Topics created by taamvan

@tbergin hey there. Time really got away from me. I’ll try to reach out to you one of these days.

@general-6-stars THANKS!

@taamvan WorldWar II v3 1941 and 1942

Setups/Rules should be here https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/category/37/axis-allies-anniversary-edition

@taamvan it is ridiculous how easy it is for Japan to kill China and how worth it to do it.

But to your point, we have all of these complicated efforts to add to our game variety flavor historical elements. All good! But the most elegant solutions is always the simplest: adjust or eliminate Allied political handcuffs. Good topic. I would do it incrementally to analyze the effects. I would start with Russia.

@taamvan i would be interested. When do you usually play and how long are the sessions? Do games usually go multiple sessions or just one?

@marshmallowofwar @crockett36 et alii

In the Pacific and in general-- BB is the way to go, IMO.

Personally, I prefer CV SUB FIG over either BB or CA/DD in bulk. Having 2-3 BB is intimidating (psychological), has soak (adsorbs hits), has bombardment–and the BBs are the last stuff to survive in a pyrrhic battle where both sides took great losses.

Numbers have an advantage, and so having 2 units might be better than 1 because they are more flexible.

However, the reason the CA (Cruiser) is so weak is that it can’t defend (either itself, or the fleet) against the subshot. Whether this is psychological or odds-driven, all your CA must be given up before your last DD is. Moreover, the DD is required to cover each fleet, and block other squares–so it has a much higher utility value.

I’ve tried to design a “Cruiser Crush” KGF/ATL and it wont work. You need ##s… the small advantage of novelty and bombardments isn’t worth it. With 5-6 CA in SZ 91, you’re going to get creamed, and you’ll have to lose your higher units first!

To broaden the conversation, the cruiser isn’t overpriced…its correctly priced. There are two rules that nerf it out 1) 1 bombard per amphibious unit drop 2) any interference (scramble, killing defenseless unit or sub, prebattle) blocks all shots.

I think all the rules work flavorfully, though imperfectly with one another. So to make the cruiser better, something has to give which is why people try to repurpose or reprice the cruiser.

Summation: Go big, Go BB instead.

Ya. Can see it now on another computer.

@JDOW also would you mind if I read your input on youtube?

commentary and indirectly asking if your view is the same as mine

One problem with the casualty choice concept is a sub overwhelm. If the enemy has enough subs, and you lose all your destroyers first, and any subs survive the first rounds of combat, the attacking player can retain those. In a normal casualty choice, the last destroyer would not be lost until most or all of the enemy subs were destroyed.

This puts the defender at a disadvantage and alters the dynamics of the offense vs the defense. It forces japan and the atlantic allies to modify the way they defend because they have to set up to make their own overwhelming attack before the sub stack can attack.

Of course the defending ships on the sea will be able to fight back against the subs, if they survive the intial attack. But the planes wont–and the retention of the fighters + 1 DD in the later rounds of combat is one of the most powerful defensive combinations. If you’re out in the open sea, they can also exploit this dynamic to crash all your fighters, having first striked your carriers out from underneath you.

There aren’t any easy fixes to this problem, because its not only an issue with losing lower value units first. I want to lose all my defensive subs, then all my defensive dd except 1, then move on to losing better stuff.

I suppose there could be a checkbox or default to “lose all dd 2nd (after defending subs), except 1, until I’ve lost all my air, or the enemy has lost all their subs”

As others have pointed out, the changes made to facilitate async play may at first seem to have a small effect, and they would have a different effect on differerent versions of the game because the rules for subs and destroyers change. But the order of casualties issue obviously causes a major departure from the normal game dynamics, in all versions.

Thank you, @taamvan. The goal of the Early Access is to listen to the feedback of players around the world. We’re certainly hearing suggestions about the allied carriers and transports! ;)

@JuliusBorisovBeamdog

Server availability is near 100%, whereas it was about 65-80% only a few weeks ago. Great job!

During games lag during noncom has dramatically improved as well. Only 1-2 minor incidents vs many periods of non-responsiveness a few weeks ago.

Still there are a few game crash issues, but the game self-recovers and reloads quickly, and data is not lost, so this isn’t a huge problem.

