The ADS vs. LL debate

Well, here is the reason I sent the TRN and BB to the Pacific…

Japan had only 1 Capital Ship left after Pearl.

That simple folks, no rocket science there.

There was an opportunity for me to Island Hop and grab some income for the US, but more importantly to raid IPC’s away from Japan, slowing them down SLIGHTLY.

And Japan had 2 choices:  allow me to raid, or attack my fleet almost exclusively with air power (since they lacked fleet).

And to be honest, I was EXPECTING to be attacked.
My goal was to take out 1-2 TRN if they were brought along for fodder (slowing the feed of forces to Asia for a net TWO rounds… 1 round that they were diverted south after my fleet, and another to be replaced after being sunk).  Or to kill a couple of FIGs (I expected to kill 2 units if he attacked since he could not mass navy to attack me).
I got lucky… I killed 3 aircraft instead of just 2.  And my BB is still alive.  No real risk, just an annoyance to Darth making him cover his Indian Ocean trannies

But even if the BB HAD died, Japan would have been missing some Air Force.  And Darth’s strat requires Air Force for offensive punch as Japan.

IF he still had his Air Force, Russia would fall in J4.  Without it, Russia will survive J4.

It is a type of gaming that is alien to AS… DIVERSION.

And in this case, it worked, better than I expected.

Japan sans just 2 FIGs would have been nice, and was the result I expected… 50% of his remaining FIGs gone.

The alternative was to have 1 TRN, 2 INF, and 1 BB raiding in the islands.  Actually NOT a major risk to Japan… no way to replenish those INF.  I might have taken 4 IPC’s or so from Japan before my INF was destroyed by defensive fire, and then my forces in the Pacific would have been worthless as a threat to Japan.

Darth would ahve been better off letting his INF on the islands take out the threat, rather than risking ONLY his Air Forces to kill what was not a significant threat to Japan.

Sorry Darth, it was a strategic error to attack that fleet… even if the dice had only been average it was STILL a strategic error.  The risk-benefit analysis from 2 non-replaceable INF is NEVER worth your FIGs.

I think this discussion is mixing up two important aspects of strategic planning - logistics and flexibility. Here I refer to logistics as the aspect of strategy that involves how to move units and conduct battles so as to achieve short term and long term goals, and flexibility as the ability to adapt your goals and replan logistics based on events external to your control.

It’s certainly true that with ADS dice, good play requires much more flexibility than with LL because of the nature of how the dice work and the rapid swings in power that can happen. Because you never know what’s going to happen, a player basically needs to replan what the optimal moves on each country’s turn. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. However, this is achieved at the expense of almost completely negating any need for good long term logistics. While there are certainly important things on the tactical level to be considered every turn, you simply cannot achieve the same level of multi-turn logistics you can in games without such random events. Comparing again to chess, good players can “look ahead” several turns, considering all possible moves an opponent can make and plan their current move based on those possibilities. Theoretically, a computer that was capable of perfect logistics, in other words, infinite look-ahead, would require absolutely no flexibility, because everything could be planned at the start of the game. LowLuck solves the problem of the shallow logistics involved in standard A&A by decreasing the randomness factor. Certainly this decreases the requirement to achieve a high level of flexibility, but it’s certainly not as bad as games with no luck such as chess.

I disagree with your assessment…

Logistics is even MORE essential in ADS, because you have to make allowance for both your main plan AND likely variables.

If you don;t, then any block, any deviation, any problem with dice or whatever means certain loss.

So you have to be able to adjust not only your front line forces, but also your supply lines, counter-attack forces, etc.

And again, IMHO, being able to adapt to changes and still win is the mark of a suprior gamer vs. one who simply executes the same old moves game after game with a guarantee of certain battles always going the same way because of “low luck”.

Switch, what you’re talking about is flexibility once again. When I refer to logistics, I am excluding flexibility. Sorry if you are used to using the terms differently or something, but you have to understand that there is a seperate component to strategy completely unrelated to flexibility that is in some ways inversely proportional to it. In chess, you can have perfect “logistics” but no flexibility and win every time; in poker you can completely ignore logistics, but you have to be extremely flexible to react to the cards you are dealt and the way your opponents are bidding or acting. Axis and Allies involves both, but ADS requires more flexibility and less logistics, LL requires more logistics and less flexibility.

Switch, talking logistics from your side it pretty weird… Your purchasing in your game vs DM is the opposite from thinking logistics. Your USA move was completely anti-logistics. You commited to fast to too much transports on the turn before. Also with the UK yo committed to fast to your trannies. That is not possible when you try to block Africa too… You should purchase for the long war not just react to the moves from the other player. The cohesion from the allied powers is not there…

Logistics are more important in LL than in ADS, because in ADS you always have a chance that luck will bail you out. If your logistics in LL doesn’t work you will simply lose, no question about that. With LL you know what the opponent can bring and calc what you are gonna lose in a strafe, so your units must be in place at always. In ADS you can rely on dice is some situations…

So you would ahve played it differently…  You’d have brought 2 TRN along to make it 5 units instead of 3 attacking that fleet.

2 TRN that would not be disgourging troops to Asia that round… one of which MAYBE 2 of which would be sunk and never transport anything again…
2 FIGs that end up Carrier based and not used for combat in Asia either that turn OR the next…

So it is STILL a diversion, one you yourself would have gone after… a basically worthless fleet in terms of threat to the Axis would have drawn off more than half of your AF for 2 turns, drawn off half of your transport capacity for a turn, and resulted in the loss of 25% to 50% of your current transport capacity.

You had in right in your first post…
That BB, TRN and 2 INF was a negligable threat to Japan, and should have been ignored.  The 1-4 IPC’s that would have shifted would have little to no bearing on the game… certainly far less than the loss of 3 aircraft…
and probably less than the loss of even a single TRN, and the units that were not trannied to Asia the round the trannies were serving as cannon fodder, and 2 of your FIGs ending up AC based and out of range for attacks in Asia the next round (based on your version of that battle AS)

Well first off, 3 FIGs could not have reached.

Second… I play a bit different thatn a lot of folks (as you keep pointing out).  My PACFLT is considered dead at start.  So ANY gain they make is worth while.  And killing a fair amount of enemy before they die is a GOOD thing.

As for the BOM and 2 TRN comparison…
Having Germany risk that bomber (which admitedly did not pay off THIS game) for just 2 TRN early… More than half the time the bomber would die on that attack… reducing Germany’s AF a nice chunk AND reducing the requirements for screening of TRN’s since Germany would be down to just FIGs with low range.

For each move, there is a counter.
For each strat there is a counter.

And every now and then… screwed up ideas WORK…  especially when folks are used to playing a certain way agaisnt certain strats.

Darth (and probably you too AS) are too skilled for that to be immediately fatal.

But unpredictability can in itself be an asset in this game (who would have thought that Russia would funnel a number of divisions to Africa when be crunched east and west?)

Idd, if you would have gone after that fig, you would have had like 4 inf and 2 figs to attack there… That is kind of a gamble…

Ok, I’ve got a lot of things to say, but not much time at the moment (will come back with those ?'s and points later).

However, I’ve got a simple concern that one of you can clear up.

Please explain how combat would be resolved involving a fighter attacking a sub using LL.  Now, my rules are a bit rusty, and I’m going from 2nd edition (don’t have revised), but I believe the fighter gets one shot before the sub is allowed to submerge.  If that’s not the case and the combat is invalid, then obviously just say so.  :-D  If it is valid then my suspicion can be rooted out by a simple explanation.  Also, I didn’t read all of the specific rules for LL at the bottom - mostly skimmed through - so there may already be something that addresses this.

Thanks, and hope to pick this back up ASAP.

OK… so AS is sitting there Armchair Quarterbacking this game… making negative comments on Darth;s play… and basically ignoring anything I do or attempt, except to deride it.

At least AS has FINALLY taken on a game in the forums for other sto make snide comments and armchair quarterback :-P

switch, AS has played several games on these forums.

Ah, but most of them were lost to the great erase a while back…

Oh no doubt I have made some mistakes in this game… heck of a lot of them actually.

And no, it takes nothing away from me, win or lose, in how you characterize DM’s play.

Yeah, I’ve definitely been interested in seeing that game play out. But obviously I don’t know what’s taking him so long … I don’t think he’s scared though, since he wasn’t afraid to lose 4 or so games in a row as he played switch, me, and DM. Losing one more wouldn’t be that big a deal.