Oh my gawwwwwd. I’ll have to get some. It’s too bad HBG is sold out!
Game unbalanced?
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Hi,
I am a long time lurker; reading the various forums on each of the games. I have a friend that I played the original Axis and Allies with which we determined was totally unbalance in favor of the allies. We have played Spring 1942 and found that it was still unbalanced towards the Allies. The next game comes out and now I have been told that it is balanced against the Allies. In fact, I have been told that it is impossible to win with the Allies playing with dice.
Looking at the map, the Germans have superior numbers against the Russians. And due to the increase in naval presence, the Allies have a very hard time making any headway against Germany. The board does appear to be set up for attacking Japan however it still means a losing proposition for the allies.
I have played a game as allies against the 1.8.0.5 AI and lost. I made several bad moves which involved not landing fighters on newly purchased carriers.
Is it possible to win with the Allies given average dice? I tend to think that we are looking at the game to simplistically; that there is more to it than meets the eye. Of course, that might just be me wanting there to be more to the game given the $50 price tag.
What does everyone else think? Can Germany simply overrun Russia regardless of UK and USA?
Thanks.
Kirk S.
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Hi,
I think that the game is slightly in favor of the axis. But for new players, the advantage is huge. When we had just started playing this game, our 4 first games ended in axis victory in round 5, 6 or 7. The 2 last games was played with a 15 bid for the allies.
The axis are a lot easier to play. Pushing headless for Moscow with Germany, and India + Moscow with Japan is possible against unexperienced players. The allies require more tactics and map awareness. Transporting troops from US and UK require thinking many turns ahead, and correct position of naval vessels and transports are crucial so you dont get your fleet sunk by the axis airforce. And with Russia, you can’t just stack Moscow with inf only and wait for the “big attack” in round 5-6. You have to play smart, strafe-retreat, trade Karelia/Caucasus from your West Russia stack etc.
-seawolf
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Until you get comfortable and know all the “correct” opening moves for allies you can give em 24 IPCs and will be a much more balanced game - against an inexperienced allies player.
Some house rules you might want to consider are those from the global edition…16 IPC Aircraft carriers that take 2 hits to sink, need to repair capital ships at ICs (i.e battleships and aircraft carriers). And lastly ability to scramble one fighter from IC. This helps protect the two US transporters and destroyer in first turn without the need of Allies requiring a bid (to buy destroyer to defend).
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I agree majority of what Seawolf said too. Perhaps Axis has slight advantage but it’s not as bad as it first looks.
Although I lose more often when playing Allies, I feel the game is not as unbalanced as originally thought. It’s true Germany starts at a much stronger position than 1E, but the real reason why Allies is felt particularly weak in this version is because there is little space for Russia to make mistake at the beginning. One bad dice and it could easily screw Russia (thus Allies). Finding ways to minimise this from happening before the UK/US produce enough support becomes a puzzle to figure out.
In fact I have a mixed feeling to Axis - to me, if both side are beginner, Axis is obviously easier to play and win. But when the Allies player is competent, playing Axis to win is much more challenging, and in fact I find coordinating Axis force could be even more difficult than Allies some times due to the way it is split and you could only do as much as 1-2 punches.
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Seawolf has it right. The game hugely favors axis at the beginner level because Germany steamrolls Russia. Both players will make major positioning mistakes, but germay starts with more offense to punish the mistakes.
Playing the game at high levels, the map still favors Axis, but not by much.
Hi,
I think that the game is slightly in favor of the axis. But for new players, the advantage is huge. When we had just started playing this game, our 4 first games ended in axis victory in round 5, 6 or 7. The 2 last games was played with a 15 bid for the allies.
The axis are a lot easier to play. Pushing headless for Moscow with Germany, and India + Moscow with Japan is possible against unexperienced players. The allies require more tactics and map awareness. Transporting troops from US and UK require thinking many turns ahead, and correct position of naval vessels and transports are crucial so you dont get your fleet sunk by the axis airforce. And with Russia, you can’t just stack Moscow with inf only and wait for the “big attack” in round 5-6. You have to play smart, strafe-retreat, trade Karelia/Caucasus from your West Russia stack etc.
