WHAT REMAINS TO BE SAID?
Sometimes I hear people say “It’s common sense”. That’s just . . . lame. It’s gaslighting and a character attack and a lazy disclaimer all rolled into one.
So-called “common sense” is really just a product of training and expectation. I think some toxic people have an idea of what “common sense” is based on their experience, and so act in toxic ways that seem right and natural to them. Their training doesn’t let them see, or perhaps admit, to their part in things.
For my part, I’m not trained to deal with that sort of thing productively. For much of my life, my training was to think some people just can’t move ahead, not as a matter of judging or feeling superior, but just accepting what the facts of the moment. I was trained to think it’s not a matter of trying to get into productive relationships with such people, as they simply aren’t capable of anything really productive in the first place.
But over time, thought and discipline prevailed over such “common sense”. Yes, some people behave in ways that I consider unproductive, and especially where it comes to communications, I understand there’s nothing I personally can do, not because nothing can be done, but because I don’t have a background and training where I can communicate the issue in ways that make sense to such people. In turn, I myself have bad habits in my own ways, as do others. It’s really not about the proverbial washing of hands and wiping the dust off the feet, and more about realizing everyone has their faults, and moving forward.
Which is not to get caught up in moral relativism. Wrong is wrong, and if someone has issues acknowledging issues and is a poor communicator, it is what it is.
Some might say what are these little vignettes, they came here for Axis and Allies! Sure. But communication is an issue that affects everyone, and I think learning to get along with people that we don’t like is a more practical and useful thing than learning about specialist applications in a board game.
. . . but at the same time, I don’t see anyone else writing about these specialist applications so back to it, I suppose.
What about “common sense” applied to Axis and Allies? Again, there is no such thing as “common sense”, not really. What there is, is a product of training. I played various versions for over thirty years is it, applied mathematical models for over twenty, then I had the good fortune of meeting some very extraordinary people, and the further good fortune that my training enabled me to recognize their unique abilities and apply some of what I learned, in some small ways, to my own process.
Part 1 was about demonstrating players should not play blind into board state. Part 2 was about explaining and demonstrating a methodical framework as applied to Axis and Allies. Both parts challenged the unthinking hierarchies present in current meta discussion. It’s true that I have strong disagreements with what I’d characterize as authoritarian non-thinking in meta discussion. But what I’m going on about really has a larger goal in mind. At some point, I think players should acknowledge they cannot and should not surrender their judgment in pursuit of some supposed goal - here, getting better at Axis and Allies. Players must realize that they often don’t have the experience of their opponents, that the fastest way to improve is through disciplined methods, and most importantly, in the end players must be independent. They must be, as it were, adults, capable of exercising their own discretion and judgment, no longer dependent children always looking to others for advice - those others often being children themselves.
Yes, one day even what I write should be left behind as players go on to more advanced things.
But until that day I have you, bwa ha ha ha, cough cough.
NOT FOR KIDS
(which assures that the kids will be the first ones to read this)
Previous parts have been about fundamental premises and the process of reason. However, those familiar with applied science, or some Axis and Allies veterans, will be looking at bits of text and saying “isn’t this important, shouldn’t something more be said” or “what does aardvark mean by these cryptic references to what isn’t being said”. Other players might think “how do I know when I’m getting good?”
Well here’s a very Adult Thing to think about. Life is a journey, not a destination. It is not about when you think you are good. It is not when you receive the adulation of others. It is when you realize how little you know, how far there is to go, and you realize that will always be the case. When you are no longer complacent and smug, no longer self-satisfied, always looking both inwards and outwards, then you will have begun your journey of enlightenment. Or maybe not, what do I know, I’m just an aardvark.
INTUITION
At one point in my development as a player, I was constantly predicting win outcome percentages, which was not just a matter of using an odds calculator a lot. Especially with smaller battles such as small trades for territory, the same unit counts are involved over and over, so especially someone trying to memorize such things will remember them.
But I’d gone rather further than that, I’d typically estimate large stack battles outcomes with less than 3% error, sometimes predicting the overall outcome within 0.1%. Which is pretty funny if you think on it because my favorite tool, David Skelly’s often has variances larger than that thanks to running fewer PRNG iterations. Well it’s sort of funny anyways.)
I could predict future board states, not looking at current board states, but simply by reading move lists and dice outcomes.
