Posts made by uffishbongo

Sahara, followed by Himalaya, followed by Mongolia.

A lot of folks write off SBR’s entirely because they only net an expected 5/12 IPC gain per raid.  Based on this analysis, it’s pretty much always better to send your bomber into combat if at all possible (if you save an infantry, that’s better than 7 bombing runs!) and maybe SBR if you have absolutely nothing else to do.

However, the simple expected-value calculation misses an important point: Even if SBR’s end up essentially trading equal amounts of your money with the opponent’s in the long run, sometimes that’s advantageous–basically, when you’re a stronger power beating up on a weaker power.  If my Germans have an income of 40 and the Russians have an income of 20, would I trade 20 of my IPC’s for 20 of theirs?  Darn straight!  Heck, I’d probably trade 30 of mine for 20 of theirs!  Similarly, it can make sense for the USA to invest in strategic bombing raids on Germany.  Swapping equal numbers of American IPC’s for German IPC’s should make any Allied player’s mouth water.  America’s supply lines are so long that this is often the quickest way for them to start having an impact on Germany anyway.

To sum up, there are several factors that can make SBR’s worthwhile despite the low expected net income gain:
—Relative incomes (if you’re much richer than an opponent, losing money hurts you less)
—Geography (if your supply lines are very long, SBR’s get you into the game faster)
—Magister’s point about multi-attacker disadvantage is very important!  This is another reason the USA is a natural candidate to be the bombing experts.

Skew is an important concept, but unfortunately, it’s hard to quantify.

The most accurate battle-predicting statistic that I know of is to add up your starting punch, plus your punch after taking 1 hit, plus your punch after taking 2 hits, etc, all the way down to when your force is wiped out.  For instance, if you have 2 inf 2 tanks attacking this statistic would be 8+7+6+3 = 24; for 4 inf defending it would be 8+6+4+2=20.  This statistic shows the advantage of skew.  Also, it can account for attacking transports and/or the “free” hit on battleships; for example, an attacking force of 1 BB 1 tran would have 4+4+4=12.  Unfortunately this takes a while to calculate, especially for medium- to large-sized forces.

If there’s a faster way to calculate skew, I’m not aware of it (but would love to be!)  Punch and count can be calculated much faster.  Based on these, the most accurate predictor comes from multiplying punch times count.  Punch times count tends to be a pretty good predictor unless the forces are highly skewed; for unskewed to moderately skewed forces it will pretty much always tell you who’s favored.  In most situations the way that I account for skew is just by noting that it’s there and mentally saying “ok, this side is actually a little better than the punch and count would indicate”.

Then of course you can always do the expected-outcome calculation where you run through a battle in your head, and for each round assume each side gets the expected number of hits, and see what happens.  The nice thing about this is that it does account for skew, plus you can do it reasonably fast.  Unfortunately the round-off errors can pile up, but it’s still a decent indicator overall.

Details of how to play G1 would depend on more details of the R1 you’re trying to counter.  It sounds like he’s only attacking WR on R1?  (i.e. not Bel or Ukr)

If Russia is playing a solid defensive game, and if the Allies are going KGF which I assume they are, then you’re not going to crack Russia with a German onslaught unless you get great dice.  You have to play the long-term game.  Most often what ends up happening for the first few rounds (in my games anyway) is you have a stack in Eeu, he has a stack in WR, and you trade Kar and Bel and Ukr each turn (or maybe only two of those, depending on how aggressive the Russian player is).  You want to buy mostly inf in order to trade territories (your fighters supply all the offensive punch you need) and stack Weu as well.

In these stack-vs-stack situations you always have to run the battle calculator and see what happens if he advances his stack, and what happens if you advance yours.  (In a face-to-face game, of course, substitute a quick expected-outcome calculation for the battle simulator.)  The big thing you want to avoid as Germany is a Russian stack advance to Ukraine.  If he can push his stack to Ukr and not get murdered, he takes away $3 of your income each turn (you’re no longer trading Ukr) and adds $3 to his (he can start trading Blk).  If in addition he forces your stack to retreat from Eeu, then you’re REALLY screwed because now you can’t trade Kar and Bel anymore and Russia’s income will be only a few IPC short of yours, which is basically game over.  You should be able to prevent a Ukraine push for a couple turns at least–you start with 7 planes, plus 7 tanks left in Europe (assuming you transport one to Egypt), plus you should be able to get at least 8-10 inf to Eeu on your first turn (again, assuming he’s only attacked Wru).  If you buy a couple tanks (say 10 inf 2 tanks on G1) then even a 20 unit push to Ukr on R2 should get beaten up pretty badly by your counterattack–remember, you can also throw in a BB support plus an inf/art from Seu if your navy isn’t urgently needed in Africa.

The other thing you always have to have in the back of your mind is whether to push to Karelia or not…in addition to boosting your income (keep Kar, plus trade Nor) this can be an effective way of cutting off British aid to Russia, at least for a few rounds, which may buy Japan enough time.  Sometimes it’s possible you can do this while still maintaining enough counterattack threat to keep the Russians out of Ukraine…basically, an infantry stack in Eeu plus a tank stack in Kar threaten to join up in Ukr.  You can resupply Karelian inf from the Eeu stack and Eeu inf from new inf purchases in Germ.  Generally you have to be doing pretty well to get to this situation (sustainably), though, and you may have to abandon Weu and turn it into a trading zone…in which case, you may have to pull some of your tanks back to Eeu in order to have a sufficient counterattack to prevent a full-scale Allied foothold in Weu.

Just a few thoughts–again, further details of the R1 move would be needed for a more detailed G1 counter.  Basically though, in this situation your goal with Germany should pretty much be to hold steady on the Eastern front, get a few turns’ worth of income out of Africa, and (if possible) try to keep US/UK from reinforcing Russia so the Japanese can take it down.