-seawolf
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Thanks for the replies…
I think I understand the idea of strafing off the infantry as Russia, one issue that I have is that the defending pieces have the advantage in firepower. The supply lines for Germany are long and even with the starting advantage, Germany cannot afford to trade tanks for infantry. Unit balance is probably also a key, the artillery would seem to be a likely unit for Russia as it doubles the firepower of matching infantry making them as strong on offense as defense.
The map changes and having Germany’s starting naval units being able to hit the Allies really makes is difficult to get a navy going.
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Good way of thinking so far I would say :-)
As with the Allied fleets: Even after G1 UK holds a a small but nice fleet on the board… the problem is: it’s scattered: India, Australia, maybe one ship in Med, Canadian coast. Try to unite them in the Atlantic meeting somewhere west of South Africa. In the meantime the US will have built up a strong naval force (Pacific fleet coming to the Atlantic plus US1 and US2 purchases: I do mostly 2 carriers+ 2 Figs to load them, 2 destroyers, bit by bit up to 8 transports) to support the UK fleet. UK should build up a strong Fighter force to hold India, and when the fleet comes up to the European coast it can start bringing troops from UK heartland to Europe on maybe 3 transports, later 4.
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Maybe it’s just TripleA that’s unbalanced… I’ve never seen so many horrible rolls for one side followed by excellent rolls on the other. As is usual, I’m sure that I only remember the bad rolls however I rolled at least 12 1 inf, 1 fig vs 1 inf and the computer hit 90% of the time and I missed 70%. I thought the odds were 1/3 and 7/12. It sure makes it difficult, even against a computer, to win when you lose so many small battles. Not to mention that Russia simply can’t afford to lose that many infantry without any sort of reward.
I understand that it’s possible for 1 fig, 1 bom, 1 des to lose to 1 cru; however, this happened while Russia got 0 hits on 2 rolls with everything except 1 fig in West Russia. I don’t even want to discuss Baltic.
By the time I lost, I was laughing at it because it was so unreasonable.
I still think that it is very hard to win with Allies. Especially if the rolls go horribly.
CK
P.S. even through all of this, I managed to hold West Russia for at least 10 turns. I got stupid with Britain and bought a navy instead of 2 fig, 1/2 inf, 2/1 art for India. America had the Philippines and all of Japan’s navy was gone. I should have gone for a KJF instead of a KGF due to the starting rolls. Britain had East Indies and Borneo to offset Germany in Africa. I kept trading France when I should have been landing those 8/10 units in Morocco and pushing towards Caucasus. I guess you just can’t fix dumb… ;-)
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The dice on Triplea distribution perform consistent very closely to mathematical ideals. An explanation of the algorithm can be found here: http://triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki/OnlineDice
In fact, Triplea dice are even better than real dice which suffer from differences in weight distribution, judging dice on uneven surfaces, and human error.I attribute people’s perceptions of “unfair dice” to two factors:
A poor understanding of statistics: It’s not particularly surprising to have significant deviations from expected value with such small samples (e.g. 1 fig, 1 inf vs 1 inf). If you run the simulation 10,000 times and I’m confident that the distribution will be centered around the expected value.Selective human perception: We as humans remember the 3 standard deviation outcomes because they’re unusual. I had a game where one defending transport sank a battleship and survived. You bet that I remember this event; it was a 0.3% probability (3z) event from expected value. Yet, I don’t remember the thousands of events where the outcome was about expectations
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Thanks, I understand statistics pretty well. Given the total rolls involved, I’m sure they balanced out to average. After all, if I hit the 1/16 bad roll and the other guy hits the 1/16 good roll, then they average out. It just doesn’t feel that way. A simple example is rolling 4 dice hoping for 1/2/3. 1/16 you get 0, 4/16 you get 1, 6/16 you get 2, 4/16 you get 3 and 1/16 you get 4. If you play by the low luck rules, this roll always yields 2 however, I prefer the randomness of the rolls. Some people will feel that they should get 2 50% of the time. Like flipping a coin 4 times. I prefer to take the chance of missing completely as an initial indicator of when to battle.
Just like in bowling where you can throw a great ball and get a solid 8 pin and the next guy throws it dead down the middle and they all fall down. Them’s the breaks… They even out; they just don’t always even out the way you want them to.
