The ADS vs. LL debate

I enjoy LL.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with ADS, I just don’t enjoy it as much because of getting sick of it after years of play, and after switching to LL I found that I enjoyed it a whole lot more because it was more strategic.

For those that enjoy ADS, I have no problem with that, and I welcome criticisms of LowLuck, but I would appreciate if those cricitisms were based on experience and reason please and not just strawman arguments. For instance, Maddogg raised good points with his dislike of the way SBRs work in LL. I agree with some of his sentiments even though I think I still prefer the LL interpretation of SBR to the standard.

From ncscswitch, the LL criticisms I have seen fall into three categories:

(ncscswitch, please correct me if I am wrong, I am trying my best to accurately understand your position, which is sometimes a hard task because often in your remarks about LL you make over-general and highly exaggerated remarks, and I hope to try to address your real concerns.)

1. You don’t need a human, just a simulator.

In response to this, I ask why bother playing games like Chess, Checkers, Go, etc, where there is no randomness? More people play Chess than Axis and Allies, and surely they would object to the same criticism. Even if we had a computer powerful enough to calculate the optimal strategy in each situation to defeat any opponent guaranteed in one of these games (which is theoretically possible for all these games, unlike A&A, we just don’t have computers powerful enough to do so), that would not stop people from playing any of these games because players would recognize that when two humans play against each other, you will have a different game every time and it’s what each player does that’s important. No person is going to be able to compute the optimal move in any situation.

Now, I’m not totally opposed to randomness in games, but see the point below for that.

2. Once you determine starting setup, the outcome can be calculated.

In response to this, I would suggest considering the following hypothetical situation: two equally skilled players play against each other multiple times with the same bid and same player playing each side both times. As long as the bid is reasonably balanced, I guarantee you that one player will not win every time. However, if one player is inherently a better player than the other, then I guarantee you that that player will win the vast majority of the time, proportional to the difference in skill. This is as it should be, in my opinion.

3. When you reduce the randomness, you reduce the fun.

This is his only point that I feel is valid, primarily because it is subjective. As I mentioned, this is not the case for me: I obviously find LL to be much more fun, and no one can argue with that because fun is subjective. My only objection to this argument is that it is based on a completely lack of experience: I would be willing to accept it better if you played a few games in LL before making such a harsh policy against it, rather than rejecting it without ever giving it a chance. Haven’t you ever tried something you didn’t think you would like, and found that you liked it after all?

So you should not assume a 24 PE bid would have won you the Axis.

I actually find that I am more likely to bid PE in ADS and more likely to bid PAfr in LL.

That’s really a very interesting point about the RNGs in dicey, AgentSmith, that I hadn’t even been thinking about. I don’t think I’ve ever actually used an ADS dicey, my criticisms were all based off LL dicey versus real dice from my experience in FTF games. But I think I can see that even in the LL dicey: taking a sample of around my last 10 games, I would say that at least 3 out of 4 times when I’ve attacked a lone transport with planes, I’ve lost a plane in the battle because the transport rolled a 1 either before or at the same time that my plane got a hit. See my game with Maddogg for an example where in all three of the battles where I did this, this happened (and for that matter I think Maddogg attacked one of my transports once and lost too). So it stands to reason that in playing with ADS this effect is amplified by the much larger amount of dice rolls - which means I really don’t want to be playing ADS.

Well, OK let’s start with a few things…

There was a hell of a debate recently in Revised over a certain rule.  One of the key points in the discussion was game creator intent, and what that intent was.  Now, the one thing that every single version of A&A has in common is DICE.  They don;t all have Artillery.  They don;t all have Destroyers.  They don;t all have Supported Infantry.  They charge differnt prices for various units.  BB’s have 2 hits in some, 1 in others.  In some the BB has to return to friendly waters to repair, in others it repaits where it is at the end of the round.  In some any Allied destroyer is active if it is in a sea zone, in others allied units not actively attacking are 100% ignored.  The maps are different, territory values are different.  Technologies, National Advantages… all differ among the various versions of A&A.

One thing remains constant… the existence of DICE.

If ANY of the creators, modifiers, tweekers, etc. of A&A had wanted a pure strategy game, then there would not be dice, period.  Indeed as Avin posted, it would be Chess.

But the game, ALL versions of it have DICE.

