🎲😢 PRNG dice support group — and ranting

It never ends

https://imgur.com/a/AQG3QBC

2 Bombers shot down, 1 left and it does 1 damage.

📢Hey there, Axis & Allies 1942 Online Commanders!

We’re hard at work on getting the new dice mode🎲 just right— so we’re asking a few more questions in a new survey!

Tell us what your ideal dice for Axis & Allies 1942 Online would be like!👇
https://forms.gle/EH1QYs4d177QtMes8

More details: https://steamcommunity.com/games/898920/announcements/detail/5124498536777100791

Forming 1942 Second Edition and 1942 Online research/testing group for strategy/tactics. Writeups to be published as guides in time. Games will be played on TripleA v5 and 1942 Online and TripleA v5 (Larry Harris Tournament Setup) without bids.

Applicants must be comfortable with discussion of mathematics and exact details and are expected to contribute meaningfully. This is not a group for casual players, nor is it a group for players that want to develop “secret” lines of play.

@Brian-Cannon I’m a bit late getting to this but as @aardvarkpepper suggested, the battle calculator (hosted by this very site at http://calc.axisandallies.org/) is your friend here. Basically, before committing to your moves, take a look at what your opponent’s possible moves are going to be and run battle calculations on what would happen if your opponent played a certain way (IMPORTANT NOTE: Remember to set the “rounds of combat” setting to “all” and “10,000X” (more simulated battles = more accurate prediction) and to also set the “luck” setting to “1942” and “Pure Luck” to be accurate to AAO.

I’m not going to speak to your specific game example because that’s not what this thread was about, but I’ll give you the same advice other people gave when faced faced the “Dark Skies” strategy. Basically, a large intimidating air stack can only attack one large stack (be it a land stack of ~10 INF or greater or a naval stack of ~5 Destroyers or greater) in one round. Because of this, you need to be a bit greedy and push forward with all of your large stacks simultaneously, creating potentially-game-winning threats in multiple regions of the board. This puts the Allies in a bad spot because they’ll be forced to choose between solidly destroying one of your threats (and letting the other ones get off scott-free to accomplish its objective) and taking multiple risky fights trying to stop all of your threats (which will probably result in the air stack getting severely reduced/destroyed, making it your victory). I’ve been talking in abstracts here but I can give a rough-ish approximation based on your game. Don’t take this as a one-to-one guide on what you should’ve done in that game, I have no idea what the board looked like:

Scenario: USA is ferrying air stacks from W. USA -> Yakut -> Center Map (Moscow). USA is using said stack to wipe out anything that moves (i.e. Japanese navy, Germany trading attempts in Russia, etc.).

Threat #1 - Get Germany’s entire army (or at least a good chunk of it) in Caucasus, threatening Moscow and demanding that USA keep the air stack in or around Moscow.

Threat #2 - Move out with Japan’s fleet and either threaten taking Hawaii+India for the last VCs (you said you had Karelia earlier and I’m assuming with a strategy like this the Allies weren’t taking Philippines/Rome/Paris anytime soon) OR threaten challenging/destroying the US fleet off of Alaska. If taking the first option here you’d just need to spend a turn or two spamming land units on Japan proper to avoid a landing in Japan. Japan is really easy to defend because of it’s 8 production.

With a large-enough Japanese Navy threatening game-over in one part of the board (by either sinking the USN (thus shutting off the stream of air units into Russia) and the German Army threatening game-over in another (Moscow), the USA in this hypothetical scenario is forced to use their air stack to either sink the IJN or wipe out the German Army. If they sink the IJN the Nazis grab Moscow and win the game, and if they wipe out the Caucasus stack the IJN accomplishes its objective and you win the game. If the USA tries for both they’ll probably fail unless the AAO RNG screws you, in which case you do what the rest of us good folks do and make a thread/post complaining about it.

tl;dr Use the Battle Calculator. Make multiple threats so the Allies need to pick one to deal with and the other(s) can prevail without issue. Don’t fear the reaper, as the song goes.

Hope this helps at least somewhat.

I know its an online game with “Online” in the name, but I still think not having really any focus on the single player experience is a bit of a missed opportunity. Its the lowest barrier to entry, low-pressure first introduction, that A&A really needs from a product like this. like at least as much as it needs solid online matchmaking. I know I probably played a hundred solitaires or games against goofy computer opponents with the old Hasbro CD before I ever put up an even remotely decent game in a head-to-head match.

Axis and Allies is a kinda wonky game to learn how to play, and one that would be well served by a robust computer tutorial. Even a middling computer opponent would be great to have for learning the basic mechanics of A&A, to say nothing of learning the UI. I think this one is serviceable for people who already know what they’re doing, and just want an official way to play, but I worry its not the most spectacular thing ever if what you’re using it for is just getting your head around the nuts and bolts. Or if the way you’re trying to learn how to play A&A is by running through the tutorial and then playing against the computer, before into a pvp match lol. The Hasbro CD attempt even with the limits of mid 90s gameplay still managed to find ways to engage the Single Player, with like AI generals, splashy stats/graphs/newsflashes stuff of that sort, and a lot of game mode options to mess about with.

This one really does need an editor though or at least a time machine.
Would be cool if there were more built-in communication features too and a way to share histories and gamesaves and such.

I wish I had more time to play lately. I missed the second season entirely. Might check it out again in the third. Things tend to open up for me in the Fall for A&A time sinks heheh. Hope all’s been well!

@djensen said in Feature suggestion: dice rage quit prevention:

Or a calming quote might work too. :wink:

==

I find that quote very calming.

VERY CALMING.

==

No, the quote was more a joke on how after the computer screws you with bad dice, it asks you condescendingly if you’re sure you want to quit.

Yes I want to quit you **** computer, why do you think I am pressing this button with a mad gleam in my eye?

==

But jokes aside - I think saying directly to the player that the program is sorry for bad dice is counter-intuitive, because it’s the program that gave the bad dice in the first place. If the program were REALLY sorry it would give better dice, or maybe have a Low-Luck option or something right?

Maybe some quotes from history would prove apt.

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/luck

“I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it”
― Thomas Jefferson

“You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don’t help.”
― Bill Watterson

“Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are millions to one.
But magicians have calculated that million-to-one chances crop up nine times out of ten.”
― Terry Pratchett, Mort

“Oh, I am fortune’s fool!”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

etc. etc.

@JuliusBorisovBeamdog Thank you for doing the analysis. My curiosity has been answered and it just turns out that my observations were simply anecdotal and coincidental.

Please pass along my thanks to the team for taking the time to do the analysis. I think a future request will be for low-luck style rolling. :wink: