Alternate bidding scheme

I often come down on preplacement bids as something I find slightly unnerving, but I appreciate what they do in preventing the game from getting stale. Each time you reset the board with some new starting unit, the whole thing changes. I think its the cascading effect of the small change that keeps the game feeling fresh, not the specific advantage provided for one side or the other. Basically once the bid becomes “standard” and you’ve played it enough times to get bored, then you need to find new ways to keep it enjoyable.

Right on.

The merit of the placement bid is precisely that it can lead Germany and Japan to change up their opening moves.  Opening moves tend to determine the way the game dynamics play out.  So if the bidding schema involves only a cash bid to the USA, then there is a danger of Germany and Japan settling into a set opening move that they consider optimal.  Then it becomes a question of how much of a cash bid does America need to defeat this optimal strategy.

but is that really the case in practice? Most unit bids I see are used to help beat down Italy with UK early. And that leads to the infamous KJF strategy by Allies. since when Italy is gone, UK and Russia have it much easier with holding Germany back.

We haven’t discovered the optimal bid yet.  The ss to 98 is solid.  But there are other bid strategies that are (potentially) just as good or better.  For example bidding units to make Germany’s G1 harder in 110, 111, 106, and Scotland.  Bidding units to China/Russia/UKPac/Anzac to help set up a KJF.  When the bid is 20+ it’s hard to anticipate the myriad bid combinations that you might have to face.

If you don’t like a flex/placed bid, what we should be bidding on is extra income for RUSSIA instead of East USA.

Make Novisibirsk worth 10 IPC’s (to represent eastern factories).  That will make all the difference in the world.  The Germans will have a fight on their hands instead of a massacre, and Japan will have an interesting target to consider.

It’s that or place a significant Russian force in Novisibirsk that can opt to aid China, or bail out Moscow in time.

4 inf
3 art
2 mec
1 arm

I like Garg’s idea!

Eastern Front is the least historical part of A&A and it would be great to actually have the Russians have a shot of turning the tide of the Hun’s as they historically did. I

like this approach much better then US cash, UK extra units (it’s always them that gets it) and an actual chance for a Russian player to make a game of it instead of just trying to see how long they can go before getting crushed.

Thanks Garg.

Kim

removed

Are we playing the same game?  :?

If Russia is strong enough to give a real fight to Germany, then I would not play Axis. What chance would Germany have to really capture 8 capitals then?
And also… it WAS a massacre … Russia lost how many? 22 Million people?

And again: sorry guys, but this just doesn’t belong in this thread. Its about US Income vs. Unit bidding.

@Elrood:

Are we playing the same game?  :?

If Russia is strong enough to give a real fight to Germany, then I would not play Axis. What chance would Germany have to really capture 8 capitals then?
And also… it WAS a massacre … Russia lost how many? 22 Million people?

And again: sorry guys, but this just doesn’t belong in this thread. Its about US Income vs. Unit bidding.

Oh we’re playing the same game, and on average the Germans can stomp through Russia and into moscow at the +20 units mark.  The Russians will have no, or limited counter attack capabilities, and the other allies are stretched to the max for time to help make a stand.

And as-is Italy doesn’t even matter,  just their starting aircraft and armor count for can-openers on the eastern front.

The goal the original poster set out for with this bidding strategy, was to come up with a system that gave Italy a chance/fight, and one that made the game balancing fundamentally different.  Novisibirsk +10 will do exactly that.

Russia lost 22 million people, absolutely, and lost 7-1 in kill ratio on the eastern front.  So why is it then that Russia has approximately HALF of the starting forces as Germany, and HALF of the income potential?  And no can-opener allies?

If you want to see 22 million plastic pieces get massacred, you have to put them on the damn board to begin with!

Want another alternative balance?  Make it 7 VC’s in Pacific, and 9 on the Europe board.  Allies will have enough time to contend properly that way.

I pretty much agree with some of Garg’s points.  My house-ruled game adds VC’s to the Pacific theater and requires 8 VC’s for Pacific win.  This way at least you have the same number of VC’s on both sides and same number of VC’s needed.

