Dice or Low Luck??

First off, well said, Argothair. If I were going to be a proponent of LL, that would sum it up. I also agree with the sentiment that rolling for large battles is time consuming, though I turn into a dice-rolling robot when it’s my turn, and everyone involved goes into a calculation trance to get that shit done as quickly as is humanly possible. If I were at a table where this was not the case, I can imagine I’d go crazy.

On the other hand, at my table, we play with a range of people. I recently moved a great distance away from the old group, so most of my physical people are only on their 0th through 6th game ever. Still far too early to propose low-luck in my opinion–even if I were to consider suggesting it.

As far as online with people I used to play with back home, we always have done, and will likely continue to do, dice games for anything competitive.

For theory-craft and screwing around with what-ifs, however, we always did/do LL. And actually, usually branch at decisive battles (because it’s easy to do in an electronic format). One branch where the results were subpar but not disastrous, one where the results were exactly average, and one where the results were slightly better than average. This turns into a fractal of “wasted” time, yeah, but it lets you see how the game could evolve from turning points depending on how well you bounced through a particular fight. If you have the time, it can help you plan not only if a strategy is worthwhile, but what can be done immediately afterwards depending on the results.

If you’re in the thick of a real game, the dice are an equalizer of sorts. Yes, you can drop to a mathematically negligent chance of winning in only an hour or two of play (if you’re doing something overtly risky or have exceptionally bad luck), but that’s part of the challenge: adapting to what happens to you. In LL, you can plan everything to the letter nearly. In dice games, as calvinhobbesliker said, you must actually play differently at certain times, because you need to overkill battles that you need to win. It also leads to situations where that one frenchman that runs headlong into three italians (to take the 1/6 chance to soften them up before a US landing, for instance) can actually win. This is a fantastic thing to see, and much drinking is done when it occurs.

We also are usually very respective (yet reluctant, mind you) to throw in the towel. If it’s 3v2 or what have you, and everyone on one side and at least half of the people on the other agree there is nearly no chance for one side to continue, we shake hands, and if it’s early enough, set it all up again.

I think dice are just more fun.

I figure that a fair share of the real battles of WWII would not be possible to reenact with LL. Take the Battle of France 1940, The Allies had more men, more tanks, more planes, more of everything. They even had terrain that favored the defender. Yet, Germany won a crushing victory with almost no loss of own units. You need to use dice to get a result like that. One side all snake eyes, the other side zip. If you do a simulation of that battle with LL, the result would not be anything even remotely close to the historical correct German victory.

Real men play dice.

@Narvik:

I figure that a fair share of the real battles of WWII would not be possible to reenact with LL. Take the Battle of France 1940, The Allies had more men, more tanks, more planes, more of everything. They even had terrain that favored the defender. Yet, Germany won a crushing victory with almost no loss of own units. You need to use dice to get a result like that. One side all snake eyes, the other side zip. If you do a simulation of that battle with LL, the result would not be anything even remotely close to the historical correct German victory.

Real men play dice.

To be fair, this game is not too realistic…the Axis make way too much money compared to the Allies than what was the case in real life.

I choose LL because it better shows the apparent skills of the player(s) and how effective a strategy can be.  Losing when u have overwhelming odds in your favor and winning when you have crap odds ruin the game for me.

@ShadowHAwk:

Well its a game, irl it does not mather how many men you have but where you have them. France had them out of position. When your troops are surounded without proper leadership they will lose because of supply issues.

Look at that, I used to believe that rich France lost because of lack of morale and fighting spirit, not because of supply issues. I think the poor Russians were out of supply all the time, two men had to share a rifle, only the lucky ones got boots, ammo was rare and food was really hard to find. That did not stop them from fighting. Every day Russian troops were surrounded without proper leadership, and with lots of supply issues. That did not stop them from taking last stand battles. Russian troops won at Stalingrad without proper leadership and with supply issues.

Real men use dice

@ghr2:

I choose LL because it better shows the apparent skills of the player(s) and how effective a strategy can be.  Losing when u have overwhelming odds in your favor and winning when you have crap odds ruin the game for me.

I beg to differ. A skilled player must know his dice. If you play LL the computer did the job, if you roll dice you must know when to gamble, when to stop and when to walk away. Dice takes more skill and knowledge than playing the dull LL. IMHO.

@Narvik:

@ghr2:

I choose LL because it better shows the apparent skills of the player(s) and how effective a strategy can be.�  Losing when u have overwhelming odds in your favor and winning when you have crap odds ruin the game for me.

