Isnt this games combat system broken if you only attack with one type of unit?

[Imperious Leader]

Because the dice have Icons for hitting different units, if you attack with the same type of unit you reduce the chance to hit?

[The Big E]

This has come up over on bgg and Tom Gale and Larry are looking at some tweaks to the system.
In a counter-intuitive way, mono stacking, or majority stacking unit types have an advantage in an equal resource and unit number setting. One would tend to think that a combined arms approach of 1 tanks/1 artillery/1 infantry (9 total RESOURCES-5 OSR/ 3 IRON/ 1 OIL)would have and advantage over 3 artillery(9 total resources-6 OSR and 3 iron) on the other side.
Depending on stance selection there is some variation, but even with a 1 die force advantage for bringing unit types that the enemy does not, the monostack of artillery inflicts more damage because there is more opportunity to inflict hits. 3 types of units in combined arms stack versus 1 type unit in monostack.
Several options are being looked at, such as adjusting cost of artillery, adding a drop down hit bonus(if you roll a green, and the enemy does not have green, then the hit goes to blue), and a combined arms factor that would add 3 dice for each set of units(1 inf./1 art./1 tank).
There are also some strategies to counter mono stacks/majority stacks.
Commerce raiding, seizing/ contesting territories with that units key resource. Use of air power(to cause artillery to possibly split its firepower) Most statistics run in combat simulations have not factored in air power either.
Also will take time and precious commands to organize existing units on the board into the stacks the way one wants. New units don’t arrive(and are able to be used until turn 2).

Just a snippet of what is being discussed at Nightingale games.
Larry is supposedly going to have something worked out by next week.

Hope this helps catch people up to speed.

[Imperious Leader]

Well the dice are key. They should be different depending on how much of a combined arms thing is going on. Perhaps bonus dice for combined arms. A stack of cheap mono units are killing my mojo for this game,

[crockett36]

Dessertfox and I have been experimenting with this mechanic.  Our solution has been one inf, 6 art, 1 tank.  or 1 inf, 1 art, 6 tank.  Another options, 1 inf, 7 art.  Suddenly yellows become misses.  Conversely, 6 inf, 1 art might be effective.  Thus blues become misses. That force is going to slaughtered, but will in turn slaughter.  Btw, the 1 inf, 1 art, 6 tanks is almost impossible to kill with just 30 dice.    Btw, in large battles, all yellows and blues should be assumed dead on arrival.

The interesting thing to consider is that in this game a single unit can kill several enemies.  It behooves each side to be very circumspect in the composition of his attacking force.  It also means that an even spread of units is the worst possible approach. Try this, the more infantry in the battle, the more will die.  The game will be to find a combination that allows you to minimize your exposure and maximize their losses.  I just fought a naval engagement, where I was outnumber.  I ended up keeping my battleship and wiping out all of his destr and subs.  His battleships also survived.

In truth, this could represent good officers who can inflict many more times casualties and still survive.  The one hit/one kill mechanic certainly has it’s own issues.

[crockett36]

Okay, so they came up with a way to negate the 1-6-1 strategy.  It’s complicated . . . So if there are no enemies opposing your inf, art, tank or plane, and the color associated is rolled and three of those are rolled, those three dice together count as one black die. A wild hit.  This is reassessed for each batch.  So if your inf are killed off in the first batch, now all of your yellows can be used thus.

[Gargantua]

I raised this issue with Larry in his home bunker during a play testing in spring 2017.  I had to go toe to toe with L himself! But he quickly realized what I was talking about as massive “combined arms” armies were getting devastated by mono crop armies, simply because everything the monocrop would result in a hit.

I don’t know what adaptations have been made, but they’ve known about this issue for a some time; hopefully they’ve resolved it.

Crockett should be up to speed with the latest.

[The Big E]

Latest I am aware of is that the cost of art has been changed from 2 o.s.r. and 1 iron to 1 o.s.r. and 2 iron.
They have been lookng at a couple different methods of utilizing “missed” dice with force advantage to balance a combined arms stack versus a mono or majority stack.

One is that if one rolls a green but it would be a miss, it drops down to “hit” the next color(blue)

The other is that if one has a force advantage in a color or colors that 3 dice of that color or colors would be turned into a wild, after normal hits are applied.

These may balance the ratio between combined and mono stacks but makes the game even bloodier.

The bgg thread is at least an interesting read:
https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2038838/question-about-battle-dice-and-tactic.

Lots of stats and some interesting ideas.

[The Big E]

I think one way to limit the power of a mono stack arty, or any mono stack is to have the black(wild) and or the white(damaged) sides of the d12 only be used by a combined arms force.

The other ideas, even my force advantage dice idea only help to balance the sides by making it bloodier.

[crockett36]

I think that would help.  Currently, nearly all inf and art that enter a large battle are toast.

[Chacmool]

@The:

I think one way to limit the power of a mono stack arty, or any mono stack is to have the black(wild) and or the white(damaged) sides of the d12 only be used by a combined arms force.

Your suggestion seems more elegant to me than changing dice colours during battles. In fact I don`t like the new force advantage rule at all.

To weaken monostacks the blacks and whites should count as fails if thrown by them, or even better blacks and whites cancel hits against the enemy, this would represent the lack of support by other arms.

[crockett36]

Let me make myself a little clearer.  This game is awesome.  I’ve been playtesting it since the beginning.  I have made the dice work for me.  I’ve adjusted every time and been successful.  The question we’ll all ask on the forums is: what’s the best stack composition?  How many should we send?  Same sorts of questions that we’re asking now.

[The Big E]

From the latest War Room update:

we are going with this rule for FA:  “In Surface Battles only: blacks and whites are misses for the side with fewer Surface Unit Types”.  Why?  It is simple.  While in the more extreme cases the math doesn’t deliver perfect equality, we believe after much testing that it is a strong enough incentive for a player to really try to bring multiple types.  All other other ideas that we tested were too bloody or too fiddly to resolve.  We’ve changed to Orange Zone Penalty to not involve black dice but rather reduce Orders by 3.