(Java, Malaya, Manchuria added)

Russia lost all those people and by 1945 had an overwhelming advantage and stormed Berlin, even though Hitler had extreme defenses established.

Agree that Italy can be a non-factor and it doesn’t matter.  That’s how I usually play and I usually win.  Russia can’t stop Germany.  Russia may be able to hold onto Moscow, but Germany can merely go South, siege Moscow, and rake in tons of money.  America doesn’t have enough money.  The Axis are not in a race against time.  This is why I think the OP is on to something.

@Gargantua:

@Elrood:

Are we playing the same game?�  :?

If Russia is strong enough to give a real fight to Germany, then I would not play Axis. What chance would Germany have to really capture 8 capitals then?
And also… it WAS a massacre … Russia lost how many? 22 Million people?

And again: sorry guys, but this just doesn’t belong in this thread. Its about US Income vs. Unit bidding.

Oh we’re playing the same game, and on average the Germans can stomp through Russia and into moscow at the +20 units mark.  The Russians will have no, or limited counter attack capabilities, and the other allies are stretched to the max for time to help make a stand.

And as-is Italy doesn’t even matter,  just their starting aircraft and armor count for can-openers on the eastern front.

The goal the original poster set out for with this bidding strategy, was to come up with a system that gave Italy a chance/fight, and one that made the game balancing fundamentally different.  Novisibirsk +10 will do exactly that.

Russia lost 22 million people, absolutely, and lost 7-1 in kill ratio on the eastern front.   So why is it then that Russia has approximately HALF of the starting forces as Germany, and HALF of the income potential?  And no can-opener allies?

If you want to see 22 million plastic pieces get massacred, you have to put them on the damn board to begin with!

Want another alternative balance?  Make it 7 VC’s in Pacific, and 9 on the Europe board.  Allies will have enough time to contend properly that way.

The problem is you can only get a 7-1 kill ratio if the Germans have twice the troops Russia has. Unlike in real life, where even when outnumbered the Germans could mow down Russians left and right, A&A heavily favors the side with the largest army. Historically, the Russians had more troops than Germany, but still came close to losing because the Germans were better. If you tried to simulate that in A&A, Germany would be crushed by the Red wave.

If you’re going to buff Russia instead of the US, reduce the victory cities needed to 7 instead of 8 to compensate for the much harder time Germany will have.

But that really defeats the purpose, I think. The OP wanted a system that put pressure on the Axis to win quick (something hard to do if Russia is cranking out units) before the mighty US comes to save the Allies’ bacon. The Russia buff does not accomplish this.

I really hope this bidding scheme delivers something to work with, because right now I am at a loss about how the allies can win the game OOB ever again. Even with a +20 bid it seems too hard, but I must admit I have not experimented a lot with bids yet.
I am also starting to think that with A&AG40, balance is an illusion. Once axis players have fully grasped the ins and outs of the economic game, it’s either the allies (like in the first edition) or the axis (second edition) that will be ‘overpowered’.

On a sidenote, it is the split 8/6VC rule that is making the axis currently overpowered, while the simple 14VC rule (1st edition) did that for the allies. Maybe the answer to balancing the game indeed lies more in the VC rules than adjusting economies… A simple 13VC win for the axis, perhaps?
Or a time-limit. In the real war, time was a huge enemy for the axis. The allied production capacity started out even below that of the axis at the start of the war, but was easily more than twice that of the axis by the end of the war. Though that is definately not represented in the game by actual economic power, it doesn’t have to mean that it is not in the game at all.
The axis could be forced to win the game within an x amount of turns or else lose the game on sudden death conditions. That should break open the game. In my experience, if the axis rush, the allies stand a chance but if the axis just don’t attack well-defended VCs and take their time to build up their economies first (time they shouldn’t have, I feel), the allies don’t stand a chance.

Anyway, back to the USA bidding scheme.
I was thinking if players bid for extra USA income, they could bid a number between 1-6. The player with the lowest bid has the most faith in the allies and therefore plays allies.
The USA is then given 1-6IPCs per turn once it is at war, and this bonus is also increased by the same 1-6IPCs per turn as well, to a maximum of +30IPCs per turn (5-30 turns after war entry).

