The Axis Advantage is Bigger Than You Think.

[gamerman01]

@Demandr3d:

2 quick questions

1. is this the league I’ve seen mentioned where the standard setup is Russia starting w a strat bmr, and then allies getting a bid as well?  I could certainly see that tilting the win percentage some.

No, that was a tournament that is down to its last (championship) game.  Not the league.

2. is this the league which requires forum postings of each players moves back and forth, which each player then has to play out separately on their own game map?

No, we use TripleA.  You are thinking of ABattlemap, which hasn’t been used for over a year.

If these are the case, frankly neither interests me much, from a competitive or effort standpoint.  Let me know, or just link to the rules and Im happy to check for myself.

Simply go to the league section and look at the stickied threads.  One of them is the league rules.
Don’t knock it 'til you’ve tried it

[Demandr3d]

Yeah, sounds good.

I wasnt knocking the league obviously, I was knocking something else :)

[gamerman01]

Demandr3d,

OK, finished reading your long post now.
You have seen a lot, but there is a lot you have not seen.  You could simply download some of the final tripleA maps from some of the heavyweight games on this site and I think you would see a lot of things you’ve never seen before, including liberation of France when the game is not a blowout.

Wheatbeer, who was trying to help you out, himself plays about 50 games a year so he’s seen a lot too.  We have another player or two who play 50 league games a year…  We have several “elite” players who win 75%+ of all their games, Axis and Allies combined.  All I’m saying is, if you want to see a lot of different game situations and strategies, this site is the place to be.  Start observing some games, or as Wheatbeer suggested, jump in the league.  You can see by the league standings who is going to give you serious competition.

[gamerman01]

Also, the 2013 league playoffs are happening right now.
Hobo and Allweneedislove, 2 of the top players on the site, have just completed G1 in the 2nd round of the playoff.
I am locking horns with Wheatbeer in round 1, I am online to play J5 right now.
I am a stronger Allies player but am playing the Axis, and Wheatbeer almost always plays the Axis but he is taking the Allies.  It is a pretty hotly contested game, with the German/Russian situation looking just like you described in your long post, but Wheatbeer went 100% after Japan with USA for the first 4 rounds so I did not declare war until J4 and am just now taking money islands (can’t wait to get my yellow hands on them)
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=32302.0;topicseen
So I don’t know if you even want to look at this one - it’s basically 2 guys arm wrestling with their left arms - but it is a compelling game because it appears to be pretty even at this point.
Other players here too, could recommend some great games for you to look at (esp. completed ones)

[wheatbeer]

1. No, that was an independent tournament unaffiliated with the league.
2. Generally speaking players complete a full turn and then post a map onto the forum (you just need to click a button within the tripleA program to create the post).

I am not 100% sure if I answered your second question or not. Play-by-forum naturally won’t be as fast as a game played live, but it makes scheduling infinitely more flexible.

League rules:
http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=32284.0

I was in the middle of posting, but basically I was also going to suggest (as an alternative) downloading some end game saves between top players and using tripleA’s “show history” feature to see how they played.

[Demandr3d]

OK, so Im a bit confused now, I thought u gus didnt use the forum for moves back and forth, but looking at the game against wheatbeer, I see your moves being announced and posted to the forum.

Whats with the turn summaries?

[ItIsILeClerc]

I really like Wheatbeer’s suggestion!

As opposed to dive into a long monologue about do’s and don’t for the allies. Which is indeed difficult for the exact reason Wheatbeer said: the allies are playing much more of a reactive game.

I could give some hints (in fact, I could hold a monologue about it for more than a day) but I 'll leave it at this for now. First I am going to check out the suggested games to see if its not all covered in there ;-).

Done enough writing for today  :lol:.

[gamerman01]

@Demandr3d:

OK, so Im a bit confused now, I thought u gus didnt use the forum for moves back and forth, but looking at the game against wheatbeer, I see your moves being announced and posted to the forum.

Whats with the turn summaries?

Those are not really used or even necessary.  You just need to download the file and look in the history.  Those are printed by TripleA automatically - player does not have to type anything.

[Demandr3d]

So basically it is just posting save files back and forth?  Thats not too onerous, I guess.

Just REALLY not a fan of PbE type formats….sigh I understand the necessity, just dampens my enthusiasm.

[gamerman01]

@Demandr3d:

So basically it is just posting save files back and forth?  Thats not too onerous, I guess.

Just REALLY not a fan of PbE type formats….sigh I understand the necessity, just dampens my enthusiasm.

TripleA automatically uploads the save file with the press of a button from within the game.
All we have to do is download one file each turn and load it up in Triple A, and then play.

[gamerman01]

You get the highest quality moves when players can take hours (if they want) to do their move, as opposed to face to face or online real time.  Also, in those formats, do you not have to wait for the other player to make his move?
Play by forum is maximum convenience.  You play when you want, and no one is sitting there wishing you’d hurry up your move because they are held hostage

[Demandr3d]

ehh, I find a lot of value in watching my opponent make his moves, I feel like I gain an understanding of his thought process that way, and that time between my moves is when I do my planning similar to the time between forum post moves.

