8 bid, RR, Axis victory

Well, I don’t think Germany will be able to keep it… or keep at a 40 ipc level because WE, SE, EE and even Karelia will be weakly defended.  I could be wrong, but I don’t think Germany will be able to reinforce all of these before the allies can successful take some of them or before Germany will make Russia fall.

I do think your plan is good, but I don’t think it is good enough to win.

To put it into perspective, most people consider a 12 bid is necessary for the Axis to have a real chance of winning…so it might be the best possible way to win with an 8 bid.  Here the odds are 50/50 on either UK or Karelia.  As the Allies, I’d rather lose Karelia.  Then what are the odds for being able to take Russia…I don’t know…I’m going to guess 50/50 here so perhaps 25% chance of winning Russia overall (the Allies could still win if Russia falls, but I’ll not consider it here).

With an 8 bid PA or PE plan, your odds for the Axis aren’t going to be that good either, I’d guess maybe 20%.

With a tech roll, the odds of one dice getting IT, or HB (the game winning technologies)  is about 5%.  10% with rolling two dice.

Lots of guessing, so again, this may be the best approach with only an 8 bid.

The opening concept is the threat of Sealion in G1 by building a Baltic tranny with the build.  That threat assumes that Russia sends at least 1 fig to UK in R1 to counter.  It also established RR so Germany would have 2 trannies in the Baltic for transporting forces to Karelia for G1 (if Russia did counter an immediate Sealion by sending a fig).

But it is not really a threat.  Kar minus 1 ftr is not a big deal.
Also I believe there is only like a 3% chance of getting HB on G1 for Sealion.  16% to get a 1, then 16% to get whatever HB are, so .16 * .16 = .025 or 2.5%.

Is this right?

Again, so you get lucky and win a game via Sealion on G1, but if you do this everytime you’ll lose more than 95% of your games.  I’d much rather be on the 95% win side.  I’m sure with an 8 bid to Europe, Afr, or even Asia you can win more than 3-5% of your games.

I think what some of us are trying to get across is, yes the Kar strike or Sealion could work, but that that win is solely based on the outcome of whether you get good dice or bad, not whether you played a superior strategic game.

Gosh, I’m starting to sound like Panda.  :-D

And over the long term if you employ this strat, you won’t win very many games.

It would be no different if you just played a regular game and started teching right away.  Heck 3% of the time you get IT or HB with Ger in rd 1 and probably have a very good chance of winning that game.  But that is not a fool proof strat for straight-up, and still doesn’t take away the need for bids.

Heck, someone who never ever played A&A before can come along roll for tech and beat me this way (the Sealion attack).  I certainly wouldn’t call them a better player me.  They just got lucky, it happens, and it happens maybe 3-5% of the time with this specific attack.

I think Panda (although it could have been another Club player, I’m not sure) used to say about 20% of the games are decided by dice, what you should look for are ways to win the 80% of the games that aren’t.

The chance of any specific tech is 1 in 36 per tech die.
The chance of any random tech is 1 in 6.

Ger 1 can afford 6, which gives 6 in 36 chances of HB. 
The other valid tech would be LRA.  Which also helps, but not as much dicewise, as HB.
SS helps, but even less. 
NC also posted (maybe another thread) about IT, but Ger will need need income to use that.  The R2-3 will strip much of that income away.  KGF will commence, and Ger will be short on air power.

I thought the point of the $8 trn bid was that G1 invasion of UK when Rus does nothing to help defend the capital is that it gave decent odds without either tech.

UK sz:
trn + BB + Sub® + trn®  vs. (Ger) 3 ftr + 2 Sub
8                                      vs.        13

UK
AA + 2 inf + arm + 2ftr + Bmr  vs.  4 inf + 2 ftr + Bmr.
3  + 15                                vs.  14

Just remember that the invasion is pretty much all or nothing.  The loss of all of that air power will be wasted if UK holds, not to mention what R2 brings with $0 spent on the ground to counter.

The R2-R3 moves against Germany are not THAT significant.  Germany will still have almost all of their land forces (down 4 INF).

No they will also be down 9 inf, 1 arm or 10 inf since they went for dice.  If no tech and Sealion fails it is game over.

