Build/Placement question…

That’s legal, but probably not very effective. 
So if you do well in Bryansk, you’ve only mobilized 2 infantry when you could have spent another 26 IPC’s that turn. 
If you don’t do well in Bryansk and you place 2 bombers, you just made Russia that much easier to take (compared to spending all your money on infantry) plus you saved 8 IPC’s extra for your opponent to plunder.

Sure, the IC will have 6 damage for the Germans, but had you max built with $32, you would have repaired 6 damage and built 2 arty/mech and 6 infantry, and the Germans would plunder 0.

I think in your well thought out example, it is actually not an effective move to over-buy.

Frankly, I think this is a very cheesy move, legal or not. I will NOT be seeing this in my games.

@Gamerman01:

Wonderful.  A complicated game that takes forever to play just got more complicated, with more options.  Bad enough the ANZAC declare war on Japan while UK stuffs a destroyer right in the Japanese fleet loophole never got closed.  Now I need to think about over-buying when I have to buy carriers to catch planes, especially with Japan.

That’s right, the carrier tactic will still work.  You only have to place them if the planes live, but you have to buy them to make the attack.  Over-buy, lose the planes, then get the money back from the carriers.  LOOPHOLE!

You unilaterally closed the fleet avoiding combat with subs/transports rule, Krieghund, I thought you would do the same here.  But if I haven’t learned anything else, I have learned that you are unpredictable.  :-P

I didn’t “unilaterally” do anything.  I closed an unintended loophole after consulting with Larry to be sure it was unintended (though I was already 99.99% sure that it was).

This case, however, is a little different.  Let me give you some historical perspective.

Revised introduced the concept of limited mobilization based on the IPC value of the territory containing the IC.  This led to the possibility of over-purchasing, which had not existed before.  The solution applied at that point (in the FAQ) was to destroy any over-purchased units without refund (though the “friendly” option of refunding the IPCs was also offered as an alternative).  This worked fine in that game, as it couldn’t be exploited much.

When AA50 came along, the concept of damaged ICs was introduced.  Under the rules of that game, unmobilizable (is that a word?) units were held over in “limbo” until a later turn.  This created the potential for abuse of over-purchasing because a power whose capital was about to be captured could get rid of IPCs more easily by refusing to repair its ICs and buying units that it couldn’t produce, which would be held over and then destroyed upon capture of the capital.  This would effectively destroy IPCs, keeping them out of the hands of the capturing power, while at the same time leaving the ICs unrepaired, costing that power more IPCs to repair them.

In later games, the concept of refunding the IPCs for over-purchased units was introduced to avoid this problem.  Of course, this can also be abused, but it seemed the “lesser of two evils”.  I’m really in interested to hear any stories of real-world abuse of this rule that benefits the abuser to any great extent, by the way.

Given all of this, you may ask, “Why don’t you just disallow over-purchasing in the first place?”  That’s a great theory, but how would it work in practice?  If none of the players notices the over-purchase, when the mobilization phase comes along a problem is presented - what to do with the excess units.  That leaves us right back where we are now.

There are only two alternatives that I can think of to the ones outlined above.  One is to redo the purchases, which seems like rewarding the mistake (or intentional act), as purchases can then be done with the benefit of knowledge of the turn’s events.  The other is to select the units to be returned randomly, which would help prevent abuse, but seems to overly punish a simple mistake.

So that’s the story of why the rule is the way it is.  As for not knowing about it before now, it’s been in the rules since AA42, 1st edition (2009).  I really would think that if the rule were open to abuse to a great extent, it would have been discovered before now.

I agree with ShadowHawk.  As long as the rule requires that you must place units that are required to make combat move legal (regardless if they are still needed by the placement phase), then that eliminates any real abuse possibility that could come of this.

There would still be a few strange exploits, but not abusive ones.  Just little tricks.

@ShadowHAwk:

For placement the rules should be made a followed.
You should place as much units as possible.
If you produced more units then you can buy you must all the following steps after which the leftover units will be refunded.

• If units you bought where required to make a move in the combat movement step legal these units must be placed. ( you will place the carrier somewhere )

This is already the case.

@ShadowHAwk:

• If you have an undamaged IC any money you have should be put into repairing it so you can place more units. If it is still damaged you take the cheapest unit available refund it and repair the IC. Repeat untill you have no more undamaged IC’s or no more exces units.

This is interesting, but I’d need evidence that the abuse prevented justifies adding this layer of complexity.  This seems to me more of a CYA for people who forgot to repair an IC than an anti-abuse provision.

Shadowhawk, first of all, made a great point in response to your post, Krieghund.  There is a big difference between intentional and unintentional over-buying.

Shadowhawk said “if units you bought were required to make a move in the combat movement step legal these units must be placed”

This is NOT already the case.  You (Krieghund) said you could choose whatever units you want to be refunded.  You did NOT say that you MUST place carriers that you bought to make a flight plan legal.  You told Wheat that there were NO exceptions to the rule that you could choose whatever units you wanted to refund, which explains the discussion that followed, and the very realistically possible exploits that could occur.

