Playing Solo

@Herr:

Let me start by stating that I have the utmost respect for the programmer who created the AI. Doing something like that in a game like A&A looks like  a pioneering effort to me.

Having said that, it can’t be denied that the AI has serious flaws in its game. It does a somewhat decent job on land, but it’s no good at all at sea. In an utterly silly effort, I once played the Allies against it in G40, giving it a bid of 3,000 (and buying some useful stuff for it too, because it’s no good at spending a bid itself). It took forever and was basically a big waste of time, but I won that game.

Sounds reasonable. 1942 doesn’t have the same sea emphasis as G40, at least when I’m playing.

I have played Axis & Allies Global 1940 and other deviations of the G40 setup several times.  I find playing solo quite fun!  The first couple times I played solo I found myself allowing one side to defeat the other.  What I do now is play the side of my preference just a little bit better than the other and I have found that it works quite well.

I did this, do this, and will always do it occasionally.    Now seriously I am really well-known for this.  As a five-year -old it was said that I spent 2 hours playing checkers solo…several days in a row: in my early years this was almost an obsession.  I hatted playing with others because they didn’t play what I wanted.  So I literally played almost every game possible I wanted to solo.  The craziest thing I ever did was a litteral 4 player reversi (yes I made a reversi game for four players) tournament.  I was a little nuts back then, but it gave me a gift of being extremely unbiased.  Anyway when I first got 1941 back in 2012, I played solo for about a year (with occasional games with others).  It really helped me get a hang of the rules and form strategies.  So how do I do things like gin rummy for four players by myself being unbiased?  Very simple:
Look at the game and say to yourself, “what are ky options and ky opponents options?”  Even if I know that I am hitting Spain next round, with Germany I think, “Would my opponents optimal and most likely move depending upon the situation of the board be Spain? If so I need to counter it.”  Yeah so kinda weird but great fun.  I do this whenever I have no one else, want to try soemthing out, and sometimes just for a playtest.

Are you truly unbiased?  If not forget it.  I know it is very difficult for people to think this way but it is actually a simple process: analyze the situation and decide what is most likely.

I have never completed a solo game but i do set it up now and then to test out opening moves outside the “normal” ones for a couple turns, trying to react to the oddball moves as effectively as possible to see how they play out over a few rounds

When I do this (generally to game test balance) I really don’t have a long range plan, as the other nations would immediately know it and spoil it. I just go from nation to nation and say “What can I do with this nation right now in this situation?” “What is the opposition giving me that I can exploit?” and do that.

@guymyer

I see this is an older topic, but I found it interesting and timely (see Covid-19). Yes, I often play solo. Quick background, I have been playing A&A for over 30 years, so I am very experienced. As you get older it is often more difficult to get the band together for a game - and I am too old to get into online gaming.

After tiring of trying to get games together I started playing solo out of desparation I suppose. With that said, I quite enjoy it now - after getting over the initial weird feeling of playing an interactive board game by yourself. But as others have noted, from an analytical perspective it is not actually that difficult. Is it perfect no, but neither are your friends who come over and drink your beer, complain about bad rolls, and blame historical inacuracies for their loses…but I digress.

One must simply act in the best interest of the nation they are playing. For example, let’s say the Allies could threaten Germany’s capitol this turn, but you plan to attack on the next turn, Germany must protect the capitol as necessary to negate the threat - stay honest. I personally find the rolls, or more to the point the bizzare rolls, are the key to fun solo games. There always seems to be a handful of Yatzee rolls of ones that throw a huge monkey wrench into the best laid plans - just like real life.

It would be cool to have a specifically designed solo A&A game, but again as others have noted, building in the AI to handle all the variables associated with these games is extrememly difficult.

Anyway, hopefully there will be new games/puzzles to solve in the future: 1914 second edition, North Africa, Kursk…

@san-diego-gamer yea more fun against people but I been playing solo so long,it seems normal to me lol

I always brought my own beer :)

Did this in the past occasionally but since Covid hit us and we moved to a bigger flat I played Solo games almost every week if nobody is available on TripleA. Benefit for me is to setup the game G40 quite often (a bit of a guilty pleassure to me) and explore new possibillities by adapting starting moves from TripeA games.
At the moment I play only 3G40 (YoungGrasshoppers Tournament Edition) because of the new order of turns and the strategy change that comes with the rule chnages.
To keep the “opponent” behaviour unpredictable I tend to use a dice to determine scramble decision (a 1 will cause scrambling actions for the defender). Saw this online in a YG video and I thought it´s worth to use that.
Still looking forward to meet friends for the post-Covid Face-toface games.

