What do you think of this mixed LL and dice idea?

@falconrider:

We’ve come up with an idea that when a battle has 10 or more units on both sides that LL is used.  Once someone has less than 10 units then the dice rolling method is used.  This has the effect of both keeping the dice involved in the game and reducing those horrible moments when a large one sided battle ruins a great game.

I am not statisician, but USUALLY the smaller the sample, the greater the chance for variation.
In other words, battles with only a few units on each side can swing wildly from one extreme to the other

Mainly because there are less chances to get the odds… that’s my thinking, probably wrong reason.

But I am fairly certain that battles with smaller unit numbers = greater variability, which is counter to your idea of forcing rolling once a battle unit gets less than 10

It could be a good idea. Your description is exactly the reason why probably 90% of all games I play, is with LL setting. Some of us think and feels it’s genuinely wrong when one sides is clearly winning, but the loosing side has 10%-30% chance of taking a capital, and that capital battle would’ve been 0% in LL. If the weaker side wins the game then something is wrong (imo), at least in the (minority) of games that have such outcomes.

In the long run the better player will win, regardless of LL or ADS. What separates LL from ADS is that you need more games to determine the better player, like in a sports leagues like soccer, basketball, here in Norway it’s not uncommon in the national football cup tournament that a level 1 team loses to a level 2 or a level 3 team. This doesn’t mean that the level 1 team should play in a lower league system, with 14 teams it’s 26 matches pr season that decides who wins the league, and the team(s) which finish last must play the next season on level 2.

How many games must be played to determine the better player in A&A with ADS? Maybe 10 games, maybe 20 games, but probably less than 30? While it’s more difficult for the weaker player to win a single LL game against a stronger player, it’s not at all impossible.
Even though I strongly disagree with ADS proponents in other LL vs ADS threads, I was informed of something I didn’t quite understand before that discussion, that the personal preferences of LL vs ADS in A&A is b/c we see and percieve different aspects of A&A.
When I play A&A, I “feel” like I play a strategy wargame like chess, I play 1vs1 with less randomness than tech and ADS. When others play A&A, they play it like poker, and some poker players are definitely better than others, it’s understood that many losses will be determined by external factors which none of the players can control. While some players think it’s ok to win/loose single A&A games regardless of skills, I feel that if this happens, it ruins the game, and it’s no more fun to play it.
I would much rather loose to a better player in LL than win against a better player in ADS, b/c in the latter example, it was not really I who won the game which was determined by external factors, but dice gods handed the victory to me, by unknown reasons.
Only the dice gods can understand the dice gods.

The reason I HATE LL is because with very small battles the opponent (or yourself) have only to make a few calculations and send in a very small force, whereas with dice you must send an extra guy or two just to make sure you don’t lose (risk management, an very important factor on the russian front).

I would agree with your idea, and I also enjoy the optional rule that ImpL has written down somewhere, that each side starts with a certain number of “bad luck points” or “luck chips”, say like 5 chips, and they can re-roll or make an opponent re-roll any single dice roll for the cost of one chip (making someone re-roll an antiaircraft gun roll costs 2 chips).  We used that during our last game and limited it to only when both sides can agree that the dice rolling was ridiculous, and it improved the game a lot.

The only time i would consider using LL is two conditions:

AA guns are done with LL

Each player has a number of LL battles per game. 1-3 per game he can call like a ‘time out’ in basketball or peremptory  challenge., where his combat will be assigned as LL, but to make more than this is too radical.

The real victory in a game is feeling good about making correct choices and not depending/winning on “luck”, or at the very least commiting less mistakes than an opponant regardless of the result of the dice.  That being said, other than maybe for testing of strats, I see no reason to use low luck.  It is a probability based game, it HAS to rely on wild luck, it is just probability after all.  Also, I think one can make a serious case that throwing in normal probability (especially in a game that doesn’t focus too much on tactics) is more realistic than LL.

Yes i second that because in war all you can do is play the cards you got. Sometimes in fact often unforseen results happen even when your outnumbered and LL does not ever account for this. I prefer to adapt strategy based on results in combat and not try to home study every move 10 moves deep because that takes the fun from playing and replaces it with who had more home study and can count beans better than the next guy.

@Imperious:

Yes i second that because in war all you can do is play the cards you got. Sometimes in fact often unforseen results happen even when your outnumbered and LL does not ever account for this. I prefer to adapt strategy based on results in combat and not try to home study every move 10 moves deep because that takes the fun from playing and replaces it with who had more home study and can count beans better than the next guy.