I find my strategies to be more disjointed and less fluid when days go by between plays, especially when playing more than one high level game at a time.

Again, this isnt really a criticism in any way, just a personal preference.  I migrated over to triplea from GTO, where both formats are used extensively, so I’m familiar with the merits of both.  I’ve had this discussion with people before, its simply an agree to disagree kinda thing.

[gamerman01]

Right

I always review every move my opponent has made, going through the history, one move at a time.  I normally get a good idea of the thought process that way.

As for days going by, this can be largely controlled by who you play.  There are many players who will give you multiple moves every day, and others who are much more leisurely (like I am these days).

If you want the game to move along and you want to play a good player, I recommend Allweneedislove, Wheatbeer, Boldfresh, or Karl7, all very active league players.  There are other good players who play quite regularly as well, this is just a short list.

[Whackamatt]

Ooo! Ooo!  I send in multiple turns on at least 5 different games a day.  :-D

[JDOW]

He all,

I really believe that many people are strongly influenced by their own experiences and often prematurely derive game imbalances from that.
I cannot say in chess “panov-attack against caro-kann is imbalanced because I always lose against it”.

Unfortunately data bases in A&A are small so Gamerman posted the only objective data we have from the league archive, at least a couple of 100 games, not much but not nothing.

This data states that Axis “seem” to have a slight advantage (in the whole population), so “seem” means that with >500 games this is probably true with a probability of >90%, it could also be variance but quite unlikely with that sample size.

That’s it if you ask me. A&A is too complex to find out which side is stronger if both players played perfectly because no one soon will ever play even close to perfectly. I dare to say that the absolutely skill level (compared to chess) in A&A makes the best player in the world the one-eyed man in the country of blinds. I dare to predict that in a world in which humans would play A&A to the extend they play chess in reality in the past 100 years the dominant strategies could be entirely different from what we do today and consider it as standard. And maybe in this world even the Allies would have a heavy advantage. Maybe just nobody (except very few players) do simply know how to play the Allies? Maybe yes, maybe no, we simply don’t know for sure.

To me the current data is sufficient not to discuss any rule changes or additional NOs - at least not for balancing (one could do such stuff to create a new game e.g.)
From here bids are a self regulating system and imo work perfectly. And we meanwhile see that in very competitive games bids are usually 12-16 in the recent games –> There is a decent change that 12-16 might make the game even.

And then lets wait for next year. Maybe we even discuss in the other direction and suddenly Allies are too strong in case people like gamerman, hobo, AWN inspire other players to win with the Allies more:)

Cheers,
Tobias

[JDOW]

P.s.: To me bids are even a nice strategic layer of that game. I could imagine a A&A variant in which I would on purpose create the standard setup in they way:
this is the placed Units and Axis/Allies can place units worth XX$ under the restrictions xyz.
So I do not even see a crucial need to aim for a starting setup which does not require bids at all.

[JDOW]

Recent developments btw. showed that bids are going up. Axis discovered that playing for economic victory can be more attractive and more difficult to stop than all-in strategies on Europe victory.

I expect average bids of +20 and higher for the G40 2014 play-offs.

[gamerman01]

@Karl7:

After playing 20+ games on the forum and off, most as the allies, I say that the Axis advantage is not slight… its huge.  I’d say at least, AT LEAST, worth a 15 bid for the allies, if not more.

Well then, I guess Karl saw it 2 years ahead of the rest of us, although I don’t think his bidding history supports this statement, does it?  :-)

[Witt]

I am a bit fed up of how easily Russia is brought down to 20 Income, whilst Germany is consistently earning 62+. Seems ridiculous  that Germany is rewarded for holding political victory cities or regions, but Russia isn’t for holding the same historically fought over ones.
I agree that taking Moscow is not as important to ultimate victory as going South and starving Russia of income, while Germany maintains enormous wealth.
I have always favoured playing the Allies, but will have to start accepting  the Axis, or risk losing most games.

[knp7765]

If you play the game without NOs, it will balance things out a little. Germany won’t be making quite so much more than Russia, although I imagine it will hurt Russia some not getting that Archangel NO. In most of our games, Russia will get that one for sure for several rounds, even if Germany is attacking them and taking a lot of territory. The reason being is that Germany tends to not be able to get a warship up to SZ 125. They do make subs but they mostly go south to either convoy raid England or try to threaten the American fleet. Once Germany gets Leningrad though, Archangel will fall the next round. That always happens. By that time Russia is turtling in Moscow.

Another idea we had is to give Russia a few small NOs. Basically, when Russia is at war in Europe, they get 2 IPCs for each victory city they control. This includes their own cities so even if Russia doesn’t get any German territories, they will still get 6 IPCs per round for a while and 4 IPCs for a few rounds after Leningrad falls. It helps out Russia a little, gives them a few extra men to hold Moscow.