1.  Russia does not send fig(s) to UK to defend against Sealion.  Germany rolls tech and has 33% chance of hitting a tech that GUARANTEES Sealion victory.  The other 67% of the time they have a slight edge.  Call it a win 4 times in 5.

Nothing guarentees victory.  What if UK gets 1-3 aa hits???  What if you lose the naval battle?  Things can happen.

Example, I got 9 hits with only 17 inf in my game with Madscientist, likewise, he got 8 hits with only 14 inf and 2 ftrs.  On J1 I attacked China with 5 inf, 3 ftrs and LOST.  I finally cleared it but I had to retreat only 2 ftrs.  And MS got hammered on his UK 1 egy counter, he lost 3 inf, and 1 ftr against only 3 inf and 1 arm.  He was left with only his bom.

This is what can happen when you only try to win by being “lucky”, you never know how the dice are going to go.  It is not a good long term strat.

2.  Russia does send a fig to UK blocking Sealion.  Germany builds land forces and goes for Karelia and Caucuses.  Caucuses is virtually empty (1 INF) and falls to BB and 2 INF.  Karelia is a 50/50 fight, and if it falls Russia can;t re-take in R2 due to Japan figs flown in for defense.  Also, UK has no fleet to tranny forces in before U

I disagree, Russia will easily reclaim.  That is if Ger also trys to hit the UK sz.

I am not calling this a sure thing.  I am calling it one hell of a first-strike strat for Germany that offers at least 50/50 chances of pulling off an Axis win for the game by making major gains in G1 that cannot be totally countered by the Allies until MANY turns later, assuming that Allies play extremely well, that dice go against the Axis, or the Axis player plays poorly.

But it is not that good of a strat.  Russia should probably let G try Sealion and you can have your 16% win percentage, I’ll gladly take the 80+% win percentage.

This strat is based solely on luck and is easily defendable with Russia help and reduces the game to a G1 crap shoot, whether it is in UK or Kar.

In other words, it is a strategy that preserves game balance, and makes it worth playing out

But at best it only gives you a 16% chance to win.  That is not very balanced.

If it were a viable strat, it would be used more in the PBEM Clubs and bids wouldn’t be as high as they are.

I think it is unfortunate switch that you are hellbent on relying on a strategy that gives you a 50% chance. I personally feel that the game should start out with a roughly 50% chance of each side winning. The goal that I place upon myself is increasing my odds to something much higher than that throughout the game and then taking that chance.

I feel that by attacking karelia you are taking the chance that if you win, and win very strongly, it will probably give you the game. 50% of the time you won’t win the karelia battle, however, and you just won’t be able to recover. Yes you can hole up in germany and create a strong fortress europe, but with all of your armor and most of your inf spent, you won’t ever really be a threat. Okay, if you get heavy bombers you might be, but I find tech pretty cheesy in this case, and most others. Instead of using tech to make the game even, I would prefer to add units to give me that 50%, and then through good play raise my percentage. I define good play as a series of moves and attacks that give me favorable position and unit exchange. I guess I just don’t like the fact that the absolute worst player in existence could still win simply by rolling heavy bombers, whereas if they did not tech they probably never would. It does not even the ground between the axis and allies, it evens the ground between good and bad players. That is just my opinion though, and I wouldn’t even consider myself a good player, I just try to be.

In terms of karelia, if you take it and I have no transports as the UK I will hit it with naked air and clean up whatever is left. I’ll probably lose a plan or two in the process, but that’s the breaks. If you land your fighters from japan there, I will attack it with 2 1’s and 2 3’s (you forgot the fighter in the UK?) giving me a 80% chance of taking. We then trade for another round. Yes it is a pain if germany takes it, but that 50% chance is what irks me. If you were able to win assuredly after the 50% chance, okay maybe. As it is though, you could definitely still lose. If it pans out it makes the game pretty even, but if it doesn’t it makes it pretty uneven.

I’m going off of memory here, but with the odds I ran for karelia and the assumption that you were planning on hitting the canada tranny with a sub?, that leaves you attacking UK seas with 3 fighters, 1 sub vs. 1 battleship, 1 sub, 2 transports. That gives you only 70% chance of winning (combined with your other 50%), and when you win you will most likely lose at least one fighter, maybe two. If you attack with two subs and your three fighters, you have a 90% chance of winning, much better. It is still quite probably that you lose a fighter, though less so. Now there is a pesky transport that can go to karelia though, allowing the UK to take it back if you managed to take it in the first place. You could try and leave a sub to block that, but then you decrease your chances of taking and substantially increase fighter loss. Indeed, if you tried to leave a sub you would probably be down to 1 fighter, 2 fighters at most really. If you were only left with one fighter, I wouldn’t bother building a carrier and I’d just go heavy on the transports. If you took with two fighters, I’ll probably still have to build an AC, but at that point you would have a damn weak assault against the navy and in UK 2 troops begin landing.

Switch,

I agree with the others here that this isn’t really a great chance of winning.  With Russia moving first, the landing of a couple of Russian infantry, or a fighter or two in the UK on noncombat will adequately protect the UK.Â

AAfiendish pointed out that if Karelia does fall, the UK (and US with the bomber, and USSR with their fighters from the UK as well) could strafe Karelia removing any German and Japanese forces.  Considering the most likely outcomes in an axis victory would be 1, or 2 tanks, this would let Germany keep Karelia but not have any forces there after the strafe =  no attack on the next turn.  You will have a couple of tanks from W. Europe that can be moved to E. Europe, but that won’t be enough to take Moscow (8 inf + 1 surviving fighters vs. 2 tanks + 5 fighters, the odds favor the Allies 57% to 43%)  Then Russia will get the time to build “fortress Moscow”, the UK and US will soon be attacking Germany from the west.

OR the Allies could take the 8 or so infantry Russia (along with reinforcements from the east) will build on R2 and add the UK fighters for defense for a stand in Moscow.  Assuming the most likely favorable outcome for the Axis, 8 inf + 3 fighters defending against 3 tanks + 5 fighters.  Again the odds favor the Allies ( I again get 57% to 43% when I run the numbers, my odds calculator is home so I am doing this manually, am I correct AAfiendish??).Â

Now, to be fair I think this is an innovative plan as I have said before:

@221B:

To put it into perspective, most people consider a 12 bid is necessary for the Axis to have a real chance of winning…so it might be the best possible way to win with an 8 bid.Â

But the following:

@ncscswitch:

I am serious, this is a gambit I would play every day as Germany with a small bid, until someone figured out that even 8 IPC’s may be too much to maintain game balance (I AM a purist afterall).Â

Is not correct, 8 ipcs are not enough for a fair game, let alone too much for game balance.  Here you have a 50/50 chance at the UK, unless countered by Russia on R1.  If Russia does counter, you have a 50/50 chance at Karelia, followed by chances at Moscow where the Allies are favored to win.  However far Germany gets, failing to take either London or Moscow essentially leaves Germany toothless and the game for the Axis will be over shortly.  This is not a balanced game, the Allies are still favored and this plan relys on luck to win.

If I only had an 8 bid and still had to play Axis, I might try this, but I’d rather feint the operation sealion and play traditionally with a noncombat move of both the Norway tank and two infantry to Africa with this bid .  Or I might try rolling for tech.  Or I might play it straight with fortress Europe and a PA bid of infantry and a tank.  Or I might take a second transport in the med.  None of these would really matter, the Axis does not have enough for a “fair” game and I will need either luck or poor play on the part of the Allies to win.

@221B:

OR the Allies could take the 8 or so infantry Russia (along with reinforcements from the east) will build on R2 and add the UK fighters for defense for a stand in Moscow.  Assuming the most likely favorable outcome for the Axis, 8 inf + 3 fighters defending against 3 tanks + 5 fighters.  Again the odds favor the Allies ( I again get 57% to 43% when I run the numbers, my odds calculator is home so I am doing this manually, am I correct AAfiendish??).

