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.
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…
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 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
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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!
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?
Hopefully my luck won’t break, it’ll just shift from Naval engagements to land engagements. :evil:
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?
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
ADS = Actual Dice Server
Craig, the “holy mary” aspect does make the game exciting, and yes, it does add spice to the game, but too much spice can, pardon the pun, make the game unpalatable. I agree that good strategy will win out over gambling with the dice in risky battles on average, but it’s becoming too frequent. Like I told the Commander, you need to play to outmanouver me, not outroll me.
And I like your setup Axis_Roll. It gives you a measure of reliability in a few of the more important battles but still retains the variability in the common trading battles.
The dice in A&A reminds me of backgammon and poker. When you play poker, you get both good and bad cards.
Same with backgammon, dice instead of cards. I played maybe hundreds of backgammon f2f games a while ago. I often got bad dice…
But my opponent beat me more than 50%, maybe 70% of all games. In poker you play 20 +/- games an evening, sometimes.
A&A can take as many hours as a day of work. 1-2 battles with skewed dice makes you loose the game.
This can happen 30% or more. A&A with LL is different eh? It’s more pure strategy. There is also a big part of strat
thinking in ADS but there’s less strat and more risk management, same type of risk management as in poker, backgammon and many
other dice games. I want A&A to be mostly strats, and less “how much do I bet on a house”.
One of my problems with ADS in A&A is that the game take so many hours to finish.
Strat thinking for me is also to calculate what units I should buy to help me win, and yes inf are boring, but infantry help
me win games. I want to think strats before and after making decisions, and also long term. LL is more depth like as chess.
In LL if stack kalia to early, or Ukr too early with Germany, then your stack get killed and you lose the game probably.
For some strange reason, it hurts my feelings less when I make mistake and lose, then I lose because my opponent got lucky.
And I learn a lot, usually, when I lose to better opponent in LL than if I lose to a better player in an ADS game, with average dice.
It’s also a greater reward for me when I’m winning in LL than in ADS, and I use both, although I shouldn’t play ADS games
because of my mental health… :-D
I like having the potential to strafe and obliterate the enemy encouraging me to stay and win. I also like being scared that my 40 infantry will ALL miss on the attack and the enemy will achieve near 100% accuracy.
