Hi Gungrinner
What a bummer. At least the Germans won’t be able to buy anything next turn either :)
Welcome to the site :)
Turn one attacks that must not fail
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Well, if your opponent messes up or his luck goes sideways too, the game could easily be salvagable. On the other hand, with average results and no major errors on your opponent’s part, do you really think you can recover from these failures?
I would actually continue after everything but failing Paris, but all of them change the character of the game drastically. Given equal play and equal luck thereafter, I would be less expectful of winning following all the failed attacks. I might still pull out a Europe victory if the J1 attack fails, and I might still be able to kill Germany after India falls, but it becomes a lot harder…
Marsh
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There is an increasing tendency for the UK to scramble all of the planes to SZ110 and SZ111. With bad dice rolling the Germany could lose a large fraction of the airforce. If nothing goes wrong for the Allies during the first turn, I usually surrender on G2. It becomes impossible to drive back Russia and survive the Allied invasion against a skilled opponent after that massive setback.
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I am in concurrence about the defeatist attitude. I think you should try to play it out. This game takes on average about 45 minutes to setup. The dice will “dice you”. Suck it up and see if you can get out of the pickle. The only true test of your skill is when you are backed into a wall. Why not let your opponent relish in the short lived victory? I’ve come back from what appeared to be certain doom on about 5 occasions. These are the games that are always remembered and talked about for years to come. “You remember that one time when I came back…”
I’ve assaulted Moscow 3 times in a game before finally breaking through. Couldn’t attack the Chinese with Japan (House rule) twice in a game. My USA got blasted in the Pacific by the Japanese fleet. Lost London and kept playing anyway for 5 more hours. It’s often more fun to see just how good you really are than worry about a win loss record. I use an unknown quote to end my tirade on quitting early.
“No good captain worth his salt only ever sailed calm seas.” -
And besides, Germany and Japan in WWII kept fighting past the point where they had any reasonable hope of achieving victory, then past the point where they had any reasonable hope of even managing to scrape together some sort of stalemate, and even past the point where it was clear that certain defeat was only months away. By May 1945, for example, the western and eastern fronts had each moved so far towards each other that the Wehrmacht troops on each front were almost fighting back-to-back down the middle of Germany. More sensible German political leaders would have taken the hint a lot sooner and promptly thrown in the towel (as Italy did in 1943), but at the time Germany didn’t exactly have a sensible leader. And in any case, wars on the scale of WWI and WWII doesn’t get resolved in the old-fashioned way of giving up before too much damage is done, conceding a few colonies to the enemy and calling it a day. Total warfare makes such demands on nations, and inflicts so much damage on them, that its objective tend to become total too: unconditional surrender of the enemy. And unconditional surrender is something that a country’s rulers are very reluctant to agree to (in part because it will mean the end of their regime), so the natural tendency is to want to keep fighting until the bitter end.
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If you consider any given battle to be “game-breaking”, then you are taking excessive risks and using the ability to concede the game and start over as a justification for those risks. Simply make more conservative attacks. It is an assumption we make that Germany can attack 3 sea fleets, take paris (and even attack Russia) all on turn 1. That isn’t conservative, but its always possible. Same with the Tobruk/Taranto complex…
I don’t know of any T1 or T2 battle where I just throw up my hands if the luck goes completely against me. If Japan loses all of its ground troops in the Yunnan battle, then well, it can make up for that with the FIC factory within 1 turn (if it took and secured it). I also don’t always counterattack there. Sometimes, its better for china to run like hell.
You’re right, India will fall. It always falls. That’s not about luck or even Allied choices (barring bringing all your air there) its more about how the game plays out. As a result, I have undercomitted to building the front line transports before and only shown up on J3 with not enough to win…so I have to wait until J4. I cant simply roll the dice and hope to get lucky, then quit because I didn’t wait until J4 or preplan better.
Maddog is dead on; I want my opponent to have to take risks and thereby lose. Usually making a certain, risky choice buys you 1 turn. You can do a battle on G4 with luck, or build up more and on G5 take it for certain.