Allies remain at a fair disadvantage in both versions. A bid mechanic should be implemented to offset this.

The tracing lines are problematic because they tend to cover up units that have not yet be committed. When there are more than 5 transports, this problem is exacerbated.

Axis planes that are on carriers in the central med SZ look as if they are landed on Sicily and are not as apparent on the accompanying carrier as in other situations/zones.

I can watch games live, the game should allow casualty selection when I’m watching live.

@Striker I like Global the best, possibly among all wargames. But 42.2 has a faster, chesslike appeal.

I try to play 5 games at once and very quickly, which improves my skills but also leaves plenty of room for me to make mistakes…like speed chess at the renfest where 1 member of the KC chess club takes on 15 all-comers at one time, one move after the next then back to the first game…

@taamvan

We don’t have any quick solution for that particular bit of lag at the moment. We have plans for a replay system so you can more easily see what happened when it wasn’t your turn. Yes, we agree and have some redesigns in process for the cards, with one of the goals being to make who’s who more clear to the player. Indeed, unit arrows are confusing. We have some plans to revise these. Bombers and fighters - we have a bug in the system that bombers should be clearly larger than fighters, but overall the design is based on the pieces from the board game. We have a few open tickets in the backlog for unit crowding leading to cases where you can’t see stack numbers. We still need to design an elegant solution and run another unit placement pass . Yay, thank you! :slightly_smiling_face:

@8d88

at the first post-release tournament, the guys who won kept using the cheezeball rule to their advantage, we all three (and greg’s crew) that we understood the rule correctly and that they were free to use it;

Attack any territory where you have no pieces where there are 5-10+ zombies
Send just 1 unit, it can be air
All the zombies attack; none of them can hit your aircraft, though it is sure to die
all of the zombie hits against defenders land, plus your unit might hit

this exploit isn’t as game “busting” as I thought some of the zombie interplay might be when I originally wrote this post. Its mostly annoying, and as you suggest, the card you get that moves half the zombie horde is even more important, both to form the stack and push it away from the areas that hurt you and into those that hurt your opponent

As your post also suggests, winning a longer game is unpredictable, and has to be based on a conservative strategy that gets and uses the techs, and adapts to what unfolds

@aardvarkpepper

in global, SBR has +2 bonus. In the other editions, not. So you do an average of 3.5 damage (5.5 in global) per bomber while taking a $2 risk per attack. Since there is an opportunity cost because the bomber can’t do this and something else, its generally not worth it.

Its more likely that they grab moscow than hawaii, because I typically have a strong us navy in the pac.

and yes, you can kind of stalemate the game by trading karelia back and forth with UK forces, even if you start building up on that side late in the game and have a fairly weak force. But once moscow falls, the money is almost exactly even (85 vs 90) and that’s a loss over time for the allies.

@SS-GEN

Pics and winner list
http://www.headlesshorseman2.com/gen-con.html

Like it.

So Dave and I took another crack at this and in preparation for the Gencon Tourney, took out all but 2 of the escalation cards. Didn’t play with a bid this time, I was the Allies.

Taking the Escalations out works well. I support this change–there are 6 copies (including the identical Zombie Rise) in the deck to start. Greg’s rule also says that you can’t draw a second escalation when you are resolving the first–at most you will draw 2 cards.

OOB, having 6 Escalations and also reshuffling them back into the deck, led to more confusing and overlapping play. Sometimes you could have 3-4 cards active, all at once–this rule change means at most you will get 2, and at most, twice per game. Even if you aren’t playing with the Tournament Rules, I’d suggest removing escalation (and zombie rise) from the game when they appear, then they can at most be seen 6 times.

Almost every new player I’ve introduced to this version said “dang, why do we keep drawing that draw two card!” Having 3-4 special powers/rolls on one turn seems kind of abusive and too luck driven (one game we had 2 of the “draw special reinforcements” and so the Russians got 3! free units for each of 3! zombie liberated territories).

See you at Gencon, Good Luck, Have Fun. Jon

I think this is a slightly different topic from the one I started but I still want to consider the idea.