Do the math and weep… in the mid game, Russia will be an economic non-factor. Same for Calcutta. This leaves the USA (83IPCs IF they managed to take some DEI areas) + the UK (30IPCs if they’re lucky) + ANZAC (18IPCS) = 128IPCs total per turn.
ONE of the major axis partners (the one not focused on early) will have an income of 80+ IPCs, the other will have around 60, with Italy topping it off at around 20. These are the rough comparisons if the USA went for an early JF and the numbers will be more in axis favor if the USA went early GF.
128 allied income versus >160 axis and by that time the allies doesn’t have a meaningful military advantage anywhere. With a late (slowly building up) +30 for the USA, this could look like 158 vs 160. THAT sounds more like a balance to me ;-).
Maybe this increasing income will also offer Japan some more considerations as to when to DOW, since the NO will only start (and increase) when at war.

One little thing I might add to the discussion whether OOB is balanced or not… Its not about the OOB setup or rules… its about TripleA.

please allow me just a little excursion…

I recognize that many players here have much more experience than I have, so in my most humble statement of opinion I have to say:

• A&A was designed to be a board game and for those who have played it, know that it is really much harder to grasp the actual positions of strong and weak points on the board or make complex attack moves involving different powers
• TripleA is a computer supported game and gets rid of many problems / effort you have with the board game version and also helps by giving better overview and to reset the game just before making the actual combat or similar (HUGE bonus to test different moves to see if you miss sth)
  and now:
• the… Battle calculator… had SUCH a strong influence on the game that it leads to the problems we face on the forum
  Why is that. medium to big battles can be easily predicted by the use of the calculator and it is not necessary to send too much forces into a territory / SZ which one would like to take - but that would happen on the board “just to be safe”
  A few troops more or less have a surprisingly high impact on probabilities of such battles, so its really hard to say by just looking at the number of units.

So you say: “BC can be used by both factions… so whats the point?”
Well yes, but Axis are much more favored, since they start the game in striking position and a good start where you just send enough troops to kill the spread out allies troops and then putting just enough troops to a location to secure it increases their momentum a lot.

So what I am trying to say is: If you say G40 is broken, then point to TripleA, not the game itself. Sure that insight doesn’t help the current discussion, since we here play mainly TripleA anyways (I guess), and the only solution for me would be not to use BC, but that’s a little unrealistic I have to admit.  :-)

I just wanted to state this, so that no one is to think the developers did a bad job. Actually I have seen a game were community had so much influence on how it would look like in the end (the alpha phase between 1st and 2nd Edition)

just my 2 cents…  :-)

@Elrood:

So what I am trying to say is: If you say G40 is broken, then point to TripleA, not the game itself. Sure that insight doesn’t help the current discussion, since we here play mainly TripleA anyways (I guess), and the only solution for me would be not to use BC, but that’s a little unrealistic I have to admit.  :-)

I just wanted to state this, so that no one is to think the developers did a bad job.

I disagree. You can’t put this on tripleA.
:-D

TripleA doesn’t change the rules of the game or alter the starting balance of forces in any way. What it does do is to remove the normal barriers to entry and allows people to play more matches against competent human opponents than would otherwise be possible. It accelerates the pace at which play testing occurs.

You’d have to go back to the days before the Internet and the Hasbro CD in the 90s, if you really wanted to see what A&A used to look like. The way it is now, a dozen skilled players can play more games in a month, than were probably played during the entire design process.

When the play testing is done face to face it takes way way longer. Back in the day, this required annual tournaments, just to get enough people in the same room who knew what they were doing, to get any kind of reasonable data set on play balance. Think about how much longer it takes, to learn the game and then to organize matches between players of comparable skill face to face.

From a design standpoint, a digital platform makes it much harder to develop a game where player inexperience, the general complexity of the ruleset, and the labor intensive requirements of the board set up, can be used as an easy way to prolong shelf life. I would submit that without the computer, there would probably be no way to determine the real game balance in Global at this point, within like 5 years of its release, just between yourself and a few players in your living room.

What tripleA has done for games since Revised, is just like what the Hasbro CD did for Classic, allow players to compete at a much higher level, inernationally, and clock many more games than would ever have been possible face to face.

