Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?

[taamvan]

@squirecam I wont convince you, but I disagree. The game works great and AAA has glaring flaws I can’t overcome. Mostly I just want to play with my buddies, y’all.

[aardvarkpepper]

Tournaments are different to AXAO. Larry Harris setup, bid, games called on time so decided by +1 VC, AXAO doesn’t implement the rules per board game.

It’s like, I don’t think they can even be compared. OOB East Indies attack and two-territory Russia attacks are all unstable. 30%+ failure at East Indies, and a little dice swing on Russia 1 can be pretty nasty. Bid makes a big difference, plus the Larry Harris setup.

As to +1 VC, I really don’t know that I’d go 100% tanks on G1 in a normal standard game of 9 Axis VC / 10 Allied VC.

@DoManMacgee - French Equatorial Africa, not French West Africa? Brazil, yeah that’s just not right. But if it’s French West Africa, I don’t think it’s necessarily bad. Well maybe it is bad but I don’t think it’s bad because I might do it sometimes. And of course I have three whole weeks of experience on this board. Maybe two and a half. Whatever. So if I do it, it can’t be bad, right? :relaxed:

Stipulating we’re using OOB with the additional restrictions of AXAO - (i.e. no use of allied transports or carriers, defending fighters float instead of having to land or be destroyed if their carrier dies, defensive profiles (which are a big change, I could go on) -

OK anyways if Germany does 2 subs to East Canada and 2 subs air to UK battleship and lands fighters on NW Europe and Finland, then UK probably has no fleet to start. And if the UK player was using the default defensive profile, if the Russian sub joined the UK fleet then it didn’t submerge and is probably dead too. So UK is looking at Baltic cruiser and transport which is inconvenient to Russia, and has zero fleet, plus probably there’s a German sub hanging out. But all UK can build is destroyer and carrier if it reserves 9 IPC for 3 infantry at India. And if it does that, then it gets whacked by 1 sub 6 fighters 1 bomber, never mind what happens if UK tries to kill the German cruiser (which probably isn’t the worst idea considering London might be threatened) and loses a fighter in the process. Regardless, UK1 fleet drop probably not good.

So US1 builds fleet while UK does whatever. Then what does US2 move do?

Well if Germany grabbed Trans-Jordan on G1, UK might want to pull Egypt units to take it back. If UK attacks Libya probably Germany stacked it so that isn’t too good. If UK sits where it is, Trans-Jordan and Libya both attack and crush them. If UK runs into Africa and pulls German units after them, that’s not the worst, but Germany can just push up into Transjordan, UK units in Africa can never catch up, then Germany has a little pocket force in the Persia region. So none of those are maybe too great, so maybe UK hits Trans-Jordan.

Well if that happens then Germany marches into Africa, and what happens? US can drop to French West Africa and fight them off. If Germany fights them, that uses up some of Germany’s attention and stretches Germany’s logistics, so that’s not the worst use of some US units that couldn’t even think about landing in Europe any time soon. If Germany doesn’t fight, that works out okay too as UK income is preserved. US could drop to Morocco but that risks getting stalled out. But south of Africa, really hard for Germany to push to.

As to G1 tanks, G2 ftr, G3 bomber, G4 infantry . . . well on AXAO I can believe it wins. What with all the Russian players trying to hold Karelia with way too few forces, or buying Russian bombers, or stacking Buryatia where Japan just whacks them, or things like that, woo.

Edit - anyways I got sidetracked. So the thing is US1 two carriers and destroyer, US2 fighters and US1 fleet moves to Africa, UK3 builds fleet, US3 moves to reinforce UK fleet. Depending on what’s going on, maybe US1 three destroyers and a carrier, etc., maybe Japan flies a bomber to Karelia, little variations. Anyways US fleet really doesn’t have much other place to go than Africa if Germany’s zoning north Atlantic with subs on US2 (US fleet can’t reach UK waters), so US1 fleet drop only reaches London on US3 anyways . . . right? So then Africa makes more sense because hey.

[aardvarkpepper]

@taamvan said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

@squirecam I wont convince you, but I disagree. The game works great and AAA has glaring flaws I can’t overcome. Mostly I just want to play with my buddies, y’all.

which flaws?

