Posts made by theROCmonster

Agreed Regular Kid, but they were still built. At 11 and 18 they would be infrequently built, but they might then get built at least once in the game… I am hesitant to play again. It has been so damn long since I’ve actually played a game that wasn’t me playing myself and theory crafting moves and builds lol. I might have to just to back up my understanding of the game sometime though :)

@Young:

My group doesn’t feel that it’s necessary to hand the US an aircraft carrier or battleship at any time during the game, and I agreed… here’s our new list.

American Wartime Production

During each “Purchase New Units” phase in which they are at war, the United States may roll 1 die on chart #1 to receive a free unit.

Chart #1

1 = Artillery
2 = Tank
3 = Submarine
4 = Transport
5 = Destroyer
6 = Roll on chart #2

Chart #2

1 = 3X Infantry
2 = Fighter
3 = Tactical Bomber
4 = Cruiser
5 = Strategic Bomber
6 = Facility

I agree. I’d never play with my proposed rules because giving America a free BB and the other big one on my list is probably too much. I like your idea of getting a free unit, but the problem is the only valuable units America can get are ships and planes, and their IPC cost is too much to just hand them out for free. That is why I liked your idea of giving US war bonds tech when at war. Much smoother system overall, and fairer. This current system almost feels like how tech is right now, and why no one competitive plays with tech. When you miss with tech it is a huge loss, but when you hit it is a massive gain. If you roll an infantry, art, mech, tank it feels like missing with a tech roll. When you get a ship/plane it feels amazing. The problem with tech, and this as well, is that when you are rolling good on your tech/chart it almost wins you the game if two players are of roughly the same skill level, whereas if you are rolling bad not hitting tech or the right unit on the chart consistently just looses you the game regardless of skill.

@Young:

I tried tripple A 4 years ago just after Gargantua introduced it at the FMG convention in Toronto. I was the Axis and got diced hard… like biblically epic, I lost 5 German planes and all my subs before I had to retreat, and the Brits were left with all their scrambled fighters a damaged battleship and a cruiser. That was my first and last experience with the automated dice, but there are other factors… I have more than enough opportunities to play table top games with my friends, and it’s not like I don’t get diced on my table, but I feel it’s different when it rolls from my own hand. Next, I’m just too busy with renovations, inventory at work, and designing customizations not that I would play if I had time… there’s something about looking at a screen that feels like time wasted. But to be honest, I’m not that great of a player and don’t wish to be exposed by some of the better players here… just to name a few reasons.

I for one am really happy you are apart of the Axis and Allies community as a whole. You’ve brought a lot of good ideas and excitement to the forums. We wouldn’t feel any less of your posts if we played you and beat you online. It isn’t really a fair test. Online players have a lot more options than live players have which gives them a massive advantage over just live players. When I used to played poker professionally I did it mainly online. Whenever I had to play a live game the competition was incredibly easy because of the amount of hands that online players see vs live players. The options you get from online play over live play I’d say are:

1. Being able to save a game. This one is huge. It is really hard to play a full game of global in 1 or even 2 full days of play live, but online you can save and come back to a game weeks/months/years later.

2. Larger player base. This one is pretty simple. There are more players to play giving you a more diverse playing experience.

3. You can watch other people play games. This is really fun if you want to observe some of the best players and see what their strategies are.

4. You can review your history. Triple A has a function where you can go back and see the entire history of the game. If you were in a game and at round 10 and you were wondering what Germany did on turn 2 you can go back and see exactly what his purchases/combat/non combat/income were.

5. There are over 100 maps/rules that you can instantly load up and play. This is my personal favorite because after playing thousands of games from only Larry Harris designed boards got boring. Being able to play Rome Total War in an Axis and allies variant, or a Zombie breakout in the US is amazing! :)

6. There is no set up/breakdown. This is just convenience, but greatly reduces overall time to play the actual game.

@theROCmonster:

All good points as to why Marines are the way they are. There are too many starting Cruisers/Battleships in the starting set up for Global 1940 2nd edition, which then greatly increases the value you get from purchasing enough Marines to fill your starting Cruisers/Battleships because it increases your overall “Amphibious Landing value” (total amount of units that can possibly be offloaded onto a territory in X amount of turns if all IPC’s are spent on transports/ground to go in the transports). Making Marines a 2/2/1 might be too strong in Global, but in the future sets I think you’ll need to make the Marine a 2/2/1.

