Was it worth adding ART to the game?

Here’s an idea: ART could act exactly like battleships - they would do an opening fire salvo before your Inf rush in, but then stay behind in the country they attacked from.

After all, that’s how they operate in real life - your artillery stay back from the front lines, you don’t have guys dragging them through the mud toward the enemy line. I guess it depends whether you see an attack on a country as a single battle or as a whole “campaign” - if a campaign, then it makes sense that the Art go along for the ride.

@Ender:

Here’s an idea: ART could act exactly like battleships - they would do an opening fire salvo before your Inf rush in, but then stay behind in the country they attacked from.

After all, that’s how they operate in real life - your artillery stay back from the front lines, you don’t have guys dragging them through the mud toward the enemy line. I guess it depends whether you see an attack on a country as a single battle or as a whole “campaign” - if a campaign, then it makes sense that the Art go along for the ride.

Not dragging artillery through the mud?  Actually, that’s EXACTLY what they did with them, Ender.  You are talking about artillery like it’s a ballistic missile.  Artillery is useless in battle if it’s not damn close (if not at) the front lines.  The 88’s, as opposed to his tanks, were Rommell’s primary weapon against the British during his Desert Campaign, and you can bet your @ss they did not remain stationary through that campaign.  Certainly, they were not shooting at tanks in El-Alamein from Tripoli . . .

All I remember about artillery from history is the Big Berthas from WW1, firing like 2 tons of metal through the sky miles away  :-o :-o :-o

And to be actually on topic, I agree that artillery pieces aren’t very common for very good reasons (for 1 more IPC you have better skew mobility and defensive fire in the form of tanks, and tanks are simply the best thing you can pair up with the infantry in a transport for the 3 nations that rely on transports).

But I also think that they have a very real and practical use for Russia early on, and Germany throughout the game. Artillery are more cost efficient on offense than tanks when you have tons and tons of infantry such that each of your artillery is boosting an infantry for 2-3 rounds at least, because 1 art adds the same number of offensive dice points as the tank does for less cost. That fits the description of the German lurch later in the game which is like 30-40 infantry + 7 or so art as they walk towards Caucasus.

It’s trickier to do this with Russia who needs to mash out infantry around round 5 or so, and also trickier for the UK/US to make use of the offensive efficiency since to have more arts also means to have more transports to hold them in and in the case of UK they have a noticeable build limit which lends itself to 4 inf 4 arm as often as possible, plus mobility counts a lot for UK/US/Japan who could really use the 2 movement points of tanks in a jiffy to blitz to a new hotzone or defend Moscow.

What might make artillery a little bit more buyable for all nations, if and only if that is truly desirable, is to maybe give them an opening salvo on defense. That might make them a competitive purchase with arm, because generally arm are better for the reasons many people have already listed - mobility, skew, and defensive punch.

The optimal ratio for the offensive (from my Sum of Decreasing Punches model) is Inf:Art:Tnk = 6:3:1
1:1:0 is quite close too.
It’s nice to start with inf only for defense, and add only arty later up to 30-50% of the total.

@Gamer:

@Ender:

Here’s an idea: ART could act exactly like battleships - they would do an opening fire salvo before your Inf rush in, but then stay behind in the country they attacked from.

After all, that’s how they operate in real life - your artillery stay back from the front lines, you don’t have guys dragging them through the mud toward the enemy line. I guess it depends whether you see an attack on a country as a single battle or as a whole “campaign” - if a campaign, then it makes sense that the Art go along for the ride.

Not dragging artillery through the mud?   Actually, that’s EXACTLY what they did with them, Ender.  You are talking about artillery like it’s a ballistic missile.  Artillery is useless in battle if it’s not damn close (if not at) the front lines.  The 88’s, as opposed to his tanks, were Rommell’s primary weapon against the British during his Desert Campaign, and you can bet your @ss they did not remain stationary through that campaign.  Certainly, they were not shooting at tanks in El-Alamein from Tripoli . . .

I know they had to be close. However, usually you want your artillery to stop shelling the enemy when your own troops are storming their positions. It all depends on how you understand A&A battles to metaphorically represent real battles.

@Magister:

The optimal ratio for the offensive (from my Sum of Decreasing Punches model) is Inf:Art:Tnk = 6:3:1
1:1:0 is quite close too.
It’s nice to start with inf only for defense, and add only arty later up to 30-50% of the total.

Funny, cause I almost had that ratio before!  Said Germany would be best off with 5:3:1 I believe, way way back on like page 1 or 2.  :P

Maybe I am miss remembering it.  I’m sure Bean will be all over it drooling just to try and prove me wrong even though I said i wasn’t 100% sure.

Any optimum is flat at the top (with smooth functions, at least). That’s what f’(x)=0 really means ! where x may be multidimensional (a vector) too.

Practically, this means that moderate (say 10-20%) deviations from the optimum decision lead to unproportionally small inefficiencies in outcome.

1:1:0 is only ~0.5% less efficient than 6:3:1. I suppose 5:3:1 is even closer.

100 inf 100 art is exactly equivalent to 200 inf defending. (Tactically yes, economically not. Attackers are 7/6 more expensive this way).
120 inf 60 art 10 tnk are equivalent to 201 inf defending (Within the ‘noise’ of simulating 10,000 runs) - and cost the same.

