What's the consensus on a standard bid?

[Mazer Rackham]

@Lucifer:

I’m gonna forget about the Norway attack, it’s too damn risky

Wise  :-D And good debate credit to you for admitting when changing your position is a good idea.

I still would want to kill 2 G ftrs though.

Yeah, I’ve tried a couple of strats where that was the goal, but I was just never happy enough with the plan.  You can send:

NOR: 3inf 1tnk 1ftr
UKR: 3inf 1art 3tnk 1ftr
WRU: 6inf 1art

Those are all battles in your favor, but I would certainly avoid an opening that risky.  Come to think of it, however, in Low Luck that distribution might be fine.

The triple attack R1, if this is risky it’s much less risky in LL. So you hope for good dice R1 then?

Nope, you look for average dice.

Mazer, you fail to explain why the triple attack is a good strat in ADS but not in LL.

There is no attacker advantage in ADS that is not in LL. Other than luck.

Ah, then let me explain a couple things.  First, I’m not saying the Triple is good in a regular game but not in Low Luck.  If anything, it is much BETTER in Low Luck, and the opening is more exploitable.  Second, I’ll give a quick example using battles like we have been talking about to show what I mean.

Suppose you have 3 battles where you have a 60% chance of winning EACH of them.  What is your chance of winning ALL of them?

It is not 60%.  It is actually the chance of winning each battle times the other chances of winning the battles.

So you get 0.6 * 0.6 * 0.6 = 0.216, or only a 22% chance you will win all three of them.

But notice that in Low Luck, you have a 100% chance of winning those three battles because they are all significantly in your favor.  (To forestall an argument, let’s say all three battles are 18inf attacking 12inf, which is an easy Low Luck battle with a 61% edge for the attacker)

It is counter-intuitive, but if you have two battles with a 70% favorable outcome, you are likely to lose one of them (0.7 * 0.7 = 0.49, or 51% of the time you’re unhappy).

Is not uncommon that G place all bids in Europe, will the triple attack be a good strat then?

Well, remember that you only have a 52% chance to take all three territories in the first place (.72 * .85 * .86 = 52%).  So by adding a single unit to any of the three territories you will drop that win likelihood below 50%; you no longer have an edge.

At 52% it is a strategy; at 48% it is a prayer  :-D  That’s the type of fight you would take, however, if you were playing against a better opponent and felt you needed some luck.  A 48% chance might be your best chance.

Peace

[Lucifer]

Small details can have big impact in A&A. The two games I witnessed, triple attack R1 –-> G had Moscow early, both had
all G bids placed in Europe…
This reminds me of advise I got from players who are much more experienced than me, I ask 10 questions about different
issues, opening moves, attacks etc.

Q: “What would you do if…?”

A:  “It depends…”.  :-P

Good players always play according to the situation on the map, what the opponent does, and all those enemy units that should be removed from the surface of the earth  :-)

[Jennifer]

That’s kinda the point.  In ADS it is not formulaic, it is emotional, it is luck, it is odds and it is strategy.  In Low Luck, it is formulaic and none of the rest.

In LL you won’t look at a stack of 25 Infantry, 10 Artillery, 25 Armor, 5 Fighters and a Bomber the same way you would in ADS.  Why?  In LL you KNOW that the defender WILL get 27 or 28 hits.  In ADS it’s probably they will get 27, 28 hits in round 1, but it’s also highly probable they will get as little as 20 hits or as many as 35 hits with all, almost identical, probabilities. (3% at either extreme, 6% in the middle, all well within +/- 4% of the most likely outcome of 28 hits.)

Well, that may not seem like a lot to some, but we’re talking a swing of 15 hits.  That’s very significant in a 5 round battle if it happens on round 1!

Same battle, in LL, however, would have a MAXIMUM swing of 1 hit per round.  That’s a swing of 5 hits in a 5 round battle, no where near 15+.

[U-505]

@Cmdr:

I totally agree with DM.

LL is a poor way to compare strategies when talking about an ADS game.  In LL there is almost no flexibility in the outcome (hence why it is LOW luck) but in real games a major attack can go bad from round 1 or you can get a miracle hail mary to save the day.

That has become somewhat of a problem with ADS, though. People are relying far too much on the “hail mary” especially in situations where it isn’t even needed.