I mean, AXAO you can’t use allied transports or carriers. Defending fighters float if their carrier’s destroyed (don’t need to land at all, just stay in the sea zone). Defensive profiles eurgh. I mentioned attacking the Japanese submarine, but there’s loads more times when def profiles just don’t get it done. Then there’s things like needing to assign casualties after each group of similarly valued units, unlike having all rolls in a sub-phase totaled before assigning casualties. Bugs. Like if you have a submarine and there’s an enemy submarine in the same zone (applies to other stuff too I think) then you can’t move your submarine out of combat unless it’s into a another combat; unlike in the board game you can’t move to a neutral sea zone and just hang out at all. Also various bugs.

Error: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property ‘width’ of null Please reload the game

Well it’s early days for AXAO yet. Still Early Access, this stuff is supposed to happen. Well we’ll see how it turns out.

[squirecam]

@aardvarkpepper said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

@taamvan said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

@squirecam I wont convince you, but I disagree. The game works great and AAA has glaring flaws I can’t overcome. Mostly I just want to play with my buddies, y’all.

which flaws?

I mean, AXAO you can’t use allied transports or carriers. Defending fighters float if their carrier’s destroyed (don’t need to land at all, just stay in the sea zone). Defensive profiles eurgh. I mentioned attacking the Japanese submarine, but there’s loads more times when def profiles just don’t get it done. Then there’s things like needing to assign casualties after each group of similarly valued units, unlike having all rolls in a sub-phase totaled before assigning casualties. Bugs. Like if you have a submarine and there’s an enemy submarine in the same zone (applies to other stuff too I think) then you can’t move your submarine out of combat unless it’s into a another combat; unlike in the board game you can’t move to a neutral sea zone and just hang out at all. Also various bugs.

Error: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property ‘width’ of null Please reload the game

Well it’s early days for AXAO yet. Still Early Access, this stuff is supposed to happen. Well we’ll see how it turns out.

Why is this supposed to happen? Why can’t they get the rules correct first, before putting the game out for sale?

It’s that, or they are deciding their own rules…which is worse. Then it’s not AA42 but a home variant passed off as the game.

[DoManMacgee]

@DoManMacgee - French Equatorial Africa, not French West Africa?

No. French Equatorial Africa. Looking at a map, it’s SZ26. Completely removed from anything even remotely relevant. I’ve had some very odd players in my games, to say the least. It’s gotten to the point where I’ll only do 1v1s if I’m going to be playing Allies. Both of my losses so far stem from bad teammates (although to be fair, one of them wasn’t so much the teammate’s fault as it was bad dice R1, but I’ve griped about that enough in the 42SE board).

The only time I ever go down to that SZ as USA is if Germany has expanded everywhere in Africa and I need to get them out yesterday.

Interesting that slow-play is a problem at the large tournaments. I imagine games can often come down to extremely dicey all-ins revolving around Karelia/India/Philippines once things get close to the time limit. I’m sure if you’re aggressive/rude enough you can get your opponents to stop stalling and move, though.

@squirecam

AAO having weird rules

Why is this supposed to happen? Why can’t they get the rules correct first, before putting the game out for sale?

It’s that, or they are deciding their own rules…which is worse. Then it’s not AA42 but a home variant passed off as the game.

Stuff like Allied Carriers and Allied Transports are things Beamdog said they changed for the sake of “simplifying the game for Asyncrhonous play” (it’s stupid, I know, don’t shoot the messenger). The thing with FTRs not having to land/crash when a Carrier dies is something I reported a few days ago. They said it’s a known bug and they’re still working on a fix for it.

The game’s basically in an open beta right now, which is why it’s still a mess. On-launch the game was a complete disaster that was borderline unplayable (constant crashing, slow-as-molasses, etc.). It’s gotten much better over the past 4 weeks or so. They even added LHTR as a setup option in the latest update (after huge demand for it from us/others on Steam).

[squirecam]

@DoManMacgee said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

@DoManMacgee - French Equatorial Africa, not French West Africa?