I think it is important to learn more of the fundamentals, some varying strats, and the economics of the game first (maybe force yourself to play very rigidly sometimes) and then just use those as sketches during most games when you learn the mechanics.

PS: please tell me IL that your picture is of the main man Neil Patrick Harris

@Imperious:

Yes i second that because in war all you can do is play the cards you got. Sometimes in fact often unforseen results happen even when your outnumbered and LL does not ever account for this. I prefer to adapt strategy based on results in combat and not try to home study every move 10 moves deep because that takes the fun from playing and replaces it with who had more home study and can count beans better than the next guy.

I totally agree with this.

Most great battles from the real war can NOT be simulated with Low Luck. In the Finnish Winter war in 1939, the russians attacked with 10 infantry against 2 defending infantry, and the 2 defending infantry won. Now in LL that would be a sure walk-over to the russians, contrary to the real world facts.

Also the Japanese attack at Singapore in 1942 are impossible to do with LL. Japan attacked with 35 000 men = 1 infantry unit and the Brits defended with 150 000 men = 5 infantry units + 1 fighter + 1 battleships. Impossible to win this in LL.

And I can go on and go on. In the real wars, the party that lose their “fighting spirit”, because of surprise and “fog of war”, will often give up and surrender, even if they have better gear and bigger guns and more men than the opponent. Before the German attacks of France and USSR, both the French and Russians had more men and bigger tanks than the Germans. This battles was not a sure win. Hitler had to roll dice and gamble against really bad odds. Real wars are pure gamble. The commander has no idea of what is on the other side of the hill. Low Luck battles do not exist in the real world. You can charge an enemy bridge with 1000 men and find that bridge defended by one lonely die-hard devil with a machine gun that are bounded for a last-stand battle.

It is only one way to play a wargame, and that is with dice.

@ Adlertag, det enkleste hadde vært om alle brukte vanlig terning istedenfor LL. Jeg bruker begge deler selv om ca. 90% av alle kampene jeg spiller har LL setting.

I don’t HATE dice, it’s just that A&A is not fun, when you’re obviously winning, and then the opponent tries a hail mary, and wins. Now, that hurts, but what is just ridiculously provoking, is when the opponent explains his victory was caused by supreme intelligent strategic decisions  :roll:
This is plain stupid. When players start accepting the fact that A&A games are won BOTH by luck and skills, then I can accept the dice players arguments.

Also, most LL players are not 16 years old who never played any of the boardgames OOB, but started with TripleA and choose LL setting. Most LL players have played hundreds of dice games, but decided to move on.

the fact that A&A games are won BOTH by luck and skills

But this is AA! Its the fine line between taking your best laid plans and casting them to the wind. Its adaptation of your efforts and the uncertainty of battle…. just like real war.

Their is no war ever conducted where every battle outcome is known before the fight with anything close to 100% and that your strategy is based primarily on this knowledge. Its like going in a time machine to see the result, and then adding more forces knowing how many will assure victory every time. To me thats ridiculous.

Uncertainty is the whole fun of playing, and yes to win or lose like poker can still be claimed as a skill game, and blamed as a luck game.

@Subotai:

@ Adlertag, det enkleste hadde vært om alle brukte vanlig terning istedenfor LL. Jeg bruker begge deler selv om ca. 90% av alle kampene jeg spiller har LL setting.

I don’t HATE dice, it’s just that A&A is not fun, when you’re obviously winning, and then the opponent tries a hail mary, and wins. Now, that hurts, but what is just ridiculously provoking, is when the opponent explains his victory was caused by supreme intelligent strategic decisions  :roll:
This is plain stupid. When players start accepting the fact that A&A games are won BOTH by luck and skills, then I can accept the dice players arguments.

Also, most LL players are not 16 years old who never played any of the boardgames OOB, but started with TripleA and choose LL setting. Most LL players have played hundreds of dice games, but decided to move on.

If you made the correct choice, then you won, regardless of the results.  There is only so much you can do.  I think IL was correct to point out poker, think of it like that.
I know if I win a game do to my opponents awful luck even though I was making poor choices, I feel it to be a loss or at least a not as fulfilling victory.