Low Luck is primarily about strategy with a small dice component that allows the Axis to rapidly ramp up to match the Allied income without too much fear of being upended by a bad round of dice, while ADS is becoming more and more a game of craps with a dash of strategy thrown in for flavor.

Why do you think most of my games go 20+ rounds and devolve into slow grinds at the end? It’s because when I am winning, I refuse to allow my opponent to turn the game around on a low percentage shot at victory. It sucks to have to play a game a bunch of extra rounds because your opponent holds out waning hope when the game is clearly over. But then again, it sucks worse to lose a game you should have won because your opponent managed to win a battle or battles that were heavily lopsided against them.

[trihero]

LLers hate this fact.  That is why they play LL.  They don’t want this effect to upset their best laid plans.

I dislike LL for the exact opposite reason - if I have good dice, then my plan doesn’t matter.

I use LL for a fast strategic modeling tool - it cuts out BOTH bad and good dice, not just the bad.

[Lucifer]

In a single game the dice is often the most important factor. Not more than 50% though.
In a ranking system one single game is not important for stats. If someone has played more than 10-15 games it’s
obvious that the dice is not a big issue, and both good and bad luck will even out. Not so in a single game though.
Everything depends, and many players are not even on the same level.
It’s not uncommon that someone wins a game because of an attack on a capital which has less than 50% for success.
This can also happen in LL.
The dice factor can have a variation between 1% to 99% imo.
All depends on the players and the dice…

[tekkyy]

Does anyone play LL in a physical game?
Did the maths slow things down?

It can be convenient since you only need 1 die.
I wonder if they should realise a axis and allies revised: on-the-go.
A small board with holes for units to plug in.

Has there been other variations besides no luck and low luck?
Say…“half-luck”?
(Half the hits points affected by luck.)

[Lucifer]

In my “playgroup” many years ago, playing the classic board game, I invented a low luck system similar to low luck in triplea.
We used it often, but not always. I also think had we had flexible rules so that players could choose if they wanted to roll
10 dice for 10 tanks, or just decide that “this battle” shall have average outcome. I don’t remember if we agreed that
one battle would be either LL or ADS, but in some games we used a combination of LL and ADS.
Sometimes math slowed down the speed of the game yes. :)
To be 100% sure to take Moscow or Berlin was worth all those manual calculations.

Now I play both ADS and LL. The problem is not only unfair dice, is also that if I get very lucky, then victory doesn’t feel
that good as if the dice was pretty average.
If I play better than my opponent, then I should win. Simple as that.

Some battles in A&A is like Hitler got a message from the eastern front that 500.000 soldiers were lost because of a big earthquake.
This is different from if soldiers cannot fight with big strength because they are freezing, or they lack food and ammo.
Or that UK navy detonated an EMP bomb which caused all German aircraft to crash because their engine shut down in the canal.
I may be conservative, but I hate pacifist soldiers. Those men should be working in the supply divisions and not on the battlefield.

Having 6 inf + 2 tanks firing 4 rnds of combat with no hits is not good for the my blood pressure,
if you cannot aim then don’t become a soldier  :-P

[axis_roll]

@tekkyy:

Does anyone play LL in a physical game?
Did the maths slow things down?

It can be convenient since you only need 1 die.
I wonder if they should realise a axis and allies revised: on-the-go.
A small board with holes for units to plug in.

Has there been other variations besides no luck and low luck?
Say…“half-luck”?
(Half the hits points affected by luck.)

In our face-to-face games, we use a version of Low Luck we call Dice averaging.

This is where like units can take their even hits, and roll the odd dice.

Example:
8 inf, 5 tanks, 2 ftrs attack.

I can dice average 4 hits (1 for the 6 inf, 2 for the 4 tanks, 1 for the two ftrs) and roll 2 inf and 1 tank.

Both attacker and defender can request a dice average.  You can only ask for one battle per country turn (when attacking Germany could have 1 dice average battle, if attacked threee times by the allies, Germany could request dice average 3 more times on the UK, US, and USSR turns as a defender).

In order to avoid the 10 tanks and 12 inf exactly hitting 7 units and running against a stack of 8 inf defending, there are threee ‘must roll’ cards each side has to negate a dice-average request.