No. French Equatorial Africa. Looking at a map, it’s SZ26. Completely removed from anything even remotely relevant. I’ve had some very odd players in my games, to say the least. It’s gotten to the point where I’ll only do 1v1s if I’m going to be playing Allies. Both of my losses so far stem from bad teammates (although to be fair, one of them wasn’t so much the teammate’s fault as it was bad dice R1, but I’ve griped about that enough in the 42SE board).

The only time I ever go down to that SZ as USA is if Germany has expanded everywhere in Africa and I need to get them out yesterday.

Interesting that slow-play is a problem at the large tournaments. I imagine games can often come down to extremely dicey all-ins revolving around Karelia/India/Philippines once things get close to the time limit. I’m sure if you’re aggressive/rude enough you can get your opponents to stop stalling and move, though.

@squirecam

AAO having weird rules

Why is this supposed to happen? Why can’t they get the rules correct first, before putting the game out for sale?

It’s that, or they are deciding their own rules…which is worse. Then it’s not AA42 but a home variant passed off as the game.

Stuff like Allied Carriers and Allied Transports are things Beamdog said they changed for the sake of “simplifying the game for Asyncrhonous play” (it’s stupid, I know, don’t shoot the messenger). The thing with FTRs not having to land/crash when a Carrier dies is something I reported a few days ago. They said it’s a known bug and they’re still working on a fix for it.

The game’s basically in an open beta right now, which is why it’s still a mess. On-launch the game was a complete disaster that was borderline unplayable (constant crashing, slow-as-molasses, etc.). It’s gotten much better over the past 4 weeks or so. They even added LHTR as a setup option in the latest update (after huge demand for it from us/others on Steam).

Do these developers even play the game?

[taamvan]

@squirecam yup they’re in live games. Im running 6-8 at a time.

I agree without the same ruleset, its not exactly the same game. The fighters float one is just wrong i’ve torpedoed several carriers and the fighter haunts me.

[aardvarkpepper]

French Equatorial Africa, well. Maybe they had family there and wanted to visit?

==

As to being aggressive / rude at tournaments - no. If they’re deliberately stalling you, they’ll be well prepared for aggressive or rude responses. I’d guess typical rejoinders would be “he’s shouting at me so I need a moment to think” (trying to get the judge to penalize you for delay, not them) or “would you check this guy out, can someone do something about this” (delaying the game further) or a bunch of things I can think of actually that I’ve seen in other tournaments though I’ve never been to an A&A tournament. Best thing I think is just remain calm and get a judge.

I mean, maybe it’s all an honest mistake (or maybe that player just really needs to take their time), who knows? Maybe you’re overreacting. (Maybe not. But maybe.) And if a judge comes along, probably they won’t penalize anyone for stalling, things being what they are nobody wants to make waves, but if you complain about that player and another player complains, at some point that player’s going to get a reputation. So make it official, it’s the best way.

==

As to fighters not landing / crashing when a defending carrier is destroyed - that was known behavior, not a bug, as far as I knew. It’s in the list of changes Beamdog published that changed the original rules - along with defender profiles and inability to use allied transports and carriers. Well if they’re calling it a bug that’s fine by me; I prefer the board game rules anyways.

@squirecam said in [Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?]

Do these developers even play the game?

Well imagine you’re a casual player and maybe you played once or twice, and you thought it was fun, then after years of never thinking about it maybe your company has a job doing it, then of course the office gets together and does some games, and everyone’s a casual player and has a good time, but maybe foresees some difficulties with certain features so changes are made. And of course nobody thinks anything of these changes, because stuff like 60% as opposed to 85%, or changing key timings so there’s 85% instead of 35%, or whatever, so what? I mean, that’s for nerds right? Does anyone take that sort of thing seriously?

Then some very fervent but inarticulate people say “omg you can’t do that!” but well, you know, EVERY game has their diehards, so who’s to say what’s actually the case? Maybe if casuals are the target market, the concerns of diehards aren’t actually so serious?

I said something about allied transports and carriers being a big change, what with changing UK fighters to India if you want to try that, importance of combined fleet timings, and whatnot, but woosh! the point was missed. it’s like, well, the rules are the same for both sides right? so what’s the big deal?

