What exactly is no luck? o_O

Does 1 infantry even get a roll, or what? Do you do something weird like decide every 6th infantry you roll will hit or something?

Now, let's assume the fighter missed the Sub on passing.  We have 1 SS, 1 BB, 1 AC, 2 FIG, 1 BMB vs 1 AC, 2 FIG, 1 SS.  Japan get's 4 hits on round 1.  Allies get 2 hits.  That's 1 damaged BB and one dead sub.  Cost 8, Reward 44.

Hmm, this becomes a complicated discussion. A few things here:

I think you meant to say 1 dest as well in the Japan attack force.

1 ss + 1 bb + 1 ac + 2 fig + 1 bmb + 1 dest = 20 dice points = 3 and 1/3 hits
1 ac 2 fig 1 ss = 13 = 2 hits and 1/6 hits

I think the majority of the time you will see the Americans surviving to round 2 to hit with their fighter, incurring 3 hits total, reducing the Japanese force to 2 fig 1 car 1 bb 1 bomb. The Americans are favored to counter Pearl in this case, so the Japanese would likely instead wish to lose their bomber to keep the destroyer alive.

A majority of the time, the sub in Solomons will not survive, making the Japanese attack force that more fragile.

But the Japanese can bring in between 3-4 fighters total, if they really need to. 4 fighters arrive if the Indies carrier moves out east, and 3 is easily achieved just by sending the caroline carrier - the fighter from carolines can land on wake, while a fighter from mainland Japan and 1 from Indies lands on the caroline carrier.

But the Japanese bringing that much force loses out somewhere. Even bringing the BB as proposed, exposes transports to the Allied airforce. You could compensate by bringing the Indies BB/car to SZ60 to defend, but that leaves the Kwang UK fleet alive, which may later link with the US navy.

A reinforced Pearl, especially when the Solomon sub is destroyed, and combined with Russian/UK consolidation about Japanese territories, causes the Japanese to give up something. If they go after Pearl, it is no longer an easy decision, they must give up somewhere else or their attack force isn't generally strong enough, or they have to lose bombers/a fighter in order to preserve the occupying force from a counterattack.

I

ADS is what gives you hair on your chest. Some people will look at ADS and chicken out when they see the possibility of 1 infantry beating 127 tanks. Or it may be more reasonable such as chickening out when sending 4 tanks against 2 tanks. Sure, losing those battles does happen, but on the other hand, astouding success also happens. Your 4 tanks could suffer no injuries. Your 127 tanks could fight 127 infantry in separate battles and never take a loss. In the long run, those who do their math the best and stick to it are the ones who win. It's just like in poker, you have to play the odds consistently with the math every time, or you will end up losing in the long run in spite of short term hot streaks. It is hard, and separates the men from the boys. Overcompensating too much for luck is as bad as bad luck.

But then again, I do see the use of LL. If you want a shortcut to the long term average, if you want a game that does not have such highly varying degrees of luck, if you want to test a strategy without having to factor in screwy dice, then go ahead and use it. Just remember that the risk and challenge of ADS makes it a different and possibly more exciting game.

And by all this talk of hair on chests and boys and men, I didn't mean to exclude you, Jennifer 

Sounds crazy indeed 

I'd totally get rockets with just about every nation if the tech dice were $1 apiece. I'd definitely spend $6 to do about $7+ every single turn. Germany would be in trouble getting rocketed in both complexes by all 3 Allies 

Which does it mean if I say I was the winner in every one of those short games?

Personally, I think it means I just got real darn lucky.

I buy into the intimidation theory. You offer surrenders so often that someone is bound to take one 

On a serious note, in games I would consider with average dice on both sides, it does take about 10+ turns in order to see who comes out ahead. 10 is about the turn that capitals fall or on the verge of falling if relatively conservative play is applied. You can end it sooner if you are aggressive and trade faster, but 10 is when the chips start to fall.

I'm starting to rethink the whole Finland idea.  I think it is best for America to get it, build an IC and start pumping out tanks.

Hmm! I've seen this strategy mentioned somewhere else, but I've never actually done it myself. I think I read it from a guy on the CSub forums (not a Csub author, just a member of the yahoo group), he claims it's common to use a 3x3 US fleet and an IC in Norway to pump out units to kill Germany.

The way I play, I say give Norway to the UK. I want to keep the UK's paycheck inflated to 32 or higher so I can fill out 4 inf 4 arm every turn. This can be difficult when you lose parts of Africa, India, Persia, Australia, New Zealand, etc, and you can't always just waltz into W. Europe for free cash. The UK could really use that Norway money.

The US has enough money to make a large support force, and any extra gains it makes are a few turns away from you being able to see it. If you have extra money to build inf for instance, it'd be one turn to build it, one turn to move it to E. Canada, one turn to ship it to UK, and one last turn to put it in Europe. A few turns from you seeing that extra money in action, as opposed to UK which is just 2 turns from being able to use it. An IC in Norway also tends towards getting bombed unless you have a free AA gun, which you don't always have.

