Oh, and to add my usual disclaimer, this isn’t meant to be some comprehensive address, it’s just a few random not terribly well organized thoughts. There’s much much more to everything, numbers, strategies, tactics, timings, opportunity costs, and so on.
Just picking one - the strategic use of small UK and US forces in Europe
Let’s say Axis want to cut UK/US reinforcements off at Karelia. This is pretty essential if the Allies are not to send cheap UK/US ground reinforcement to Moscow. There’s some timing issues where Axis are trying to shift off Karelia but I won’t get into how Axis handle that and Allied counters here.
The rules for land retreat are, all units retreat to a ground territory that at least one unit came from. This can be used to set up “teleports” where, say, Allies use UK ground units on Finland and West Russia to attack German-controlled Karelia, and all UK units “retreat” to West Russia. The same is true for US.
But thinking on it, UK and US won’t typically have units just sitting around in West Russia. (A related issue, one of the problems with 1942 Online is inability of defender to select the controlling power of a unit taken as a casualty, which definitely is problematic for this sort of tactic). Typically UK units have to deliberately be sent in from India in advance, and US ground unit(s) from China must be preserved.
But having a small number of ground forces has loads more applications.
For example, I mentioned above using German infantry to keep Japanese fighters safe. If UK only has air units in range, UK would end up trading expensive air units for cheap German ground - though that bleeds the German stack, it’s really often not worth the trade (as UK fighters can be used in a combined Allied stack defense as well).
But if UK ground units are in range, suddenly Germany has to use a lot more units to defend, which bleeds its major stack, or Japan’s air becomes unsafe, or any number of unpleasant scenarios.
Or, I mentioned if USSR attempts to move its Moscow stack into Kazakh, that Germany can smash it. If US has ground forces to recapture Kazakh from Axis, though, USSR fighters can land on Kazakh, which can make a difference, especially if a good portion of Germany’s attack units are at West Russia and/or Archangel instead of just a simple stack on Caucasus, which is what’s going to happen in the game described above.
When players attempt to “optimize”, often they may ignore these small but important things, instead doing things like “I must defend India with everything possible, because defending India is important”. True. But other things are also important. Depending on dice outcomes and player decisions, both the player’s own decisions and the opponent’s decisions, games change a lot.
But I don’t understand? India is important? Look at the screenshots. UK is holding India, but I don’t think any player would seriously claim Allies are in a winning position.
Or I don’t understand? Japan needs to be the major Axis stack controller against KGF? Look at the screenshots. It’s a KGF. Japan is far from the major Axis stack controller. Again, seems it’s working out for Axis.
And for those that say “well it’s not that simple, there’s other factors” - exactly. Which is why I detail and open for discussion what I think those factors are, and how different factors need to be weighed in the balance.
1942 Online’s lack of communications is on some level understandable. There are costs to implementing features. Simply removing communications options reduces options for toxicity. Sure.
But after a couple years of play, the 1942 Online meta is pretty awful by and large.
Maybe the thought was, players are going to be so casual, they won’t actually want to develop or learn. Communication? Who needs all that? Make 'em jump through hoops!
But for the same reason, I don’t find 1942 Online particularly compelling, particularly ranked with stale meta and compulsory 24 hour checkins.
What was the desired experience, really? What is 1942 Online’s “ideal player”?
On the one hand, a casual player that isn’t going to care if they can’t see unit movements and deal with an obfuscating UI, because “it’s just a game.” No need to chat, “it’s just a game.” But on the other hand, 24 hour checkins are pretty demanding, and where with other “free to play” games missing a day usually means losing some virtual currency or negligible opportunity cost, here a single missed checkin means losing potentially hours of investment made in multiple ranked games.
On the other hand, noncasual players that don’t need chat because they’re already synched outside the game. But then, all the limiting rules changes, lack of bid, and obfuscating AI make the program a bother to use. (Just use TripleA!)
So if the product fundamentally does not appeal to casuals or to noncasuals, the playerbase ends up being only players with very particular preferences, or one might say tolerances. Is that “just my opinion” or isn’t that just how things are?
Sometimes people protest that complaints don’t understand the realities of the situation (yet typically such arguments never provide such “realities” or leave anything open to discussion). For my part, I think the programming team was given limited time and limited budget to accomplish certain tasks that were designated by the design team; I think the design team was probably constrained by orders from up the chain which in turn were likely influenced by licensing and investor considerations. So where I would say the design was not good enough, or there are demonstrably bugs, well, I think that’s understandable, to some point.
