Change Defense Profile - Subs?

Having played the classic edition back in the day, the wild swingyness of the dice mechanic was always a bone of contention. A lot of board wargamers dismissed it as a kids game because luck was such a big factor, I always appreciated the unpredictability.

There are basically two types of wargamer, or two ends of an axis we all lie on. Some treat these games as puzzles to solve, to find the ‘right’ tactic or the perfects strategy. Then there are those that like having to think on their feet and adapt to the situation as it unfolds.

A&A in all its forms has always been a game for the latter group. Yes you need to strategise, but you need to hedge your bets, have a backup plan, adapt creatively to unexpected reverses. That’s the fun of it.

As for randomness, if you randomly generate points on an x/y graph, you’ll quickly notice that the points tent to form clumps and little chains. Truly random distributions are not smooth or evenly distributed. Humans are hard wired to see and create patterns. We’re truly awful at generating random numbers ‘by hand’ and also terrible and judging whether a range of numbers are random or not. There’s been bags of research on this. I play role-playing games so Ive rolled huge numbers of dice and seen some amazing runs of luck, disastrous bad luck and just numerically weird looking results. That’s just randomness for you. I’ve had this argument with gamers ‘proving’ that particular outcomes were almost impossible. Yes. All the possible outcomes are almost impossible, when you roll enough dice. They’re all equally unlikely. That’s the point.

Subs are by far the most cost efficient naval attack purchase. Surprisingly, they do okay in defense as well since hit points are so important. Japan should only buy subs if usa purchases pacific naval units round one. Since subs have more attack than defense, the usual dynamic is that two fleets are 3 spaces apart. The stronger navy will try to move to two spaces, either through enough defensive strength or with destroyer blockers. The other side has the choice of building up defense, countering similarly with blockers, or retreating.

3 transports, 3 infantry is an all around flexible and powerful round 1 purchase. If UK attacks japan sz37, this strongly suggests KJF and a buy of 1 trans, 3 sub 1 inf might be more appropriate.

@meowmix Yup, that will happen roughly once in every 216 SBR with 3 bombers. It stings hard.

Thanks! I appreciate your quick response.

Gonna file the two glitches I found in two separate threads.

First, the QoL changes and addition of ranked mode have breathed new life into this game for me. Thanks a ton for implementing both.

Anyway, this glitch is something I call “Sub Vortex”. Allow me to explain:

Scenario: USSR has a sub in SZ7 (English Channel). I Combat Move my German Sub into that SZ to attack. Both the Allies Player and myself have my Combat Profiles set to “Submerge Subs if no Destroyer Present”.

Battle Occurs, battle is canceled because Soviets submerge. USSR Player’s turn, battle is canceled because Germans submerge. Germany Player’s turn, I should have the opportunity to have my Submarine leave the hostile Sea Zone. This is where the possible glitch comes into play.

For whatever reason, I cannot leave the SZ with the Soviet Submarine. I can click the sub and see SZ7 come up in “yellow”, but the surrounding SZs are not “blue” and I cannot click any of them to move away from the Soviets. As this is a ranked game, I do not know if my opponent is also experiencing this glitch, or if it’s only affecting me.

Not a huge bug, but a bug nonetheless.

Thanks for listening.

One problem with the casualty choice concept is a sub overwhelm. If the enemy has enough subs, and you lose all your destroyers first, and any subs survive the first rounds of combat, the attacking player can retain those. In a normal casualty choice, the last destroyer would not be lost until most or all of the enemy subs were destroyed.

This puts the defender at a disadvantage and alters the dynamics of the offense vs the defense. It forces japan and the atlantic allies to modify the way they defend because they have to set up to make their own overwhelming attack before the sub stack can attack.

Of course the defending ships on the sea will be able to fight back against the subs, if they survive the intial attack. But the planes wont–and the retention of the fighters + 1 DD in the later rounds of combat is one of the most powerful defensive combinations. If you’re out in the open sea, they can also exploit this dynamic to crash all your fighters, having first striked your carriers out from underneath you.

There aren’t any easy fixes to this problem, because its not only an issue with losing lower value units first. I want to lose all my defensive subs, then all my defensive dd except 1, then move on to losing better stuff.

I suppose there could be a checkbox or default to “lose all dd 2nd (after defending subs), except 1, until I’ve lost all my air, or the enemy has lost all their subs”

As others have pointed out, the changes made to facilitate async play may at first seem to have a small effect, and they would have a different effect on differerent versions of the game because the rules for subs and destroyers change. But the order of casualties issue obviously causes a major departure from the normal game dynamics, in all versions.

Well, I do know it was set to one thing and showing another for a brief moment. Leaving the game and coming back solved it.

@aardvarkpepper Well if you are interested in developing an AI or improving the AI for A&A games and for an implementation much closer to the actual game then you should consider TripleA as we are always looking for contributions: https://github.com/triplea-game/triplea