Is the G1 Egypt Attack a Good Move?

These figures are based on 10,000 simulations using AACalc (as modified and running at www.campusactivism.org/aacalc).  The IPC figures are all approximate - with an accuracy of around 0.1 to 0.4.

Now of course some of these units aren’t worth as much as their IPC cost (German subs) and others are worth more (any land unit in Africa).

If the German transport isn’t worth $7 then the attack on EGY is more lucrative.  I think the transport is useful and shouldn’t be thrown away.

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Scenario 1 - no Egypt attack

Z2  (sub, fig, bom vs bat/tra)
IPC gain of 18.3
(11.7 for the loss of bat vs the loss of fig/bom/sub + 6.6 for the loss of the tra)

Z12 (sub, 2 fig vs des, cru)
IPC gain of 8.8

Total IPC gain 27.1

Scenario 2 - Egypt Attack

EGY (assumes 2 inf, art, 2 arm, bom vs 2 inf, art, arm, fig)
I assume that G is willing to take the bomber casualty to take EGY (in practice, I don’t think this decision has much of an impact on the IPCs).

IPC gain (for the units, not including taking the bomber casualty) is 5.3

If you take EGY with a bomber and armor or better - you gain 9 (5 NO, 2 for G getting EGY, 2 for UK losing EGY).  This is a 60%.

If you take EGY with a single armor, by losing the bom - you gain 2 (5+2+2 - 12 +5 (for the armor)). This is a 15%.

Total value of the attack on EGY
5.3 + 0.6 * 9 + 0.15 * 2=10.9

Z2 (fig, 2 sub vs bat, tra)
IPC gain of 10.4 (loss of bat vs loss of 2 sub, fig) + 5.8 (loss UK tra) = 16.2

Z12 attack (2 fig vs des, cru)
IPC gain of 1.7

Loss of German transport
I assume that UK will only attack the bomber if they cannot attack a single armor on EGY.
-7 * 0.66 = -4.6

Probability UK takes back EGY by attacking it with 2 inf, bom
arm (34% chance G has a single armor - assumes they were willing to sacrifice a bomber) - then UK has a 93% chance of winning

0.340.93-7 (UK gets NO + EGY money)= -2.2

if there is 2 arm left (21% chance) - I assume UK goes for killing the GER transport instead of having a 45% chance of taking EGY.

UK chance of retaking EGY with IND transport (UK: 3 inf, art, bom vs EGY)
Note: UK has a 5% chance of a tra surviving an attack on Z35 (2 fig vs des, tra) and this gives it a great chance of retaking EGY.

ITA gets NO
(0.75 (Germany chance of taking EGY) * 0.58 (ITA chance of taking TRJ with 2 inf, fig, cru/bat vs 2 inf)) - (UK chance of retaking EGY)  * 5 =2.2

Scenario 2 total
10.9+16.2+1.7-4.6-2.2+2.2=24.2

Conclusion: Who knows!  Tentatively the decision looks very close. I’ve got the non-Egypt attack having a 3 IPC advantage, but there are a lot of factors that I didn’t include.

Oops, I already see that I didn’t include the UK chance of retaking EGY and that causing ITA to not get the NO.  That is worth around 0.6 IPC.  Making the overall gap between the two strategies around 3.5 IPC.

I didn’t include the probability that Germany would take and hold EGY, and then the value that it (and/or Italy) would get from being able to blitz/march into the rest of the Africa one turn earlier.  If the Axis takes 2 IPCs away from UK, that is a swing of 4 IPC and it might be multiplied by three or more turns.  They might get SUD and EAF on G2, CNG and RHO on G3, and SAF on G4 - all one turn ahead of schedule.

I also didn’t include the probability of an Italian fleet wipeout (if the G attack on Z12 kills nothing (10%) AND a fighter survives the attack on EGY fails (19%)).

That’s a 1.9% chance.  Expected loss of 6.5 IPCs.  So it subtracts about 0.1 IPCs (more like 0.13, but who is counting) from the expected gains for Scenario 2.

atm my standard G opening is:

Attack egypt without bomber, to soften it up for italy
attack SZ2 with 2 subs
SZ9: with bomber
SZ12 with 3 fig.

absically you want to hit everywhere where you have 50/50 or better vs UK navy on G1.

@Nix:

atm my standard G opening is:

Attack egypt without bomber, to soften it up for italy
attack SZ2 with 2 subs
SZ9: with bomber
SZ12 with 3 fig.

absically you want to hit everywhere where you have 50/50 or better vs UK navy on G1.

very aggressive, but very strong to keep the Allied navy off Europe’s back door for a while.

@akreider2:

I also didn’t include the probability of an Italian fleet wipeout (if the G attack on Z12 kills nothing (10%) AND a fighter survives the attack on EGY fails (19%)).

That’s a 1.9% chance.  Expected loss of 6.5 IPCs.  So it subtracts about 0.1 IPCs (more like 0.13, but who is counting) from the expected gains for Scenario 2.

Certainly, IPC Gain / Loss is something that is important in the game, but really could / should be tossed aside for other aspects in a decision to attack or not to attack.

The AXIS has the military advantage early on, and SHOULD trade them for IPCs lost/gained.  Diminishing the already scarce allied units is a larger consideration in the context of battle decisions for the axis in the early rounds.  The axis needs to press their military advantage.  If they do not, you give the allies those units and the time to consolidate and use them against the axis.

In my view, the axis are winning the war at the beginning of the game.  Taking some risks to increase the lead is worth it because the lead can become so great that the allies can never overcome that lead.

It’s a fine balance that I have found:  the allies seem to be just one round too late for a well oiled axis war machine.  This is the ‘lead’ of which I speak.  A slow expanding Axis war effort (ESPECIALLY early rounds) can shrink this lead at a small gain of being ‘more efficient’.  The Axis has a larger level of acceptable losses compared to the allies (again, especially early).

While numbers are limited, an advantage of quantifying strategies in terms of average IPC gain/loss is that you can compare two strategies.  If you try comparing with arguments that aren’t based in numbers, it is much harder to come to an agreement.

Ideally we’d want to have games played by the same sets of people - where you try the Egypt attack once and another time where you don’t (against the same opponent).  Then you could compare win percentages.  My guess is that there would be so little impact that you’d need to play 20-50 games to see a statistically significant difference (95% confidence level).

In practice, a lot of people like to put the Allies bid in Egypt (I always do), so it is hard to get solid statistics on this.

@akreider2:

While numbers are limited, an advantage of quantifying strategies in terms of average IPC gain/loss is that you can compare two strategies.  If you try comparing with arguments that aren’t based in numbers, it is much harder to come to an agreement.

Certainly, but you also can not boil all decisions to strictly IPC differences (a.k.a. numbers).  There are many times in a game where I will sacrifice high price units to achieve a desired goal or bait in an opponent.

Also, as you pointed out, while battle win percentages are based on several samples, each game has many battles with only ONE sample, and with such a small sample size, ANYTHING can happen.  So we based decisions on ‘the odds’, and most of the battles do fall in the few standard deviations from the norm, but it only takes an odd battle or two to make strategy discussions based strictly on ‘numbers’ as incomplete in my opinion.