But at some point someone needed to step in and take responsibility. Someone had to be in charge. It’s two years on, and I’m playing ranked games in a weak meta, with the altered rules, the no-bid, no balance, 24 hour checkin, and no-comms.
Look, I’ll tell you how I know it’s a weak meta.
Some might argue “not everyone wants to have a discussion, aardvark!” So true. But you don’t need a discussion if you understand fundamentals. If you understand the fundamentals, it takes ten seconds to respond in an intelligent way to basic questions.
. . . like?
Let’s take the basic topic of Axis vs Allies balance. The so-called conversation around that was, Axis win 55%, Allies win 45% at one point. And the narrative was, that’s balanced. That’s defined as balanced, you understand, that was the nature of the so-called “conversation”.
But the problem is, over large sample sets, 55% versus 45% indicates imbalance. And further, as I pointed out at the time, the data collection itself was suspect, because if weak players tend to play Axis, then reports would naturally skew against the “true balance” of the game when played by skilled players. (Similar things happen with fighting games and Starcraft, but I digress.)
The developers put in separate ratings for Axis and for Allies, which I disagree with, but all right, at least that addresses some concerns over imbalance. But the discussion I mentioned above was not about ratings validity, but game balance in general; Axis versus Allies. And again, the argument was made using facts that was presented as having one meaning when the actual meaning was literally the opposite.
Well, mistakes can be made. But back to player skill in the meta.
When you have players of a certain ability, they’re going to naturally draw up probability distributions, as was done in some articles for 1942 Revised edition. Seems most of what I remember has been lost to time, but I remember reading and writing such articles, so I know very well it happened.
And what is the nature of these probability distribution writeups? Well, what happens is one takes different proposed moves, writes up the probability distributions and sequential decisions based on information available, and creates probable outcomes. Over multiple turns, different opponent and player responses are each explored, each action having its own probability distribution. By understanding the probability distributions and their consequences, “balance” is proved or disproved for a skilled player set.
And that’s really all there is to it. If that sounds stupidly complicated, literally that was what I did this entire thread (without so much numbers) but one can very much see the numbers and the thinking behind everything if one looks. Would help if had TripleA’s .tsvg system but eh.
So how do you know when it’s a weak meta? When players keep asking about balance regularly, and they keep getting the same stock answers using statistics with no context with suspect data. Okay it’s pretty funny for some people, but come on. At some point you’ve just got to be like really now.
But nobody wants to do some sort of complicated writeup or analysis just to answer a question that doesn’t even apply?
Well, no. When a decent player creates strategies, they must understand their tactical tools, they must understand how to evaluate board state, how to optimally distribute forces and plan purchases not just for the current turn but subsequent turn. I hope that just makes sense. So naturally if they’re thinking through such things and trying to identify key timings, then they are going to do a certain amount of necessary work.
Which is why it was simple for me to understand quite early how Japan could use submarines to counter the KJF, and why and how Japan should pressure India, the timing of the German advance to cut off units at India, and various contingencies. Sure, a lot of the lessons in how to evaluate numbers and distributions came from reading up on Revised. But Revised allowed transports to be used as cannon fodder, had different setup at India and East Canada; anti-KJF in 1942 Online is a different animal.
And as a side note it’s nuts for me when I read players write about “shucking” East Canada like it’s Revised. In Revised, you needed one transport per transport drop from East Canada to northeastern Africa, there were fewer territories in Revised making it faster to march through, transports acted as ablative armor protecting Allied fleet cores. In 1942 Second Edition, you need two transports per transport drop, Japan capture of Alaska threatens the Eastern Canada sea zones, etc. etc.
The real key identifier for lack of thought in a meta is a lack of discussion about pros and cons and real consequences.
Oh, G1 can build Berlin tanks to help secure Karelia on G2? Well I suppose that might not have been incredibly obvious to some players so was worth mentioning. But what about the loss of infantry on the G4 push towards Ukraine? What, nothing? Somehow Germany magically makes up the difference? But look at the numbers on the income, these different branches - no? Just take your word for it because you’re “top platinum”? What about where you say this and this happens, but it doesn’t happen if an opponent reasonably does this and this? Doesn’t the whole supposition just break apart?
Players don’t want to have involved discussions? Sure. But when there’s authoritarian commands like “build 2 tanks on round 1”, well, there’s an old joke I think about George Washington and the Continental Congress, something like that. Someone proposed that the army be limited to whatever number of soldiers, and Washington said “Let’s also pass a motion that we’ll never be invaded by armies above a certain size too” or some such thing. Ha ha. No, it’s really funny, you know?
But when such hilarity is said in all solemnity and expected to be taken seriously, well, you know.
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