This system has served us well.  Reduces odd battle outcomes, speeds the game up (no need to roll a dice average battle, typically)

In the 7th round, and every 2 rounds after that, you get 1 more must roll card.

[Jennifer]

Honestly, LL ruins the game for me.  I need a certain amount of luck.  And, when it comes to naval engagement (and Mollari will support me in this) I get all KINDS of luck!

[frood]

Jennifer, Luck doesn’t work the way you think it does. There, I’ve said it. I know I won’t convince you in a million years, just had to say it.

[Jennifer]

Ender,

When I attack my opponent at sea with 40% chance to win, and win, that’s lucky.

If I attack my opponent at land with 90% chance to win, and lose, that’s unlucky.

How does luck work in your mind?  Not saying your way is right or wrong, just interested in your thoughts on how luck works.

[frood]

What I’m saying is that there is no reason at all that you would have a consistent pattern over dozens of games of always having good luck in naval battles, bad luck with your AF, good luck with your Inf, or whatever.

Dice is dice. They don’t know who’s rolling them or what for, and they always have a 1/6 chance of rolling any given number.

[trihero]

Honestly, LL ruins the game for me.  I need a certain amount of luck.  And, when it comes to naval engagement (and Mollari will support me in this) I get all KINDS of luck!

I would never advocate LL become the standard for tournament play, because I acknowledge the thrill of full luck and the intention behind it. I merely think that LL is an excellent strategic planning tool that helps you cut right through the crap of good/bad dice to see what your strategy is really like in the long run.

[Jennifer]

Yes, Ender, they always have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling any given number.  Now, ask Mollari how often I engage him navally with an inferior force and win.

And I can give you numbers on my infantry consistantly scoring more hits then my fighters in small engagements.  My fighters (except in naval campaign) couldn’t hit the broadside of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics with a nuclear weapon in most engagements.  But yes, the numbers are also skewed because I have many battles when my infantry out number my fighters and only few where fighters out number infantry.  So there’s 2 chances for the infantry to hit and only one chance for the fighter to hit in MOST land battles for me.  Still, that’s only supposed to be a cumulative 33% chance for the infantry to hit vs 50% for the fighter to hit. (Assuming only ONE infantry needs to hit for a hit to be scored, not that both have to hit.)

That’s why I say I have good luck here or there.  Not because the numbers are any different.  If the numbers were different,then I’d have good probability - that’s not the same as luck.

[trihero]

Well in the long run luck evens out…if you kept rolling those naval battles against Mollari you’d eventually find that things will even out.

[Jennifer]

@Bean:

Well in the long run luck evens out…if you kept rolling those naval battles against Mollari you’d eventually find that things will even out.

Hun, Mollari and I play roughly 2 games a week on average and I don’t think I’ve lost a naval battle to him yet.  Army/Air Force I lose all the time to him (and I win all the time too.)  Navally, I can’t remember the last time, if there was a time, I lost a naval battle to him.  Unfortunately, battleships and aircraft carriers can’t take land!

[trihero]

Hun, I said in the long run. I’m talking hundreds if not thousands of games. There’s no telling when your luck will break, is there?

[Jennifer]

Hopefully my luck won’t break, it’ll just shift from Naval engagements to land engagements.  :evil:

[tekkyy]

Yes dice can ruin your day.
But for me LL removes way too much luck for my tastes.
I feel risk management is part of the game.
So I think I’ll only enjoy half luck.

Requestable half luck is also nice.

And just in case I am confused, what does ADS stand for?

@axis_roll:

In our face-to-face games, we use a version of Low Luck we call Dice averaging.
…
Both attacker and defender can request a dice average.  You can only ask for one battle per country turn (when attacking Germany could have 1 dice average battle, if attacked threee times by the allies, Germany could request dice average 3 more times on the UK, US, and USSR turns as a defender)
…
In the 7th round, and every 2 rounds after that, you get 1 more must roll card.

Well since you roll half the dice you should call it half luck then.
Low luck or dice averaging might be misleading.

I like it how you can request it. And the must roll card.
It adds another layer of strategy.
Sort of like telling your troops to do a regular attack.

@Bean:

Hun, I said in the long run. I’m talking hundreds if not thousands of games. There’s no telling when your luck will break, is there?

There is no telling.
If there is, then you were reversed-convinced by Jen on how luck works.  :-D