And this random factor is a MASSIVE influence on how the game is played…
Do I hit Ukraine with just those forces, which wins 60% of the time (absolutely A-OK in LL, but in ADS, 2 games out of 5 it is NOT enough…
I need to knock back Russia’s income this round so Germany can crack Caucuses.  So I’ll risk my bomber in SBR this round (in LL, SBR is about the silliest thing ever invented, since about half the bombs are somehow dropped on your own people and factories)

Things like the Miraculous Defenses that have made “Yukon Jack” one of the most famous INF units… A recent game I played where a US INF held against “sure loss” forces in Asia… THe Screaming Causack that repels the German amphib landing…  NONE of these things happen in a LL game.  They CAN’T… all just math, and every battle’s outcome is known +/- one unit as soon as the movement is declared.

Knowing to 100% certainty if the US sub will survive or not at Pearl if you send X forces…

Axis and Allies is a WAR GAME.

No war strategy ever goes off without a hitch (Battle of the Bulge anyone?)  And that is where the dice come in.  The dice are how things like Patton’s drive to relieve the pressure on Bastogne… or the US losses on Okinawa… or the Battle of Midway… The DICE are what allow the equivalent of the REAL events… these repeated, numerous, and CRITICAL historical cases where forces held out, or advanced, against overwhelming odds… DICE are how these events are translated into the game.

In terms of the game… it allows for “desperate strikes”… where your back is to the wall but if you can win this ONE battle… a battle you only have a 40% chance of winning, you might be able to come back and pull the game out.  In Low Luck, there is no point in even TRYING that gamble, because you will lose.  But in ADS, 2 times in 5 it will WORK, and then it is up to YOU to fight back and make that gamble pay off in the long run.

And that last one folks… THAT is the real reason to play ADS.

And it is why I will NEVER play Low Luck.

If Avin wants to play me that badly… If is he so certain of his ability to defeat me… then why be afraid of DICE?

Switch… if you like random dice, tell me then why you are always whining about dice. It seems you are the only one getting bad dice everytime. So stop wining take dice like a man if you like ADS so much…

Switch, this is the problem with your post: you are not engaging the arguments I am mentioning, what you are attacking is a FAKE version of LowLuck that does not exist. You make it seem like LowLuck does not involve dice - it does!. You make it seem like in LowLuck certain situations cannot occur, which they can. You are creating a false version of LowLuck and then attacking that, so most of your points are rather invalid. For instance:

But the game, ALL versions of it have DICE.

So does LowLuck. So there is no point saying that LowLuck is invalid because it does not.

Furthermore, no out of the box game has bidding in the rules, but you seem to accept bidding as an acceptable compromise of something that we should do, because the game “ought” to be balanced in order to be fun, right? Similarly, we accept LowLuck as a standard house rule, to address the over-randomness issue without changing the fact that randomness can exist. There is no reason to worship the out of the box rules or the intent of the designers. When I play a game, I do so to have fun, and I don’t care if the person who created the game says I can’t do something when I’m playing their game - as long as there are people interested in playing with me the way I want to play, I’ll do so and have more fun.

Do I hit Ukraine with just those forces, which wins 60% of the time (absolutely A-OK in LL, but in ADS, 2 games out of 5 it is NOT enough…

If there is a battle that is winnable with 60% odds in ADS dice, then it will be winnable with about 75-80% odds in LowLuck. I would probably not conduct this battle in LowLuck either. So your example bears no weight. The only reason I might conduct this battle is if I intended to strafe, not take the territory, the unit composition of attacking and defending units was acceptable, and I was more concerned with killing units at potentially equal cost to the units I would lose.

Things like the Miraculous Defenses that have made “Yukon Jack” one of the most famous INF units… A recent game I played where a US INF held against “sure loss” forces in Asia… THe Screaming Causack that repels the German amphib landing…  NONE of these things happen in a LL game.  They CAN’T… all just math, and every battle’s outcome is known +/- one unit as soon as the movement is declared.

Actually, ALL of these things CAN happen in LowLuck. It is possible for a lone defending bomber to win against 5 attacking infantry … in LowLuck! I don’t know where you’re getting your ideas about LowLuck from but every single one of the situations you named are possible in LowLuck : as I mentioned before, you are attacking a FALSE verison of LowLuck.

…DICE are how these events are translated into the game.

And as I said, THERE IS DICE IN LOWLUCK! So all your historical examples of things going wrong apply just as well in LowLuck as in ADS. The only thing is that in LowLuck, one infantry cannot win against 500 (although one infantry can win against 2), unlike ADS. It would be absurd to say that there exists sufficient unknown variables in war that such a thing could happen, keeping in mind that the lone infantry is not supposed to represent an elite sniper unit, it represents a group of infantry, and no matter how well trained they are, that cannot happen in a single battle.

