Posts made by aardvarkpupper

I’ve already got a pretty good idea on how I want to approach the issue of potential cheating in similar games. But you’ve got a Master in Statistics, right? I’d imagine you have some ideas too, if you’d like to share?

@Gunner77 There may be some bugs, but that is how it should and usually does work.

@TheDude-0 Thanks for excellent reply. Noted and agreed on all points.

@TheDude-0

I don’t know if Julius Borosov still says it, but reassess combats after every round. Two rounds of one attacking fighter versus two defending infantry isn’t expected to end well.

As far as 1.3% happening 75% of the time, not quite. Initial round attacking infantry and fighters got no hits; that’s 25/36 * 1/4; around 17.4%. Odds of defending infantry hitting 1 or more times was 56%. The aggregate that round was a bit less than 10%; certainly a bad result for attacker but nothing like 1.3%.

Second round around 21% attacker missing all and again defender hitting 1 or more times 56%. Odds then went to around 12%, again a bad result for attacker, but could be expected to be worse after attacker got no hits and defender did hit, see?

Third and fourth rounds attacker got no hits, and two defending infantry missed both dice third round but got one hit fourth round. But by that point, the attacker might have seriously wanted to retreat. For Japan vs US, US and USSR both go immediately after, and probably at least one of them could prevent German tank blitz to Moscow (or something of similar magnitude that would justify taking 1 attacking fighter versus 2 defending infantry repeatedly).

As an aside, I don’t recommend using that dice calculation tool. It does have nice data presentation, but last I used it, there was some sort of issue with how it handled certain battles so it would consistently underreport expected battles. I forget the circumstances, maybe it was an amphibious assault or something; the battle you put in was probably reported correctly more or less. I’d use AACalc or David Skelly’s (AACalc I don’t think lets you allocate hits to AA guns or I’d probably just stick with that, though David Skelly’s does have some nice data visualizations).

@Imperious-Leader

A well written study using scientific methods remains relevant and interesting regardless of edition.

It’s probably a bit embarrassing to some that I caught the OP’s likely using a different edition where that had gone unremarked before, but that’s as it goes.

(I wrote the post I’m referencing re: different edition a few hours ago; I expect it hasn’t cleared yet so perhaps we’ll see it tomorrow.)

@SuperbattleshipYamato
Re: breakdown

Oh, that was a “make better more detailed questions or aardvarkpepper will start typing text walls that reference appendices A-H, and you won’t be able to make sense of any of it unless you actually read the whole thing” thing.

If someone makes a topic “Let’s run the numbers!” or something, maybe I take another look.

But for this thread, I’m sorta like - there’s an English battleship at Gibraltar in Revised. But there’s no English sub at Suez, and even for a bid in Revised, I would think bid typically goes to Axis (not Allies). So it’s probably Classic, don’t you think? Sub off Suez, battleship at Gibraltar, right?

Which actually makes it correct where OP says they were reading Don’s essays. But if they’ve only been playing about a year, it’s 2023 so where did they get a copy of Classic from?

Mysteries within mysteries. And if the OP is actually worried about losing vs English battleship at Gibraltar, well, air has reach right? So it still comes down to, there’s some pretty important details missing. What is the OP doing exactly? Need those details if want to provide any good contextual advice, hm?

So I’d favor making a new thread like “The numbers on G1 Egypt?” because I see this thread as a misdirected Classic post.

But even making a new thread to really hit those numbers in detail - I don’t know that readers would really be interested in in-depth. Like, you can’t really discuss the Atlantic transport game unless you know the Atlantic escort game, the Axis counter-escort, the Axis timings, and knowing those in turn mean understanding the context Africa and Pacific play, etc. It’s a lot. And in the end, it’s rarely “right” or “wrong” so much as “there’s tradeoffs”, and even for lines that are statistically worse against prepared opponents, there’s the possibility opponents won’t be prepared because they haven’t seen it before, which is another discussion.

But if you want to dig in deep - why do YOU favor G1 Egypt? Maybe make a new thread, throw in a load of details, numbers, if it’s something to be dug deep on.

