Turn one attacks that must not fail

Hey MOW, cool topic… I’m curious to know how you play the Med as the UK turn 1.

Personally, I find your defeatist attitude interesting. I’ve had just about every battle you list go south but did not “throw in the towel” as you seem to think is the only option. In my mind, that’s the excitement and challenge of this game. Sure the dynamics change, but that simply means so must the game plan. Combat is fluid and generals must adapt to the outcome of every battle. If it goes as expected or planned…outstanding. But if it doesn’t, we must come up with an alternative plan or action to offset or regain the loss. I have indeed recovered from losing most of G’s aircraft on the opening turn w/ GB ships still standing. To say “If I lose X amount of aircraft or GB has ships left means the game cannot be won” is, in my mind, short sighted. To me that simply adds to the adrenaline level and excitement of the game. Even if your prophecy proves true, I must at least try to continue the game because there’s always the chance my opponents plans will go south too. Anyway…interesting question. I just never like to throw in the towel so quickly. I love to play it out. Even if I’m on the losing side. I always learn something from every game.

There is an increasing tendency for the UK to scramble all of the planes to SZ110 and SZ111.  With bad dice rolling the Germany could lose a large fraction of the airforce.  If nothing goes wrong for the Allies during the first turn, I usually surrender on G2.  It becomes impossible to drive back Russia and survive the Allied invasion against a skilled opponent after that massive setback.

I am in concurrence about the defeatist attitude. I think you should try to play it out. This game takes on average about 45 minutes to setup. The dice will “dice you”. Suck it up and see if you can get out of the pickle. The only true test of your skill is when you are backed into a wall. Why not let your opponent relish in the short lived victory? I’ve come back from what appeared to be certain doom on about 5 occasions. These are the games that are always remembered and talked about for years to come. “You remember that one time when I came back…”
I’ve assaulted Moscow 3 times in a game before finally breaking through. Couldn’t attack the Chinese with Japan (House rule) twice in a game. My USA got blasted in the Pacific by the Japanese fleet. Lost London and kept playing anyway for 5 more hours. It’s often more fun to see just how good you really are than worry about a win loss record. I use an unknown quote to end my tirade on quitting early.
“No good captain worth his salt only ever sailed calm seas.”

And besides, Germany and Japan in WWII kept fighting past the point where they had any reasonable hope of achieving victory, then past the point where they had any reasonable hope of even managing to scrape together some sort of stalemate, and even past the point where it was clear that certain defeat was only months away.  By May 1945, for example, the western and eastern fronts had each moved so far towards each other that the Wehrmacht troops on each front were almost fighting back-to-back down the middle of Germany.  More sensible German political leaders would have taken the hint a lot sooner and promptly thrown in the towel (as Italy did in 1943), but at the time Germany didn’t exactly have a sensible leader.  And in any case, wars on the scale of WWI and WWII doesn’t get resolved in the old-fashioned way of giving up before too much damage is done, conceding a few colonies to the enemy and calling it a day.  Total warfare makes such demands on nations, and inflicts so much damage on them, that its objective tend to become total too: unconditional surrender of the enemy.  And unconditional surrender is something that a country’s rulers are very reluctant to agree to (in part because it will mean the end of their regime), so the natural tendency is to want to keep fighting until the bitter end.

If you consider any given battle to be “game-breaking”, then you are taking excessive risks and using the ability to concede the game and start over as a justification for those risks.  Simply make more conservative attacks.  It is an assumption we make that Germany can attack 3 sea fleets, take paris (and even attack Russia) all on turn 1.  That isn’t conservative, but its always possible.  Same with the Tobruk/Taranto complex…

I don’t know of any T1 or T2 battle where I just throw up my hands if the luck goes completely against me.    If Japan loses all of its ground troops in the Yunnan battle, then well, it can make up for that with the FIC factory within 1 turn (if it took and secured it).  I also don’t always counterattack there.  Sometimes, its better for china to run like hell.

You’re right, India will fall.  It always falls.  That’s not about luck or even Allied choices (barring bringing all your air there) its more about how the game plays out.  As a result, I have undercomitted to building the front line transports before and only shown up on J3 with not enough to win…so I have to wait until J4.  I cant simply roll the dice and hope to get lucky, then quit because I didn’t wait until J4 or preplan better.

Maddog is dead on;  I want my opponent to have to take risks and thereby lose.  Usually making a certain, risky choice buys you 1 turn.  You can do a battle on G4 with luck, or build up more and on G5 take it for certain.

