critical early battles.

We’re just getting started with our first alpha +2 game, but I feel like the changes improve the gameplay. They make a slower Axis strategy viable, whereas before I felt like I always had to blitz to win.

If you don’t want to pay $180 to be a playtester, just pretend that the games haven’t been released yet. We’ll let you know when it’s safe to buy.

The greatest part about playing my roommate is that we can have unlimited turns. I don’t mind watching him think through his turns and visa-versa. Our games usually take weeks to finish, but we can leave it set up.

@kcdzim:

Would probably still need a top down camera.  And the screen itself would need to be pretty massive (even AA42 needs chips sometimes).  A computer would not be able to handle chip stacks very easily from ONLY below.  There’s an I/1 problem here that will need a sophisticated recognition program, not just a simple touch screen that can possibly differentiate one piece from another.

Like you said, the software/hardware compatibility would be a nightmare.  The human brain can quickly make these connections, a touch screen….  not so much.  That’s a pretty sophisticated program we’re talking about here, unless there’s quite a bit of input from the user at each phase, and then it’s no longer as simple as moving pieces around on a gameboard.

The surface is actually pretty amazing about detecting the shapes of objects above it. If you made AA units specifically for a Surface game, you could put a bar-code or serial number on the bottom of each of your units, and the table could tell them apart.

Instead of using a stack of chips to represent multiple units, the game could record that for you. Like, it would know that the German tank in Finland is really supposed to be four units, and it could represent that by putting a circle on the game board under the actual physical unit. A simple touch interface would let you add “chips” to a unit or split an army into two separate stacks.

Has anybody seen the demos for Microsoft Surface? Here’s a demo they released today: http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2011/jan11/01-06MSSurfaceSamsungPR.mspx

It’s a touch-screen computer in a tabletop that can recognize objects placed on top of it. With a good A&A program, you could do amazing things:

-You could have the game board appear on the screen. Instead of using tokens to represent territorial control, the map itself would change color.

-You could have running totals for each country’s income that would change as you moved your units pieces. You could have a running tally of the total number of various units each country has.

-The game would know the moves each unit had made and could tell you when you’re making an illegal move.

-You could pick up a plane on your combat move, and the table could show you all the possible targets and resulting landing spots.

-The game could record all of the moves and give you a game recap when you finish. You could analyze things like income over time or number of tanks per country.

This may have been addressed before, but my opponent and I are thinking about adding defensive retreats as an option.

Basically as a defender, you would have the option to retreat your army to an adjacent controlled territory at the beginning of each combat roll. If you choose to retreat, the attacker would still get an extra roll to inflict some damage on the routing forces.

Obviously this means some heavy adjustments to strategy. You don’t need to be as careful with your advancing armies as long as there’s enough  cannon fodder to cover the attacker’s first roll. It becomes a lot harder to destroy large stacks, unless you have them surrounded.

My question to you guys: do you think this rule adjustment favors one side more than the other?

Yeah, there’s something that gets me with the timeline of this set-up.

Theoretically the game begins right after the allied evacuation at Dunkirk (Germans are in possession of Belgium, but not France), which would set the game at June 3rd-5th, 1940. This makes sense as the usual G1 move is taking France, (Paris fell on June 10th, the rest of France surrendered on the 22nd).

The USSR set-up, however, includes the Baltic States as Soviet territory. These territories weren’t invaded until June 16th, well after Paris fell.

Basically, there was no point in time in which the Baltic states were Soviet, but Paris was still French.

Obviously the game is set-up for superior gameplay, not ridiculous historical accuracy, and I like this. I only nitpick because I can.

Romania ain’t no neutral!

@Sime:

That?s a pretty interesting strategy for that specific scenario.

Do you think he was aware that Germany could reach his capital before you sent the Italians to America?  In your opinion, was he buying all the talk of you sending the Germans to Egypt?

I think if I was in your position I would have sent the Italians to Africa instead of attacking America, keeping up the illusion that Axis is heading south.  If he didn?t perceive the German threat, he would be sending his units to intercept the Japanese and hopefully leaving his capital lightly defended.

It?s a bit riskier this way because if he sees the threat and stocks his capital, the Italian units are no longer in position to invade America and divert attention away from the Japanese, but it?s just another way of looking at the situation.

Anyway, great write-up, Pelanderfunk. I enjoyed reading it.

No, he definitely saw it coming. Truthfully, the Italians were a bit of a waste in the US – all they really did was give the US a few more targets. On the other hand, maybe the resources he wasted on those targets could have won the war if he used them differently.

My opponent tends to let his emotions leak into his strategy. I knew that if I sent even a tiny Italian fleet over, he would destroy it the first chance he got, even at the expense of a more benefitial move.

That’s a graph of the country bank over time. So if you recorded the amount of money in each country’s bank at the end of every turn, then graphed it, that’s what you would get.

