Countering Operation Sea Lion

@DarthMaximus:

I’d be willing to test this scenerio with anyone that wishes to play as the Axis.  I would of course play the Allies.

R1 would be as follows with no fore knowledge of Sea Lion:

Buy 2 inf, 2 rt, 2 arm (common for my play)
Combat - Wrus with 9 inf, 1 rt, 1 arm, Ukr with 3 inf, 1 rt, 3 arm, 2 ftrs

Results: 
Wrus taken with 6 inf, 1 rt, 1 arm
Ukr taken with 3 arm, 2 ftrs

Both standard results (using LL and everything hits on 3 or above).

I’ll Non-Com everything West (again very standard in all my games)
sub to sz 2, aa to wrus, I’ll even make sure the ftrs are out of range of London on R2 by landing in Cauc.

Summary

Wrus - 6 inf, 1 rt, 1 arm, aa
Ukr - 3 arm
Cauc - 4 inf, 2 rt, 2 ftrs, aa, ic
Mos - 4 inf, 2 arm, ic
Novo - 2 inf
Yak - 4 inf
Sz 2 - sub with uk ships

Germany’s turn.

They must spend 25 on dice (giving them a 60% chance to get).  They of course will automatically get LRA for this 25.

Germany must attack London with 1 inf, 1 arm, 5 ftrs, 1 bom.

Results:  Germany takes with 1 arm.
They lose all aircraft - 1 ftr shot down due to aa, and the rest lost trying to preserve the Arm.  (Again this is all standard and avg results with LL or even Frood)

Germany plunders the 30 ipc.

The rest of your G1 purchases/combat/non-com moves are up to you and subject to dice rolls just like a normal game.

Some things in this set up may be negotiable I haven’t looked too closely at it and may have missed a unit here or there.

I would define success for the Allies in the following ways:

1 - No Success - Allies are completely overwhelmed from the loss of London and on their heels all game.  Perhaps Moscow has even fallen, but it is obviously over by rd 4-5.

2 - Limited Success - Allies make it to rd 6-8 and still putting up a fight.  They might be losing the game but UK is back in it and all three Allied capitals are still in Allied hands.

3 - Success - Allies make it to rd 9-10 and are still fighting.  The Allies have recoverd from losing London and the game has turned into a “normal” dogfight.

4 - Great Success - The Allies hold on and win the game.

Personally, as the Allies, if I did lose London on turn 1 I’d be happy with any one of the last 3 definitions in that I gave myself a chance to comeback, but for the sake of this test I’ll be shooting for one of the last two.

We also don’t have to play the entire game, just a few rds to see how things shake out.

I’m actually kind of curious about this since I’ve never played with Tech or OOB rules.

This does sound like alot of fun.

I would love to try this out with you Darth.  And I get to play the infamous darth too :)
:notworthy:

You did mention negotiability with this set up.
I tink if USSR gets 3 tanks in Ukraine, then Germany should get 1 plane left in UK.

In fact, in my dice sim, I get most common outcomes of the UK 1 grab is (12%) 1 tank, 1 ftr, 1 bomber  and (12%) 1 tank, 1 bomber….

Battlemap or mapview?

Did you run that with only Inf, Arm, 4 Fighters, Bomber vs 2 Infantry, Artillery, Armor, 2 Fighters and a Bomber?

If you lose the bomber first (and assume one fighter was shot down by AA Fire) I get the following results:

Attacker results:
–------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 
Probability % # units / losses
  0.1% 7: 1 Inf, 1 Arm, 4 Fig, 1 Bom
  0.81% 6: 1 Arm, 4 Fig, 1 Bom 
  5.72% 5: 1 Arm, 3 Fig, 1 Bom
  17.56% 4: 1 Arm, 2 Fig, 1 Bom
  24.25% 3: 1 Arm, 1 Fig, 1 Bom
17.73% 2: 1 Arm, 1 Bom
  10.6% 1: 1 Arm
  23.23% 0: no units

Also, note, you have almost a 1 in 4 chance to lose and NOT take the capitol, despite getting the LRA technology.

@axis_roll:

This does sound like alot of fun.

I would love to try this out with you Darth.  And I get to play the infamous darth too :)
:notworthy:

You did mention negotiability with this set up.
I tink if USSR gets 3 tanks in Ukraine, then Germany should get 1 plane left in UK.

In fact, in my dice sim, I get most common outcomes of the UK 1 grab is (12%) 1 tank, 1 ftr, 1 bomber  and (12%) 1 tank, 1 bomber….