I have played 108 games of Global and those scenarios happen very rarely.  People focus way too much on the opener and the first 4 turns of the game because for most people, that is all they play.  The deeper game lies closer to T8, and luck isn’t the deciding factor on where you are at when you get there.

Its a game of skill.  If luck mattered, you undercomitted, planned badly, or shouldn’t have made that attack.  At some point, you have to go to the dice but in our final game, we only had 2 climatic battles at all the whole rest of the game is a stalemate.

My opponents often have to suck up losing battles and awful odds too, I hardly jump for glee, because I know its going to happen to me at some point.  But there is a huge difference between “attritional”, general luck (getting infantry causalties) and being lucky when it matters (rolling average in a 60 piece battle when your opponent has a slight odds disadvantage).

I don’t understand low luck.  It isn’t AxA to me.  Luck doesn’t distort outcomes it confirms them.

The first one is ok.  The second one is game winning.

@Marshmallow:

Well, if your opponent messes up or his luck goes sideways too, the game could easily be salvagable. On the other hand, with average results and no major errors on your opponent’s part, do you really think you can recover from these failures?

As I said in my first post…of course I think I can recover. I have before. “No guts -no glory” Right?  :wink:

From your examples, France is really the only attack I can see that both must be done and that I would consider game ending under most circumstances.

From that alone we can say that some portion of games are going to be lost on dice alone. It’s just the nature of probability.

That said, most people who think they lose to dice simply don’t understand dice. Yes, you lost a battle you “should have won”, since you had a 90% chance of winning, and it cost you the game. But if you fight a half dozen critical battles at 90% that will cost you the game if lost in a particular game, you’re going to lose half the time outright.

I generally think people who go into France light are insane for this reason - sure, you’ve still got 90% chance of winning but that means you’re going to lose 1 in 10 of your games on the first battle. That’s insane. But most people don’t consider that a “real” loss, despite the fact balancing minimizing your risk vs reward of spreading yourself out is literally the entire point of the game.

But this is also why I don’t think the other battles are strictly game enders if they go poorly. When the board is against you you simply up your tolerance for risk. A 10% chance of winning a Hail Mary that will decide the game now is entirely preferable to losing with certainty in a few more turns.  A 90% chance of in a game deciding battle is entirely too low if everything is going your way.

I have played many games in my life, and many times, I’m the one with the advantage.  I’m the oldest of my friendset and the owner of almost all the games.  I’m the GM or rules-explainer.  My opponents then have to fight uphill against me for 3-4 more hours, fruitlessly, sometimes for YEARS.

It seems really unfair then that when I take a knock, or bad luck, or a “worst” outcome, that I would just give up, ever.

I’ve had the advantage so many times, I’ve just realized that its much more fun and more fair for me to play out a losing game.  Winning is fun, but it would hypocritical not to let other people enjoy the advantage that experience usually offered me first.

C1 on Yunnan & UK1 on SZ96 - Yes. In both cases, particularly the first too much damage is done.
J1 on Yunnan - no. Not at all. Not a little bit. What are you smoking?
G1 on SZ110? Without bringing in the BB, if the UK scrambles you would expect to lose 3+ planes. Strange comment.
G1 Paris? Perhaps. I’m not so sure about this one. If you take out 1inf 1art 1arm it becomes about 97%. Perhaps if you lost that you would be looking a bit poorly.

@Marshmallow:

Re J1 Yunnan attack, if this fails you are not taking India by land. It’s a major setback. Game loser? Only if you were planning to take India to win.

I will not lose a plane to take the territory and suffer no real ill effects if that happens, other than not getting to kill a couple more Chinese J2/C1. What is the problem you are talking about? If you do lose planes and still withdraw?

My issue with LL is that it changes the game balance in ways I don’t completely understand, particularly for small, air supported battles.

For example: there are 3 infantry are in a province. I know I can send just 2 units and sufficient aircraft to land 3 hits, always be successful and always take the province. Depending how important both winning and taking the province was, without low luck I might have to send 3 or 4 units. This will be especially problematic in amphibious assaults, because knowing I only need to send one transport can make a huge difference.

I think this will further tilt the game into Axis hands. Germany and Japan both have large starting air forces, take part in many small battles, and guaranteed outcomes will free up Japanese transports for other tasks. Maybe it’d even out elsewhere, but I’m just not sure what all the ripple effects will be.