Posts made by SubmersedElk

SubmersedElk

Grasshopper, I’m afraid Larry’s interest in doing anything further with this game has passed and that any play balance will have to come from the community.

That said, the bid is long accepted as the most agreed upon means, however to put some new life into that system for more strategic variability, how about inverse bidding? The bid is instead of ADDING units equal to the bid for the Allies, but is instead for that amount in units belonging to the Axis that will be REMOVED from the set up!

How much are you willing to give up as the Axis knowing that your opponent will be REMOVING that amount of units of yours of Their Choice?

A 20 point bid is now possibly 2 less Axis fighters, or a capital ship, or a couple tanks and a transport, the options are endless. The Axis may have to totally alter the Standard Opening’s and rethink their first turn attacks.

If the Axis advantage is material, then TAKING AWAY some of that advantage just might be much more effective than Allied bid additions, as well as taking away some of that early initiative with well calculated attacks.

What does Japan do with 4 less Infantry and 2 less Artillery do in China? How effective is Germany with 2 less Fighters to take on the UK navy? Italy could suffer a major disaster in Africa!

Think of the possibilities and then rethink what the bid might be. The options could really dictate some major strategic thought on both sides.

Kim

you could screw over Japan pretty hard if you removed their starting transports

SubmersedElk

@Marshmallow:

@SubmersedElk:

When I get Allies I always put 3 of the bid towards an ANZAC inf in New Guinea. The long term payoff on that one is many times the investment.

My understanding is that typical bidding rules do not allow placement of units where none currently exist. Are you using non-standard bidding rules?

Marsh

My understanding of bidding restrictions is that the country getting the bid has to own the territory, or in the case of sea units has to have a unit present in the SZ, and that no more than one bid unit may be placed per territory. I’ve not had anyone object to the inf in New Guinea.

SubmersedElk

When I get Allies I always put 3 of the bid towards an ANZAC inf in New Guinea. The long term payoff on that one is many times the investment.

SubmersedElk

@teslas:

As is, AA guns shine at scaring your opponent into thinking “what if”. That is their main benefit, do not forget this.

At a cost of 5, AA guns are often not worth purchasing over 1.66 infantry units, even if your opponent has lots of planes, assuming you have a large defensive stack. For instance, if Germany has 15 planes coming, and Russia already has 4 AA guns to shoot at 12, they’re actually very likely better suited to buy infantry than an AA gun + infantry.

That’s a good summary of why AA guns as-is are poorly balanced in the negative direction. Even in optimal circumstances it’s not worth buying one, ever.

At a cost of 4, AA guns would become absolutely better than infantry, but not by a huge amount, in large battles with lots of attacking planes.

Shouldn’t they be, though? Enemy has lots of airplanes, you need to defend - if that’s not what AA is for, what is AA for?

At a cost of 3, AA guns would ��ing amazing, and you’d be seeing them be purchased much, much more often. A cost of 3 would be game-changing.

I think it’s worth a shot. As you noted even at a cost of 4 it would only be in specific battles way late into the game where an opponent commits a huge air force that it would be worth buying, and then only marginally so. So we have to bring the cost down to 3 to make them worth buying at all in any circumstance. If a unit exists in the game there should be some circumstance in which it’s worth buying it, no? There’s the threshold - cost of 3. It’s worth testing to see what happens IMO.

SubmersedElk

Well that’s how it works now… any number of AA guns from one to infinity still works out to one shot per plane total.

My guess is that the theory is that since WW2 era AA was basically “spray and pray”, not precisely targeted like current AA, it didn’t pump out more shots, just the shots that it did pump out were likely to hit something in proportion to the number of targets available to hit.

It might be interesting to see what happened if each AA gun got to fire, people would definitely buy them whereas they don’t now. It would severely decrease the value of air in land battles, making it nearly worthless with enough stacked AA. You’d have to have AA guns at a cost of 15 or more to balance that out and remove a lot of the starting AA.

In the current setup with AA, a cost of 3 would be more appropriate and get them used/purchased more often. If we removed their ability to take a hit in combat a cost of 2 might even work. WW2 AA weren’t sophisticated or expensive weapons, they were basically medium caliber machine guns. They certainly didn’t cost almost as much as a tank or a sub!

