Nuno did great last night s did tim. Ive always always been partial to brent and I think when he got up there at the end of the second half he brought things back together again.
What ended up happening in that proposed free for all late last year
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In the 2nd and 3rd game we let UK and Russia pick two NAs.
The other player pick one NA.The capital in exile rule lets you move your capital to another IC and place 3 infantry there and it becomes your new capital.
If you don’t have an IC you keep collecting income until you can place an IC.We also made a conscripts NA for Russia. Though it seems not powerful enough, wonder if we can lift it to 2 free infantry per turn.
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Maybe England also needs free infs…
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me and my buddies have tried this game many times. unless the brits and russia make allies with someone, they have no chance. so what we did was move UK capitol to south africa, all units from uk + boats in sz 1 & 2 went to usaf, and we moved 1 inf to uk. so the island of uk was worth 2 ipc, and usaf was 8. then we gave russia 10 ipc per round up to 40. so if russia earned 35 ipc it would only get 5. it gave russia and uk a real chance, and really changed the game. and i did win with russia, once. when i took berlin i had 10 fig + 3 bom.
i’ll play a ffa game, with any rules you want. i use the real board so if it needs to be tossed i’ll do it.
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Those are some pretty good ideas Mojo.
I haven’t played a FFA in Revised, but I think reallocating some of the British units would help.
What if you shifted the BB in Sz 13, DD in Sz 15, trn in Sz 1 all to Sz 2, giving the the UK 2 BB, 1 DD, 2 trn. The Ftr in Egy to Sz 35 and the Arm in Egy to Safr. And if UK is given that one NA with the IC they can move the India AA to where ever they place the IC.
I think you might have to give them 1-2 ftrs more on UK and maybe 2 additional inf for whereever they placed their 2nd IC, but you might be able to cause some trouble if you just consolidated their existing navies.
Russia could maybe get 1 rt for kaz and novo, maybe 1 bomber since all the other nations have bombers, and maybe an armor for yak.
I’d have to look at the overall starting army ipc values to see if more units are needed for a particular country.
Edit:
i’ll play a ffa game, with any rules you want. i use the real board so if it needs to be tossed i’ll do it.
I’d be interested, as long as one of the rules was no alliances for X number of rounds.
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@ncscswitch:
Not sure about in later games. But in the first one, it was not a true FFA game. There were several alliances and the game was effectively Germany against the world after UK1. So under those circumstances UK’s income was not a major issue.
Actually, in game 1, America and England had an understanding. America would take the Canadas because England was powerless to stop her, but England would take Brazil because it was not cost effective for America to stop her.
After that, America ignored Germany because Japan was the only threat to America. So America, being wise as she was, sat back, watched England, Russia, Japan and Germany beat each other up, and moved in when the smoke began to clear and wiped the floor with them.
There were no true alliances, but Germany has never forgiven America for doing exactly what America said should be done with America to win a free for all game (namely as little as absolutely necessary to for go losing valuable units and continually increase the size of the army, navy and air force.)
In game two, Miss America was given England. Miss America wisely pounced all over the idea of jumping into Africa as soon as possible with everything possible before getting land locked to an island.
She also decided to annoy America by taking Alaska, then liberating W. Canada before losing her Canadians. Shame, they did so well. Anyway, eventually England ended up with a very strong power base in Africa and was moving through the middle east when Japan stole the show with a blitz on the Victory Cities. Kudos to Japan because England had no chance of a VC win any time soon!
As for game Three, The Madam of Omniscience, Omnipotence and Benevolence has graciously stood aside to allow others to play and find new tactics whilst she has a gleam of vengeance in her eye for game four!
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good idea also DM. we even let UK go first before, but it only helped a little. the real problem with FFA is the USA is just too tough, and to far away to get hit. so UK, GERm, RUss beat each other up and the USA sits back and goes after the weakest one. japan is in a good place unless USA just decides to go after them, and then the rest of the world loves that.
bottom line is UK needs help somehow, someway, and so does russia.
as for allies. when it’s online like this people can talk and the rest of the players have no idea, but when me & my buddies play it’s all table talk, so as soon as allies are made, others are also made. it can really make for a wierd game when russia & germany not not attacking.
but i’ll try playing one if we can get others interested, as for the rules, i’m open.