So what I see happening is in future sets no one will purchase Marines after they have have enough to fill the starting Cruisers/Battleships. This is because the marine has very little value when you need to “shuck units” (usually involving 2 main groups of transports. One group picks up the units purchased turn before and lands them in your “shuck zone”, and one group that goes back to the purchase zone.), and you don’t want to build Cruisers/Battleships for your fleet because their cost/effectiveness ratio is horrible when compared to other sea units when you are looking at defensive/offensive value in sea battles. I would much rather purchase: infantry, artillery, transport, 2 subs, and a destroyer =34 IPC’s over 2 cruisers, 2 marines =34 IPC’s. So then you ask yourself what is the point of the Marine unit if all that are ever built are for the starting Cruisers/Battleships on the board? That is why I think for future sets Marines might be more playable at a stat line of 2/2/1 with text “+1 attack when Amphib Assaulting, does not receive bonus from artillery, 4 transport cost”. In future sets you might not have a lot of Cruisers/Battleships in the starting set up, and you can always balance the map appropriately to allow for the increased “implied threat” that Cruisers/Battleships give to the total “Amphibious Landing value” (total amount of units that can possibly be offloaded onto a territory in X amount of turns if all IPC’s are spent on transports/ground to go in the transports).

As a side note I’d loved it if they changed the cost of Cruiser to 11 and Battleships to 18. They would still be “niche” buys, but at least they would have a place in the game besides just starting units on the board. Making them cost 11 and 18, and giving them the ability to transport a Marine, would mean they are still bad transport units, but not as horrible in places like the pacific in global 1940. I just don’t know why Larry values the bombardment ability so highly… It isn’t that often that you get to use it, it is easily blocked, when you do get to use it the extra firepower you get isn’t that much, unlike in Revised, the units get to return fire, and most of the time you get to bombard is when you would have easily won the battle without it because you have overwhelming firepower. The only real good part about bombard, IMO is the threat projection it allows, but I think he overvalued this threat projection because fighters, do it better and are more malleable than cruisers/battleships.

All good points as to why Marines are the way they are. There are too many starting Cruisers/Battleships in the starting set up for Global 1940 2nd edition, which then greatly increases the value you get from purchasing enough Marines to fill your starting Cruisers/Battleships because it increases your overall “Amphibious Landing value” (total amount of units that can possibly be offloaded onto a territory in X amount of turns if all IPC’s are spent on transports/ground to go in the transports). Making Marines a 2/2/1 might be too strong in Global, but in the future sets I think you’ll need to make the Marine a 2/2/1.

So what I see happening is in future sets no one will purchase Marines after they have have enough to fill the starting Cruisers/Battleships. This is because the marine has very little value when you need to “shuck units” (usually involving 2 main groups of transports. One group picks up the units purchased turn before and lands them in your “shuck zone”, and one group that goes back to the purchase zone.), and you don’t want to build Cruisers/Battleships for your fleet because their cost/effectiveness ratio is horrible when compared to other sea units when you are looking at defensive/offensive value in sea battles. I would much rather purchase: infantry, artillery, transport, 2 subs, and a destroyer =34 IPC’s over 2 cruisers, 2 marines =34 IPC’s. So then you ask yourself what is the point of the Marine unit if all that are ever built are for the starting Cruisers/Battleships on the board? That is why I think for future sets Marines might be more playable at a stat line of 2/2/1 with text “+1 attack when Amphib Assaulting, does not receive bonus from artillery, 4 transport cost”. In future sets you might not have a lot of Cruisers/Battleships in the starting set up, and you can always balance the map appropriately to allow for the increased “implied threat” that Cruisers/Battleships give to the total “Amphibious Landing value” (total amount of units that can possibly be offloaded onto a territory in X amount of turns if all IPC’s are spent on transports/ground to go in the transports).

The only problem with your list Young Grasshopper is that 55% of the time you are getting someone “bad”. The only good numbers are 2-4 and 9-12. The US needs ships/planes early-mid game only, so 55% of the time you get a ground unit on your roll that doesn’t really do anything until too late in the game to matter. That is why I wanted to try and limit the possibility of US getting a ground unit as their roll.

Sorry about that and thanks.

Why did the play testers find that Marines at a base stat line of 2/2/1 were overpowered? IMO Marines are too expensive for what you get from them. They should be a decent choice at least since cruisers and battleships are never purchased.