I mean, sure, right, if they didn’t play the game, maybe they would take it more seriously, my guess is they did play the game but maybe missed some of the finer points.

. . . those finer points which STAB YOU LIKE A SWORD IN THE HANDS OF A SKILLED PLAYER :white_frowning_face:

oh well hopefully they’ll come around.

[squirecam]

@aardvarkpepper said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

French Equatorial Africa, well. Maybe they had family there and wanted to visit?

==

As to being aggressive / rude at tournaments - no. If they’re deliberately stalling you, they’ll be well prepared for aggressive or rude responses. I’d guess typical rejoinders would be “he’s shouting at me so I need a moment to think” (trying to get the judge to penalize you for delay, not them) or “would you check this guy out, can someone do something about this” (delaying the game further) or a bunch of things I can think of actually that I’ve seen in other tournaments though I’ve never been to an A&A tournament. Best thing I think is just remain calm and get a judge.

I mean, maybe it’s all an honest mistake (or maybe that player just really needs to take their time), who knows? Maybe you’re overreacting. (Maybe not. But maybe.) And if a judge comes along, probably they won’t penalize anyone for stalling, things being what they are nobody wants to make waves, but if you complain about that player and another player complains, at some point that player’s going to get a reputation. So make it official, it’s the best way.

==

As to fighters not landing / crashing when a defending carrier is destroyed - that was known behavior, not a bug, as far as I knew. It’s in the list of changes Beamdog published that changed the original rules - along with defender profiles and inability to use allied transports and carriers. Well if they’re calling it a bug that’s fine by me; I prefer the board game rules anyways.

@squirecam said in [Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?]

Do these developers even play the game?

Well imagine you’re a casual player and maybe you played once or twice, and you thought it was fun, then after years of never thinking about it maybe your company has a job doing it, then of course the office gets together and does some games, and everyone’s a casual player and has a good time, but maybe foresees some difficulties with certain features so changes are made. And of course nobody thinks anything of these changes, because stuff like 60% as opposed to 85%, or changing key timings so there’s 85% instead of 35%, or whatever, so what? I mean, that’s for nerds right? Does anyone take that sort of thing seriously?

Then some very fervent but inarticulate people say “omg you can’t do that!” but well, you know, EVERY game has their diehards, so who’s to say what’s actually the case? Maybe if casuals are the target market, the concerns of diehards aren’t actually so serious?

I said something about allied transports and carriers being a big change, what with changing UK fighters to India if you want to try that, importance of combined fleet timings, and whatnot, but woosh! the point was missed. it’s like, well, the rules are the same for both sides right? so what’s the big deal?

I mean, sure, right, if they didn’t play the game, maybe they would take it more seriously, my guess is they did play the game but maybe missed some of the finer points.

. . . those finer points which STAB YOU LIKE A SWORD IN THE HANDS OF A SKILLED PLAYER :white_frowning_face:

oh well hopefully they’ll come around.

Then they shouldn’t be changing rules if they are casual players. If they don’t play at all, then its even more applicable.

Its not “even” since the Axis can rarely swap fighters on allied carriers or use each others transports.

I’d hate to see what they’d do to AA50 or Global…

[squirecam]

@taamvan said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

@squirecam I wont convince you, but I disagree. The game works great and AAA has glaring flaws I can’t overcome. Mostly I just want to play with my buddies, y’all.

Im still unclear on the flaws of AAA vs this abomination…

[Panther]

@taamvan said in Game 203 Report: What happens when you do everything right?:

… and AAA has glaring flaws I can’t overcome.

Would you please share those flaws you have identified? Maybe - in order not to hijack this topic here - open a topic in the TripleA Support category, please?

[barnee]

Hmm…“glaring flaws”. I guess it’s good I’m not blind from playing so much triplea. I see no reason to attack/bash triplea to promote an inferior pay program. I hope AnA online succeeds. The more players the better.
Coming out with a flawed game is probably not going to encourage first time users to come back though.