In terms of the game… it allows for “desperate strikes”… where your back is to the wall but if you can win this ONE battle… a battle you only have a 40% chance of winning, you might be able to come back and pull the game out.  In Low Luck, there is no point in even TRYING that gamble, because you will lose.  But in ADS, 2 times in 5 it will WORK, and then it is up to YOU to fight back and make that gamble pay off in the long run.

Once again you are attacking a FALSE LowLuck. Similar to what I described above, if a battle has a 40% chance of success in ADS, it probably has a 25% chance of success in LowLuck, so the same situation applies: if your back is to the wall in ADS and this is your best shot at winning, take it by all means! However if you are getting absolutely crushed to the ground like Maddogg was against either of us, an attack that would have 3% chance of winning in ADS would not have any chance in LowLuck - and I can’t see any justification for wanting something that extreme to happen - would you have been happy if Maddogg had come back and won against you in either of the games you played against him if he had tried to do such a battle and got lucky enough to win? Say he had thrown every German unit he had toward Karelia and then Moscow and won despite overwhelming odds, and the money he got there was enough to beef up Germany’s defense to repel off the US and UK until Japan took over the rest of Asia, etc? Would that have been a satisfying game?

I could echo your last sentiment exactly with the idea reversed:

“If Avin wants to play me that badly… If is he so certain of his ability to defeat me… then why be afraid of DICE?”

If you want to play me, why are you afraid of STRATEGY?

You know, rather than it being a grudge match DM, I have an idea for a friendly compromise that I hope we can both enjoy:

I’ll play a game of AAR with ADS with you switch, if you play a game of 2nd Edition LowLuck with me. Since I know you’re much more experienced than I am with AAR, I would welcome the chance to play you there and learn a few things about Revised, and I would be willing to play ADS in that since it’s your preference despite my own dislike if you would also be willing to play a 2nd edition LowLuck game with me despite your dislike, since that is my preference. I expect I will enjoy our Revised game despite the dicey and will learn some things from you, and I hope you would be willing to allow yourself to enjoy the 2nd edition game despite the dicey and learn some things there as well.

OK, LAST thoughts on ADS and LL…

Low Luck reduces the variable to the “reaminder” of the combat multiple (22 attack roll equals 3 units dead, and 4 times in 6 4 units dead).

But that is still, by design, a VERY low random component.

That makes the game far more predictable… you know that in a certain battle 60% is “good enough” to win with LL, but in ADS most folks want 80% or MORE before they go into a battle.  That changes the rate of advance, the vectors of attack, the force volume available for secondary and tertiary attacks, etc.  THAT is a huge change.  LL simply frees up units that otherwise would be used for “insurance” to instead be used on other rather predicatble battles.

And the last point…
LL reduces the game to a set of move-counter-move that have been written about, posted, analized, reviewed, tested, over, and over, and over again.  If player A does X, then PLayer B will do Y OR Z.  But in ADS, that random factor can kick in and reduce Plaery A’s X move to ashes, making him have to work out and use strategy W modified (as an example).  In short it works to push the game OUT of those pre-set, pre-planned, pre-analized strategies by having the random factor play havoc with the success rate of the “tried and true” strats.  Sure, they still work… most of the time.  But if you strafe Ukraine in R1 and get lucky on dice, Russia has split forces for Germany to face on G1, potentially leaving Russia w/o amour and/or air forces, and losign a lot more units that would have occured with a traditional strafe and retreat to Karelia (as an example).

Basically, ADS requires more fluidity of strategy in order to adapt to the potentially DRAMATIC shifts in balance of power and force-frontatages than would occur in LL.

@Avin:

You know, rather than it being a grudge match DM, I have an idea for a friendly compromise that I hope we can both enjoy:

I’ll play a game of AAR with ADS with you switch, if you play a game of 2nd Edition LowLuck with me. Since I know you’re much more experienced than I am with AAR, I would welcome the chance to play you there and learn a few things about Revised, and I would be willing to play ADS in that since it’s your preference despite my own dislike if you would also be willing to play a 2nd edition LowLuck game with me despite your dislike, since that is my preference. I expect I will enjoy our Revised game despite the dicey and will learn some things from you, and I hope you would be willing to allow yourself to enjoy the 2nd edition game despite the dicey and learn some things there as well.

I appreciate the offer Avin.  But I don;t think it is fair to either of us, not to mention still asking me to give up core gaming principles.  You know and understand the quarks of LL far more than I do (or ever will), and that gives you an advantage.  You know what the LL spread is in each type of battle sequence.  Your experience with teh specific format of LL in application would give you a massive edge (for example, it was only recently I even learned how fracked LL SBR’s were).

Also, by your own admission, you lack extensive experience in Revised.