I had enough practical knowledge to look at a board state and the turn number then state what was “odd”, which is a lot more impressive when players learn to do it themselves. In meta discussions that’s why where other posters often react to what they see on the board, I also react to what I don’t see, I’ll ask why part of the board is how it is, what the opponent did, what the player did, and how there’s no way the current board state is normally correct because someone missed the counter or didn’t develop their position properly.
The problem with that sort of “common sense”, though, is other players simply don’t have it. Some don’t even know to look for any of it. There’s also a lot of small sub-disciplines, like wave interference, binomial applications, practical stack building versus bleeding, understanding tank applications, fighters, bombers, the whole naval rigamarole, what key timings are, how to predict key timings based on initial setup, ruleset, territory value, IC locations, logistics, and so on.
Most of that won’t make sense, I’m sure, and that’s all right. It’s just things you can look forward to, or maybe you’ll have your own specialties.
INTUITION AS APPLIED IN THIS SERIES
When I read posts saying players should play ignoring board state, I “knew” that was wrong, not because I already had the specific calculations at hand. No. I knew that Revised edition veterans spoke against tank rush except under certain conditions, I knew I had heard nothing from 1942 Second Edition players (which doesn’t mean that much, the analytic community pretty much retired but still), and something like a decade later even with all the rules changes, 1942 Online wasn’t so different that I thought unsupported tank rushes would be good.
Besides that, I’d already done my own research some years ago into “R1 dice break into G1 WR strafe with Kar/Ukr stacks.” I don’t know, maybe I should call it something like “the aardvark tank rush” like follow subscribe, then discover years later some player in Indonesia wrote it all up and better years earlier - which is typically the case, remember how long the board game has been around, how long different versions have been around, remember current versions are often only adaptations of earlier versions, and if you also know specifically how different versions were “broken” - that is, how players played optimally yet repetitively to win highest percentages in those versions - and you knew how specifically later versions changed to remove those “broken” lines of play - well, let’s just say you get some ideas of what’s going on.
So I was like “yeah no way that’s true” and I started typing, and to my not-too-surprise, I was able to find without much trouble a case that could be mathematically demonstrated that supported my case. That’s intuition at work.
As to claims that G3 pressured Moscow and Allies could fend J3 India, well, that’s not really intuition, that’s more “common sense”. (Oof, there’s that phrase again.) Well, I suppose it’s not really common sense. But think on it. If Axis are seriously pressuring Moscow, then why are the Allies allocating resources to protect India? It’s not like infantry can move from India to Moscow in one turn, it takes a while.
Again, I had some practical experience, writing up the whole Ukr/WR/Cauc Axis line, with J fighter reinforcements, and how India could be “cut off”, Moscow isolated. But . . . I didn’t really need that much.
Anyways! Intuition.
INTUITION GOING FORWARD - WAVE INTERFERENCE, UNIT TYPE AND COUNT, AND BAD VAGUE ARGUMENTS
So far specific cases have been very straightforward. It may not have seemed that way when I started addressing the question of G3 Moscow and Allied defense against J3 India by addressing Szechwan, then I probably at least addressed Mediterranean, north Atlantic, some brief timing, and so forth. But there are sharp limits to what can be achieved using such a limited predictive model…
Before getting into the particulars, a word about bad vague arguments. I’ve spoken to authoritarian arguments that attempt to use reference to authority in place of reasoned arguments (“top rank player” or “my day job is” or “you don’t know who you’re talking to.”) That is different to when I write “that is not relevant, but here is what is specifically relevant” or “that is a question that I will not address at this time”.
The difference is one tries to avoid addressing specifics altogether and goes on and on about things that have nothing to do with the nominal topic, another is simply limited on time so chooses to talk about something that is perhaps not what a querent wants to talk about or even what a querent thinks is related, but which does have some relevance.
People use bad vague arguments catch on and start copying phrases or references, hoping to lend weight to what they write. I read, for example, an argument that units are not about their IPC value, and I thought “very good, they have enunciated what any player that doesn’t purchase battleships already knows”, but perhaps that was uncharitable on my part. Then they said a whopper which amounted to ignoring addressing a major stack battle, and downplaying losing a major stack battle, and I thought “oh no”, but also “it would be really funny to take a screenshot of this to pass around at office parties”. I know, I’m awful, but I also didn’t take the screenshot . . . to pass around at office parties.
While one tries to form an intuition around bad vague arguments, one is bound to have bad intuition.
So what forms good intuition? I can’t say what will work best for others, but I know predictive models I build account for wave interference and unit type and count.
