XDAP-5 AllWeNeedIsHank vs Cannibalized by Fluff

[allweneedislove]

@DeadTom:

I intended to leave Berlin vulnerable since I didn’t think you would attack it, because you seemed so confident that you would win, but I didn’t intend to leave it that vulnerable…

we were and still are confident that we would win. we talked about not attacking berlin as it would have been a better long term strategy, but we thought it would be a quicker and more obvious time for you to resign.

@DeadTom:

…
@Boldfresh:

Guess thats game  :|

You seem disappointed. It was still an amazing game, even if the amazing comeback we had going didn’t pan out. Good game AllweneedisHank, and good luck in the rest of the tournament.

i also enjoyed the game and had lots of fun. although we had a very different outlook on the game. thanks for the well wishes.

@DeadTom:

The Allies lost a lot in taking Berlin. They lost the entire US air force and 4 British transports.

we payed a huge price to take berlin. but it will only take usa two turns to build its airforce back to the pre berlin attack strength. and the uk will have it’s transports and more back in one turn.

we lost a much more brutal battle in moscow. the moscow outcome was probably in the top 1% of positive outcomes for the axis. both the japanese and italians softening blows were higher than average, allowing the german assault to have an 18% chance at winning with at least 1 unit remaining. and you won with many units left over. the allies lost most of their airforce including the awesome usa fleet of bombers. even after that worst case scenario the allies have a huge lead in total unit value, total units, production, and cash on hand.

@DeadTom:

Although, if you want to play it out a bit more, I’d really like to see if I can reestablish a defense…

i am sure axis could establish a defense to hold on for many more rounds(possibly another 10-20 rounds) due to the victory conditions for the allies.

@DeadTom:

…Since your next round game hasn’t started yet, is it alright if we continue? It’s your call.

i am happy to keep playing if you want to see what could happen. if hank is happy to keep playing we would obviously give up our spot in the tournament if you win(again this is very unlikely as axis would need great dice in multiple major battles or many major blunders by the allies to win) even if hank and/or decay do not want to continue we can play 1vs1 or 1vs2.

[Hank13]

I’m a bit confused. Have we won this game or are we still playing?

If Fluff isn’t conceding then of course I will still play. If you have conceded and you just want to continue for fun, then love can continue playing if he wants. I have a few other games I am trying to finish up and seeing that my players have been eliminated from this game, I am not really interested in continuing.

[DeadTom]

What I am saying is that we will concede right now if you want us to, but I really want to see how this plays out. I have no intention of playing defensive and forcing the Allies to achieve their victory conditions to win. If we continue, I will play all out for victory. The Allies cannot take Berlin a second time, so at worst losing Berlin will only set back my plans for Germany 2 rounds. As you said, it will take the US 2 rounds to rebuild their air force, so we will be in the same situation as before except with a stronger Britain.

I have lost Berlin before and recovered to win under similar circumstances. Losing capitals is only decisive if you can hold them or do a follow up attack. If Hank wants to move on, how about we continue 2v1? The only question I would have is whether you would still hold to your promise that if we end up winning we could go on to the next round of the tournament if Hank chooses not to continue.

To give you an idea of why I think that I can still win, here is what my impression of the game is. None of this has been by accident. This has been my strategy from the very beginning to play a positional game rather than a VC rush or economic game like most people say are the only two choices. My strategy was to encircle Russia and strangle them by attrition. The Italians would set up a strong position in the Middle-East giving them easy access to Egypt, the Japanese would take India securing Italy’s rear, and the Germans would eventually take Moscow then use their superior position to secure the remaining VC’s. I was relying on long supply lines to mitigate the economic advantage that the Allies had.

The first thing that went wrong was that Japan failed to take India and then collapsed very quickly. This was not so much the fault of my teammate as it was great play by the Allies in the Pacific. Then I had to get opportunistic and managed to secure India with Italy. Moscow got VERY dicey, but I still achieved that objective, and the entire time I thought that it would come down to control of Novgorod for the win. Novgorod has been and still is the key to victory, and this would seem impossible given the Allies incredible economic advantage for most of the game…

Except for one thing. There is a serious flaw in the Allied strategy. You can probably guess it. I’ll give you a clue: It rhymes with bamming spombers. Don’t get me wrong, it is a good strategy. It puts a lot of pressure on Germany, but it lacks stopping power. It’s effectiveness is limited once you are forced to engage the enemy. This is the reason that I still think I can win.

[DeadTom]

@allweneedislove:

we lost a much more brutal battle in moscow. the moscow outcome was probably in the top 1% of positive outcomes for the axis.

I disagree on this. Factoring in the odds of getting good outcomes on the suicide attacks, I would say we had about a 10% chance of taking Moscow. Give me some credit, it wasn’t all the dice.