Rather than play to each other’s weakness… why not play to each other’s strengths.

You are a skilled player of Classic, that is your strength.
I fancy myself a skilled fluid tactician, making ADS my stength due to potentially rapidly shifting situations.
Admittedly, fluid strategy is better in Revised since there are FAR more variables than Classic, but simply going ADS whould add enough fluidity to allow my skill set to kick in.

And I’ll commit to 3 games over the next several months…
Best of 3 to make sure that neither of us would be able to declare victory due to a dice screwing.

Your game, my dicey.
No Tech, No National Advantages, standard victory conditions (2 capitals, 84IPC Axis after USA move, Surrender)
Darth can admin our bids.
And I am willing to play either RR or regular, or even 1 of each for the first 2, then a random choice for that for Game 3 (if needed)

switch, that’s completely ignoring the idea of compromise altogether. That’s just the same offer you’ve been making for months. Haven’t you realized that we will never play against each other if we keep at that standstill? I have an open offer to you to play LL, you have an open offer to me to play ADS. Neither of those offers are going to be fulfilled unless we compromise in some way.

Yes, I know you will have an edge in Revised because of my lack of experience with the game. Yes, I think I would have an edge in LL, but not because of you not knowing the intricacies of LL (there really are no “intricacies” to speak of except the SBR rule) because I don’t think there’s anything about LL to “pick up” if you’re familiar with ADS, but because I do think I am a better player. However I am proposing we play to have fun, NOT as a grudge match. I don’t see what we could gain from that. I will regularly play games that I can predict who will win, for fun. For instance, I played Maddogg not because I didn’t know who would win, but because I thought it would help to teach him a few things. I’ve played many highly ranked players at DAAK despite the fact that I was fairly certain ahead of time that they would win, and I thoroughly enjoyed the games because I learned a lot and saw some really interesting strategies played out. In fact I probably enjoy playing games where I lose more than games where I win if I am challenged by some good strategies I hadn’t thought of before. Which is why I would be interested in playing you in AAR, and therefore am willing to play on your terms.

For Agent Smith’s comments (most of which, in particular those characterizing my play) I am going to ignore…

You are VERY correct in that, in the typical game, MOST combats WILL resolve themselves in a rather predictable way.  The odds determine that such will be the case.

BUT…
Every now and then George Mason makes the Final Four, and all the #1 cedes do NOT.

Sure, MOST battles are going to be predictable, but on average, there will be at least ONE battle that will be completed screwed up (again, based on law of averages, with 20-30 battles rolled, at least one of hem will have fracked dice).  In fact, such a result is so likely, you can in fact COUNT on that occuring in any given game.  It is PREDICATABLE, COMMON, and EXPECTED.  Low Luck removes that near CERTAINTY.

Sure, EE and KAR is predictable enough that in many (most… perhaps nearly all) times the random component will even out.  But what about elsewhere?  Manchuria?  Novo?

The dice frack WILL happen in an ADS.  Quite likely more than once in a game that goes more than a few rounds.  Mathematically, a dice frack is a GIVEN in virtually EVERY SINGLE GAME.

The true test of a player’s skill is NOT how he or she executes a series of pre-planned moves with results that are based on the most likely combat results +/- a standard deviation.  The true test of a player’s skill is HOW or IF they recover from their pre-planned strategy being blown to ashes.

Is their Russia play strong enough to compensate for losign a FIG in the Baltic and having split forces in Kar and Ukr?
Is their Japan play strong enough to compensate for a 5 division USSR force in Manch on J1?
Is their Germany play storng enough to compensate for UK holding Egypt on G1?
Is their UK play strong enough to compensate for losing their initial and rebuild fleets?
Is their US play strong enough to compensate for losing a number of TRN’s in the Atlantic?

THose are just examples…Farily common examples from an ADS game, but nearly impossible examples in a LL game.

Low Luck ignores the certainty of a minimum of one dice frack per game.  And if you are intent on arguing the law of averages, then for Low Luck to be viable, you need to figure out how to insert the certainty of dice frack into it in order for it to indeed be a REAL law of averages.

… or you just play ADS and let those averages self-generate.

So are you interested in the offer I made above?

Basically it comes down to this: You are not willing to play LL, because of prejudice you have against it without trying. I am not interested in playing ADS because I have played both and prefer LL. I am offering that both of us overcome our dislikes or prejudices, not for the sake of making a point or childishly getting our way, but so that we could both learn something and have fun. I am willing to meet you halfway - I will play ADS if you will play LL. I feel I have the most to learn from you via ADS in AAR, hence my offer. Are you willing to meet me?