I support digit gameplay as the best way to playtest the OOB A&A games. If we’re really serious about designing a “forever” game, that is balanced by sides and lasting,  its “alpha” development phase should be conducted digitally first, since you can isolate balance issues or distorted play patterns much more quickly.

Battle Calculators have been around for a while, at least since email was invented, and since people began playing against each other in PBEM games. The calc in tripleA makes it a lot easier and faster to use in live play. Basically any player can now use the advantage that before might only  have been available to a mathematics whiz on the fly, but it’s still up to you how to use it. I don’t generally calculate battles during a live game, since I like to live dangerously, but for those who do, it’s just one more way to heighten the level of gameplay.

What I like about tripleA is that it helps to develop a concensus at the level of international gameplay, among skilled A&A players who might not otherwise get a chance to play each other.  I think it helps to facilitate a lot of these discussions that we find interesting on the forums.

Absent a digital game platform and saved games, most of the evidence for A&A playbalance is anecdotal, and its a lot harder to have these rich conversations about it, since the experiences and analyses of the game can be so divergent in different gaming groups when it’s just face to face after action reports.

I do appreciate the feeling that Elrood articulates though. It’s hard to design a boardgame that can keep pace in the digital era. But I’d rather use the machine to make a better game, since I think its possible to do that and still create games that are true to the spirit and still fun to play face to face over the long haul. I also don’t see a whole lot of great alternatives. King Ludd lost his crown a while ago.
;)

2 cents banked

Ps. Just for the record, I also think the developers did a good job. That said, it’s in the nature of the A&A game that there is always room for improvement as time goes on. And I think a digital platform can really help with that, since it allows us to play more games, track the development of the gameplay, and share ideas about it with greater ease and more detail.

Actually, TripleA does change the rules (just look at the list of known bugs, some OOB rules are ignored).

But while I agree that the Battle Calculator makes a difference, I don’t think it unbalances the game. I think it just makes it almost impossible for players to make mistakes, and thus makes the unbalance more evident. For two new players, it doesn’t matter which side they play, either can win. This is because the Axis player will most likely make many rookie mistakes, allowing the Allied player a chance to win. But if both players are experienced and use a Calculator to figure out everything beforehand, they can use optimal strategies to win… favoring the Axis because the OOB game favors the Axis if played optimally.

TripleA doesn’t enforce all the rules but the only one off the top of my head that it changes is selecting AA casualties during SBR’s. Instead of having each facility target their attackers individually they are all grouped together. This allows Tac’s to take any bmbr hits. I know there are others but this seems like the main one to me.  It is up to the players to know the rules same as a board game.

The B Calc comes into play during forum and to a lesser extent live games. If you calc every battle in a live game people probably won’t want to play because you take so long. By forum you have hours, days and sometimes weeks to prep your moves. You can run it through local mode as much as you want before sending your optimal move. Nothing wrong with that. It has a different “feel” then a live game. I always feel a little more pressured playing “live” than by forum. Though I don’t play much of either.

I agree with Black Elk. Larry and the Gang made an awesome game. TripleA allows you to number crunch many possibilities that otherwise wouldn’t happen. I don’t agree that TripleA has “broken” Global 40 though. :)

Given the complexity and nuance of the global ruleset, it’s a small wonder that tripleA is even able to “enforce” as much it does. I remember the first time I glanced at the 1st edition manual for Europe 1940 thinking to myself “there’s no way we’re going to get the engine to do all this stuff!” And feeling pretty demoralized by it. Thankfully Veq and Bung didn’t throw in the towel on that, and now the engine is able to handle pretty much the whole beast. (Bearing in mind where we started, how everything was hard coded to run classic, and nothing beyond, it was no small feat of accomplishment bringing the engine to its current state.) But just to the point about “known bugs” TripleA does provide a ready solution with two critical features:  the “edit mode” and the “free roll.”