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I have played 108 games of Global and those scenarios happen very rarely. People focus way too much on the opener and the first 4 turns of the game because for most people, that is all they play. The deeper game lies closer to T8, and luck isn’t the deciding factor on where you are at when you get there.
Its a game of skill. If luck mattered, you undercomitted, planned badly, or shouldn’t have made that attack. At some point, you have to go to the dice but in our final game, we only had 2 climatic battles at all the whole rest of the game is a stalemate.
My opponents often have to suck up losing battles and awful odds too, I hardly jump for glee, because I know its going to happen to me at some point. But there is a huge difference between “attritional”, general luck (getting infantry causalties) and being lucky when it matters (rolling average in a 60 piece battle when your opponent has a slight odds disadvantage).
I don’t understand low luck. It isn’t AxA to me. Luck doesn’t distort outcomes it confirms them.
The first one is ok. The second one is game winning.
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@Marshmallow:
Well, if your opponent messes up or his luck goes sideways too, the game could easily be salvagable. On the other hand, with average results and no major errors on your opponent’s part, do you really think you can recover from these failures?
As I said in my first post…of course I think I can recover. I have before. “No guts -no glory” Right? :wink:
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From your examples, France is really the only attack I can see that both must be done and that I would consider game ending under most circumstances.
From that alone we can say that some portion of games are going to be lost on dice alone. It’s just the nature of probability.
That said, most people who think they lose to dice simply don’t understand dice. Yes, you lost a battle you “should have won”, since you had a 90% chance of winning, and it cost you the game. But if you fight a half dozen critical battles at 90% that will cost you the game if lost in a particular game, you’re going to lose half the time outright.
I generally think people who go into France light are insane for this reason - sure, you’ve still got 90% chance of winning but that means you’re going to lose 1 in 10 of your games on the first battle. That’s insane. But most people don’t consider that a “real” loss, despite the fact balancing minimizing your risk vs reward of spreading yourself out is literally the entire point of the game.
But this is also why I don’t think the other battles are strictly game enders if they go poorly. When the board is against you you simply up your tolerance for risk. A 10% chance of winning a Hail Mary that will decide the game now is entirely preferable to losing with certainty in a few more turns. A 90% chance of in a game deciding battle is entirely too low if everything is going your way.
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I have played many games in my life, and many times, I’m the one with the advantage. I’m the oldest of my friendset and the owner of almost all the games. I’m the GM or rules-explainer. My opponents then have to fight uphill against me for 3-4 more hours, fruitlessly, sometimes for YEARS.
It seems really unfair then that when I take a knock, or bad luck, or a “worst” outcome, that I would just give up, ever.
I’ve had the advantage so many times, I’ve just realized that its much more fun and more fair for me to play out a losing game. Winning is fun, but it would hypocritical not to let other people enjoy the advantage that experience usually offered me first.
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If one of these attacks goes badly, there are undoubtedly consequences. The consequences are typically very bad unless due to bad luck your opponent is not able to capitalize on it. That’s “fog of war” type stuff – the dice represent that. Low luck players don’t want any uncertainty, which IMO is not realistic.
Can you win after one of these attacks fails? With equal levels of play and no more surprises, it will be extremely difficult – you really need some kind of equalizer to have a decent hope of winning following failure in one of these battles. The dice are your realistic hope for that equalizer. It is possible to win however – as someone said, upping your risk tolerance helps equalize.
Can it be fun to still play if you don’t win? Absolutely.
Can you learn things from continuing in these situations? Absolutely. Every game teaches us something, and we learn more from unusual situations than the usual ones.
Many folks find that they want a serious challenge on both sides of the board or the game is not rewarding. Frankly I find it more rewarding if I win because I played better and not because the dice just hosed my opponent’s properly-planned major attacks. I would rather the dice play a major factor late in the game as opposed to early. Chalk it up to personal preference.
Marsh
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C1 on Yunnan & UK1 on SZ96 - Yes. In both cases, particularly the first too much damage is done.
J1 on Yunnan - no. Not at all. Not a little bit. What are you smoking?