I beg to differ. A skilled player must know his dice. If you play LL the computer did the job, if you roll dice you must know when to gamble, when to stop and when to walk away. Dice takes more skill and knowledge than playing the dull LL. IMHO.

The computer rolls the dice too…  it is called: Random Number Generator.  Dice and LL can happen face-to-face or on some software version of the game.  There is no such thing as knowing when to gamble when the dice can swing in any number of ways.  There is no way to predict whether the dice will favor a player or whether they are about even.  The idea of ‘knowing your dice’ is just common superstition that places like casinos profit off of.  The only ‘skill’ for dice is being able to run a mental cost/benefit analysis and weighing that against the probability to win.  This skill also holds true in LL since both involve proper allocation of resources.  LL works if you want to minimize risk and focus more on in-game strategy and to truly determine who is the superior player without one side potentially getting overly bad or overly good dice rolls which may affect a fair skill comparison.  Dice works when you want simplicity in combat(not adding dice and dividing by 6) and if you like the potential dynamic game that it can bring.  Yes dice can breed skill in being able to adapt to bad dice rolls, but winning when getting lucky rolls does not make you look good and losing when having bad rolls does not necessarily make you look bad.  It also allows for occasions where a bad attack is made worse by even worse dice.  Then the attacking player tries to claim that he/she got diced while the defending player tries to claim that the attack was already doomed in the first place.  Dice just has too many variables for a fair assessment.

Anyway, if you want to do dice, you will probably have a game that is very dynamic and has a lot of excitement.  But be ready to have a player be pissed or to be in a sour mood because their strategy was destroyed by dice.  If you want LL then be ready for a game that has some dynamic action but mostly straight, predictable, and usually very fair to both sides in proper skill measurement.

Well said, ghr2!

Not played LL so not really qualified, but voted dice anyway. Like the uncertainty and freshness dice give. Every game is different.

I also like to roll the dice too. But looking at LL now. See if I got this right.

D6                      D12
    Attacker            Attacker

4 inf    @1          4 inf    @2
  2 arm  @3          2 arm  @6
  1 fit    @3          1 fig  @6

13=                  26=
  2 hits and @1    2 hits and @2
    1 dice roll          1 dice roll

D6                      D12
    Defender            Defender

3 inf    @2          3 inf    @4
  1 art  @2          1 art  @4

8=                    16=
  1 hit and @2    1 hit and @4
    1 dice roll        1 dice roll

My question is would your odds increase just a bit using D12 for the dice roll. I don’t have any access to a D12 calc.

@SS:

I also like to roll the dice too. But looking at LL now. See if I got this right.

D6                      D12
    Attacker            Attacker

4 inf    @1          4 inf    @2
  2 arm  @3          2 arm  @6
  1 fit    @3          1 fig  @6

13=                  26=
  2 hits and @1    2 hits and @2
    1 dice roll          1 dice roll

D6                      D12
    Defender            Defender

3 inf    @2          3 inf    @4
  1 art  @2          1 art  @4

8=                    16=
  1 hit and @2    1 hit and @4
    1 dice roll        1 dice roll

My question is would your odds increase just a bit using D12 for the dice roll. I don’t have any access to a D12 calc.

It should be exactly the same with a D12, since you’re just doubling everything.

I’ve never used the Low Luck system, so I don’t have any opinions on its merits relative to standard dice…but one element of this discussion caught my eye: the general issue of “result predictability” versus the potential for having a good strategy ruined by bad dice.  Although I never really developed the idea beyond just a rough concept, I’ve sometimes wondered whether a variable-risk dicing method might be interesting to use in an A&A context.

I got this idea from a subject area that has nothing to so with wargaming: possible ranges of investment returns (both positive and negative) based on the riskiness of investment types.  Financial institutions sometimes offer investors various types of pre-packaged investment portfolios which contain mixtures of stocks and bonds, in different proportions, and in varying ratios of domestic versus foreign holdings.  Here are three simple (and completely fictitious) examples of what I’m talking about.  At one end of the scale, you might have a very conservative portfolio that consists entirely of domestic guaranteed government bonds; its upside is that it’s very safe (you’re virtually certain never to lose any money), but its downside is that the rate of return is very low.  At the opposite end of the scale, you might have an aggressive portfolio consisting entirely of foreign stocks in high speculative and volatile sectors of the economy; its upside is that it has potential for generating spectacularly high returns, but its downside is that you could end up losing all your money.  In the middle of the scale, you might have a balanced portfolio which distributes your money among many different asset classes, and therefore which offers a mixture of safety and risk and a mixture of low and high returns.