I’m still having trouble adjusting when a large battle goes terribly wrong for the Allies. ;-) I’m sure the random number generator is just fine. My perception is skewed.
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Once the Allies get diced, the game is gone. Try having everything hit on West Russia and get 1 hit on offense and 3 hits in defense. The next turn takes it out however, the reply is 3 hits again. Lose the Baltic battle, which happens more than 75% of the time in my games and the Allies are screwed.
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Anything is possible in Dice.
But yeah, short answer, the game is unbalanced in favor of Axis.
I’d put it down to several reasons….
Map design and Production spread: To be specific, the indefensible Russian starting position on the Karelia factory, and the fact that the British must spend additional money (relative to previous editions) to protect the India factory. Fewer shuck-shuck paths for the Allies to exploit in general. Another space between the W. US to East Indies Pacific transit for USA. While Japan has a much easier route to Moscow from sz62 transport via Szech/Kaz, and US cannot build viable production in China to stall them since all territories here are worth 1 ipc now.
Updated unit costs/abilities: mainly the more expensive tank at 6, the defenseless transport at 7, and the cheaper bomber at only 12 ipcs. Most of these alterations work in favor of Axis.
The starting unit balance: both on the Eastern front and with Germany’s ability to destroy Allied starting ships in the Atlantic, seems to favor Axis. Also, the situation around Egypt is very precarious for both sides. The potential swing there is pretty large, and its easily jacked up by bid units. I see most people bid in this area when allowed to an open bid.
Possible solutions: I prefer a set bid of some sort for this board, like an extra Russian fighter at Moscow, or an extra US Atlantic destroyer. I say set, because otherwise the Allied player is more likely to spend the money on UK units to lock Axis off Egypt, or break a naval battle, or just put a ton of Russian ground in the East, which can kind of bust the opening in the opposite direction. Or alternatively you could try a slightly larger bid but only to income (without any extra units getting put on the board.)
Or another route is to use some kind of house rule to bring the game more in reach of Allied victory. Again I like rules that increase Allied income, or increase income overall, as a way to balance. Or instead of income you can try to tweak with the production, like allowing Allies to place an additional factory somewhere.
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Thanks for the information. I bought two of these thinking it would be more fun than the first 1942 game. I played it a couple of times and found out that the Allies had a big advantage. My friend, whom I have played all of the Axis and Allies games with, played with his son during the Christmas break and told me that this game was so imbalanced that the Allies had no chance at all. I had read about how it was easy to counter the all tank build, etc. The one thing that I have found from playing the game is that one Ukraine is stacked, Russia is in big trouble. I kept thinking that Britain and America could put some pressure on Japan and yet it is very difficult to do so because Germany and Japan will decimate the British navy. Even if you try to put pressure on Japan, they can simply buy bombers, fighters and inf/art to pressure Russia.
yeah, American can build carriers and transports to land units on Europe. the problem is that by that time, Germany and Japan are both monsters. With the income the Axis have, they can sacrifice their air force to destroy the navy and have it all built back by the time the Allies have recovered.
Or am I missing something?
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Updated unit costs/abilities: mainly the more expensive tank at 6, the defenseless transport at 7, and the cheaper bomber at only 12 ipcs. Most of these alterations work in favor of Axis.
Oddly, I only find that the transport at 7 is in favor of Axis.
Tank at 5 IPCs will create a German “blitzdozer” on Russia.
While Bomber at lower cost can provides US and UK a bit more Fast Flying units toward the front line, in 1 or 2 rounds.One option to see how it changes the balance, is simply to turn Transport into Classic ones at 8 IPCs, Defending @1, and worth 1 hit.
You can also choose to keep it as the Last Casualty Chosen. (I prefer this one.)
It simplify things a bit, and Allies will need less escorting Warships. -
I think the problem is one of position. True, the Allies make more money than the Axis - but there should be an asterisk on that. The USA starts out totally out of position and usually cannot use their income in a meaningful way until several rounds go by. So it is really just the UK and Russia doing the fighting against all the Axis. One solution is a lend-lease rule like I posted elsewhere that would enable the Allies to get IPCs quickly where they are needed, before the Axis forces get out of hand.