Both are available in the game tab. Between those two features it is possible to provide a work-around for basically all those known bugs that I’m aware of. Sure, its not as perfect or elegant as one might wish, but if you know the rules (as you’d be expected to when playing on the physical board), tripleA can simulate the boardgame more or less exactly.
;)

I know at times I can be a somewhat strident partisan and apologist for tripleA, since I’ve sunk a lot of time into it, and still think it’s the best simulator currently available for A&A, but I take amanntai’s point. If you assume that tripleA will do all the work for you, it’s possible you might encounter a glitch or two when comparing with the rules as presented in the OOB manual.

On the other hand, those same edit mode and free roll features can come in very handy for other purposes as well, if for example, you want to house rule a bid bonus to USA’s income!
:-D

You can do this with just a few clicks in tripleA, and the game will track everything that happened in the game history! It would be hard to overstate the value of the edit mode and the game history here. Just consider how many paragraphs and pages of text notes it would take to give a full after action report of an FtF game, and compare this to a save game where all the information from every move in every round is recorded for easy viewing.

So my suggestion, taking it back to the main subject of this thread, would be to play some games with this USA bid concept in tripleA. Using the edit mode it is pretty simple to implement, and then we can see, with hard data, the effect it has on the balance by sides.
:evil:

I am considering your statements elk and I think you might have a point there. May be my attempt to demonize the BC was a bit over the top, but I think we understand each other after all.

I totally respect TripleA and see what it did for the game and the community. Without it no more games would be possible for me. My first Global 1940 games took like 4 to 6 sessions - each about 3 to 4 hours after work. Luckily for me I have some hobby-room in my flat just for me.  :-D  … we had 3 of those games alltogether… so not that much
And it was so hard to get the people for it… since not everybody of my local friends shared my enthusiasm about it.

But anyways … that board gaming took a lot of time and effort away of my spare freetime - while tripleA just diminishes my work-time (office) - so even better :evil:

Sorry for my little rant above and I am happy you “caught” it the way you did with your arguments.  :-)

@Black_Elk:

So my suggestion, taking it back to the main subject of this thread, would be to play some games with this USA bid concept in tripleA. Using the edit mode it is pretty simple to implement, and then we can see, with hard data, the effect it has on the balance by sides.
:-D

yes back to topic please. We are doing that. Right now 4 games are running in the 9-10 range of US income bids. If more players would participate, would be even better!

Always! and I love the rants  :-D
We are on the same page for sure.

The 1940 2nd edition game is a beautiful thing, nearly perfect, but it still needs something reasonable to level the sides. I think the USA economic boost could be a fun approach.

@ItIsILeClerc:

I am also starting to think that with A&AG40, balance is an illusion. Once axis players have fully grasped the ins and outs of the economic game, it’s either the allies (like in the first edition) or the axis (second edition) that will be ‘overpowered’.

On a sidenote, it is the split 8/6VC rule that is making the axis currently overpowered, while the simple 14VC rule (1st edition) did that for the allies. Maybe the answer to balancing the game indeed lies more in the VC rules than adjusting economies… A simple 13VC win for the axis, perhaps?[…]

Anyway, back to the USA bidding scheme.
I was thinking if players bid for extra USA income, they could bid a number between 1-6. The player with the lowest bid has the most faith in the allies and therefore plays allies.

I like both ideas

I really like the gentleman’s approach here :-).
Unlike some people who would call other ideas ‘idiotic’, ‘weak’, or discard them as ‘inexperienced’ right away.

Really, really curious about how this project will play out… I’m following.
Sadly I can’t play myself, as I have to carefully dose my time spent on A&A and I’ve already played for 5 weeks in a row quite recently.

I think giving the US a NO bonus is necessary, but I also think it needs to go hand in hand with another modification. Either a deduction in Japan’s Air (let’s start with one Ft and one Tac) or a permanent 5 NO for Russia too. I fear that without a bid the Med can too easily become a safe haven for the Euro Axis. The Med is too easily a bread basket for them and makes the European defence harder.
But then I would remove all of Japan’s NOs. (There is  enough income there, without the DEI bonus and a bonus for holding India or Sydney.)I would also like to see Germany lose half of its easily attainable ones (Leningrad, Cairo and Volgograd). Actually, once Moscow has fallen does it really need another 5 income?
I suppose I am not normal though.