@ckladman Yes, the game tends to favor the allies without objectives, and the axis with. To balance, you could trying giving a bid (additional starting units) to the side that is at a disadvantage, or play with objectives but reduce the payout. (3 ipcs vs 5.)
A Serious Discussion of Technologies in 1941
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Again, you are totally missing the point, but thats OK.
I believe you are suffering from a serious case of ‘group think’. I suppose we all do on certain things.
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The point is, Joe, and trust me on this, I have a ton of experience sinking enemy fleets, is that the submarine in this incarnation of the game is a laughingstock. There is use for one or two, but as a main battle unit, it’s horribly lacking and underpowered. Even with super submarines, the odds of them actually being used as a super submarine is about nil. (You get in range, I attack and sink you since they all defend at a 1, even with the technology.)
Destroyers are the main warship in this game. Coincidentally, they are identical to submarines in previous versions (minus their sneakiness). They cost 8, move 2, attack 2, defend 2, just like submarines of old. They can block enemy movement, they can prevent transports from loading and unloading all like submarines. They are submarines, on the surface of the water, for all intents and purposes of this discussion.
What do submarines do now? They make use of sloppy gamy play by your opponent. If he leaves a carrier alone with nothing but fighters, you can send your submarine or two submarines in to attack it and kill the carrier and planes. If he leaves transports unprotected you can swoop in for the auto kills going under his fleet (assuming he doesn’t have destroyers.)
Otherwise, your main fodder piece are destroyers.
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No, they arent main battle units. Nor should they be. That was completely silly in the older editions.
BUT they are far from useless. At the very least they provoke a response. And in actual fleet attacks, they are every bit as good or better as DDs.
If everything else is equal, of course a fleet without subs isnt going to let itself be attacked by one with. But everything else is NOT equal. If someone moves their fleet to a spot where you MUST contest, then they can attack you. The AA50 map is FILLED with situations like that. It appears to have been specifically designed to FORCE those types of decisions.
I dont think anyone is advocating trying to use subs as THE main naval unit. But they make wonderful ADDITIONS given the geography of the new map. The Pacific campaign has a lot of aspects of a game of chicken. Subs can help break up that standoff or else put you in decent position to win if your opponent pulls the trigger first.
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The problem is, if my fleet is in range of your submarines, your submarines are in range of my fleet. I’ll gladly attack your fleet to stop your submarine from attacking at 3 or less and make them defend at a 1. (this is the tech thread, so i assume you have the tech.)
My destroyers, regardless of defense or attack, do so at a 2.
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Ya know what tech scares me the most? It isn’t Heavy Bombers. Strategic bombing campaigns are not the easiest things to properly execute and can be nullified almost completely with the proper tech. No the one that scares me the most is Long Range. I find that one is the one that seems to hit the hardest. Paratroopers may make you go chase after scattered infantry here and there. Mechanized infantry may speed infantry to the front, but Long Range just completely changes things. All those ships and other stuff you thought was safe. Nope not no more. Of course after they have achieved Long Range you will have taken it into consideration. It is the turn they get it on that can be a disaster.
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How about making tech a little less ‘dicey’?
please read and offer your thoughts to:
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Yea tell me about it, A44! The worse thing about LRA (on the receiving side) is that it takes effect immediately. Really makes you think before putting your fleet somewhere…sure, there’s only a 2 or 3% chance your opponent will buy 1 researcher, get a break through and roll Long Range Aircraft if he has no technologies already, but do you want to risk 200-400 IPC fleets to that kind of chance?
Now, someone is going to pipe up and say “see, that’s why we can’t have technologies in league.” Hogwash. It’s only 3% of the time and if your entire game goes up in smoke because someone got a technology, then I submit that you are already a substandard player and were probably only winning based on luck of the dice anyway.
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@Cmdr:
It’s only 3% of the time and if your entire game goes up in smoke because someone got a technology,
well realistically it’s closer to a 1 inf 6 chance (16%) if you wanted to spend enough for researchers….
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I was thinking per die roll.
1 in 6 to get a tech
1 in 6 to get that specific tech.17 X .17 ~ 3%
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I don’t mind technology. I figure I get diced way more than I am going to get burned by tech. Not only does your opponent have to have a breakthrough, they then have to hit the critical tech AND be in a position to benefit from it. I will leave working out all those factors to the probability experts around here.
I would readily submit that you will get burned by bad dice in a critical battle before you get burned by tech. I again state that my feelings about the people that are against it because they are afraid the conditions will change and their oh so carefully prepared strategy will go out the window. Guess what, the dice can already do that.
I also like the random tech in AA50. While once you receive a breakthrough you do know you will get something, you do not know exactly what. It is just like combat in the game, there are no guarantees. Having the two charts also can lead to strategic decisions. I currently have Radar with Germany in a game where I really could have used HB, LR, or even ship yards. Anything off of chart 1 would have been a guaranteed help. However due to conditions on the board I weighed my chances and rolled chart 2. I didn’t get what I needed or even something that could have even helped me as I think there have been no Allied SBRs in that game. But I am fine with that. Its just the breaks just like the dice in combat.