G1 on SZ110? Without bringing in the BB, if the UK scrambles you would expect to lose 3+ planes. Strange comment.
G1 Paris? Perhaps. I’m not so sure about this one. If you take out 1inf 1art 1arm it becomes about 97%. Perhaps if you lost that you would be looking a bit poorly. -
RE sea zone 110, if you bring the BB and two subs and still lose three planes, Germany is hosed IMO.
Re J1 Yunnan attack, if this fails you are not taking India by land. It’s a major setback. Game loser? Only if you were planning to take India to win.
G1 Paris you can win the battle but the attack can still be considered to have failed if the French defense got into your tanks. Good luck taking Moscow quickly if that happens.
Marsh
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Well im one of those LL players and i dont mind the uncertainty, but i dont want the extremes.
I would love to have a system that is more random the Low-Luck currently is but that guarantees that your dicerolles are in the 50% part of the bellcurve.I’m there with you on that desire, but frankly that also is not realistic. Weird stuff happens in combat, and those extreme results on the dice account for that possibility. It is odd how in every game we see at least one result that is 1% or less likely.
Marsh
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@Marshmallow:
Re J1 Yunnan attack, if this fails you are not taking India by land. It’s a major setback. Game loser? Only if you were planning to take India to win.
I will not lose a plane to take the territory and suffer no real ill effects if that happens, other than not getting to kill a couple more Chinese J2/C1. What is the problem you are talking about? If you do lose planes and still withdraw?
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My issue with LL is that it changes the game balance in ways I don’t completely understand, particularly for small, air supported battles.
For example: there are 3 infantry are in a province. I know I can send just 2 units and sufficient aircraft to land 3 hits, always be successful and always take the province. Depending how important both winning and taking the province was, without low luck I might have to send 3 or 4 units. This will be especially problematic in amphibious assaults, because knowing I only need to send one transport can make a huge difference.
I think this will further tilt the game into Axis hands. Germany and Japan both have large starting air forces, take part in many small battles, and guaranteed outcomes will free up Japanese transports for other tasks. Maybe it’d even out elsewhere, but I’m just not sure what all the ripple effects will be.
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I will not lose a plane to take the territory and suffer no real ill effects if that happens, other than not getting to kill a couple more Chinese J2/C1. What is the problem you are talking about? If you do lose planes and still withdraw?
Yeah, losing the plane would be a bad call. But if China gets four hits on defense, you lose four ground units and do not take the territory.
You can still take India, but you have to do it by sea, and chances are you will not be getting any overland units to help. That means that India will be biting hard into your air force to take it.
China holding Yunnan is a bad beat for Japan.
Marsh
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If you build the MiC in FiC, or Malaya, or the naval base on Yunnan, more reserves can be brought up by J3, easily.
Its just another way of saying that if China gets 20th% lucky and gets 6 extra dollars C1 rather than dying by J4, Japan quits because the road wasn’t standard level easy.
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I agree with you that it’s not the end of Japan’s game if the Yunnan attack fails. However, I still maintain that it delays you from taking India by a turn if UK Pacific and China are run properly. Losing that turn is very costly for Japan.
That being the case, Japan may be planning to not capture India until late in the game for some reason, so you may just not care…
Marsh
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I understand the feeling of being screwed after a bad dice role. But does it not reflect what happened in the real battles? Not some, but quite a few war changers happened against all odds! Just one example is the battle of midway where Japan traded 3 carriers for 1 US carrier. I can imagine Japanese admiral blame an other: that is why you need to play low luck!
In my opinion you should be able to handle some unexpected outcome. For me that is part of the game. Even if that causes to loose in some cases. Some other time you have more luck and you win. Nothing in this world is 100% based on skill!!!
I do agree that a bad first round has a big influence on the rest of the game. Much bigger than any other round! But that is part of the dynamics of the game! -
:-D The Imperial Japanese Navy actually lost or ‘traded’ 4 aircraft carriers (Akagi-Kaga-Soryu-Hiryu) to only 1 aircraft carrier for the United States Navy (Yorktown). FYI!
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