So you could buy 3 carriers for 6 planes to land, attack the opponent in the seazone by your complex, lose the 6 planes, and then get a refund for the 3 carriers assuming you overbought by 3 or more units.  Shadowhawk is saying you could require that the 3 carriers be placed and not refunded because they were necessary to make the 6 planes legal.

And… I’m sorry, but there was no reason to believe that you had contacted anyone else, including Larry Harris himself, in that short amount of time and came back with an agreed-upon answer.  Wrong assumption, I’m sorry.

Why not let the OPPONENT choose which units are refunded??!

@Gamerman01:

Shadowhawk, first of all, made a great point in response to your post, Krieghund.  There is a big difference between intentional and unintentional over-buying.

Unless you catch it during the purchase phase, there’s no way to prove whether an over-purchase was intentional or not.  If it is undiscovered until the mobilization phase, you still have to deal with it then.  This kind of makes the difference a moot point.

@Gamerman01:

Shadowhawk said “if units you bought were required to make a move in the combat movement step legal these units must be placed”

This is NOT already the case.  You (Krieghund) said you could choose whatever units you want to be refunded.  You did NOT say that you MUST place carriers that you bought to make a flight plan legal.

I misinterpreted ShadowHAwk’s point.  This is an interesting point, and it is worth considering.

@Gamerman01:

You told Wheat that there were NO exceptions to the rule that you could choose whatever units you wanted to refund, which explains the discussion that followed, and the very realistically possible exploits that could occur.

I suggest you read my post again.  What I said was that the only restrictions were that you cannot violate other rules.  If the new carriers would be the only place you can land planes, the carriers must be mobilized, and other units chosen to return for a refund.

@Gamerman01:

Why not let the OPPONENT choose which units are refunded??!

This would also seem like overly punishing a simple mistake.

Suppose all the Chinese territories are axis controlled, China has troops in Burma, and they have $6.  They buy 2 infantry and attack Yunnan but fail to liberate it.  They would get their $6 back right?

@Krieghund:

I suggest you read my post again.  What I said was that the only restrictions were that you cannot violate other rules.  If the new carriers would be the only place you can land planes, the carriers must be mobilized, and other units chosen to return for a refund.

Oh!  Excellent.  That pretty much closes that abuse door entirely.

@Shin:

@Krieghund:

I suggest you read my post again.  What I said was that the only restrictions were that you cannot violate other rules.  If the new carriers would be the only place you can land planes, the carriers must be mobilized, and other units chosen to return for a refund.

Oh!  Excellent.  That pretty much closes that abuse door entirely.

wait so is krieg saying that even if the planes whos range was extended by the purchased acc’s DIE IN COMBAT and no longer need a place to land, the acc’s must still be mobilized?

if so, we have no real issue (and one wile.e.coyote is very sad and disappointed)

Wait, not so fast…. Krieghund’s post was in response to a specific question by Wheatbeer:

“1. If you over-purchase, can you choose not a mobilize carrier if one of your planes can’t land without it?”

So I’m not sure that also applies when there are no planes left. Because that also seems to imply that in a similar situation where you didn’t overpurchase but still bought a carrier, you’d have to mobilize that carrier in the seazone where combat took place even when the planes that needed the carrier had died. That would be strange.

Reposting this side by side to clear up the confusion.

@wheatbeer:

1. If you over-purchase, can you choose not a mobilize carrier if one of your planes can’t land without it?

2. If you over-purchase, can you choose not to mobilize a carrier whose purchase was originally required to launch an attack (by creating a hypothetical landing zone)?

@Krieghund:

1. No.

2. Only if the air units that were going to land on the carrier either no longer exist or have another place to land.

OK, thanks Wheat, I think I did mismatch those.

STILL

This is the problem for us on the website:
If I was playing face to face, I would stop my opponent during the purchase phase if he over-bought.  However, if I recall correctly, Krieghund hasn’t said that you can’t over-buy.

Playing on TripleA, however, my opponent has played his whole turn already.  So this rule is highly problematic (a big loophole) playing on-line, because you could intentionally over-buy, run all your combat, refund yourself some carriers or transports or subs or whatever, and there’s nothing your opponent could do to stop it.

There is a HUGE difference between intentional and unintentional over-buying, and you choosing your own units to refund or your opponent choosing or whatever, and there is a very simple solution.  Over-buying should be explicitly not allowed.  If it still happens, accidental or not, the OPPONENT should get to choose which units are refunded.

No matter what Krieghund’s ruling is (you still haven’t cleared this up satisfactorily in my mind), I know what the league’s rule will be.  Especially because 99-100% of our games are played online.  Overbuying will not be allowed, and the opponent will choose which units are refunded if it does occur.

I agree that disallowing overbuy for League play is a great idea.

Thanks for the feedback, Shin Ji

I’m still hoping to hear from Krieghund whether the intent is against intentional over-buying or not.  There’s not a rule against it, as he pointed out.

It seems we’ll need a new feature request for TripleA to prevent overbuying…  TBH I’m surprised it’s not there already.  It’s not terribly complicated–what one can buy is limited by production capacity and PUs.

triplea does alert you to the fact that you bought more units than you can place although it doesn’t prevent it

you can’t refund the unit it just stays in limbo until it is placed

but you guys probably already know that