AA diceless varient, well playtested

[crimsynseraph]

So the idea is obviously to get rid of the element of chance.
The way I went about doing this is keeping all the values of the units, and you add the total value of all your units in a single engagement, and kill one enemy for every multiple of six that you reach.
Another thing is the point bank. You can choose to bank points or spend them to reach a different multiple of six.
So say the UK has 7 points in its bank, and has 2 tanks and 5 infantry on offense in an engagement. they have a total of 11 points in the battle plus 7 banked, and could potentially kill 3 units. Germany has 1 tank and 7 guys on defense and 9 points in the bank. They could potentially kill 4 units and still have 2 in the bank, or they could save the 17 points from the tank and guys.
Also, you basically treat it as tho you had dice… You can’t kill more enemy units than you have in battle, and you play in rounds. So since the UK could only kill 3 men the first time, and germany could only kill 4, UK on the second round has 2 tanks and 2 infantry with nothing banked, so they can only kill one now, and bank 2, and germany at the start of the second round has 1 tank and 4 guys, so they can kill one guy and bank one point, or bank 7 points.
Another rule is that the attacker has to spend up to at least the next 6 if he can. If he sends a bomber out after a transport, and has 2 in the bank, he has to spend that 2 to kill it in the first round. This prevents dummy assults to get fast points. (Also, since the transport’s combat value is 0 instead of - like an industrial complex I play that you can spend 6 to kill with it. but thats optional)
I haven’t figured out a very good way of integrating the technology charts into my diceless system tho… We play that you spend 30ipcs to get the 6 dice that you’d statistically need to get your 6 rolled, and then you still have to roll for the actual technology itself. Tho I’m starting to experiment with assigning bank values to each tech (heavy bombers would be VERY expensive as opposed to increased factory production for instance)

[Emperor_Taiki]

I like dice, diceless games take away strategy and tension in exchange for short-term “fairness”(whatever that word means) which I wouldn’t want anyways.

[Keredrex]

this would also take away the possibility of attacking with less (but stronger) units, and winning the territory.

[crimsynseraph]

I don’t know what makes you think that removing randomness takes away strategy…. It just means that you don’t have any more HUGE unexpected losses. You still have NO idea how the other player will spend his points.

And I would hold that attacking with less but stronger units is just bad strategy, you don’t have anything to protect your stronger units when the many weaker ones start throwing out unreasonable amounts of ones.

The great thing about my version is it still keeps all the probability elements. Three destroyers are statistically going to roll a six. It just lets you choose when you get “lucky”. The strategy is not lost at all.

I don’t know, maybe the people I play with are just weird, but we always added up the numbers to see how many we’d probably lose vs take even before this system, so it wasn’t a huge change in how we played.

[allboxcars]

Ahhh yes, the thrill of math.

No thanks. I’ll keep my dice, forget my six times table and avoid the Deus Ex Machina phantom kill bank.

#691

[Emperor_Taiki]

@allboxcars:

Ahhh yes, the thrill of math.

No thanks. I’ll keep my dice, forget my six times table and avoid the Deus Ex Machina phantom kill bank.

#691

Diddo, when the results of battles are not pre-decided there is so much more the player has to deal with and take into consideration.

But suit yourself.

[Keredrex]

@crimsynseraph:

And I would hold that attacking with less but stronger units is just bad strategy, you don’t have anything to protect your stronger units when the many weaker ones start throwing out unreasonable amounts of ones.

Im thinking of those battles around the map where you got 5 inf.  but i can roll in with 3 tanks,  1 bomber … thats 10 vs 13… its less units but if the strategy makes the position valuable then Id do it even if sacrificing a bomber.  the odds are in my favor slightly.

more importantly… your taking out the wonderful possibility of rolling 5 1’s on defense and killing tanks and a bomber. 
when we play we keep a log of the game, especially when we have Miraculous rolls… like destroying a fleet cause all the subs hit with 1’s and your enemy had bad roll’s.

to each his own

[allboxcars]

@Keredrex:

more importantly… your taking out the wonderful possibility of rolling 5 1’s on defense and killing tanks and a bomber.   
when we play we keep a log of the game, especially when we have Miraculous rolls… like destroying a fleet cause all the subs hit with 1’s and your enemy had bad roll’s.

Personally those are my favourites even when I’m the one in the hurt locker over it. Always good for a laugh…

… but of course I cannot disagree:
@Keredrex:

to each his own

#706

[Lucifer]

@Emperor_Taiki:

I like dice, diceless games take away strategy and tension in exchange for short-term “fairness”(whatever that word means) which I wouldn’t want anyways.

So chess is not a strategy game??