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My rationale on the tank cost hurting Allies has to do more with Russia. In AA50 for example, it was a lot more viable for Russia to create an offensive armor stack. For use in deadzoning, or to provide more reach on counterattack options. Germany and Japan will build tanks no matter what they cost, because the movement advantage is so strong blitzing towards the center. Axis would probably buy Armor even at a cost of 7 or 8 haha, just because of the way the map is designed, the fact that they need to reach the center as quickly as possible. But Russia doesn’t have that same incentive. They don’t really need to “race” anywhere as part of their natural movements (other than maybe Karelia or perhaps India) so I find that its a lot harder for Russia to justify buying tanks on this board. A similar problem affects UK in India, where the tanks are just a bit too expensive to justify, and most players opt for inf/art combo. The bomber its true can also be used effectively by the Allies, I just think it favors Japan with the reach, and as an easy way to pound Russia into the ground for a relatively cheap Axis investment. Again the distance from Moscow to the coastal regions of China often means that Japan can launch their bombers to Moscow or Caucasus and still have 3 spaces left to move afterwards, usually to Europe where they can put extra defensive pips on a German stack and threaten weakly defended Allied transports around Europe or the Med at the same time they threaten sbr on the Russian capital.
Der Kuenstlers comment about Allies being out of position is on point. I lot of people I’ve gamed with in 42.2 make the gripe that USA is too slow to get into the fight, and that they have a hard time impacting the game before the fate of Moscow is decided. Both Atlantic shucks are gone. Africa, UK both take one more round now, since you have to launch the transports 2 moves and then alternate them rather than shucking, which means you have to buy more transports overall, and since they don’t defend on their own, it means you have to by more warships too! All this combines to stall the USA’s Atlantic crossings. The Pacific isn’t much better. The inability to drop a China factory to support the British India factory, means that anything the USA does here has to come across the ocean, again via defenseless transports. The British have a somewhat stronger position in the Pacific, relative to previous boards, and that can be a boon, but the balance around India is often so precarious that its very hard for them to branch out much. The idea of using USA to bank roll the two weaker Allies is novel, and I think it has some definite promise.
For a KJF or Pacific oriented game, my main advice would be not to take Borneo with UK. This has screwed me in the endgame as Allies more times than I care to recount. Often times in a KJF full press, you will have the opportunity to snatch up the rich islands with UK (on account of the turn order), East Indies is a fairly easy grab, and it may be very tempting to take Borneo in subsequent rounds with UK just to deny the income to Japan (and beef up the British purse in the process) but in the long term you will hose USA’s pacific game by doing this. USA desperately needs to control one of the two 4 ipc islands for production purposes (either East Indies, or Borneo), to have any real chance of setting up on the mainland or Tokyo itself in the endgame. This isn’t just to handle Japan though, its also to deal with a German controlled Moscow/Eurasia and to cover the launch points onto India and Africa. If you give both islands to UK, its asking for problems down the road, as Japan may be too preoccupied to attempt retaking them, and then USA is locked off the production by their British Allies (who themselves usually don’t have the cash to buy production, or exploit it even if they did.) Other than the Borneo to USA thing my only other advice for a Pac game is to be as aggressive as you possibly can with UK and Russia early on. Unlike Classic or Revised, its a lot harder for Allies to just count on the inevitability of victory due to the US economy.
TripleAI is not very effective, so you will definitely find that playing against Human opponents is even more challenging. I’ve seen a few Russian openings that I like, but I’m still undecided whether I prefer the Northern Stack Karelia/Archangel focus, or the Southern stack Ukraine/Caucasus focus. Southern seems much more intuitive, but I’ve seen the Northern stack work quite well too. It depends on what sort of fighter transit for Russian defense you are trying to set up.
Also, its important to remember that a lot of players, and many tripleA players especially, do not play dice but rather play Low Luck. Its not always immediately obvious when you hear people talking about balance issues, which playstyle they prefer. I like dice games myself, and in dice there are always chances for recovery, provided you are willing to play things out. LL is different. In an LL game, the bids and opening purchases become much more critical, as the underdog will have less chance at recovery once the game starts to slip away from them.