SubmersedElk

I will be convinced of the value of the UK battleship (or the US dd/sub, for that matter) when I see it used effectively against me. (I’m still not convinced that Allies have reasonable win chances at all.) The only thing I see the J2 giving up in terms of kills is the US fighter. The suicide-the-BB thing seems to me even less effective than it getting a 2/3rds chance to destroy a cruiser. Suiciding ANZAC fleet doesn’t sound like a great idea either… my IJN defensive fleet is always parked at a harbor, so whatever damage they do gets absorbed by bb/ac and repaired (with air replaced onto the carriers as needed) before the US gets to follow up. So between them both suicide attacks will generally need to add up to 5 hits or more before even a sub or destroyer gets removed from the board, and that would require a big sacrifice of material.

As far as the cruiser goes, I know that as Japan I use that thing every single turn to do something important. It’s not always bombarding, but it does get a lot of shots and it does project a lot of threat. On the topic of bombarding, repeated bombard shots are a great way to whittle down a large stack against an opponent with low income when you can’t take on the whole stack at once. Japan has several situations where this happens - against India, against the Russians if they come, and later on when assaulting Australia for the win. It’s another option I’d rather not forego if I don’t have to, and I don’t perceive that necessity.

Typical scenario: India with 25ish units on it but only 6 income, throw 2inf 2art at it with 4 amphib shots, on average you’ll score 3 2/3rds hits - just under an even return - with a decent chance to get more, and you don’t risk any more than four units for that roll of the dice. Rolls of the dice that could go very bad for the opponent where it doesn’t really hurt you if it goes bad for you and the odds are reasonable to get the good outcome, those are pure money in a game like this. It’s basically a small strafe with a capped risk, get completely diced and your cost is 14 tops, and you don’t need make stack in Burma to try. Take those chances every time you see them, I say - the bombards give you more of those chances.

As an aside, this conversation gave me an idea I’m going to try. My expeditionary fleet with Japan is usually bb/cruiser/2ac and escorts. I’m going to try swapping out the 2nd AC for the other bb/cruiser pair to have four amphibious shots in the one group and see if that magnifies the threat even further. Perhaps there is not a lot of fear of two bombard shots from a fleet, but four shots might be a different story.

SubmersedElk

In chess, pieces are considered to have relative values in the general case: Queen 9 (or 10), Rook 5, Knight/Bishop 3, Pawn 1.

However, any given piece can have a value much more or less than its nominal value; a passed pawn is worth far more than the average pawn, a knight posted in the center is worth much more than one posted on the edge of the board, a queen exposed to attack is worth less than one not so exposed, and so on. Also reflected in the relative values is the value of time; a piece that requires two moves to get into an effective position is worth less than one that is one move away, which is worth less than one already posted optimally.

Likewise, units in A&A have nominal values, reflected in the purchase price; but they also have relative value based on position as well.

In the case of the UK BB in SZ37, it has nearly as low a positional value as a BB can possibly have. BBs are most effective as part of a defensible fleet in a location where threat can be projected or the enemy is projecting threat. The UK BB in question cannot easily join with such a fleet and cannot project any serious threat, so its positional value is negligible; and because it is so far from joining with the rest of the UK fleet it scores very poorly on the time value as well. It can actually have negative real value if the UK spends cash or other units to protect its nominal value while it is not in a position to be actually useful in combat.

Contrast this to the hypothetical US cruiser tradeoff. The cruiser is nominally worth only 60% of the BB, but positioned in SZ10 it is already combined with the US fleet and is one move away from projecting threat from an important location. So even though the nominal value is much less, I’d assert the positional value makes it more valuable.

Likewise this is my view of the Japanese cruiser vs. the UK BB. I can use that cruiser to great effect from the beginning of the game until the end. It is immediately useful, it is immediately firing its bombards or improving odds in sea battles, it is immediately protecting other assets of value. Same goes for Japanese air, they are projecting threat from the very first move and barring a mistake they are always in good position.

I would argue that taking out a cruiser in J1 is close to the maximum value that particular BB can provide, barring a very long 15+ round game where it is constantly protecting a valuable fleet and/or firing bombard shots for most of that time. Even the Atlantic BBs get shots at useful German units right away, something that cannot be said for the SZ37 one.

This leads me to the conclusion that the ability to kill off that BB in J1 should be assigned a very low overall value, one much less than its nominal 20 cost - and that trading it for 20 US income on turn 1 is a good trade for Allies and bad for Axis. 20 US income is two extra fighters which can be far more useful than that UK BB can ever be, especially when those fighters can be used to project threat into SZ6 as early as US2. That is a nearly immediate downside to J1 that doesn’t occur in the J2.

SubmersedElk

That’s a little hard to follow, but I have a quick related question: If you were playing Allies and had the option to alter the setup, removing the UK BB in SZ37 in exchange for an extra US cruiser in SZ10 or SZ101, would you do it?