@san-diego-gamer said in Playing Solo:

but neither are your friends who come over and drink your beer, complain about bad rolls, and blame historical inacuracies for their loses…

LOL

I used to play solo when others didn’t have time for a game. I actually really enjoyed it and found it useful.

For me, one of the keys is to find something about each Power’s unique military situation, history, goals, geography, possible scenarios, etc., to make every “switch to the other side” highly interesting… so that by the time I’m running an opposing strategy I become even more enamored with it, or with testing the weaker spots in what I had previously thought was a strong plan.

It’s also a great time to experiment with house rules.

Yes, and there are methods to make solo gaming more enjoyable. Check the classic book “The Solo Wargaming Guide”.

Basically, you list key strategic paths for the opposing side, and before their round you roll the dice which will dictate the strategic path you must follow for that nation. This method prevents you from foreseeing how the enemy will operate.

In sum, the enemy’s strategy is determined by luck before their round, but at a tactical level (battles), you need to make best decisions for all involved nations.

Actually, this is an old rule for solo wargaming. You develop scripts for each enemy and roll the dice.

@phd_angel said in Playing Solo:

Yes, and there are methods to make solo gaming more enjoyable. Check the classic book “The Solo Wargaming Guide”.

Basically, you list key strategic paths for the opposing side, and before their round you roll the dice which will dictate the strategic path you must follow for that nation. This method prevents you from foreseeing how the enemy will operate.

In sum, the enemy’s strategy is determined by luck before their round, but at a tactical level (battles), you need to make best decisions for all involved nations.

Actually, this is an old rule for solo wargaming. You develop scripts for each enemy and roll the dice.

Is the author of this book William Silvester ?

Thanks

This would be a great time to list each countries objectives and figure out how many for each and roll up to a certain amount of dice matching the lists.
May have to go with maybe have allies roll less based on what axis does so allies can respond

I play solo often. It helps in learning rules. It helps to develop a sense of possible strategies and gain some mastery of mechanics. Sometimes I play out limited scenarios in “what-if” mode. Yes, if I develop a strategy, my “opponent” is fully aware of what I’m attempting. When I switch sides, I look for the best possible response and thus can learn something about how my strategy can be countered. I have sometimes played out entire games like that, because it’s fun to see how different choices (and luck) work out. If a strategy turns out to be fatally flawed and disaster ensues, that becomes part of the narrative of the game. I’ve also made maps for small scale engagements, inspired by a wonderful game that imagined a British invasion of Heligoland-Bight (I am sorry I can’t recall the name). My current interest is a map of Ceylon imagining an invasion to take it as a stage for invasion of India.

I can also whimsical stuff just for the hell of it. Alternate histories and just weird stuff. A recent setup of 1942 became The Great Orc War when genetic mutants called Orcs because Orcs came swarming out of Mongolia in mid-1943 (dictated by die roll). Determining things by die roll can be a way of limiting bias. Die rolls determined when the Orcs appeared, how many of each type appeared in a turn, when they acquired certain capabilities and what those capabilities were, how nations responded to events, and so on. In addition to die rolls, it is helpful (as already suggested) to define objectives and any unique tendencies for each power. Sometimes those become principles that can make a decision, and sometimes they can be reasons to tilt the die roll. The response of the Japanese in the game was assigned to the “very unlikely” pile but the die just happened to go there.

In the unlikely event that anyone would be interested, the Orcs were defeated, the Soviet Union was destroyed, the Japanese were contained and cooperative, the UK was a shell of itself with colonial possessions lost, the Germans were defeated by the US and UK despite an alliance with the Orcs, and the US emerged as the only surviving great power with some interesting tech developments. This matters because I’m thinking of some new events in this alternate universe. :)