WAVE INTERFERENCE
I expect I shall have to use something than that “wave interference”, as it doesn’t convey well what’s going on to most. Well, I’ll think on it.
Sometimes players of Axis and Allies say it’s about “strategy” or “tactics” or vague grandiose things, which makes sense. It’s a game about conquering the world (or liberating it, whatever). It attracts a certain crowd. When I say “risk management” or “binomial distributions” or even “logistics”, people just sort of grunt and sidle away. They don’t want to get caught up in that nonsense.
“Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics” - Napoleon.
I mean, don’t listen to me, listen to the guy that’s been dead for over two hundred years and has never played the game. Got quotes from Sun Tzu too for what it’s worth.
So what is this “wave interference”? What are “rogue waves”? What does any of that have to do with Axis and Allies?
Sometimes I see players talk about “fair dice”. Some even want dice altered to be more “fair”. Or I’ll read how a player said everything was going great then the dice wrecked their great plan. I’m like hey. Don’t they know what game they’re playing? (Well, no, they don’t, but that’s okay, it’s a marketing thing, they want to play this strategic tactical thing but they end up with a time-consuming game that’s about risk management. Eh.)
I’ve seen a lot of Youtube videos where someone complains about bad dice, not recognizing that they owe their position to a lot of small favorable dice results over the course of the game. I think “they have no right to complain, haven’t they been paying attention? they were literally winning on luck!”
Dice happen. Sometimes a player gets a lot of small good luck, sometimes a lot of small bad luck andd it adds up. Or there’s an unusual result in the first round of a major stack battle, which can turn out to be very costly to someone. It must be understood, it is not just about accepting that dice happen, or believing superstitious nonsense that the dice will turn, or getting caught up in Monte Carlo fallacies. It is entirely expected that there will be a range of results in any combat, and how a player forms plans and contingencies to deal with both bad and good luck influences who is the winner.
(And again, where it comes to ranked play, remember some players have better control over schedule, some have more patience with UI, some - well let’s just say there’s things other than board game skill that influence ranked outcomes).
I’ve written elsewhere about multipeak models and how binomial distributions are “jagged edged”, how Axis and Allies risk models are different to everyday perceptions. I’ll mention a bit of that here. Most people think of risk as something analogous to everyday life; if they throw a dart at a dartboard maybe they don’t hit the center, but near the center. They think dice work like that.
But actually combat in Axis and Allies is a result of interfering waves, reinforced by multiple rounds over time. If a player has a 85% predicted win rate on a battle, they often think it’s like they’re tossing darts at a board and they’ll hit 85% of the time, and 15% of the time it won’t be great maybe but close.
But actually in application it’s like having dartboards on opposite walls. 85% of the time a player hits the dartboard in front of them, and 15% of the time the darts fly out of their hand backwards and hit the target behind them. It’s very weird for players not used to thinking like that. Then if the dart hits near the center of the dartboard behind them, players get really really weird about it, because nothing about what’s happening even seems to make sense.
But a player used to how things work isn’t surprised at all.
So, wave interference. Knowing the probabilities, knowing anomalous results, knowing anomalous results in early rounds reinforce over repeated rounds, players know that odd dice outcomes will happen. They don’t depend on it, they don’t fear it, but they do try to account for it as best they can. The ocean’s surface is not like glass, but a lot of small ripples, then sometimes there’s a giant rogue wave that comes along.
In warfare, commanders deal with these sorts of things by keeping reserves to deal with situations as they come up. Rather than simply committing everyone to battle “if you’re not fighting you’re not doing your job”, they understand that situations sometimes come up that require a fresh and ready force able to respond. Or, with firepower, commanders can shift fire to deal with particularly troublesome targets, instead of everyone just firing ahead no matter what is happening elsewhere. That is, commanders in real life have various abilities to respond, and need to act intelligently.
What does that look like in Axis and Allies? There’s a lot of applications, small and large, but for the time being, I’ll say - a good plan shouldn’t need everything to go right, a good plan ideally has some flexibility to respond to conditions, and sometimes small chances need to be taken early to prevent big things later. Those are only general thoughts, not specific applications, so you can imagine what the final and most important thing to remember is. Don’t get smug and think because you lack a plan, that you’re a master of innovation and response. You will get wrecked by a player that’s prepare, and you’re not smarter than the numbers. Know your position, understand the board stat, and always remember there’s probably something you haven’t considered that’s going to come back and bite you.