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Count me in for that game definatly. I’m in the process of drawing up some rules and ideas that I wouldnt mind put in maybe a permanent thread where people can view them easily and comment on and contribute ideas to fine tune it so to speak. Hey wouldn’t a FFA tournament be interesting if we can some sort of system going :-D
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wow rand your talking about tourney, i’m in. hey i’ll drop TC a line to see if he’s interested.
i’ll look at your ideas. we also tossed one around but never played it was giving a dollar amount to start, buy what you want, and have at it. -
I disagree. America cannot JUST sit back and watch. If you do that, then when Russia, England or Germany falls, you are seriously behind the infinity ball. (that’s the 8-ball, but it’s sideways, get it?)
America needs to go navy and put that navy in the Pacific, meanwhile, dedicate 33% (rounding down) of their assets to military build up in North America. The idea is to convince England it’s too much of a pain to invade Canada so they don’t even bother doing it. (PS: Rockets can reach from E. Canada to England)
The reason is you don’t want Japan to expand without limit. Putting your ships in the Pacific, even if you don’t use them, will at least keep Japan honest.
Then, when you have the forces, honestly, I’d go after Japan. Holding the islands is a lot easier then trying to hold Africa with England, Germany and Japan contesting it as well. You don’t even need to take Japan, just surround it and keep him locked on Japan itself.
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i think you took it a little to literal, i did not mean sit and stockpile money and do absoluety nothing, but you can sit back while the others pound each other and decide which way to go.
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I know what you meant. I disagree. I think America needs to spend a few rounds doing what you say, but after that, needs to be a threat in the Pacific. You do not want to face a Japan after Russia falls without already owning the Pacific. England, meanwhile, is basically neutralized with a Fortress America stance and Germany’s got her hands full with England and Russia so they won’t be threatening you any time soon.
Meanwhile, America can easily pick up some islands. Be nice to have two bases of operations: Borneo and E. Indies. Just sit in SZ 36 with your fleet (including 4 transports) and shuttle 8 units a round right into FIC if you want too.
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Didn’t play many Diplomacy-like games, but what would prevent forming of spontaneous coalitions (even without explicit communication) in a Free-for-all ? Maybe even along historical WW2, driven by geography, accessible enemies and territories of value:
Germany+Japan vs Russia
Russia+England vs Germany
Russia+England+US vs JapanMaybe even earlier or alt-history variants (e.g. Japan+England vs Russia).
Then what happens if 2 powers besiege the third (say Germany+Japan vs Moscow) ? if any one attacks, the other may win easily whoever wins the first one. So the situation would become a stable triangular deterrence ?
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Then what happens if 2 powers besiege the third (say Germany+Japan vs Moscow) ? if any one attacks, the other may win easily whoever wins the first one. So the situation would become a stable triangular deterrence ?
To some extent this happened for a brief time in the 1st game. Moscow held out for a turn or two when it appeared either Germany or Japan could take the capital, because the other would be able to beat the forces remaining after moscow fell. But it didn’t last long. And it certainly wasn’t “stable” because russia couldn’t even pretend to keep up with the other two by that time.
Two things that surprised be about that game were 1) apparent agreements with little benefit to one side. Specifically, britain and japan seemed to be cooperating with the US but at least from the outside I couldn’t see much benefit they were gaining from it - especially toward the end when the US was obviously the biggest force to be reckoned with. 2) agreements that could only end in backstabbing. When I’ve seen good diplomacy in something like Risk, it was best to set non-aggression for a limited period of time, or just across a certain border rather than absolute alliance. If it’s absolute, you know someone will eventually have to break it because in the end ,there will be only one winner. And if you do many of these you want the reputation of being someone who doesn’t break their agreements (rather than, say, the one who gets their opponent to leave Japan poorly defended, then takes it ;) ) I don’t know exactly what agreements were made, but there definitely seemed to be some backstabbing involved.
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Britain and Japan did not have agreements with the United States. I can state that for a fact because I was the United States.
What happened was exactly what happened because the United States did not leave room for England or Japan to attack her.
For instance, there was a 200 point army in North America. No way a landing could be achieved without an awful lot of resources and if achieved, no way a beach head could be established. Thus, neither Japan nor England bothered even trying to form landing parties.
Secondly, Japan was split between attacking Russia and attacking America. Without German assistance, there was no way he could pull off both, not when America was +4 for Canada so at her full 42 IPC for most of the game and pumping out boats like a mad woman.
Eventually, the Japanese navy was sunk and with it, any chance of restraining America. That meant Japan had to go all out against Russia and hope to have enough holdings on the mainland to win without her islands. Meanwhile, America had to go bananas for islands to get enough firepower to make a mainland landing.
Unfortunately, Japan did not have enough left to hold Japan and America squeaked out an invasion, which I may add, was against the odds.