@Young:

when we think of American factory output during the war, how can we not include strategic bombers on a list like this?… cruisers were more one and done compared to the amount of bombers being produced. Also, I structured the list so that theoretically, the higher the roll, the better the unit. Personally, anything on the list would be helpful for the United States, but one unit has to be the least desirable and one has to be the cherry on top. Along the path of developing this mechanic, I realized that we have to be carefull not to be unfair to the Axis by handing the Allies big units with lucky rolls, but we also have to take into account how much America is behind the 8 ball.

Well said. :)

I agree we need to have a 5 IPC unit and the marine is perfect for it. Make it really cost inefficient, but allow it to be loaded onto Cruisers/Battleships is brilliant, but, IMO, it is a little too weak. Why not give marines 2 attack instead of 1 and keep the other text as is. 5 IPC’s is really pricey for what they do. They still wouldn’t be a great buy, but at least at 2 attack (3 when amphibiously assaulting) would be something. They don’t even receive artillery support…

I don’t believe this is off topic at all. He is proposing a rules addition to the game, and I am just putting in my oppinion on it and suggestion.

I’m not sure you read the rules I added to the 12 number chart. I did state that you can only carry over 1 turn. The point I wanted to make is to give the player to ability to get lucky, as well as give them more incentive to carry over their roll. I will revise it a little to give more incentive

If you roll a 3 or 4 the first turn the values are
3 = Sub, which is worth 6 IPC’s  
4 = Transport which is worth 7 IPC’s

If you were to roll 2 dice 36 times the number of times each number comes up is:

Dice total            Number of              Probability        Total Unit          Unit Value Times  
                         Combinations                                          Value                  Probability

2                     1                  2.78%                 6                       .1668
    3                     2                  5.56%                 6                       .3336
    4                     3                  8.33%                 7                       .5831
    5                     4                  11.11%                8                       .8888
    6                     5                  13.89%                8                      1.1104
    7                     6                  16.67%                10                     1.667
    8                     5                  13.89%                12                     1.6668
    9                     4                  11.11%                12                     1.3332
    10                   3                    8.33%                16                     1.3328
    11                   2                    5.56%                20                     1.112
    12                   1                    2.78%                30                       .834

Totals                      36                      100%                     135                      11.0285

The average Unit Value you will get when rolling 1 dice is 6.334 and 2 dice is 11.0285. You’re right it doesn’t really seem incredibly worth it to go for the second roll. Maybe if we add in art at 2 and took out “get 8 IPC’s to spend immediately” at 6 and then moved everyone up accordingly it would be better. so a chart like:

1   =  Infantry
2   =  Art
3   =  Tank
4   =  Sub
5   =  Transport
6   =  Destroyer
7   =  Fighter
8   =  Strategic bomber
9   =  Cruiser
10  =  Carrier
11  =  Battleship
12  =  “Get 1 of each unit from numbers 1-5” (in other words you get an Infantry, Tank, Sub, Transport, and Destroyer)

With this chart if you roll 1 dice you get an average Unit Value of 5.667. If you roll two dice you get an average Unit Value of 10.7866.

@Young:

American War Effort

During each mobilize new units phase in which the United States are at war, they may roll 1 die to obtain a free unit to be immediately placed on the board along with all other newly purchased units.

Die Roll  =  Free Unit

1  =  Tank
2  =  Submarine
3  =  Transport
4  =  Destroyer
5  =  Fighter
6  =  Strategic Bomber

This is an interesting idea. The only thing I don’t like about it is that you can’t account for this unit ahead of time in your planning. It also has a little too high variance from “meh” (1-3, mainly just 1 though) to “great!” (4-6). This change would reduce the skill factor of the overall game down a little.

I’d suggest having you roll at the start of your purchase phase, but you can’t place the unit down until your place units phase. Also I’d change the strategic bomber to be a cruiser instead. The reason I’d change this is because the Strat bomber is a little too good, and I’d like to see cruisers used more :). The tank seems like a really unlucky roll, compared to all the others, so I might think about changing a roll of 1 to “get 6 IPC’s to spend immediately”. So it would look like:

Roll a dice at the start of your purchase units phase and whatever number you roll is what you get on the chart below, but you can’t place the units down until your place units phase.