There’s a legend on the right side of the graph that explains which country is which – the blue on the top is the Allies total and the orange is the Axis total.

@RedHunter:

I wouldn’t have given up…but thats just me. I would have kept the fighting going until the axis won the game.

I would have kept playing this game, but I completely understand why my opponent quit. It’s hard to play the same game against one opponent for two months only to end in a slow defeat. I’ve been in his shoes a few times, too: part of me wants to keep playing in case he makes a mistake, and part of me wants to start all over again so I can use all the new strategies I gleaned from this game.

@RedHunter:

Your in trouble though I think since the USA can now focus back on building up huge forces. If they put enough ships to defend the west coast and then send everything else into germany they can land on norway to shore up the brits then push their way in. How are you going to defend vs that and still pour enough into the east front to stop Russia from counter attacking? Stalemates are a bad idea for tha axis because the worst thing you can do is give America the time to get going.

Well, I’d agree with you if we were back a few rounds. By round 13, though, time is no longer on the Allies’ side. The US has been giving the war all its got for 8 rounds or so. It’s not like there’s this huge force that could come in and save the Russians if they could just hold out a little longer.

Last night in round 13, I was able to take out most of his remaining offensive weapons. At the start of US14, my opponent conceded.

Here’s the final bank graph:

I was only able to pull this game off because I made very few tactical mistakes, and I was able to capitalize on all of my opponent’s errors. That being said, my initial strategy put me in the position to win. Each of the three Axis powers had a very specific role to play in the victory.

Japan
1. Invade the US to cause as much chaos as possible.
2. Focus on taking as much money as possible from “soft spots” and money territories (Africa, China, Siberia, DEI).

Germany
1. Invade the US to cause as much chaos as possible.
2. Focus entirely on Russia, buying only tanks and mechs.
3. Repel any European invasions that the Italians can’t.

Italy
1. Gain as much money as possible in Africa and the Middle East.
2. Build as big of a fleet as possible and stall the Americans in the Atlantic.
3. Build ground troops to repel invasions.

Basically I won the game because German and Japan took too much territory that was too hard to retake. The only reason that Germany did as well as they did (I was playing against a turtling Russia) is because they could afford to spend their entire income on mechs and tanks for Russia. That was only possible because the US couldn’t get in the fight because it was too busy retaking Western US and fighting the Italians in the Atlantic.  By the time the US was landing in Europe (US11), Germany had enough IPCs to buy some defenders.

I updated my post with progress of this game.

I like to go for Russia G1, G2 at the latest:

-My opponent will usually pull back his forces, so I never have as good of a chance to destroy some Russians as G1.
-If you attack G1, by G2 you can capture enough territories to be well past the the 5 ipc loss from declaring war.
-Most of the ground forces you use for your initial invasion can’t easily be used anywhere else on the map. Better to have your troops conquering Russian territories than sitting at the border waiting.
-If you do a G1 Blitz towards Moscow, you can get your opponent to either pull troops away from the other two cities or risk losing their capitol.
-A G1 attack puts Russia completely on the defensive – it can be a good feint.
-If you wait until G4, the Russians have 120ipcs to spend defending their country. That means if you wait until G4 but spend your money on Sealion or Africa, you’ll be outnumbered on the Eastern Front when the truce is over.

@SalothSar:

@Pelanderfunk:

@SalothSar:

If your going for the USA why attack Russia?

My opponent will play a very offensive Russia if I’m not aggressive with my German attack. By G3 or G4, his Russia would have enough of an airforce to be a real threat to any invasion force of my own. If I attack G1, I can keep him limited to infantry buys – infantry can be a tough nut to crack, but at least they aren’t mobile or offensive enough to disrupt my invasion plans.

Case in point, that’s where we’re at right now. He’s got a mass of infantry that can only realistically protect one or two of his cities, and I’ve got a slightly smaller force of tanks and mechs that can outrun him to the weakest city and take it.

How can a Russian player be agressive if they can’t attack until R4?

It’s not about where is Russia attacking, but what is Russia buying. Every time I’ve left Russia alone until R4, I have a much harder time overcoming them.

If you attack early, Russia must buy infantry, or you can take Moscow by G6. If they only have infantry, your attacking options increase because they can’t counter attack effectively.

If you attack late or wait until R4, Russia has time to build combined arms forces – tanks, mechs, artillery, planes. Then, every move I make in Russia I have to make sure my attacking force can’t be counter-attacked and destroyed.

This may just be the way my opponent plays Russia, but I’ve noticed a pattern – Attack on G1 or G2, fight Russia outside Moscow. Attack G3 or G4, fight Russia in Poland.

In this game, there was no reason to wait. I could pick up the 5ipcs within the first few turns so that the loss of the NO is balanced out. The German army that I sent to attack the USA didn’t include any of the ground units I could use to attack G1 or G2, so I had enough troops.