America's all about compromise, right? Lol how about a mix of LL and ADS, based on luck? At the beginning of every battle, roll a die. If it's 1-3, you do it LL. If it's 4-6, you do it ADS   

Definitely 1, the way I play it. Attack Egypt with 3 inf 1 fig 1 bomb, when Egypt has 3 units. I might be convinced to use the fighter elsewhere when there's 1 or 2 units in Egypt, but 3 requires full attention and a quick knockout before Germany gets free IPCs.

I'm starting to think Low Luck is the way to go  I certainly use it to test strategies against myself to see what you can expect.

But there is something to say about ADS. I got into the game partially because of the luck aspect. It is akin to gambling. You play poker because there is a chance element involved, but a lot of skill as well. A&A is not chess, where the results are rigorously dependent on your previous moves, and low luck starts to go down that road. The dice fracks and calculating for them takes a lot of balls to deal with, which is what makes it exciting to me.

Personally, I don't care much about dice fracks one way or another. I will make apparent remarks like  look at those dice and stuff, but I take bad dice in stride. Suck it up as a loss, and keep going. Look at the overall picture - the dice should come out as you expect in the long run. Those who win in the long run have the better strategy. Those who use Low Luck take the shortcut to that destination, but it's not as exciting.

I could see why it could be thought to be Marsellus's soul. But do you think Marcellus's soul would be perceived as "beautiful?" Few souls have that characteristic, and I have doubts as to Marcellus, being in a life of crime, being in that elite category.

I forget who's who, but that guy who is robbing the restaurant, I do not think he would be interested in a soul. He is interested in material gains (wallets, money, jewelry).

If it were gold, that question would be totally unnecessary.

Not necessarily; we tend to make sometimes redundant comments when we have nothing else to say. I could easily imagine someone saying "wow, that's beautiful" if it were gold.

 

I laughed at just about every one!

I don't agree with leaving one inf in Manch/Indochina, Aretaku. That just makes it nearly certain that you will lose the inf there to an attack. I'd rather keep the inf in a bigger pile somewhere else so I can retake Indochina at lower cost.

I'd probably hit Pearl.

In the worst case scenario, 33% of the time (solomon sub died), I'd send a force of 1 sub 1 car 1 bomb 1 fig. 73% of winning. I could increase that margin if all I care about is killing the sub and carrier, not the fighter, which I think is reasonable. I'm more scared of the carrier being used immediately to go island hopping than I am about the fighter.

In the other scenario, 66% of the time, I'd have an extra sub to send to Pearl, pushing it up to 93% of winning.

Let's just keep it simple and say I want to win in Pearl, not just knock out the sub/car. In that case, we can weigh the percentages to come up with a total average expected success rate:

93% of 66% + 73% of 33% = ~85%. So 85% of games will see the Pearl Harbor fleet dead, averaging the cases where the ��� sub lives and where it dies.

If I may suggest, perhaps the UK fighter should really be used to do the Pearl Harbor reinforcement (attack solomons then reinforce the Pearl fleet0. The UK fighter is not needed in either Kwangtung nor in Buryatia. The Kwang transport will fall a vast amount of the time vs 1 dest/car/tran, and Buryatia is secure from any reasonable J1 assault with the Russian fig there.

This pushes your odds to 66% of killing the Solomon Sub, and 100% reinforcement of Pearl with a fighter. That makes attacking Pearl a serious problem for the Japanese. It could still be done, but either the battleship from SZ60 would have to be sent or you would have to accept some moderate fighter losses after sending all available airforce in. Either of those cases would make it extremely difficult if not impossible to either build transports anywhere around Japan, or be able to counter in the land as effectively minus the fighters.

Politicking is not as important as buying 4 inf 3 art or having a sexy avatar 

[Low-Luck]

Basically, I'm looking for a way to deplete MORE germans then I loose russians.

I think, Jen, that the 3-way attack is for you as long as the bid isn't in Europe. If you're into Low-Luck, you can make a huge dent in the Germans. You have really just about 100% in both Ukraine and West Russia, and 89% in Belorussia (93% if mutual destruction is OK with you). It's nearly guaranteed that you wiped out 9 German inf, 2 art, 2 arm, and 1 fighter. You lose just about as many inf and 1 art, but that's it for the immediate round, so the trade is in your favor. You will probably lose all of your tanks and 1 art in the counterattack, but those take out units as they go, too. You can always put an AA in Ukraine to make any airforce sent that much riskier for a counterattack.

I haven't tested your proposed strategy in this thread, but I"m still inclined to think that you're going a little bit too hard too fast. You give up a lot of important staging grounds for trading territories, which means the Germans are up about 4 IPCs and you're down about 4 IPCs. You have to build your offense just about from scratch, while the Germans can still happily pile up cheap infantry especially with their extra income to suffocate your attacks. You're on a pretty much a coin toss (~58% rounded up) to get the starting that is "good", the other significant 42% being very bad and putting Russia into an immense hole with little gain to show for the immense risk.