Combat Sims

If not playing LL there are many realistic outcomes….

I use frood.net/aacalc but I’ve been trying to ween myself off my reliance on it…

You can’t use the single most likely result.

You have to figure, what will happen if the attack goes well?  What will happen if the attack goes very badly?  How expensive will it be?

Usually, if you fail an attack, it’s horribly expensive, so you have to give yourself a good safety margin.

–

I do not personally use combat sims.

I generally use it just to see how an average battle would go overall but that’s about it

I am running every battle on Frood before hand.  Of course, since I am using Frood for all the dice anyway, this is easy.

I attempt to set up the attacks with out reference to the sims but then run the sims to see if they would be as effective as I guessed.

I have fine tuned using Frood to look at the most optimum combats versus moves.

For those who might cringe at the analysis, I would offer the thought that military commanders have staff personnel whose entire job is to look for and evaluate all possible solutions and odds of success.  Their sims are much more realistic…

The way I personally set up a round of combat:
1.  Lay out my moves and combat:  what I want to achieve, and the force I think will do the job, and with any potential counter-attacks taken into account
2.  Any battle that I am unsure of based on my own brain, run the sim to check to see how close I was to correct
3.  Tweek any combat forces to increase odds if needed
4.  Engage!

I will also use a sim to help judge long-term patterns of combat in a given region, running anticipated force additions, etc. to see what the result may be several rounds down the road, just to get general trends.

For the small battles experience will give you a good indication of what you need to attack or defend with but for the larger battles it helps me run multiple variations of the same battle in the time it would take me to do one in my head or on paper.

It also helps with the naval battles so I can decide if it’s worthwhile to lose fighters or surface ships and save subs in cases where my opponent decides to lose his last destroyer. Or at what point do I need to lose a bomber to save a ground unit when I’m defending a territory.

It’s not too hard to eyeball a battle but the sims just make it a lot quicker.

From my other post it is clear that I hadn’t played A&A in a long time, but got a game in last night - first since Dec '98.  I used the estimater on triplea to check a battle for my opponent and a couple myself.  I actually though about how cool it would be to have the simulator as a hand-held.  Too bad the market isn’t big enough.

You can get sims on your phone if it is web enabled (frood.net)

well i do it from time to time when im about to do a large battle, like hit moscow etc. Large fleet battles might get a check up before hand.

I never used one during competion, but I’ve peeked at the Triple A one when just playing a game against myself.
Or I’ll play the computer once in awhile and check it then too. Kinda cool to compare results with projections.
The AI on that game needs some serious help, but hey, beggars can’t be choosers.
Whoever created Triple A deserves a beer! Pretty cool…

I guess it is worth stating that I don’t consider the use of sims in face to face play to be appropriate.

Unless both players have equal access it is unfair and if both players have access it slows the play dramatically.

I don’t use one during games.  Unless there are some unholy dice, I can usually forsee the outcome of a battle.  Besides I think if you base all of your attacks on the results of a simulator you are taking a lot of the fun out of the game.

I do use a simulator to run mock battles when I am trying to work on a strat.  Maybe the use of the sim during my little strategy sessions helps me predict outcomes in a face to face game, but I would never have my opponent wait while I did a number crunch.

I agree.

In an FTF, I would not use a SIM.

One thing I have learned over the past year or so is that my method of evaluating the probable results of combat is pretty close to equivalent of that shown by the sims, except perhaps in the largest and most diverse battles (the SIMS tend to show large stacks of FIGs on top of INF as being more significant than the way i personally evaluate battles, but that is the only major discrepancy I have noted… except that SIMs tend to show better probable results from an all INF attack than seems to occurr in reality.)

I use the sim for two things mostly:

1. What are the odds in an attack of either losing more IPCs than the other guy, or of losing units I don’t want to lose (Ftrs usually)
2. How much do I need to leave in a key territory to make it a losing battle for the other guy to attack.

The odds of surviving percentage is the most useless statistic - you could have a battle with an 80% chance of survival, but if you look at the breakdown you actually only see a 40% chance of an acceptable outcome that doesn’t leave you with your pants around your ankles.

@ncscswitch:

I agree.

In an FTF, I would not use a SIM.

So in FTF games, do you use paper and pen to compute important battles?

I’ll bring down my laptop when we play and may use it when we FTF (and offer same to opponent)

In PBEM games, I use a dice sim for most battles (since I’m on a computer anyways)

When I play FTF I look at the units I am going to send into battle and then count my opponents units.  Just doing that generally gives me an idea of how the battle will turn out.  If I have any doubt about wehter or not I will accomplish my mission then I may not attack.  Most the time I know the approxiamate result of the attck based on experience.  Of course lucky rolls can change all of that.