[Lucifer]

@crimsynseraph:

So the idea is obviously to get rid of the element of chance.
The way I went about doing this is keeping all the values of the units, and you add the total value of all your units in a single engagement, and kill one enemy for every multiple of six that you reach.
Another thing is the point bank. You can choose to bank points or spend them to reach a different multiple of six.
So say the UK has 7 points in its bank, and has 2 tanks and 5 infantry on offense in an engagement. they have a total of 11 points in the battle plus 7 banked, and could potentially kill 3 units. Germany has 1 tank and 7 guys on defense and 9 points in the bank. They could potentially kill 4 units and still have 2 in the bank, or they could save the 17 points from the tank and guys.
Also, you basically treat it as tho you had dice… You can’t kill more enemy units than you have in battle, and you play in rounds. So since the UK could only kill 3 men the first time, and germany could only kill 4, UK on the second round has 2 tanks and 2 infantry with nothing banked, so they can only kill one now, and bank 2, and germany at the start of the second round has 1 tank and 4 guys, so they can kill one guy and bank one point, or bank 7 points.
Another rule is that the attacker has to spend up to at least the next 6 if he can. If he sends a bomber out after a transport, and has 2 in the bank, he has to spend that 2 to kill it in the first round. This prevents dummy assults to get fast points. (Also, since the transport’s combat value is 0 instead of - like an industrial complex I play that you can spend 6 to kill with it. but thats optional)
I haven’t figured out a very good way of integrating the technology charts into my diceless system tho… We play that you spend 30ipcs to get the 6 dice that you’d statistically need to get your 6 rolled, and then you still have to roll for the actual technology itself. Tho I’m starting to experiment with assigning bank values to each tech (heavy bombers would be VERY expensive as opposed to increased factory production for instance)

I like your philosophy, but the low luck system is also pretty good, at least much better than normal dice.

People play with whatever dice/combat system that they think is most interesting/exciting, but many of the dice proponents claim that coincidence is the same as skill, but the fact is that no one can control dice rolls, unless they are cheating, but we can control all the other aspects of the game, like buying and moving units.

I have played several LL games which was decided by luck, but many dice advocates deny the fact that this is possible…

[Emperor_Taiki]

@Subotai:

@Emperor_Taiki:

I like dice, diceless games take away strategy and tension in exchange for short-term “fairness”(whatever that word means) which I wouldn’t want anyways.

So chess is not a strategy game??

Chess and Diplomacy are too of my favorite games and they of course dont use any type of dice or cards or randomness.
Diceless games of A&A however are terrible. A&A is made to be played with dice, thats how it simulates battles. Diceless A&A is simply an exercise in subtraction which i can go back to kindergarden for. I like A&A because it is a simple strategy game with World War 2 flavor, leaders took alot of chances in WW2 and battles were uncertain affairs, so by removing the dice your just sucking fun from the game and your changing the strategy for the worse. The game certainly becomes less realistic.

I am not saying that with dice the better player always wins, I am saying i dont care if the better player wins any particular game or not.
Life isnt fair, and its an interesting expeirence to know you did your best and you still lost as it is too beat someone who is better than you.

[Lucifer]

@Emperor_Taiki:

Diceless games of A&A however are terrible. A&A is made to be played with dice, thats how it simulates battles.

but this is where you are wrong. A&A doesn’t simulate anything. The only way to “simulate” battles is to make a very complicated and advanced computer game.

In the long run, the better player will win regardless of LL or dice, but for single games, dice makes it so random that in a 1vs1 game with experienced players, the lucky player will win. How anyone can think that is more fun than with at least somewhat less randomness I do not understand. I started playing with dice until I got fed up, but after a lot of games and experience, it was obvious that the randomness was just too much.

But each to his own…

[crimsynseraph]

@Keredrex:

@crimsynseraph:

And I would hold that attacking with less but stronger units is just bad strategy, you don’t have anything to protect your stronger units when the many weaker ones start throwing out unreasonable amounts of ones.

Im thinking of those battles around the map where you got 5 inf.  but i can roll in with 3 tanks,  1 bomber … thats 10 vs 13… its less units but if the strategy makes the position valuable then Id do it even if sacrificing a bomber.  the odds are in my favor slightly.

more importantly… your taking out the wonderful possibility of rolling 5 1’s on defense and killing tanks and a bomber.   
when we play we keep a log of the game, especially when we have Miraculous rolls… like destroying a fleet cause all the subs hit with 1’s and your enemy had bad roll’s.

to each his own

Oki, yeah that might be a viable option… tho i would still very seldom attack with just tanks since you lose so much more in terms of ipcs when it gets taken back from you. combined forces all the way.

Also, assuming you have enough points banked and your enemy does not it would be a simple thing to destroy a fleet using only subs.

[Emperor_Taiki]

@Subotai:

@Emperor_Taiki:

Diceless games of A&A however are terrible. A&A is made to be played with dice, thats how it simulates battles.

but this is where you are wrong. A&A doesn’t simulate anything. The only way to “simulate” battles is to make a very complicated and advanced computer game.

Like I said, I play A&A for its WW2 theme, if you dont care for the theme I sorta see how you wouldn’t care for dice. However less randomness does not equate to more strategy. Tic-Tac-Toe and Checkers have no randomness yet only very simple people would call them strategy games.

One example of how dice add strategy to A&A is that when your losing you may need to figure out how to engage in a decisive battle in order to force a decision even though you will likly lose the battle. In a diceless game once your losing you might aswell give up and order pizza.

When your winning a dice game a wise  player is still caustious, they must build up there advantage and not get drawn into battles that they would have better chances of winning in subsequent turns. In a diceless game having the slightest advantage allows players to roll over there opponents with no question of their victory.

[Keredrex]

Just a thought… how do you handle Bombing raids and AA fire in a diceless game???

As the game is if a player is having a bad day concerning dice… he can make up for that with planning and strategy.  at the same time… a player who is suffering from a poor move can have a great dice roll and recover from poor strategy.  removing the dice simply takes those options out the game.  not necessarily a bad thing… but i dont see the point when the game was designed around Dice & Strategy.  ill just play chess … like 3d chess or hexagonal chess… if i dont want the probablility. but for Axis… give me the field marshal dice so i can see the flags on all the 1’s i roll

by the way this is a great discussion, thanks

[Lucifer]

Many of the LL bashers haven’t even tried LL, at least not much. I started playing dice in f2f games (A&A classic), but then we created the same LL system that TripleA supports, even though this was 20 years ago and there was no internet or TripleA. We decided that we could choose in each battle to use either regular dice or the LL system. I choose to play LL rather than dice after several TripleA games, where in 1vs1 or 2vs2 games, too many times the game was decided during the first two rounds b/c dice rolls favored one side.
There is no strategy that can beat bad dice, only if you start having extremely good luck, which is unlikely b/c of mathematical facts, if you have bad luck in the first round of a game, you must have much better luck than your opponent afterwards, b/c the opponent then will have a much stronger position and more units on the most important territories.

As I already mentioned, it is fully possible to lose LL games b/c of dicerolls, and it has happened many times, even though it does not happen very often compared to all those LL games where the best player wins. LL is no guarantee that you won’t lose b/c of bad luck, but it is much less likely than in regular dice games.

[crimsynseraph]

@Emperor_Taiki:

Like I said, I play A&A for its WW2 theme, if you dont care for the theme I sorta see how you wouldn’t care for dice. However less randomness does not equate to more strategy. Tic-Tac-Toe and Checkers have no randomness yet only very simple people would call them strategy games.

One example of how dice add strategy to A&A is that when your losing you may need to figure out how to engage in a decisive battle in order to force a decision even though you will likly lose the battle. In a diceless game once your losing you might aswell give up and order pizza.

When your winning a dice game a wise  player is still caustious, they must build up there advantage and not get drawn into battles that they would have better chances of winning in subsequent turns. In a diceless game having the slightest advantage allows players to roll over there opponents with no question of their victory.

I play it for it’s theme too… I don’t really understand why you think that taking out the dice makes it less WWII… Sure, in warfare there are unexpected events such as weather, or crappily trained soldiers… (Tho that’s hardly unexpected) but a good general should be able to account for a lot of that… The best general in the world can’t recover from never rolling a one. I invented this in a fit of frustration after rolling no more than 20 ones in an entire game. There is literally no amount of good strategy that can make up for the dice being that strongly against you. Its just not fun. This way whether you win or not is based entirely on whatever you can pull out of your head, or butt as sometimes happens. lol
And I have turned many games around from the brink of defeat with a few great moves. only to have my opponent do the same, and have to do the same again. I think it makes you think a lot more.

[Keredrex]

Ever thought of switching to a D10 die system?  i know there are posts that list the unit values… I think it would help alot… you could make infantry Att on 2’s making it a 1/5 chance instead of 1/6

[Emperor_Taiki]

A&A dosnt allow you to account for weather, sick generals, miscommunication, bad recon, the element of surprise and a host of other important factors that effect a campaign. Without dice the stronger force will always beat the weaker force given a combat, this is entirely unrealistc and contrary to the games theme.

It seems that your main concern is making sure that the better player always wins, I dont share that concern and I am prefectly fine with the better player losing. I dont see why dice make the game less strategic or interesting in fact I listed reasons why it makes it more strategic and more interesting.

Julius Ceaser agrees with me anyways “the die is cast”

@Keredrex:

Ever thought of switching to a D10 die system?  i know there are posts that list the unit values… I think it would help alot… you could make infantry Att on 2’s making it a 1/5 chance instead of 1/6

I have played some games using a d12. I found it was just confusing, i have been thinking about converting the stats into d8 or having different dice based on what unit is rolling.

[Keredrex]

@Emperor_Taiki:

I have played some games using a d12. I found it was just confusing, i have been thinking about converting the stats into d8 or having different dice based on what unit is rolling.

Yeah i made an attempt at working with d8’s then i heard A&A P / E 1940 were adding a Tac Bomber Unit.  Figured id up the dice to d10 to give a greater range between unit strenth and also allow percentage rolling if need be.  Which can make for interesting Tech rules or situations.  for example ive seen house rules that have Sub detection rules, which i think the percentage dice option would make it easier.