[Black_Elk]

I don’t know about the devs, but I was playing the gencon set up with Julius last night and had a good time via discord. I’m like a complete insomniac and he was in a timezone way off so guess it aligned. I went for a pacific stall plan that panned out after making making a pretty clean sweep with Russia. Went with the blast on Borneo x2 inf/New Guinea x2 inf 1 cruiser bombard, sz61 1 fighter one cruiser (landed in Bury for the pacific press), Australian Submarine immediate dive in sz 37 for the extra attack forward attack pip and carrier forward to block at Philippines. Starting bomber to Kazakh. UK opened damn near flawlessly, placed a new bomber in India and pair of tanks in India, for UK2 crush on IJN from the air, and rush up of British mobile ground support to eastern front.

Some good early headaches thrown at Axis in the Pacific, but even when you nuke the hell out Japan’s starting fleet, Pearl is still on the table and they got a lot of options on defense. Still seemed to come down to getting ahead in the Atlantic, and basically down to trade German air vs Allied main transport group, after UK finally dropped a deck in round 3. Peeled off too many German air in that exchange for Axis to recover position on the center so called it inside of 7 rounds.

The whole defense profile and AAZ rules for carriers definitely changes some key things. But still feels like A&A even if different than the 1942.2 I was playing a few years back. I guess it works, but it would really be nice if more live play features were introduced and just keeping the asynchronous style as a default option, but with the option to enter live play and normal defender chooses casualties. I think that would probably make most people happy. Clean up the movement UI, and finish up with some basic unit editor (so you can fix player mistakes to save an otherwise hosed game, or bid via added units.) They do that and it probably ends up a pretty good platform for casual pick up games. But yeah, roll out was a little rough. I kind of expected it to be in a more complete state, but the last patch and hotfix added some nice stuff. Hopefully they keep going with it.

I probably use A&Aonline just to keep up, and maybe more new players find a way in that way. I’m too deep into Iron War and probably when 1914 Pops off that will eat up all my time in triplea heheh. It’s hard to go back to v5, but I can’t imagine any other way to play the global game than triplea and don’t see that as something very likely to crack off online elsewhere. I think they’d have an easier time adding the Anniversary game online than G40.

[DoManMacgee]

I don’t see why we necessarily have to pit AAO and TripleA against each other like you can’t just play both (or just ignore the one you don’t like). AAO is a casual, easy-to-access platform that’s in its infancy whereas TripleA has been built from the ground up over several years and caters to a more hardcore audience.

Obviously pretty much everyone here is going to favor TripleA, seeing as this is literally the community for Competitive A&A.

I think this thread’s gotten pretty off topic though, and it’s partially my fault for bringing up AAO in the first place. Sorry.

[aardvarkpepper]

A 7-round KJF isn’t representative of how altered carrier rules affect the game.

As to making most people happy - that’s as may be, but when you have stuff like altered transports and carriers, floating fighters, casualties assigned after each sub-group of like-valued dice rolls instead of after all casualty rolls in a sub-phase, defensive profiles changing gameplay because of unresolveable issues - well.

Then there’s things like movement lines covering things up or unit icons covering each other and unit counts up or bugs or visual presentation or such things.

Then too there’s alternatives that offer options to view full game histories at each sub-phase of combat as well as positions before combat, noncombat moves, &c &c.

It’s not that TripleA is completely ideal either mind. Like casualty selection emails can get pretty weird, let’s face it. If you really want to do things “fairly”, you have to send the game state after combat moves completed and ask for casualty assignation after the first round of attacker hits connect. Then you need more back and forth emails for subsequent rounds of combat. So it’s not that TripleA had some ideal solution to asynchronous play either.

But then, you look at 1942 Online and though there’s a lot of nice things to be said for how it looks and thoughtful little things like Map Notes (too limited for my taste but it’s *something) and defensive profiles (better than full auto-assignation) - it is what it is. If it’s not implementing rules properly, it’s not.

If they had made Axis and Allies Zombies, then that would be one thing. If they had made Summer 1942 or something, and made clear it’s not supposed to be based on any extant board game version, that would be another. But supposedly it’s based off Spring 1942 - just with these odd changes that affect gameplay.

I could maybe be a little more forgiving if there were proper mathematical tools for risk assessment, extensive tutorials including in-game AI assists past scripted tutorials, a really great AI, ability to review game state history along with an ability to play back appended notes (not the Map Notes, but more detailed and extensive notes for extended commentary, or even audio files to be played back while viewing the game) - I mean, if there were something that made 1942 Online distinct, stuff that you just can’t find elsewhere.