As for England and Russia, I have no idea. I presume from the banter they had a Kill Germany First pact for mutual benefit. As I assume that Germany and Japan had a mutually beneficial pact to kill Russia first. Since they were mutually beneficial, no expressly codified pact was really needed, and I assume never written.
I do think it important to note that, as America, I at no time even posed a threat to Germany. I had no ships in the Atlantic after US 1, nor on the left hand side of the board after US 2. So Germany’s complaints of the entire world against him are really on some shaky footing. Not to mention, after Japan fell, it was America attacking England with a vengeance in Africa and the Middle East. (England was the only threat to me at that time, no one else had a navy and I did not need to worry about land invasions as almost 100% of my holdings were islands and distant continents.) So again, it was not the world against Germany, but rather, Germany and America against England. If anything, the British player should have been complaining about a one sided fight after the fall of Tokyo!
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It was just things like Britain not reclaiming empty territories, and Japan just vacating all it’s valuable territories and leaving its capital lightly guarded, it sure seemed like there must have been a promise involved. Like I said, I don’t know what was agreed upon, I was just going by how it looked.
It may have been mutually beneficial for Germany and Japan to go towards each other to soak up Russia at first, but at some point attacking each other in central Eurasia becomes counter-productive. The US was becoming a massive threat in the east that Japan, the only ones in position to do anything about it, did virtually nothing to counter. I was surprised that Germany and Japan didn’t reach an agreement to lay off each other for a while and go pick off Britain and slow down the US respectively, but Germany didn’t think any agreements were appropriate, so I guess that wasn’t going to happen.
And I understand you never went directly after Germany…Of course you didn’t have to since every one else seemed to do it for you, leaving you to clean up the rest of the globe ;)
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Um, let us correct that…
USA took Japan after a false alliance was made to Japan by the US.
Tokyo was left VACANT in an effort to go after Germany in Russian territories. Then the US WALKED in free and clear.
Also, that was TECHNICALLY the second FFA since the first effectively ended when UK surrendered to Germany and transfered their holding and units to Berlin.
I won the first one with Churchill’s capitulation to the Reich :-D
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We rightly stipulated that a nation could not surrender all its territories to another, Switch.
And Japan did not leave Tokyo unprotected. It just put its fighters where it thought they would do the most good. You, however, kept trying to get him to suicide all his fighters on a kamikazee mission (which would have doomed Japan one turn later instead of the turn it fell.)
And yes, everyone else was going after Germany, so I did not have too. But even if they were not, I still would not have since I was in no position to get into that mess.
As for lightly defended islands, after his fleet was sunk, what did you want him to do? There was nothing for Japan TO do. He was effectively out of the game at that point, it was just a matter of his armies getting the notification.
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Wow, the rehash is almost as tumultuous as the orig. thread. ~ZP
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@Cmdr:
As for lightly defended islands, after his fleet was sunk, what did you want him to do? There was nothing for Japan TO do. He was effectively out of the game at that point, it was just a matter of his armies getting the notification.
I was referring more to the end when they completely vacated the asian coast and took all their planes out of tokyo as well. As an outsider, that looked to me as if Japan was promised it would be spared if they went to contest asia.
I don’t remember the circumstances of the fleet conflict (who had the numbers advantage/who initiated conflict, etc), but I was also surprised japan didn’t at least attempt to rebuild fleet to cut you off. Even though you won, I seem to recall your fleet was pretty decimated too.
Whatever. All I know is that it was a good read regardless. :-)
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He kept asking for promises but I never gave him any.
He almost had to vacate the mainland coast to stop Germany from over whelming him. As for Tokyo, that was not so much abandoned since he didn’t have a way to get his forces off Japan. His fighters were already in Russia stopping Germany from taking Moscow. It was a catch 22. He could let Germany win by evacuating Russia to protect Tokyo, or he could have a better fight against America. America only won because I lucked out and got into that bottom 22% where the attacker actually survived. He still had about an 80% chance to win, though, I had the forces to do a second attempt later if I wanted too.
Germany, on the other hand, was telling his ally to not only give up Asia so he could take it but to suicide his planes into America and hope enough hit that the American navy would be set back a round or two. Not a very good move, IMHO, since the suicide fighters still had a 33% chance of missing EACH and you had to pre-declare all your targets, so you couldn’t even see if the fighters you sent after a specific boat actually HIT that boat before declaring the next one. That means you’d have to dedicate 4 fighters to sink a battleship, 2 to sink a carrier, etc. You could send half that much, but you’d be relying on luck.
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