My take on LL versus Dice

@HolKann:

Why would risk management be the aspect that defines A&A? Imho, it is not. To me, A&A is defined by its strategic character, giving you the feeling like you are a WW2 general trying to outwit the enemy.

A WWII general had less reliable means of predicting battle outcomes than in standard A&A.  LL, being more reliably predictable, is less like being a real general.

@HolKann:

The method of getting battles resolved is simply less important to me. I would even be fine with a no luck system since this would not take away the strategic aspect of the game.

Extrapolating the likely results of combat is at the heart of A&A strategy - LL or otherwise.

@HolKann:

If you really think risk management is the “soul” of A&A, go poker.

The key element in Poker is hidden information, not randomness.  Psychology is the soul of that game.  This means the ability to interpret your opponents’ bets, check, and raises as well as to predict how they will interpret and respond to yours.

There is no secret information in A&A, and hence nothing like the above elements.  Poker is better likened to bridge.

@HolKann:

Change the word “strategy” by “tactics” and I’ll agree. The strategies in LL are EXACTLY the same as in ADS. Only some tactical tricks are not.

In regular A&A, it is often the right strategy to make a battle when you are a slight underdog.  And not only when you are losing and need a break to catch up! (Though those situations have interesting and valid strategic repercussions too).

You could also be strategically correct to enter two battles both as underdogs when it is only important for you to win one of those battles.  If you are a forty per cent underdog in two battles, you are actually a sixty four per cent favorite to win at least one of those.  In LL you will lose both every time.  It is fair to say that strategy is affected.

Tactical effects would be such as this:

An attacker does not generally need as favorable odds for the battle as the defender, because the attacker can pull out if things go bad.  In this way a 50/50 battle  actually favours the attacker, as may even a battle which would slightly favour the defender were it a fight to the death.  In LL this is less a factor.

The tactics of strafe attacks becomes stronger in LL.  (I don’t think this is an improvement though, as strafing used to be a hard decision.  With the risk removed, it is an easier decision).

@bugoo:

Ok here is the thing, it all depends what you want out of the game.

Dice players want a more ‘beer and pretzels’ type game, where the chaotic elements are seen as a positive as it keeps the game ‘interesting’ and more ‘fun’.  Kind of a casual serious game.

LL players want the pure competition, minimized chaotic elements, where risk management is a factor, but luck does not win the game.  They want the satisfaction of winning or loosing based soley upon there decisions, not the dice.

This is why Robin started this thread.  Not to say he prefers regular A&A, or to say it’s better.  Rather to defend it against the attitude that LL is somehow a more strategic game.

His main point is what he calls risk management.  In A&A, you must carefully weigh the desire to protect yourself from disaster (by playing cautiously) with the benefits you can achieve by stretching or even skimping (such benefits include efficiency, accomplishing more, and causing disaster for your enemies).

This element arises constantly in your A&A decisions.  Finding the acceptable success rate for a battle is a very tricky, highly strategic activity.  You must decide how bad it will be if it goes wrong vs how good it will be to scrimp and save forces (which cannot be perfectly quantified, btw) and compare that ratio to the actual success rate, and contrast that result with the same analysis for a more or less risky alternative.  Not a lot of people can make these decisions well.

Also the correct strategy in LL is often very different than in standard.  See my post directly above.  This is contrary to another common misconception regarding LL.

@Romulus:

Some weeks ago I was accused of being too much lucky in a TripleA LL games becuse my dice hits more than the expected average…

Ironically LL can be more luck because fewer dice are tossed.  Standard deviation is higher in a smaller sized sample.  :P

I personally don’t view either as the ‘correct’ way to play, LL is my preferred way to play, as knowing the outcome of the game by the time of UK1 annoys me, as does loosing moscow to an attack with 8% odds, but neither is the ‘correct’ way to play.  Just pick one.  I just hate when people think there is no luck in LL, or that it takes away strategy, it is like debating whither an RTS or TBS has more strategy, there just different is all. (RTS=real time strategy game, like Starcraft, TBS=turn based strategy game, like civilization).

@zooooma:

@Romulus:

Some weeks ago I was accused of being too much lucky in a TripleA LL games becuse my dice hits more than the expected average…

Ironically LL can be more luck because fewer dice are tossed.  Standard deviation is higher in a smaller sized sample.  :P

I agree!
Moreover a small sized sample is not “statistically meaninguful” in the sense that statisctics laws can not apply to a set of too feew elements. So for being correct we can even not speak of standard deviation if we have too few results to consider.

Moreover, opening moves, which involve battles with few units, are influenced by the variance of the dice rolling. In such battles the balancing effects of the “average hits” are less important than the single die rolled so missing the hit with the die may still causing problem. In the same way battling on the front line and achieving 1 hit more than the average (scoring with the die) is still “disturbing” to some player.

I found interesting your consideration about the “underdog” concept.

I said that I think of ADS and LL as different in the skills required.

IMHO, ADS requires a greater effort in strategic planning for handling also adverse results and call for a strong risk management in making strategic and tactic decision. Also the logistic of the game is indirectly influenced by the battle resolving method, losses in battle and reinforcement needed are not simple to foresee, so a player have to plan is logistic not knowing all the variables.
(By the way risk management is a discipline, for example in handling software development projects, so it is not a contradiction speaking of trying to handle risks.)