Building analytic tools for Axis and Allies type games, and a game similar to Axis and Allies.

I’m building in what I want. But I want to hear what other players want too.

Particularly, I have three questions.

1. How important is the setting of the game to you? How would you feel about playing a game themed, not around armed combat, but cute animals doing pizza delivery, supposing the gameplay were identical?

2. Name some specific data visualizations you’d like to see, including specific examples of actual usage and/or screenshot so I can look them up. E.g. David Skelly’s tool has a visualization of expected unit count surviving over multiple rounds of combat.

3. How to handle asynchronous play. (more below)

If this sounds familiar, I wrote parts of it up on different forums at different times.

This is a pretty specific case, and I know a lot of players don’t play like this. But nevertheless, just bear with me.

Suppose Japan hits the Hawaiian Islands fleet; Japan has up to submarine, cruiser, two fighters, bomber; US has submarine, destroyer, carrier, one fighter.

Scenario A: Suppose Japan wants to play it risky and only sends 1 sub 2 fighters. Then maybe the US wants to have the US submarine fight.

Scenario B: Suppose Japan hits with the kitchen sink. Then maybe the US wants to have the US submarine submerge.

1942 Online handles this with “defensive profiles”, but defending players can’t switch up their actions depending on what the attacker does. And not to get into the use case too deeply, but digging a bit deeper shows defender may want to change decisions depending on composition of attacking force (not just the count of units), dice roll results from earlier rounds, the outcomes of battles in different territories/seazones conducted earlier (and not just loss/win, but again, the composition.

So this is where I sort of shrugged and said, well, 1942 Online’s implementation, sort of is where it is. It’s not the same as the boardgame, but that’s just how it is.

But suppose it were “fixed”? The way it’s handled in TripleA last I heard, you sort of agree on OOL and conditions before the game, and if someone does a bad OOL for the defender, then the game gets rewound and the “correct” decision made, which can get messy (lot of complications I won’t get into but been there a few times.). Or in TripleA, if a game gets to that point where you know there’s sort of a weird OOL coming up, the upcoming defender could send sealed instructions, or unsealed directions, or even the game could be paused until both players could go live. You get the idea. It’s messy.

So I wrote elsewhere, you CAN make a really detailed UI where the defender can pre-specify exhaustive conditions, but that’s super cumbersome.

The idea I’m working with right now is, instead of having a static “defensive profile” like 1942 Online, instead have an AI that makes decisions round to round, with some additional input decisions by defender.

So for example, if UK hit a German fleet in the Baltic, the AI might by default land a fighter on Berlin. But a human player COULD specify that the fighter land on Norway or Finland instead (because maybe US / USSR didn’t have a followthrough to destroy the German fighter cheaply), and the German fighter range has better to some targets. Etc.

@ninja_steffen Don’s essays were for Classic or Revised, I forget. I consider the essays a must-read for introduction to thinking about the game, but the particulars e.g. hit Egypt or not change with editions.

So there I’d say the first question is, playing OOB (out of the box) setup? Or LHTR (Larry Harris Tournament Rules) setup? Because if it’s OOB I probably expect Axis to win regardless. Heh. And what’s this about an English battleship at Gibraltar? That’s very interesting. It implies there’s some background missing.

So this is one of these things where, if you want a really good contextual answer, need to provide more contextual details.

For example, suppose I said it doesn’t make sense to send tank and infantry and bomber to Egypt, because under LHTR the German bomber is in Ukraine and is expected to be destroyed? Or suppose I said on USSR first turn, a fighter was flown to Egypt? (And that’s not really great for USSR either; there’s a reason that’s not “standard”, but it DOES happen.). Or suppose I just did a breakdown on the numbers and followups of Russia/Germany/UK, and said here’s what you risk, here’s what you gain? Hm?

Anyways this thread is a few months old, so if any replies, we’ll see. But also, where is an English battleship at Gibraltar coming from? Because Germany can blow up the UK starting battleship, in different setups I think there’s a destroyer or a cruiser off Gibraltar for England respectively, so is UK buying a battleship?