This flat-optimum principle is well to be remembered and can be seen in the whole world. The only clear contradictions come from discontinuities, or sharp IF-THEN conditions.

For instance, 49 inf 51 art are less effective relative to cost than 51 inf 49 art (because of the 1:1 matching rule).

The problem with that type of mathematical only review is that it only applies to ROUND 1 of battle.

Once losses are taken, and Round 2 begins, you can find yourself with insufficient fodder to continue the attack without taking higher-value units as casualties.  Also, if you take heavy losses Round 1, you start losing 2 punch units instead of 1 punch units, which totally wipes out the cost/benefit analysis of the attack.

So not only do you have to evaluate that first round optimal number, but you have to calculate in the losses of both attacker and defender in order to see what the ratios are for Round 2.  And against a large INF stack, that initial attack ratio will be decimated by loss of INF on the first turn of battle, leaving you to proceed with only ART and ARM (or turn it into a strafe and retreat your forces to get more INF… a “lather, rinse, repeat” strat).

In order to account for first round losses, most of the top ranked players here (Darth in particular who is #1 in the League) recommend a 3 to 1 ratio of INF to ART for an attack.  That allows you to maximize punch, minimize the cost of losses, and maintain punch and fodder for the 2nd and subsequent rounds of combat.

Defensively, the 3:1 ratio also gives you more defending INF fodder before you have to lose the higher cost ART, reducing your defensive cost per point over a tighter (5:3) INF/ART ratio.

I agree with the portion of switch’s statement I read. (Sorry,didn’t read through it all.)

You’d have to apply the mathematics to a series with different outcomes over a period of time.  If you are only doing a strafe for one round, then you are okay.

Exactly that is the reason to use “Sum of decreasing punches” - to account for an unknown number of rounds and some +/- variation in firepower at that times.

6:3:1  18+17+16+15+13+11+9+7+5+3 = 114
5:5:0  20+18+16+14+12+10+8+6+4+2 = 110

My 6:3:1 “solution” when applied against 10 inf loses on average 3.33 inf so the 2nd round on average is 2.67:3:1. Not much “waste”. If the battle goes well enough one presses to the end, if not it becomes a 2 or even 1-round strafe.

For planned 1-round raids 1:1:0 is optimal.

True, pure inf and some armor is better defensively but in offensive situations I thinked this for that’s irrelevant. They include the much stronger multi-power attacker’s disadvantage: UK+US trying to break German EEU; Japan trying to take Moscow defended by all 3 Allies etc. If attackers are near strong enough to win offensively their defensive is very safely above equilibrium. So arty is what to add at the end !

What I haven’t told yet is that the 6:3:1 result depends closely on 3:4:5 IPC costs as inputs. If covering the investment in transport ships the ratios may modify.

For how many turns do you think it’s sensible to calculate “amortization” of transports ?
8 turns ? for US that would make 1 IPC per transport*turn, 1/2 per unit transported, 2 stages = +1 IPC per unit. So 4:5:6 IPC real cost.
4 turns ? … … +2 per unit so 5:6:7.

I’ll redo the calculations.

Also for land offensives (Berlin<>Moscow direction, Japan/Asia>Moscow) tanks may save 1-2 turns of march, reducing “dead investment” so inf/art are relatively more expensive.

Art was definitely worth adding to the game. Before art, we had to chose from only 2 different ground units.
I prefer inf+tanks if I can afford it. Numbers are very important and for UK, and also Jap in the first few rnds, art is
good investment for increasing the attack punch for infantry.
Also for G and Russia art is worth buying, but still inf+tanks are better than inf+art.
For Jap, to buy inf first few rnds, then some art in addition to inf, and from rnd 3-4 tanks mainly bc Jap should be at 40-45,
and tanks can reach a destination faster than inf and art.
For US I think is important to fill up the trans, preferably with inf+tanks, but with art this can give more units, and it’s a long
way to persia/caucus so the men better start walking asap, tanks will follow shortly….  8-)

Well, more then adding artillery, what made revised worth buying is the tanks getting a defense of 3.  That by far was the best change in the game in my most humble of opinions.

Ageed! The increase to Armor defence is what really makes revised better. It has made us completey rethink how we structure our forces especially for def.

The increase of defense value for tanks is the most important and clever change of all unit changes, I certainly agree.
But the revised map is a more significant difference than change of unit values, and also more important in general imo.
The ftr decrease cost to 10 is very good also.

Double hit BBs seems rather big too  :?

@Bean:

Double hit BBs seems rather big too  :?

Those were in classic as well though.  It was an optional rule, but it was still there in classic thus it was not introduced in revised.

Oh, didn’t know that. Never played classic  :roll:

After revised, going back to classic kinda sucks.

It’s like becoming a gourmet chef and then going back to condensed Chicken and Stars soup. :P  Oh sure, you can still live on it, but would you want too?

@Cmdr:

After revised, going back to classic kinda sucks.

It’s like becoming a gourmet chef and then going back to condensed Chicken and Stars soup. :P  Oh sure, you can still live on it, but would you want too?

more fun to go KJF in classic.

I agree.  But man, it is SOOO much harder to go KJF in classic then KGF!

Just invade Gibraltar, make a HUGE stack and walk into Spain. =)