Battlemap or mapview?

I use Battlemap most of the time with in-house dicey.
Yeah, Germany can survive with a plane from London as well.  You can choose ftr or bom.

About the odds, I did a manual LL (for results) b/c at least with Frood it goes by standard OOL (I’m not sure how to customise ool), but most players will lose the UK bom in the first wave since it is an amphib, thus I think odds for German success can be skewd slightly if this isn’t taken into account.  The UK might only save the bom if Ger really got hammered in AA or only got like 1-2 hits.  But I don’t have a problem Germany having a plane left over as well since it will probably help with the test.

Also this will probably be a slower pace game for me with tourney and league games going on, etc.

@DarthMaximus:

I use Battlemap most of the time with in-house dicey.
Yeah, Germany can survive with a plane from London as well.  You can choose ftr or bom.

Also this will probably be a slower pace game for me with tourney and league games going on, etc.

That all sounds great.

You or I can start a thread in the board games.

The pace sounds good, I have to do a few things right now.
Maybe tonight I will do Germanys turn

If you start the thread and have a battlemap with the above described set-up, that’ll save me some time.

Sounds good.

I’ll create the thread and post the initial map.

Okay, the game thread is here:

http://www.axisandallies.org/forums/index.php?topic=11199.0

Hey Cmdr Jennifer where did you get these odds? I’ve done the battle on frood (2.0) with

1 Inf 5 Fig 1 Bom 1 Arm vs. 1 Bom 2 Inf 1 Art 1 Arm 2 Fig

(OOL as listed above) and I get the following results (with a AAGun):

Probability %   -    units
  0.12%   -   8: 1 Inf, 5 Fig, 1 Bom, 1 Arm.
  0.36%   -   7: 5 Fig, 1 Bom, 1 Arm.
  0.02%   -   7: 1 Inf, 5 Fig, 1 Arm.
  0.02%   -   7: 1 Inf, 4 Fig, 1 Bom, 1 Arm.
  1.72%   -   6: 4 Fig, 1 Bom, 1 Arm.
  0.02%   -   6: 5 Fig, 1 Arm.
  4.88%   -   5: 3 Fig, 1 Bom, 1 Arm.
  0.22%   -   5: 4 Fig, 1 Arm.
  9.3%    -   4: 2 Fig, 1 Bom,
  0.42%   -   4: 3 Fig, 1 Arm.
  11.76% -   3: 1 Fig, 1 Bom, 1 Arm.
  0.92%   -   3: 2 Fig, 1 Arm.
  11.5%   -   2: 1 Bom, 1 Arm. (average result)
  1%       -   2: 1 Fig, 1 Arm. (average result)
  8.8%     -   1: 1 Arm. (median result)
  48.94% -   0: no units.

That is the reason why I wouldn’t even try the sea lion with 1 fig destroyed by the russians.

The results with frood 1.0 where about the same, so I wonder why your odds are so much better

Ranor,

I got those numbers from Frood.  I assumed 1 Fighter killed by the Russians on Russia 1 and 1 Fighter killed by the AA Gun in England and that Germany had succeeded in LRA.

That leaves:

Infantry
4 Fighters
Bomber
Armor

Attacking, in order of loss and

Bomber
2 Infantry
Artillery
Armor
2 Fighters

Defending, in order of loss

Note, the order of loss was changed so that the defending bomber was killed first to maximize the damage done to Germany.

This leaves a 1 in 4 chance of Germany FAILING to take London on Germany 1.

Axis,

The way to adjust the OOL on Frood really is not difficult.  Just change the Bat to Bom and then the Bom to Bat and run the sim again.  (Bats are always listed first, but you get the idea.)  Just make sure to type the units in correctly, as they are already written under the attacker/defender line.  Also, check for duplicate entries!

so we have a test game to watch

and its set to 5 LRA dice

I am hoping that means we have a consensus on outcome being obvious for case of getting LRA with fewer dice

No one is arguing that if Germany gets LRA with 1 Die that it’s over powering.  Not unrecoverable, but darn near close.

However, statistically speaking, you’d need at least 6 dice to be relatively sure of 1 success. (1/6+1/6+1/6+1/6+1/6+1/6=1)  And if I was going to try it, I don’t think I’d take less then 6 dice.  However, 5 seems okay.  At least it allows you to build 5 infantry still.

@tekkyy:

so we have a test game to watch

and its set to 5 LRA dice

I am hoping that means we have a consensus on outcome being obvious for case of getting LRA with fewer dice

I picked 5 dice rolls, b/c with anything less I wouldn’t be scared if Ger tried to tech since with 4 rolls it is about 50% and drops as you go to 2 or 3 dice.  At that point it is to the Allies advantage to make Germnay buy the dice, then try to actually roll the dice for tech, then actually roll the aa-fire for London, then try to roll the actual battle of London.

All those odds add up to an Allied advantage so there is no point in trying to prevent Sea Lion since by simply doing nothing the Allies will win 60-70% of the games at least.

Looks like our test may have been a bust anyway, since it looks like Russia will blitz to Belin on R1 after UK took out the blocker inf in Balk.

Sry Cmdr Jennifer.

I’ve redone the battle on frood with your proposed OOL (which is in fact the OOL I used in frood 2.0) and the results stay the same 50% 0 units for germany. The only time I got results simmiliar to yours was, when I only used 1 defending inf for the brits instead of 2.

@Ranor:

Sry Cmdr Jennifer.

I’ve redone the battle on frood with your proposed OOL (which is in fact the OOL I used in frood 2.0) and the results stay the same 50% 0 units for germany. The only time I got results simmiliar to yours was, when I only used 1 defending inf for the brits instead of 2.

This should be the link to the display I am getting from frood with my results:

http://frood.net/aacalc/?mustland=1&abortratio=0&saveunits=0&strafeunits=0&aInf=1&aArt=&aArm=1&aFig=4&aBom=1&aTra=&aSub=&aDes=&aCar=&aBat=&adBat=&dInf=2&dArt=1&dArm=1&dFig=2&dBom=1&dTra=&dSub=&dDes=&dCar=&dBat=&ddBat=&ool_att=Bat-Inf-Art-Arm-Tra-Sub-SSub-Fig-JFig-Des-Bom-HBom-Car-dBat&ool_def=Bom-Inf-Art-Arm-Tra-Sub-SSub-Bat-HBom-Des-Fig-JFig-Car-dBat&battle=Run&rounds=&reps=10000&luck=pure&ruleset=Revised&gameid=&password=&turnid=&territory=&round=1&pbem=

Overall %*: A. survives: 77.8% D. survives: 18.1% No one survives: 4.1%

• percentages may not total 100 due to rounding. The average results from above are highlighted in charts below, while the median result (equal odds of getting a worse or better result) is written in red. Attacker results:
  –------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Probability % # units / losses
  0.09% 7: 1 Inf, 1 Arm, 4 Fig, 1 Bom / no units. : 0 IPCs
  0.72% 6: 1 Arm, 4 Fig, 1 Bom / 1 Inf. : 3 IPCs
  6.05% 5: 1 Arm, 3 Fig, 1 Bom / 1 Inf, 1 Fig. : 13 IPCs
  18.7% 4: 1 Arm, 2 Fig, 1 Bom / 1 Inf, 2 Fig. : 23 IPCs
  24.05% 3: 1 Arm, 1 Fig, 1 Bom / 1 Inf, 3 Fig. : 33 IPCs
  17.78% 2: 1 Arm, 1 Bom / 1 Inf, 4 Fig. : 43 IPCs
  10.42% 1: 1 Arm / 1 Inf, 4 Fig, 1 Bom. : 58 IPCs
  22.19% 0: no units / 1 Inf, 1 Arm, 4 Fig, 1 Bom. : 63 IPCs

–------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Defender results:

Probability % # units / losses
  0.08% 6: 2 Inf, 1 Art, 1 Arm, 2 Fig / 1 Bom. : 15 IPCs Lost
  0.44% 5: 1 Inf, 1 Art, 1 Arm, 2 Fig / 1 Inf, 1 Bom. : 18 IPCs Lost
  1.28% 4: 1 Art, 1 Arm, 2 Fig / 2 Inf, 1 Bom. : 21 IPCs Lost
  3.24% 3: 1 Arm, 2 Fig / 2 Inf, 1 Art, 1 Bom. : 25 IPCs Lost
  5.86% 2: 2 Fig / 2 Inf, 1 Art, 1 Arm, 1 Bom. : 30 IPCs Lost
  7.22% 1: 1 Fig / 2 Inf, 1 Art, 1 Arm, 1 Fig, 1 Bom. : 40 IPCs Lost

81.88% 0: no units / 2 Inf, 1 Art, 1 Arm, 2 Fig, 1 Bom. : 50 IPCs Lost (+30 IPC Plundered if Germany takes the land)
–------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I glowed and changed the text color of both the most likely outcome and the average income.  Everytime I run this the percentage changes from 24 to 23 to 22 but it’s always about a 1 in 4 chance of the attacker being wiped out without taking England.