How might this apply to A&A dicing?  As I said, I never really worked out any details, but the idea would be that a player who’s about to enter a round of combat would choose one of three dicing options: low-risk, medium-risk and high-risk.  These options would, I imagine, work either by using either different dice types (4-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, etc.) or by using standard dice combined with some sort of interpretation table.  The low-risk option (represented, let’s say, by 4-sided dice), would offer a narrow and hence fairly predictable range of outcomes, which would translate into only modest gains or modest losses.  The high-risk option (represented by, let’s say, 8-sided or 12-sided dice) would offer a much wider and less predictable range of outcomes, with potential for either spectacular gains or spectacular losses.  The medium-risk option would fall somewhere between those two extremes.

The point of the system would be that each player would have to decide on a case-by-cases basis whether he wants to use a low-risk, medium-risk or high-risk dicing strategy in a particular round of combat, rather than being locked for the whole game in either a Low Luck mode or a standard dice mode.  In principle, this would have two advantages.  First, it would mean that each player would have to make a new type of “command decision” during the course the game, which adds to the thrill of being an armchair general or admiral (which is part of the whole attraction of wargaming). Second, a player who decides to use a high-risk dicing strategy and who ends up losing big won’t be able to put all the blame on the bad dice: he’ll have to take responsibility for having chosen the high-risk dicing strategy in the first place (which, again, is something that a real commander has to live with in a real war).  Conversely, the player who decides to use a high-risk dicing strategy and who ends up winning big will be able to congratulate himself for pulling off a gamble which succeeded spectacularly.  Yamamoto (who was an avid poker and shogi player) was definitely a commander of the “high-risk dicing strategy” type, and he’d probably have agreed with what James Graham, the 5th Earl of Montrose, said during the English Civil War :

“He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all.”

I know its doubled but would a D12 die roll on defense @4 be just a bit better that a D6 die roll of @2 ?
Just look in to see if somebody has a D12 calc. and roll a D6 and a D12 1000 times.

Rolled 10 D12’s got 7 hits.
Rolled 10 D6’s got 6 hits.

Well it still gives you a chance to roll die and make it more interesting if you can get more than 50% hits on a die roll.

@SS:

I know its doubled but would a D12 die roll on defense @4 be just a bit better that a D6 die roll of @2 ?
Just look in to see if somebody has a D12 calc. and roll a D6 and a D12 1000 times.

Rolled 10 D12’s got 7 hits.
Rolled 10 D6’s got 6 hits.

Well it still gives you a chance to roll die and make it more interesting if you can get more than 50% hits on a die roll.

Both have a 1/3 probability of a hit…

Interesting thoughts, CWO. I’ve played a couple of times with a mix between normal rolling and LL, which was also quite good.
Before each battle (but not each round) both players decide whether they fight with normal dice rolling, or LL. So if your Major IC is being raided by 5STR, you can decide to roll 5@1 or 1@5 with your AAA.

I can understand why people want to play with dice, but playing with LL is ofc the best way if you want to play the opponent (or a certain tough strategy), and playing no LL = playing the dice.
Just consider the opening battles, playing with dice. I have seen it way too often that Germany looses the battle of Paris (or gets a Pyrrhic victory there) and/or the same with SZ110. Just for the nitpickers: NO, Germany has not been a fool sending in too few units to these battles. If this happens to Germany, they have lost the game already unless a similar catastrophe happens to the allies, which is completely out of the player’s hands. Assuming two players of a reasonable level. Iow: the dice dictates the winner of such games and not the players. And there are many more examples.

I remember a funny topic on this forum but I can’t find it right now. I believe it was called something like ‘tales of the worst dice ever’. If you read that topic, you will understand how a complete idiot can defeat the A&A god (whoever that is) if the dice decided so.

The bottom line: yes, it is ‘all in the game’ (well, in A&A anyway), but dicerolling only means that you are playing your opponent if dice roll within the normal range. The extremer the deviations, the lesser your opponent matters. And, knowing statistics, very extreme results do not necessarily mean that they happen only very rarely. I know people that roll very, very bad. Always. It is just no fun being them and play a game (any game) with dice…

The last game I played I got careless with Japan and lost half my fleet. The USA had a bigger fleet and could hit the DEIs with force. The only way I could stop this was a big risk attack with planes and last of my fleet. If we had been playing LL then I couldn’t have made the attack because I would have lost before it begin. As it turns out I won with one damaged battleship left and got the momentum back. LL takes the daring moment out of the game and I dislike that.