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Thanks to all for this great analysis. Very interesting as I have not analyzed the game to that extent nor played any of the Global varieties. When I first got the game and set it up, it really hit me as a KJF game. Britain and America both start with a fairly large navy in the Pacific. The problem is that Japan has a larger navy and before an America/Britain punch can be applied, the British navy is pretty much gone. The Axis are able to apply that 1-2 punch to the Allies where it is much more difficult to set up that 1-2-3 punch against the Axis.
I figure out the odds however I don’t like low luck; if I want to play a game of chess, then I’ll do that. Like most people, I get worse than average rolls ;-) At least I remember them that way.
Interesting on saving one of the large IPC islands for America. It seems to me that forcing Japan, which must use transports to move units to the Asian coast, to spend money on navy would be the most effective way of winning as the Allies. Germany has no need to spend a dime on the navy and simply needs to protect it’s capital and take territory away from Russia.
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Hard AI is a definite improvement, over previous editions of tripleA if you’re using TripleA_1_8_0_5
The Allied opening under AI control is pretty fun times. You can learn from the machine :-D
But it does some things you can definitely exploit. For example, the Hard AI seems to enjoy purchasing battleships. Whatever the reasons for this, (and it does have a certain charm I’ll admit, and can sometimes lead to some nice scores for the AI) but it’s important to recall that no seasoned human player is going to be spending the majority of their cash on this unit. Buy carriers and dd instead. Also Hard AI was (I believe) designed to play on the Revised game map. 1942.2 and all games since AA50, have used defenseless transports. So the TripleAI will often send their transports forward to be sacrificed unecessarily. Now this doesn’t do you much good against a veteran human, but if you just want to beat up on the computer, start trying tricks like that. Because who knows, before too long the AI might just go HAL style on us, or become self aware like Skynet, and then we will all pay dearly for those defenseless transports we sunk with our bombers LOL.
Keep at it dude, and pick up some games in the lobby if you can. Fastest way to get the edge is to watch how other people do things, and when you get rocked, you adapt or try something you saw that the enemy did, against your next opponent.
I think on all the new boards, it really pays to maginify your bomber buys. A pair of them might not crush super hard, but get 4 or 5 together hitting in the same spot, over long distances and you might start to see more opportunities develop. Keeping your air together, and keeping your fleets safe from the enemy’s air. I feel like that’s half the game now, ever since the bomber cost was reduced, and transports were given a defense value of 0.
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I agree with what Baron said. I think bringing back the classic transport at 8 IPC’s and 1 defense, but is only able to be taken as a hit last would be a much needed improvement over the current 7 dollar non defense transport. The problem with the defenseless transport is huge, and I don’t think people realize that it is, in a way, game breaking because of how Germany can take advantage of this buy buying planes.
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Yeah, I’ve seen the Hard AI leave a bomber within range of a fighter and transports left unguarded however most of the time, the takes my fighter in a direction that I don’t want to go. So, the transport might seem like an easy target however it keeps the fighter from performing a defensive action.
Realistically, I think the game needs to be played with 12 sided dice because, let’s face it, the infantry are so overpowered for the cost. In fact, the artillery simply make them an even better unit with the increased firepower. I haven’t even tried playing the Axis yet because, well I don’t want to feel really stupid getting beat by the computer. ;-) Removing the transport ability to fight back is really a stab at the Allies because only they need to have a lot of them to do anything.
I think I will look at the game as the Axis really must attack because if they don’t, they are toast. The trick is to get them to attack where you want them to without giving too much up. Now that I’ve looked at the map again and reread your small novel, SZ5 almost seems unfair… Once the Allies are there, it really is going to be hard for the Axis to stop them especially if they have a large bomber force in America and use the fighters that Britain has been building each turn. I can see 3 US and 1 UK carrier with a bunch of transports and infantry being a huge headache. I just need to prevent loss by victory city.
And I really don’t like taking advantage of AI glitches or logic mistakes. The computer can’t learn so once you take advantage of it, it’s like taking candy from a baby. And I have bad teeth already.
The submarines seem like a unit that could be very useful however, like most people, I seem to never get the 1/3 chance when I need it. Again, this seems like another attempt to balance the game in favor of the Axis because the Allies typically don’t need a naval stealth unit.
And I never really thought much about SZ61; I always considered that japan would go the old route instead of through America. It’s closer and if Germany has Caucasus, really pressures Russia.
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