Just to re-iterate:

I am assuming Russia took Ukraine on Round 1 with at least 1 armor and 2 fighters remaining.
I am assuming England scored 1 out of 6 Hits with the Anti-Aircraft Gun in London hitting a fighter.
I am assuming Germany spent 30 IPC and got 1 out of 6 Hits for Long Range Aircraft Technology (only fair, 1 out of 6 for England, 1 out of 6 for Germany)
I am assuming the Germans MUST have 1 armor die last, which could cost them the battle if they roll a 4, 5 or 6 and all they have is an armor vs a fighter
I am assuming that England loses the bomber first.  Honestly, I highly doubt there is a chance that England would want to keep the bomber in that scenario anyway, unless they got dang lucky with them AA Guns and the attacker missed everything in site.

Oh yea, and note, the defender surviving is not the important part of this battle.  The attacker MUST survive in order for this battle to be considered a win.

So it’s not 80/20%  It’s 75/25% with attacker surviving 75% of the time, give or take depending on the whether where Frood’s server is, and the attacker losing it all 25% of the time.

Remember, if you do not win, you do NOT pass go, you do not collect 38 IPC and you do lose the Luftwaffe.

I used your link and redid the battle I got your results then. But then I change the 1 (att land unit must live) to 0 and instead changed the OOL for the attacker in such a way, that the arm was lost last and now I got once again the 50% 0 units result. I’ve also done the battle in LL and the result seems to support the 50% failure for germany.

Maybe the program is flawed or just the option with the numbers of atacking land units that have to live.

And just lo clarify this: “I do not propose the sea lion.”

(I just stated that I would use only 1 die for tech even if someone wants to try this, so he could do a nearly normal buy on G1. If it worked fine he could try his sea lion then if not he still could play a normal game)

To clarify my previous position…

With OOB tech rules, and $25 spent on tech, Sea Lion IS a viable option.  If you add a bid of $8 to Germany as a TRN in SZ5, it is VERY doable.

If Russia sends FIGs to London on USSR 1, then Germany skips the tech rolls and goes balls-to-the-wall on Moscow; as does Japan, even if it means skipping Pearl.

If you are playing with box rules then there would be no bid.  And even with 5 dice you’re still hampering yourself a lot since, as I showed, you only have a 75% chance to win in England.  That’s a significant chance to lose everything without taking England.

If with 5 dice LRA does not happen, you just abort, go INF heavy, and play a normal KRF game.

VERY little lost in the attempt for Germany since UK still has to defeat the Baltic Fleet to land freely in Karelia/Eastern.  And Germany ofcourse retains their 5 FIGs, 1 BOM if you abort Sea Lion…

Correct.  However, there is still a LARGE cost to Germany.  You just SBRed yourself for 25 IPC on Round 1.  So you build 5 infantry and, let’s say, you liberate Ukraine, take Egypt and take Karelia.

You have 42 IPC like normal.  Except, you don’t have the support you would have had if you had not gone for LRA.  That means England liberates Karelia for Russia to preserve Russian power, America lands in England to stop future Sea Lion attempts until they can sink the SZ 5 fleet with minimal costs and England probably liberates Egypt. (You can only hit it with 2 infantry, 2 armor, fighter, bomber, so odds are you don’t have a lot of defense there at the moment.)

The only difference in this from a normal game, if you go 25 IPC for tech and fail, is that you are down 25 IPC in units.  Roughly 5 infantry, 2 armor’s worth.  That’s pretty significant if you realize that Russia only had 24 IPC itself for round one purchases and you spend MORE then that on tech dice.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is that win or lose, Germany is NOW playing a defensive game and hoping Japan can take out Russia before America (and later England) can take out Germany.

I don’t know if I want to try it.  You only have a 67% chance to get the tech (best I can figure it) and a 75% chance to get London.  That’s like a 50/50 shot (0.67*0.75).  You want to risk that, knowing that if you do succeed in London you are without an airforce.  Sure, you have tanks (you said you’d build tanks, you didn’t say planes.) but tanks you will lose as you trade land with a nation who has planes not tanks to use.

You are ignoring the fact that if Germany DOES hit the tech, then 3 out of 4 games UK is lost, and Germany gains $38 IPC and UK loses the ability to build on UK 1.

75% is a chance I will take every time it is given for a Capital battle…