But as it is, well - it does look nice. And the price tag is low. But I don’t get things just because they look nice and have a low price tag.

Of course I did get 1942 Online. But then, it’s in Early Access. So it could change.

Well it’ll turn out how it turns out.

[Black_Elk]

@aardvarkpepper Yeah I mean not saying it is representative, just that dude was actually playing hehe. Even with an oddball Japan stall opener there were at least 3 occassions where the AAZ carrier rules altered a move I would otherwise have made.

I think what feels a little strange to me is the primacy given to PBEM or asynchronous play over live play. Like I don’t know anyone who is spending time trying to do things asynchronously on the physical board. I guess in the 80s maybe you could set up 2 boards and make a phone call or whatever, but I don’t see anyone trying to pull this off before dice rollers and email. Its novel sure, but not exactly traditional by any stretch. The original game was clearly intended for live play, and a lot of the nuts and bolts assume at least 2 people in the room actually playing at the same time.

TripleA remains pretty ideal for me, but there isn’t much of a playerbase for 1942 over there. If ever there was those peeps have mostly moved on by now to other games. So the draw of A&Aonline is mainly that, the players. I guess steam is just a more popular or convenient way in, or at least many people seem more comfortable playing a steam game version despite its evident shortcomings right now. Even after GTO demonstrated how easily those can go the way of the dinosaur as soon as the publisher pulls the plug. Doesn’t matter how much time or energy or money you put into GTO, there’s no way to access it anymore. Online only means we’re dependent on continued dev support to keep it running. I guess even TripleA and A&Aorg have to run donation drives to keep the servers up, but least once you have the application installed you can always run it locally. I can still play Hasbro in single player even if the cd is kind of scratched hehe. But yeah, the draw I see is the players coming out of the woodwork, many who probably would never have found tripleA or these boards on their own, but who have found their way to A&Aonline. I still think they’d have more pull if the game was live play primarily, by the book, with asynchronous just as an alternative option.

[taamvan]

@Black_Elk @aardvarkpepper

Ive completed about 15 games. Some observations

1. long game and tournament game are completely different
2. allies are at a sound disadvantage in both versions (have won 85% of my Axis games and 40-50% of my allied ones).
3. this is exacerbated by the fact you can’t use the combined forces rules (carrier and transport split usage) which help the allies quite a bit
4. I’m doing a ton of battles rapid fire but the overall observation is that in order to “ensure victory” you need send more than you would in the live game
5. They can’t take Moscow if you get 5-7 UK fighters up there, but that won’t necessarily win you the long game
6. the US KJF is weakened by the fact that grabbing the VC temporarily won’t offset the fall of india or moscow
7. bid mechanic is needed
8. stratbombing is a wash without the +2 bonus, so unless you are willing to send in stacks of bombers and trade TUV against the odds, its better not to do it
9. blocking doesn’t work too well on the 42.2 map because there are usually 2 ways around

[aardvarkpepper]

“stratbombing is a wash without the +2 bonus” - what +2 bonus?

“can’t take Moscow . . . won’t necessarily win you the long game” - yeah, Axis have France, Italy, Berlin, Kiangsu, Phillipine Islands, Tokyo. Then say they grab Karelia, India, and Hawaiian Islands, that’s enough.

But then, I feel if Allies can’t grab Karelia in KGF or maintain control of Hawaiian Islands in KJF, then Allies are probably losing anyways.

[taamvan]

@aardvarkpepper

in global, SBR has +2 bonus. In the other editions, not. So you do an average of 3.5 damage (5.5 in global) per bomber while taking a $2 risk per attack. Since there is an opportunity cost because the bomber can’t do this and something else, its generally not worth it.

Its more likely that they grab moscow than hawaii, because I typically have a strong us navy in the pac.

and yes, you can kind of stalemate the game by trading karelia back and forth with UK forces, even if you start building up on that side late in the game and have a fairly weak force. But once moscow falls, the money is almost exactly even (85 vs 90) and that’s a loss over time for the allies.