SubmersedElk

@teslas - I really view the Japanese cruiser as a more valuable unit than the UK battleship - in my experience the BB is usually hanging out in the Indian Ocean for the first half of the game or just a non-vital part of a mixed Allied Pac stack in the Pacific acting like a turtled unit. At best it maybe gets an amphibious shot in Africa around UK4 or so, but it’s never really in the thick of things and takes a long time to be put to use. Meanwhile that cruiser is making bombard shots every turn and is a vital part of the keeping the IJN southern fleet safe from counters, from the very first move.

Also all these scenarios where Japan is taking plane casualties instead of land casualties are bad ones, IMO - very costly, and Japan has a lot of demands on its income in the early game. I regularly go whole games without losing a single Japanese air unit, and the size of the Japanese air force is an important part of its threat/counter-threat projection as well as fleet protection.

I’m less concerned with where Japan stands after J1 or J2 as where it stands in on J4 or J5, is it robust enough to continue offensive operations when the US has a real naval threat in play?

What would be really helpful are screenshots or a saved game of a J1 scenario that I can compare to where things usually stand for me with the J2.

In other notes, some playtesting is showing that Allies can throw a wrench in the works by going all-out KJF including using Russian air and mobile units with a specific focus on Yunnan, and full-Pac US builds or nearly so aimed at SZ6 to draw Japanese ships and air from South Asia, but of course that comes at the price of giving Germany and even sometimes Italy terrific game opportunities.

Either way, the balance mod seems to be an absolute requirement for Allies to have a viable game, without the extra income especially for Russia it just can’t put enough units on the board where it needs them.

SubmersedElk

Part of the equation is that I see the UK battleship as being perhaps the least useful unit, PU for PU, on the whole board. I do not view it as being even close to the equivalent of the US getting +20 to spend.

Another part is that you get free kills on UK and ANZAC transports when they inevitably go for Sumatra and Java in round 1, and that is a huge benefit to Japan. UK can’t replace its transport and ANZAC takes two turns minimum to do so. You often get a free destroyer kill where the battleship used to be, and you can absorb it with your BB - which gets repaired by the harbor right away - instead of risking the loss of a cruiser.

An additional factor is that having the position in Malaya on the first turn Japan is at war makes DD blocking in DEI impossible, and thus makes them easier to capture and hold.

Then there is also the risk of a successful China/UK combine in Yunnan which can be a serious problem for Japan. This can really only be prevented by having threat on Burma on the turn in which Japan goes to war. In the J1 scenario that threat can be completely nullified by a single ship left off Malaya. If you look at the prototypical J1 outcome http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=26960.0;attach=172410;image Japan has 2 land units that can reach Yunnan, against a potential stack of 13inf/2ftr/1tac for China/UK plus a backup UK stack in Burma ready to reinforce. Japan CAN wipe this out… at the average cost of a third of its air force, with some potentially catastrophic outcomes in that mix - while not being able to take the territory and facing yet another Chinese/UK stack of 17 units the next round. This is a great way for Allies to wipe out Japanese starting land and air forces, which can make China a serious problem moving forward and greatly weakens the ability to defend against the US. So what if India dies? They die anyway at even lower odds later on, if they can weaken Japan that much they have done their job. Now US is full-building Pac and Russia has every incentive to join in the party, and Japan is without much of the material they require to hold off these threats - and don’t yet have the income to take them all on.

So no, I do not at all like the potential outcomes of the J1 - there are some really really bad scenarios in there, whereas there are none at all in the super-safe J2 alternative. Allies have decent responses to J1. They don’t have ANY good responses to my version of J2.

I would also turn the question around and ask: what additional benefit is gotten by attacking on J1? By the end of J3, which situation is better for Japan, a typical outcome of a J1 attack (which comes with risk), or the situation in the J3done screenshot (which comes with almost no risk)?

If you can show me an outcome from a J1 attack which is better than the outcome from the J2 under discussion, I’d be happy to look at it. Take a screenshot from a save and show me the alternative for the J1 case.

SubmersedElk

One more note, in case anyone was wondering…

UK can stack Burma on UK1 and then combine-and-hold with China on Yunnan on UK2. The problem with that is that UK makes only 6 income on UK2 and then can’t hold India from the direct amphibious threat from all those transports. The Japan response to this maneuver would be to move all the transports and their loads to Malaya and hit India on J4, while holding off on building the IC in FIC. UK/ANZAC cannot put enough units to stop 6 transports plus air plus bombard shots so that gives Japan a 100% attack on India for J4 that can’t be countered. In this scenario Japan would have a little bit more trouble in China but UK Pac is dead earlier and Japan has the use of that IC instead of the one in FIC. Japan can then build new loaded transports to clean up the Yunnan stack; staging in FIC is immune from a Chinese counter, UK doesn’t have enough units to attack, and US/ANZAC help is too far away to get there in time.