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i just dont know yet, i guess because my dice in getting tech have been bad so far
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While I dont really have anything against techs per se, you have to admit that they DO add ANOTHER layer of randomization to the game- and one that has widely varying results. For combats, you can easily see the benefit of adding ‘x’ or ‘y’ more of ‘z’ unit to the battle. Sure it might not always work out the way its ‘supposed’ to, but it is far more measurable than techs (precisely BECAUSE its a random roll to get a random tech that you may or may not be in position to take advantage of).
But to say that it isnt adding more luck to the game because the game is already dice based is incorrect. Suppose we added in a rule where every time a unit wants to move you roll a die and if you roll a 1, you cant move it. All that is doing is adding another roll to a game based on rolls anyways, right? But I think most people would agree that it DOES make the game more ‘luck dependent’. Same thing for tech - more dice dependent (important!) events you add, the more ‘luck based’ the game is going to become (for better or worse).
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I have to agree. The most vocal opponent I have dealt with on any of the boards (AA.org, AAMC or C-Sub where I actively discuss) was a man who couldn’t handle the slightest deviation from his calculated plans. He would rip, roar and brutalize anyone who disagreed with him on the boards and then seek to prove himself right in a game, but the instant you started to win that game, he’d claim you cheated or whatever, and stop playing. (One such instance was a game where I claimed Russia could go on the offensive and hold Germany back with support from England while America disassembled Japan in Revised. I still have that map if anyone wants to see it. He quit very early.)
I only mention this person because it seems indicative of the majority of players who have historically been very vocal in their opposition to technologies. It seems, from experience, and I know it is not true of everyone who takes this position, that the weaker players are the ones who refuse to play with technologies.
But while that may be true, it may be false, the important thing is that we are the only gaming community who does not allow technologies in our tournaments, to my knowledge, at least online. Flames of Europe allows them, DAAK allowed them, probably still does, and I know AAMC encourages you to use technology in tournaments.
So let’s join the rest of the world and use all the good things Larry has given us!
To me, Axis and Allies without National Objectives and without Technologies is like playing Chess where all your pawns are queens. Sure, it’s fun for a while, but it gets old. There’s no dynamics any longer, it becomes stagnant.
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Yep, agreed that techs definately stir the pot. Its very difficult indeed to know that ‘I always build ‘x’ in ‘y’ situation’ when techs are in play. For long term play, I agree that their use prevents the game from getting stale. The trade off is that indeed, you are adding another random factor to an already pretty random game.
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Yep, agreed that techs definately stir the pot. Its very difficult indeed to know that ‘I always build ‘x’ in ‘y’ situation’ when techs are in play. For long term play, I agree that their use prevents the game from getting stale. The trade off is that indeed, you are adding another random factor to an already pretty random game.
And it’s already random enough.
Bah humbug to more outcomes determined by luck
(Christmas is still in my mind……)
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But the randomness is what makes it fun.
If I wanted to play with a calculator, I can go to frood.net and sit there for hours a day. :P
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@Cmdr:
But the randomness is what makes it fun.
If I wanted to play with a calculator, I can go to frood.net and sit there for hours a day. :P
I guess everyone has a different level for what they feel is ‘fun’ randomness in a game.
Almost total randomness in a game is like Yahtzee, whereas (almost) no randomness exists in chess (a flip of a coin to be white).
I am of the ilk that a less random A&A is a better game (there’s enough already)
I however do not like so much less randomness as to like low luck.Seems to be a personal preference, one that is hard to measure too.
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I play Axis and Allies. Chess is for children learning how to play strategy. :P
Sorry, but I learned Chess at age 4, my son learned at Age 5 (my other son sucks on the pieces, so I think age 2 and a half is too young still.)
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I really like the current tech structure as it is in AA50. I don’t really like the guaranteed tech from enhanced that I read about in your other thread. My biggest problem with that system is it basically divides things into the haves and the have nots. I also don’t like the targeted techs either. In my opinion then tech can become overpowering. Since you know what you get and when you get it you can build up to fully exploit it. Yes I know all those decisions are strategic decisions I am just thinking that it does make some techs a bit too powerful.
I like the current system of weighing risk and reward. I also like the random selection as it forces you to adapt to the situation, not just check of that unit y was bought on round x.
And as far as being random, none of it truly is. With real dice I can warm them up to where I get good rolls pretty consistently and the dice server here at AA, well it aint random at all. That thing well and truly hates me! :-D I have even got some results so low out of it frood wont even calc them.
Don’t be dissing on Chess Jenn. That’s how I paid a lot of my bar tabs in Germany.
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I’m not dissing it! I don’t diss checkers or chutes and ladders either. :P (Okay, that was just mean.)
Anyway, I can see the compromise of targetable technologies just to keep technologies in play. Yes, you can plan for the technology you want, and the 4:2 system does eventually guarantee you will get the technology you want, but you still have to afford the first 4 dice and that’s 16, 20 or 24 IPC (the latter being my 3 tiered system) or all 6 which is 24, 30 and 36 respectively (again with the latter being my 3 tiered system.)
Not perfect, but at least you need to roll a lot of dice and you don’t get shafted like I did in a game with Runyann where Germany rolled almost a billion times before finally getting a technology (and then it was the only one on that chart that didn’t immediately help her.)
But it also doesn’t let you automatically get the one tech you want for one die either.
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