1  =  Get 6 IPC’s to spend immediately
2  =  Submarine
3  =  Transport
4  =  Destroyer
5  =  Fighter
6  =  Cruiser

Another option would be to add tier levels of what you can get. Instead of having 1-6 on the chart, you’d have 1-12 on the chart. Something like this:

1   =  Infantry
2   =  Tank
3   =  Sub
4   =  Transport
5   =  Destroyer
6   =  “Get 8 IPC’s to spend immediately”
7   =  Fighter
8   =  Strategic bomber
9   =  Cruiser
10  =  Carrier
11  =  Battleship
12  =  “Get 1 of each unit from numbers 1-5” (in other words you get an Infantry, Tank, Sub, Transport, and Destroyer)

The rules would be a little different as well, and would read something like:

Roll a dice at the start of your purchase units phase and whatever number you roll is what you get on the chart below, or you can elect to hold off on getting your unit or effect, and instead “bank” the number you rolled to be carried over to your next roll. Example is you roll a 4, but don’t want what is on 4, so you can then add that 4 to your next roll. The next turn you roll a 3, so then you would have your original 4 + 3 = 7, and you would get a fighter. If you choose to carry over your rolls you must choose the unit/effect you get from the sum of your first and second roll.In other words, the highest total you could possibly get is 12, and that is only if you roll a 6, choose to bank it, and then roll another 6. This would keep people from saving up their rolls until they got something really juicy.

I know this would have a much higher risk reward than the one you are proposing, but I think it could be fun, and hope your opponent doesn’t roll 6 + 6 = 12 or 5 + 6 = 11 :).

That is why you should play several hundred games of dice to understand what to do when the battles don’t go your way. You need to be malleable. I just build the correct units, and do the correct moves based off of what the board should look like 3-5 turns in the future. Low Luck allowed me to see my mistakes (thank god for triple A :), and that allowed me to get much better much faster than I would have with dice. But I would say I was already nearly an expert when I took up Low Luck. I wouldn’t recommend it for anyone that hasn’t played at least 100 games.

@the_jetset:

Guys … “Low Luck” is BAD war game modeling.  I’m sorry.  But I can’t be more polite or nice about this subject.  Low Luck is just simply not good. … It is God.  And there is a very big difference between “Gods and Generals.”  :wink:

The best Generals are the ones that know the best strategy. Low luck shows you the best strategy because it shows you which strategy wins if both sides play perfectly and nothing goes wrong. Granted I wouldn’t want starting players to learn with dice. I didn’t even know there was a low luck system until I’d played well over 300 games. Players should get the feel, and excitement, of the randomness of dice to get into the game and learn certain military doctrines that you don’t get from Low Luck. Once you’re excitement of dice runs out, however, you get tired, and annoyed, of loosing to bad dice, and not your strategy. You hit a wall where dice can’t teach you anything more because you don’t get an exact feel for the “perfect strategy” because somewhere along the way, usually on the first turn or a massive battle, one side got a lot luckier than the other and made your hopes of winning impossible, not by good play, but by bad dice. This doesn’t teach you whether the strategy you had was the best one or not. With low luck the best strategy almost always wins out (probably something like 99%). This teaches how to get better when you go back and review your games you can see exactly where you made a mistake and why.

I would never play a game online with dice for every round in Global. As Talleyrand19 said, loosing to a good strategy by someone lets you learn something, but loosing to dice just makes you annoyed. Not to mention that games between two skilled players takes well over 10 hours to play, and investing that much time into a game just to get screwed in one important battle almost makes you not want to play the game again.

The way I play now, against myself, is I do Low Luck for the first turn of the game and dice after that. This really smooths out the randomness factor of the initial battles that involve huge amounts of TUV. Since you don’t get to decide your starting position, with the way the board starts off there are going to be certain battles that if one side wins or looses can destroy the rest of the game. Say Germany looses the battle for France, or UK scrambles 110 and gets incredibly lucky, or UK gets incredibly unlucky in the SZ 97 battle, then the game, more or less, is decided before it even really began.

I also give each nation a one time only ability, when they are the attackers, to choose to have the battle roll out with Low Luck instead of dice. This is to help the huge battles that will inevitably happen in Moscow and India and Naval battles in the pacific.

The biggest problem with only playing a game with Low Luck is that:

1. Planes become too good in smaller land battles. If there are 3 infantry in a territory all the attacker has to do is send 2 infantry 4 fighters and a bomber and guarantee the take of the territory.

2. Strafing is incredibly powerful and limits a lot of strategies. Stacking two large forces outside a hotly contested territory is no longer possible. In Low Luck since you can calculate the exact amount of hits needed to leave 1 unit alive you can just attack in and retreat. One example of this is if Italy stacked Alexandria and Sudan first turn, then all UK has to do is strafe Sudan and retreat, where as in dice it would be extremely risky to do so. Also in sea battles you can do crazy things with hit and run tactics that wouldn’t be possible otherwise.

3. Games feel too similar. With every turn being Low Luck games play out almost the exact same every time, but with dice, after the first round Low Luck, small battles that happen later in the game might not go according to plan and would force a change in strategy, making for more diverse and exciting games. I know you can make the point that having Low Luck on the first turn makes every game more similar than if you didn’t have Low Luck the first turn, but there is nothing I hate more than loosing on the first turn of the game because of bad dice.

4. Large battles can be made 100%. I am actually fine with this one. Again I don’t want to play perfect strategy and loose to dice :). This is why I would allow a one time only, if attacking, choice of Low Luck.

Lol. Ya I am just tired of some of the broken mechanics of this map. :/

This is too much RNG. What if you don’t spot the other fleet? You then get screwed on your next turn. That isn’t fair, or realistic, at all. Because you able able to move 2-3 sea zones a turn with fleets. Missing a search check would be game ending a lot of times. Also air power is way too much in this version, at least on the European side.

I was rethinking this and maybe it would be better if the US, UK pacific, and Anzac technologies didn’t kick in till they were at war with Japan.

Honestly if they just made the map a little better by:

1. Not having 110 and 109 connected, but instead made 110 connected to 104, 111, and 112. This would allow UK to possibly build ships in 109 because fighters/tacs wouldn’t be able to go from Western Germany to 109 and land without having a carrier.

2. Not having Western Germany and Northern Italy connected. Just have Greater Southern Germany extend all the way to Switzerland, so that planes in western Germany couldn’t land in Alexandria or Egypt. Also Germany couldn’t just build mechs in Western Germany that can, on the next turn, go down and defend Southern Italy. The defense of mainland Germany would be harder for the axis.

3. Removing the major IC in Germany’s capital, and replacing it with a minor. Also add a minor IC to Greater Southern Germany. This would lessen the total number of troops Germany as a nation could build, and Germany would be take more planning to defend. You can’t build a reactionary 10 infantry for defense if you need it, instead you’ll be able to build only 3. In total Germany’s starting territories would be able to build 16 units a turn, instead of 20.

4. Changing Strategic Bombers attack to 2, instead of 4. This makes bombers less powerful for ground and sea battles. The attack on Moscow will be less, and Allied fleets would have a much easier time defending their transports. In other words Germany building 4 bombers a turn late game is no longer an automatically great buy. Also Japans first turn attacks become a little weaker.

5. Allowing Minor IC’s to be built on islands. This would really help the Allies in the Pacific. I guess Japan could then build an IC in the Philippines, but is that really that good?

6. Making Russia worth 5, instead of 3. This would give USSR 2 more IPC’s to spend every turn. Increasing their defense against an overwhelming German attack.

7. Making the US NO, while at war, for having control of EUS, WUS, and CUS worth 15, instead of 10. This would make Japan a little more hesitant about a turn 1 attack. Also US is desperately hurting for income in this game because of how much fleet he needs to build. An extra 5 would help a lot while not making any new broken mechanics.

8. Making only planes in the territory that produces the carrier be able to place fighters/tacs on a newly placed carrier. So you couldn’t end your non combat movement phase with a fighter/tac in a sea zone that doesn’t have a carrier. One annoying problem is that either the axis or allies can, at any time, use fighters/tacs that otherwise couldn’t reach a territory or sea zone to be able to reach it if you purchase a carrier. The ability to finish your turn in a sea zone increases the implied threat from planes too much, IMO.

LOL. I’m sorry it isn’t a “fun” strategy. I just find it to be the most efficient in the long run. :)

It depends on Italy’s situation turn 2. Turn 1 I almost always build 2 mech. There isn’t much an allied fleet can do in the med. Germany can easily blow it up unless it is really large, and if it is large then they are loosing out on building ground forces. Think about it. When Germany takes the slow route with dealing with Russia he will have so many troops/production left that can all go for Egypt that the allies are faced with a really impossible situation.

Italy building almost all ground (mainly inf after turn 1) means that Germany doesn’t have to build infantry in Germany or Western Germany for a long while, and instead can build just art/mech/bombers to go against Russia. A large allied fleet with 10 American transports stationed off Gibraltar isn’t nearly as scary when you have 30-50 Italians able to defend against it.