SubmersedElk

Pacific turn 3 combat and complete

Notice that there’s really nothing at all Allies can do about any of this, the opponent played it about as well as he could have, and that the number of hits scored by Allies is about what can be expected barring very low probability outcomes.

A few transports get sacrificed in DEI on J3, which is compensated for by the additional transport builds on J2 which you can see in the SZ6 at the end of these turns. The transports in the Phillipines can pick up the units from the other islands and take them to Burma or Shan or recapture an island as needed, and the new transports go to Phillipines to pick up the units left there, which maintains the level of threat.

SubmersedElk

Pac turn 2 combat and complete

SubmersedElk

Some screenshots of the progression on the Pacific side.

Japan turn 1 combat move and turn complete

SubmersedElk

@teslas:

This is all very standard stuff. I do very much the same most games if I am going for the throat.

To address this - I am not claiming any of this is original. It’s all stuff that was done to me when I was playing Allies more often that I couldn’t solve. So I started doing it to other people, and nobody’s been able to solve it yet.

My setup for J2 is very close to Cow’s J2, maybe 6-7 units total are in different position at the start of J2. I put less emphasis on northern China, if China wants to stack in Kansu they are not in a position to affect anything important.

As others have noted, G40 is all about threat projection. The aim of this strategy is to reduce potential allied threats to three manageable ones.

Foregoing Sealion attacks means there is no Russian offensive threat to deal with. A focus on China/India early means there is no threat from either in Asia. For Russia/China/India in general, turtled and isolated positions do not project threat. Ignoring Africa means there’s no threat to deal with there as there’s nothing to threaten.

The first threat is the Russian defensive counter. This can be managed by counterstacking, or even retreating temporarily if neccessary, or by moving around it.

The second threat is the US Pac fleet. This can be managed by building a defensive fleet in SZ6 or the Phillipines and using DDs to limit movement, and being able to bring back the second, expeditionary IJN fleet in a timely manner.

The third and most dangerous threat is the US Atlantic invasion fleet. I manage this threat by stacking inf preemptively. If Allies have any hope of countering this strategy, it’s by effectively managing this invasion - but I’ve yet to see someone pull it off.

There’s one other potential threat that I should probably address, which is the Russian eastern infantry if stacked in Amur. I ignore this threat, if it is created at all, and let Russia strike first. Because I rely on transports rather than ICs, there are no fixed positions Russia can reach that need to be defended, which mitigates some of the threat. As Russia can’t reinforce its position, the threat never grows. It can only hold one territory at a time so it can’t do much production damage, and Japan can set up to eliminate this stack at its leisure. Should the US reinforce it with air, that actually reduces the threat from the stack further as Russia won’t abandon expensive US air support thanks to the favorable turn order - Japan can strike the US air between the two enemies’ turns if Russia’s infantry moves out, so Russia is stuck wherever that air lands. And of course if Russia strikes first, it loses the 6 Mongolian infantry I’d otherwise have to account for.

SubmersedElk

@Private:

Being on the edge of losing to wittman, who had a 13 bid as allies, I wonder what allied bid you feel would effectively counter the strategy you lay out? My understanding is that experienced players believe axis to have a significant advantage without such a bid.

That’s my question as well. I don’t even know if an effective counter strategy can be pulled off by Allies without serious mistakes made by the Axis player. That’s one concern I have had about G40 for quite some time and it has yet to be demonstrated to me that the Allies are viable on this map. If someone does pull it off, I would very very much like to know how.

SubmersedElk

@aequitas:

For an offensive Ger. player, Greece might be vital to him.
It provides 3ipc income per round and might be strategic in an aggressive Axis Med. Gameplay.
I often take Greece as Germany so I can save my 40ies each round for russia.

Greece is not that important overall. You could choose to ignore Greece entirely to strengthen the main stack earlier instead. I like having the extra income as income means flexibility, and it gets the Balkans over with for good. Leaving those units there gives the allies backup if they choose to invade via that route, and I’m not comfortable with the risks to Italy on that attack.

As you noted, it also opens up an additional option for counterplay in the Med, if the opportunity is right. Ignoring the Med is part of the strategy only because it’s inefficient, but if Allies allow an opportunity to efficiently counter then the option is there. A key theme of the method is preservation of options; an open option, exploited or not, still forces the opponent to account for it.