[DeadTom]

TripleA Turn Summary for game: World War II Global 1940 2nd Edition, version: 3.6

Game History

Round :12

Purchase Units - Italians
            Italians buy 3 artilleries, 4 infantry and 3 mech_infantrys; Remaining resources: 1 PUs;

Combat Move - Italians
            5 artilleries and 8 infantry moved from Iraq to Trans-Jordan
                  Italians take Trans-Jordan from British
            2 artilleries and 3 infantry moved from Western Germany to Germany

Combat - Italians
            Battle in Germany
                Italians attack with 2 artilleries and 3 infantry
                British defend with 1 artillery and 1 factory_minor
                Italians win, taking Germany from British with 2 artilleries and 1 infantry remaining. Battle score for attacker is -2
                Casualties for British: 1 artillery
                Casualties for Italians: 2 infantry

Non Combat Move - Italians
            1 aaGun moved from Iraq to Trans-Jordan
            2 mech_infantrys moved from Persia to Trans-Jordan
            1 infantry moved from Persia to Iraq
            2 fighters moved from Iraq to Ukraine
            3 transports moved from 39 Sea Zone to 79 Sea Zone
            3 artilleries and 3 infantry moved from India to West India
            1 battleship and 1 cruiser moved from 39 Sea Zone to 79 Sea Zone
            2 artilleries and 1 infantry moved from Northern Italy to Western Germany
            8 infantry moved from Western Germany to Germany

Place Units - Italians
            2 artilleries and 1 infantry placed in Iraq
            3 infantry placed in Persia
            3 mech_infantrys placed in India
            1 artillery placed in Northern Italy

Turn Complete - Italians
            Italians collect 27 PUs; end with 28 PUs total
            Objective Italians 4 Control Iraq Or Persia Or Northwest Persia: Italians met a national objective for an additional 6 PUs; end with 34 PUs
            Objective Italians 1 Control The Mediterranean: Italians met a national objective for an additional 5 PUs; end with 39 PUs

[allweneedislove]

@DeadTom:

@allweneedislove:

we lost a much more brutal battle in moscow. the moscow outcome was probably in the top 1% of positive outcomes for the axis.

I disagree on this. Factoring in the odds of getting good outcomes on the suicide attacks, I would say we had about a 10% chance of taking Moscow. Give me some credit, it wasn’t all the dice.

i want to apologize. after reading your response and my post again i can see how it was rude of me and dismissive of your play. you did play well and i was not trying to marginalize your play. you made the right call on making the triple attack on moscow as it was low odds/high rewards.

i also made a mistake in the math. your results were about top 8% not top 1% like i originally stated. when calculating it i assumed that the above average results from the two suicide attacks on moscow would result in not taking moscow. but you could have had the same moscow result without 7 suicide hits, which i discounted those results. it was the discounting of those results that gave the incorrect upper 1% statement.

[allweneedislove]

@DeadTom:

… If Hank wants to move on, how about we continue 2v1? The only question I would have is whether you would still hold to your promise that if we end up winning we could go on to the next round of the tournament if Hank chooses not to continue…

that would be unfair to hank. i can’t play and lose a game without him and then tell him, by the way i lost a game so you lose your spot in the tournament.

i am happy to keep playing. but i think hank was just wanting to move on as he has many games going on right now. we can wait to see what he says.

if he wants to continue we would need to try to play realtime for an hour or 2 in an evening as we can not bog down the tournament as it is unfair to dairyqryn, boldutch, wewin, and atlanta axis.

if hank does not have time, i am happy to continue playing at a normal/slow pace.

i enjoyed this game and would be happy to start another if either or both of you want to start another game

[DeadTom]

How about we pick a time for just the two of us to finish the game on the TripleA lobby just for fun. The result would have no affect on the tournament. I could meet you there Saturday morning if that is alright.

[DeadTom]

I would say that my chances of getting those results were even higher than 8% actually. The suicide attacks by their high risk nature force the odds of any attack closer to 50%. I think it would have been reasonable to assume above average rolls for the suicide attacks in calculating the odds of taking Moscow since the odds were so low. The average would have been about 5 hits compared to the 7 that I actually got, which is not abnormally high especially with the number of @1’s I rolled which increase the variance. Also, If you take the average remaining units by the attacker according to the battle calculator and divide it by the odds of winning (to get rid of the 0 values in the results) you find that the average number of units that I would have left over in a win would be about 14. I think it is safe to assume that the odds of getting these results or better would be as much as 15% which is well within the realm of reasonable possibilities.

[allweneedislove]

@DeadTom:

How about we pick a time for just the two of us to finish the game on the TripleA lobby just for fun. The result would have no affect on the tournament. I could meet you there Saturday morning if that is alright.

pm sent

[DeadTom]

For anyone interested, Allweneedislove and I continued the game 1v1 and this is the latest save after 16 rounds. The game was a stalemate for a while with the only major event being a naval battle in the Pacific where both the Allied and Japanese fleets were wiped out. The Axis were flirting with economic parity for a while, but now the Allies have liberated India. We plan to continue the game hopefully next week.

Keep in mind that officially Cannibalized by Fluff has already conceded, so this has no effect on the tournament.

AllweneedisFluff.tsvg

[allweneedislove]

it is still an interesting game.
deadtom is outplaying me. i think the allies had a good enough lead to hold on to this game in-spite of my poor play and deadtom’s good play.