In LL my idea is that the great skills a player should have, in addition to strategic ability, are the ability to make optimal forces allocation, in minimizing risks (not managing or handling but “minimizing” i.e. avoiding it at all, trying to avoid them being a factor). Strategic decision are still hard to do but logistic is simplified, because a player think in advance to force allocations, it is quite mathematic to know what he is going to lose in the battle, wich will be the position and wich kind of reinforcement will be needed and where.

@zooooma:

A WWII general had less reliable means of predicting battle outcomes than in standard A&A.  LL, being more reliably predictable, is less like being a real general.

If you use the realism argument in A&A, you are delusional. No pun intended…
I don’t remember if I have been guilty of this myself in some of my previous posts, but we should agree on this matter about reality and the lack realism.

“better training, tech, heavy weapons, more weapons, communications, surveillance, spying missions in some battles, logistics, terrain, better motivation, defenders advantage, attackers advantage b/c of surprise attack, etc. etc…”

A&A has very little to do with reality. It’s a fun and exciting game. If want realism, or close to realism, you have to step out of the A&A world and play games which are completely different.

LL or ADS is nowhere near the reality of which WW2 generals had to make decisions. Its not enough to make a more complex game which can have LL or ADS, it must be completely and totally different.

Also, for me it’s about winning the war, not the battles, but I also want to win some battles along the way, but this is nowhere near as important as winning the war.

I don’t see myself (when playing AA50) as Rommel, Patton, Eisenhower, Zhukov, or Yamamato, but as Churchill, Stalin, Hitler, FDR and Hirohito.

And for some of us who prefer LL, I always play 1vs1, I could play against 2 or more players, but I never play on a team, it’s not mostly about skills, like I couldn’t play with people who are not as experienced as me, it’s rather b/c I have this medical and mental condition  :evil:, so It’s not good for my health to play with other people if they make decisions which I disagree with. My blood pressure can’t handle it, and this could go both ways, as playing multiplayer other players would disagree with my decisions and so I could cause not only my own defeat, but also my teammates.
This is why A&A is better played with 1vs1.

My friend and I are considerint playing a LL F2F game this Friday - does anyone have thoughts on this?  Is there any difference playing LL F2F vs. online?  Does anyone else do this?  Also, how are subs/bombardments/anti-aircraft calculated?
Thanks.

When we play A&A ADS/LL online, it’s the program who does all the work, the players do all the thinking.

I don’t know if I’d bother with LL in a f2f game, if we’re not playing it through TripleA in local mode.
The core of the LL system is very easy, add the attacking points, divide with 6 and roll the remaining dice, same goes for defender.
SBR attacks in TripleA are not handled like some others are doing it.
But AA guns fire same way as other combat.
If you attack with 3 air units, the AA gun fire 1 die @3 instead of 3 dice @1.

For bmrs doing SBR, someone prefer to set each bmr doing $3,5 in damage, in TripleA the dice are rolled as usual also for bmrs doing SBR.

How are subs sneak attack calculated?

the same as any round

**(the number of subs) x 2 x 1/6 [d6 odds] = the number of expected casualties you will inflict in the sneak attack

Lets say, if you expect to kill 1.3 units, you can round that to 1.  Therefore disregard 1 of the lowest units in the wrest of you calculations, or 1 hit on a battleship, in the calculations for that round.  It’s tedious, but it must be repeated each round.  **

@captainjack:

How are subs sneak attack calculated?

As I said, there are some small differences between different LL systems, but for every battle except SBR I think other A&A communites use the same system.

It’s much easier to learn it if you dl TripleA, and play some battles against yourself, both in ADS and LL.

http://triplea.sourceforge.net/mywiki

We had a small debate on the developers forum if the TripleA LL system should make it possible to forfeit the sub surprise attack, and let subs attack with other units, especially if there are DDs with the defending units.
Also some of us thinks that, since in AA50, land units can fire back from naval bombardment in amph. assault, CAs and BBs should be able to fire with other land/air units, all this to reduce the number of dice being rolled.
Personally I think the LL system in TripleA is good enough as it is now, but I wouldn’t mind other solutions to roll fewer dice than the current TripleA engine allows.

DAAK has a pretty good LL system for AAR, it would need some modification for AA50 for reasons mentioned above (changed BB CA bombard rules, changes to sub rules)

http://www.daak.de/indexe.php3

I would agrue that for AA50 to BB and CA should fire with the ground forces and subs should only fire separately if no DD present, to reduce the variance.

DAAK use an SBR table where the attacker loses 2-3 IPCs (50% chance for each) per turn, from your starting cash pool (as in AAR bomber loses 2.5 IPCs on avergae vs AA gun [cost $15 in AAR]) and inflict 2-3-4 (33% each) IPCs damge to an IC in a 6+ territory since bombers inflict on average 2.92 IPCs per SBR vs AA gun. If no AA then attacker loses nothing and inflicts 3-4 IPCs (50% each)

Different damage tables handle different scenarios (max IPC caps for terrirory value and also with/without AA firing).

Pretty annoying for F2F games though, I personally prefer LL online but ADS in F2F since the calculations really make a live game drag on for ever and ever.