SubmersedElk

@teslas:

This is all very standard stuff. I do very much the same most games if I am going for the throat. Outside of extremely bad dice luck, or UK putting nearly 100% of its economy into fighters sitting on Moscow (and even then…), a G6 Moscow is quite possible. An I6/G7 Moscow is basically guaranteed.

I usually don’t end up taking Moscow until G9 or G10. But he’s making under 15 income several turns before that so it’s a matter of convenience. Since you can finish him off at your leisure, there’s no need to sacrifice position elsewhere to rush it. And if UK panics and dedicates his whole production to shipping fighters there, great! That’s production that is not able to be useful in any other way, so it’s not being efficiently used against Axis.

Germany:
Why take Greece as Germany? Is it merely to help Italy? Judging by your comments about them, probably not.

The tanks you could potentially afford to send down there because they can make it back into Russia in time to be useful, but sending the Bulgarians means those guys are never making it to Moscow until G8 (one round after the potential 12 far est ruskies show up). Is the gain of 2 IPCs/turn for Germany/Italy worth the loss of 5 infantry for your Moscow crash (or the threat of a crash while you duck south and grab Volgo/Caucasus)? Is the main reason just to make sure you don’t give the allies a juicy landing point later in the game?

I have Germany do it since Italy loses their transports before they can get to it and I’d rather Italian slow units opening cans than being extra turns behind. Germany can afford for the Greece attack to go poorly but Italy cannot, so this plays into my risk aversion. Also, I’m not in a rush to kill off Russia at any particular time so there’s time for those inf to play catch-up. You need a few spare inf to picket Belarus and other territories and they can get to those places when you need them, even while they are a move or two behind the main stack.

Italy:
Standard. Tanks/mechs I1/I2, then turtle up hard. Even buying planes to support the can opener is possible I3/I4 if the allies are nowhere to be found in Europe. I try to let Italy grab as much land in Russia as it can (exempting the mICs and victory cities).

I’ve been buying a fighter for Italy on I1 but a tank/mech would probably fit better, that’s a good suggestion.

Japan:
Why not do most of this J1?

I don’t do it on J1 because I don’t have the transports to move enough units to create the follow-up threats on J1, so it is riskier and less solid in my opinion. Being risk-averse, I try to have a robust enough position that it can sustain getting diced once in a while, since that is inevitable. Odds become much better on J2; with the air pre-positioned, all the attacks are overkill attacks and getting diced is less likely. Waiting a turn also makes it much less likely that the US will build full-Pac and extends the time that Japan has a free hand.

The US needs minimum 2 turns of building to create a threat in one theater or the other. If they split then they don’t have threat in either. In the absence of J1 the US usually builds Atlantic, and of course it takes a move to position the US threats, so Japan doesn’t need to deal with it until as late as J6. If they build Pac anyway, Japan can efficiently stall the threat for a long time; build carriers and pull back air to protect them, as you don’t need much air on land past J3, DDs to block and limit US threat to air only, and subs to kill off his blockers to make him deal with the counterthreat to Hawaii from your growing SZ6 defensive stack.

Japan getting to 68 production on J3 means you can full-build tanks/mechs in FIC and still have enough to defend even a full-build US pac strategy for a very long time. Japan’s expeditionary fleet never gets more than 2 moves from returning to SZ6, so bringing it back to allow your full fleet to counter a move to the Carolines stalls him further if need be.

If US does full-build Pac, Japan can’t be quite as aggressive, but Germany can be more aggressive and kill Russia off faster, as it doesn’t need to repel the US from Western Europe. Italy can also consider building ships and reviving its Med game in that case. Alternatively, Germany can start adding subs to raise the cost of the eventual US entrance in the Atlantic theater, which is an efficient delaying tactic.

SubmersedElk

@aequitas:

What are you going to about russia invades Finnland instead of retreating to moscow with the whole stack?

I’ve only encountered that once so far and it turned out very badly for Russia as it requires a commitment of units larger than he can afford. The combination of fast units that are building in Germany, the reach of air power, and the ability to transport a couple more per turn end up isolating Russia’s attack stack and getting it cut off from behind when G captures Novo. If enough is committed Russia might even be able to hold it, but at a far greater cost along the rest of his front. Russia doesn’t start with many fast units and he has to commit those to that attack, weakening his threat elsewhere; I’d welcome it as G.

SubmersedElk

I’m happy to give you a rematch. Keep in mind that I actually read the rest of the game notes today and figured out why the US was making 120 income a turn, and am not going to permit that for a second go-around!