You also don’t know your enemies entire military deployment, maybe we should have all our units writin down on paper and then we can roll ‘intel’ dice to see if we know what the enemy has in the territory before we declare attacks!  And why do fighters attack inf, honestly a fighter group would run out of ammunition before he would kill that many inf, oo maybe we should have ‘build times’ for units that take longer to build like some of the boats, that would be awesome, and why do we even have territories, we should use measuring tape to see how far the units can move, hey lets add an oil resource too!, etc, etc, etc.

To even remotely compare AA50 to a true stimulative game and use that to defend dice is laughable.  You want realism?  Dont play AA.  If you like dice because it is more fun to you to have that large random variable, and if i want to play LL because i prefer smaller, random variables (and yes there is a variable, like when 1 dd, 1 ac, 2 figs kills 1 dd 4 figs attacking them, or a sub+bomber both die to a DD) because I feel the large random variable is not fun then just say that, you don’t have to defend a preference.  Its like trying to defend a TV show preference, you just like it or you don’t.

I personally like the idea, as it is very close to how LL is to begin with, perhaps just say each side always rolls 5 dice if they have atleast 5 units, 1 die is the LL die, choose the units for your other 4 dice, or something to that effect.  Maybe a 2 or 3 die LL system could be designed along those lines, where you always roll a small number of dice.

PS: please tell me IL that your picture is of the main man Neil Patrick Harris

of course the one and only!

To me, dice in Axis and Allies represent the friction and uncertainty of military engagements. (See Clausewitz for some awesome insight into the concept of friction in war)

It can represent heroic actions, poor communication, weather, a daring gambit, or a thousand other things that happen on battlefields that low luck never accounts for.

Live by the dice, die by the dice.

@ithkrall:

To me, dice in Axis and Allies represent the friction and uncertainty of military engagements. (See Clausewitz for some awesome insight into the concept of friction in war)

It can represent heroic actions, poor communication, weather, a daring gambit, or a thousand other things that happen on battlefields that low luck never accounts for.

Live by the dice, die by the dice.

I read Clausewitz, it was interesting. I didn’t notice any good strat suggestions for AA50 though  :roll:
Maybe I should read the last 2/3 parts of discourses of Livy? At least the first part was interesting, but also Machiavelli lacks a fundamental understanding of the core mechanisms in teh AA50 game  :roll:

I’m gonna have to repeat myself, the dice in A&A is not even slightly similar to real battles in real wars. Period. Maybe LL isn’t either, and now we’re getting to the point, A&A isn’t reality, it’s extremely far from reality.
If you play 5-15 games of A&A a week, then you see some very weird dice rolls, and quite often also, since there are many games and many dice rolls in ADS games. If there was a slight similarity between ADS dice results in A&A and reality, then we would here bad news from Afghanistan more often than now, i.e. not 2-3 soldiers killed in a car bomb, but 350 killed in an artillery attack against a secure NATO base  :evil:
How could the Talibans not be seen by allied ftrs/satellites etc??

Why doesn’t such things happen in real life? Because the dice in A&A is not reality, and it’s even close!
I could drag this even further, some weird dice results in A&A would be like Iran attacked the US+UK during the first months of the Iraq war, and every other Persian/Arabic nation also joined the Jihad against the decadent infidels from the western world. Now, would Donald Rumsfeld count for the unthinkable?? Not that US+UK would lose the war, but losses would be much higher than anticipated.
On a military scale, it can only be so far from reality before aliens invades the earth, but in (dice) games these things can happen.

I don’t think anyone is suggesting that aa50 is an accurate WW2 sim?

I was suggesting that dice add randomness to a game, and that this randomness is akin to the concept of friction as defined by Clausewitz.

LL may reduce the randomness of the game and make it more like chess, but it can also make the game less interesting and more mechanical. Online I can see the appeal of it, doing LL for a game with friends around the table would be annoying to calculate and take a lot of the tactile pleasure of AA50 away. (My friends and I do love rolling dice)

Still though, this is a probability based game.  To curtail probability is to completley take out the mechanics of the game. Low luck poker or black jack would not be the same game.  If say in roulette 00 comes up 100 times in a row, people would say that is just not fair and odd defying.  What you really have to look at though, is that the probability “resets” every time to a 35 to 1 payout.  Some people call this a phenomenon, but it is nothing of the sort.  This is something that would get lost in LL, the entire mechanics of the game gets messed with too much.

The whole thing for me is to play for minimizing mistakes and making correct choices (which is the real victory, not necassaly taking down enemy capitals) in the situations that unwind during the game.