Do you mean 3 tanks + 5 fighters vs. 8 inf + 3 fighters? That is heavily in favor of the defender, like 97% or so. I don’t think germany would even have that though, as they would use fighters on karelia and lose probably at least one in UK seas. At most I think they’d have 3 fighters. They certainly wouldn’t be able to take moscow immediately, and probably wouldn’t try. I don’t think that conceding karelia is a good idea though. Letting germany build in karelia is not something I’d be willing to let happen, especially when they will solidly own it and ukraine, and if they feel like it trading caucus. This puts russia pretty far in the hole. I think that if germany takes karelia you have to take it back. Later in the game you can potentially cede it if it helps the allies, but giving it solidly to germany early in the game would be tough.

AA,

Thanks for the odds calculations on my scenario.  Its much more in favor of the Allies than I thought it was.

I also agree that its generally not a good idea to let Germany into Karelia.  However, in this case I was thinking that Russia only needs to withstand the initial assualt because after that, Germany will be too weak to pose a real threat.  Therefore, I was trying to determine the most favorable defense for Russia (to strafe Karelia and lose fighters or simply land them in Moscow?).

Hey switch,

Have you played any of the people who have been disagreeing with these strategies? I’ve seen you posting that you usually use the Hasbro version against yourself or against the AI, but you have to recognize that this is no substitute for playing against a human. I would be greatly interested in seeing a record of a play by email/forum (on the Games forum) attempt against some of the regulars of this forum to defend either this strategy or the no-bid strategy you propose (the one for which I recorded the no-luck game against myself). It’s all good to continue to argue statistics back and forth, but it’s much more useful to actually see it carried out in game. And to counter the suggestion that you get “bad dice” the first time around, go ahead and play more than once - I’m convinced that unless you get very “good dice”, these two strategies are going to be rather inadequate.

Sure, I’m interested, but if we’re playing, I suggest you get more acquainted with the standard ways of play-by-email using a map (such as GhoulLord’s, which seems to be the norm) and dice server first. See the links on the sticky thread on the Games forum for more details, or look at some of the other games posted there for samples. I just got through a game of teaching my opponent how to do that, and what with him not being a native English speaker, I was having a rather difficult time. I looked at your game with trihero, and there’s no way I’m going to be doing that; I haven’t played on an actual board in over a year, it takes far too long, and allows much more leeway for mistakes. Plus my cat would knock over pieces of a game I set up but left overnight!

I also only play LowLuck games myself, (hence my simulations in the other thread were using low luck results). So we should therefore probably contest your other strategy (the one on the no-bid thread, although if you like you could still use a moderate bid), since it doesn’t involve weapons development. I hardly ever play RR, but as I mentioned in the other thread, I would consider a bid of around 12 IPCs probably a minimum bid, so if you’re interested in still using a bid of 8 with RR to prove your point, that sounds fine to me.

I also only play LowLuck games myself

Since the purpose of this game would be to determine if an 8 ipc bid in the form of a baltic transport would be sufficient to give the Axis a victory, I think LowLuck would be more appropriate than purely random dice.  Here the answer is dependant more on strategy than on dice.  Unless of course you both want to play 10+ games to even out any statistical anomalties  :wink:

I do however like what Napoleon said, “it is better to be lucky than good” and do not play LL myself.

I see your game with Trihero is over; are you interested in starting a game soon? I play LowLuck so that no one can blame the loss on bad dice, and I walk away from each game I play satisfied that regardless of whether I won or loss, it wasn’t because of luck. If you’re trying to evaluate a strategy then that adds further reason to use LowLuck, because it’s possible to have a superior strategy and lose because of dice and vice versa. With LowLuck the same is still possible, but much less likely of course. Anyway, for the purposes of this discussion, if we’re not doing LowLuck, as 221B said, we would need to play several games to even out the statistical anomalies. I don’t know if I can commit to that, but if you are adamantly opposed to trying lowluck, I could give it a whirl.

DarthMaximus’s post on the top of the games forum should have the necessary links. On the AAMC downloads page, GhoulLord’s map is the third from the top. You can also take a look at the recent game between DarthMaximus and madscientist for a sample of how these games are done. DAAK also has a Play by Mail guide and a LowLuck guide. I see you started another game with TriHero; let me know when you’re ready to start.