Like CWO stated, you can try playing with LL and no LL. The attacker gets to pick what way he wants to go. Your gonna use LL when you know your going to pretty much win and if your losing, like chillaxe stated then you want the luck of the dice roll.

I’m gonna have to check that out.

I’m a dice man  :-D

This topic is a fun horse to Frankenstein, as it always elicits strong opinions haha.

I played LL for a long time after we first implemented it in TripleA, but I find that the ultra conservative endgame playstyle which LL encourages just doesn’t suit my tastes.

LL puts most of the emphasis on the first round combats. This is where most of the swings occur, because the battles are narrow and deal with small forces. This can make for a very exciting opener, but, at least in my experience, a much less exciting closer. Playing as the underdog becomes increasingly demoralizing, as the game starts to move further and further away from you. To me the swing on a remainder just isn’t enough to keep the game surprising. Not enough nail biters. Not enough bitter reversals of fortune. LL also allows for something that you can never see in Dice. The calculated perfect strafe, with the ability to just count pips and determine the max hits a defender could put up. Then use that calculation to determine the exact results of an attack/retreat before it ever takes place. And related to this, the ability to air-blitz capitals with predictable results every time. I don’t mind rolling a ton of dice for large battles. To me that’s almost the whole point of the game, and the thing I actually look forward to the most.

The variability of the dice results provides the chief narrative component to the gameplay for me. LL diminishes this story telling aspect as every battle becomes narrow. There are no “do or die battles” no “balls to the wall” attacks in LL. No dramatic final defense of the homeland. I guess I’d be in the Yamamoto camp. In LL there isn’t much gambling or bluffing, it’s all down to the numbers. And if you goof it, even once, there is little room for recovery.

I’m always struck by this idea that LL is somehow more competitive, or more strategic. I don’t see that. It just involves a different type of strategy, and a different set of calculations. You don’t have to deal with the possibility of a large dice swing, on attack/defense, and you don’t have to plan for the contingency that your units dud in the first round of combat. The best example I can think of is everyone’s favorite LL combo…

1 inf, 1 art, 1 fighter for the auto-hit vs a single defending unit.

This inf+art+fighter combo vs a single unit, and you will never lose more than 1 hitpoint in the engagement. In a dice game, there is no guarantee that simply because you dedicate 7 ipcs in ground risked (with a fighter), that you will automatically win the battle and take the territory. I prefer to sweat it, and to watch my enemy sweat it too haha.

Of course, to each his own, but I’d be careful how much credence you put in LL strategies or the LL analyses of overall game balance, as translating to the Dice game. They’re very different styles of play, and produce a pretty different game on balance.

Let me put it another way, in LL, all the “flaws” and all the “exploits” of the OOB unit set up or the map design (on any given board) are laid totally bare. There is no crazy dice randomization to save it, if the game is unbalanced. So in LL the bid process and the first round combats, the starting TUV and location, are way more significant.

I find the endgames rather less climactic, as the play-style is more likely to produce early concessions, and sometimes even greater frustration with the results of the LL rolls. It’s not No-Luck after all, dice are still rolling. I’ve seen people get so pissed that they missed a remainder roll, that they drop the game completely. LL dropping occurs just as often in tripleA as Dice dropping, usually with the same bad attitude and hostile spirit you might expect after a really lopsided battle in a normal Dice game. And I think this is because there just isn’t room for underdog recovery in LL, so those types of players just up and quit, the same way they probably would in a dice game. The point being, that LL is not a surefire antidote for players who are easily frustrated by the results of combat rolls.

All these impressions of mine are totally anecdotal, just based on personal experience while playing games in tripleA. I know there are many great LL players out there, and I’ve played with quite a few. Excellent opponents and good sports.

But I’ve also played with the poor sports, and seen the real sour grapes. People who definitely confirmed my pre-existing bias and suspicion, that those who can’t handle a bad dice roll, or the collapse of a multi-round strategy due to the results of a single dice battle, are basically just not the sort of A&A players I want to game with anyway.

I prefer to play against dice masochists, with a sense of humor about it.  :-D

These days, if a player insists on LL, I’ll just pass on the game, and wait for another Dice player to come along. I just have a harder time investing myself in the LL game, and getting excited about it, and A&A takes ����ing forever to set up, so I enjoy a game with likeminded people. Of course that’s probably the exact same logic that others will use when they enjoy an LL game with other likeminded LL players.

So either way is cool, but just recognizing that it’s really a very different type of game.
:-D

I agree with ya. I would rather get back in game with better chance with dice rolls if I’m losing.