This is a pretty basic Allied question, I guess, but I suck with the Allies so I’m still figuring out the basics.

I’m specifically interested in the subset of Allied strategies which have both the UK and US shipping units into Europe using the north Atlantic.  I realize there are also viable strategies which use the Mediterranean (US fills North Africa with units and then starts shuttling them to Weu/Seu/Ukr/Blk/Cau), not to mention KJF.  But narrower questions tend to get more useful answers, so I don’t want to get into the relative merits of KGF vs KJF or Eurocentric vs Afrocentric at this point.

Among the subset of strategies which I’m asking about, it seems the UK and US have two major options.  One is more aggressively oriented, and has them using the Baltic (SZ 5) to shuck units from the UK every turn into Western/Eastern/Norway/Karelia.  (The US would, of course, have a second fleet shucking units from Eca into UK, but that’s also true in the second strategy.)  This strategy is more directly focused on attacking Germany with piles and piles of units.  The other is more defensively oriented, and has them using the Barents Sea (SZ 4) to shuck units into Archangel and Karelia.  From here they can reinforce the core Russian territories of Moscow and Caucasus, and then expand outward against Germany and/or Japan as needed.  Basically you try to turn Russia into a 90 IPC country that moves 3 times per round.  (Except that each of the three moves only uses some of the 90 IPC…so that’s a pretty limited analogy.)

In the Baltic approach, you typically end up building a stack in Karelia until it’s big enough to push forward to Eastern.  If Germany stacks Eastern before you get your system running, you may need to start in Norway and then push to Karelia.  If Germany manages to stack Karelia early, you may have a couple turns of annoyance where you drop into Norway/Eastern/whatever and get smashed before you deplete the Karelia stack enough to start a stack of your own.  The Baltic approach has the advantage of keeping pressure on Berlin–both UK and US are threatening to drop at least 8 ground troops (more if you overbuild your transports, which I like to do at least with the UK) plus air, so Germany may need to keep 15-20 units in Berlin to be safe.  This makes it hard for them to put any pressure on Russia.  If they try to stack Western too then they’re really tied down.

The Barents approach has the advantage that you can help Russia survive against Japan instead of just trying to take Germany down faster than Japan takes Russia down.  It also allows more opportunities for specialization, as a way of getting around multi-attackers disadvantage (say, one country could help against Japan, another against Germany, or whatever).  However, you also give Germany a bit more breathing room since the only core German territory within your reach is Western.

There are tons more advantages and disadvantages of each, I’m sure, but remember, I suck with the Allies, so this is where y’all come in…

Personally, I usually try to start with an aggressive Baltic strategy, mainly I guess because I like attacking in general (I guess there could be some tie-in to Switch’s last thread here) and don’t want to give away the initiative.  Then I switch to supplying Archangel if I get desperate.  Unfortunately it takes an extra turn to do the switch (you have to spend one turn dropping in either Norway or Western during the transition), so if I ever get into a situation where I have to then I pretty much lose.  I’ve never really tried going to Archangel from the start, or splitting the two up (e.g. having UK go to Archangel and the US work in the Baltic–one possible downside being that you might need more fleet defense to protect against the Luftwaffe).

Any thoughts/experiences?

I used to always buy a G1 carrier, but against strong players I found that I pretty much always got pwned by an aggressive Russia.  In particular, it becomes hard to prevent Russia from pushing its stack up from West Russia to the Ukraine on R3.  When that happens it’s generally a Bad Thing for Germany because Russia gets richer than it has any right to be.

My German strategy is sort of in flux right now.  I’ve been playing matches on the TripleA ladder against players who are significantly better than I am, and noticing some things about how they do Germany. 
–-First, I noticed (much to my shock) that they are often willing to stop stacking WE after a couple turns and turn it into a trading zone.  They always have enough tanks+planes+Berlin stack to prevent a permanent Allied foothold there, so it ends up just getting traded back and forth with a couple inf and some planes each round.  Basically, in exchange for giving America or Britain an extra 6 IPC, you can free up a dozen infantry to pressure Russia with. 
—Second, I noticed that they all buy more tanks than I do.  Often not that many on G1, but frequently some significant tank purchases on G2-G4.
—Third, I noticed that they really like to stack Karelia early, i.e. on G1 if I let them.  This makes life with the British rather frustrating as you may have plenty of transports and plenty of ground troops, yet nowhere to land without getting massacred.  I’ve switched to a 3 inf/3 tank R1 buy for the sole reason that it helps avoid a G1 Karelia stack.

Now I’m sure that some of this has to do with weaknesses in my Allied strategy (of which there are many), i.e. these might not be things that work in general but only things that work against me.  I tend to work toward a slow-building steamroller with the Allies, which can make me susceptible to quick and aggressive expansionism.  Still though, something to think about.

FWIW I haven’t seen a G1 carrier build in a ladder game in a looong time…probably the last person I saw do that (besides me) was rated at something like 1200.

BTW Bunnies, how long has it been since you played over on the ladder?  Only losing to Serghis (besides dice disasters) is pretty impressive!  There are some other folks who are darned good with the Axis…

Can you really use TripleA as a mapping utility?  I don’t know of any way to edit the board position (move/add/delete units), but if there is a way I’d LOVE to hear it since TripleA is far more visually attractive than ABattleMap.

Just in case you’re interested, a similar phenomenon has been observed in real-life military strategy.  It’s called the Lanchester Square Law.  Basically, the power of an army is proportional to the square of its size.  Check out http://tinyurl.com/37npjl
Of course, it works in real life for different reasons than it works in Axis & Allies!