France survives turn 1, what now?

@Caesar:

@wittmann:

And America isn’t? It had 7 Carriers and 17  Battleships in late 1941, yet when the game begins it has one of each.
And Japan starting with 21 Air, is realistic as hell too.

Yes but US can’t get knocked out of the game with a land invasion that can begin on turn 1.

A lot of major powers can get knocked out of the game if they’re focussed down.  That’s the basis of many strategies, including Sealion, Calcutta Crush, KGF, KJF, as well as going hard vs Moscow.  So not sure that should be the bellwether :)

Loosing to France on G1 is like…

In a Paris failed attack, Russia can easily buy as many tanks as it wants for several rounds. You’re not playing Russia right if you think it’s super weak under the circumstances of this discussion post. Russia should be able to get strong enough to camp E. Poland and gobble up numerous NO money for awhile or at least keep Germany from making it to Bryansk for a very long time.

If Germany sends all ground into Paris and fails, congratulate your opponent on winning the game, re-cock and re-start.

If Germany tried super aggressive stuff like going for both Normandy and S. France besides Paris, then he definitely deserves to have to switch sides.

@ShadowHAwk:

Even if you do normandy and south france G1 the paris attack is still 90%ish, given that the odds calculator is off with a lot of units it should be even higher then that.
If you lose a 80+% battle ( not mutual annihilation ) then you just got diced, its not skill but luck that lost you the game.

If we where to play against each other in many games (switching sides). And you attacked paris with a 20% failure rate, and I attacked with a 1% failure rate. That would mean that you would loose 20 % of your games as the axis on the first turn, while I would lose only 1%.

If we where equally skilled in every other part of the game and had a completely balanced bid, I would guess that I would win about 58-60%  of the games.
This means that doing paris with only 80% chance of winning actually is poor skill. You will lose way to many games that way.

If you do a battle where you have an 80% chance of winning and 20% chance of losing the entire game, when you have a perfectly good alternative of having a 97-99% chance of winning, that is a bad choice and bad gameplay.  Letting Italy get Southern France on I1 or going after Normandy on G2 are perfectly acceptable options that dramatically lower your chance of a Paris disaster.  If you want to play with the dice to be in a slightly better situation with a win, but potentially game-losing outcomes if you are not lucky, you are not a good player.

Getting diced is when you make smart moves that have a high probability of success, there are no other alternatives that would be safer yet yield essentially the same outcome, but lose because of bad rolling.  If Germany does a Moscow bombing run with 4 bombers and loses all of them to AA fire, that is getting diced.  It was a good tactic with a horrible outcome that will change the game.  If you lose the entire air force on G1 when going after the UK fleet, that is getting diced.  If you lose in Yunnan on J1, that is getting diced. If you have two Italian tanks plus two Italian mechs fail to kill a single Russian blocker, that is getting diced.  If your big battle in the Pacific that should have a +100 TUV outcome results in a -100 TUV outcome, that is getting diced.

I agree with Kreuzfeld that overambitious and unnecessary attacks combined with unlucky rolls is NOT getting diced.  There is absolutely no need to have less than 97% chance of winning the Paris battle.  That still leaves 3% chance of loss and I do have great sympathy of people who get diced on that combat.

One way to analyze it in raw numbers is calculate the average tuv differential for your proposed deployments.

I usually go with a deployment that is 100% (actually 99.5+%) with an average tuv swing of +29.  It has never failed but someday it will.

It’s risky, but not uncommon to see deployments with only 92% and an average tuv swing of +17.

By my calculations, a deployment with 80% would have an average tuv swing of +11.

So leaving aside losing 1/5 games on the 1st turn, is whatever you gain by attacking Normandy and/or Southern France worth 18 ipcs of units on average?

Of course, this debate seems more ambiguous in Balanced Mod because of the incentive to take Normandy in relation to Vichy.

Start again.

@ShadowHAwk:

Even if a normal Paris attack
7 inf 3 art 4 mech 6 tanks results in mutual annihilation for germany and france it will be a pretty uphill battle…

The odds for this battle are 99,916%, that is good enogh. In fact, I once lost that battle against Karl. However, these are the 1 in 1000 games you just lose in G1 due to the dice. Nothing you can do about it.

However, I can only recommend to not dilute the France attack and always bring at least 20 units. Otherwise the chance is too high that Germany loses many mechanized units which is also very bad.

@JDOW:

@ShadowHAwk:

Even if a normal Paris attack
7 inf 3 art 4 mech 6 tanks results in mutual annihilation for germany and france it will be a pretty uphill battle…

The odds for this battle are 99,916%, that is good enogh. In fact, I once lost that battle against Karl. However, these are the 1 in 1000 games you just lose in G1 due to the dice. Nothing you can do about it.

However, I can only recommend to not dilute the France attack and always bring at least 20 units. Otherwise the chance is too high that Germany loses many mechanized units which is also very bad.

I think 7inf 3art 6tanks is enough to attack Paris. ~97% victory and I disagree that you always need to bring 20 units into Paris. The benefits of taking Normandy or Southern France G1 should not be ignored. The consensus of this thread is that if you lose a battle with French victory below 10% it is a result of luck because the units brought were more likely to score hits. The income gained from taking Paris G1 is what let’s Germany get aggressive and make buys countries hovering at 35 income could not. If you lose Paris playing it out changes the dynamics of the game too much because G2 buy is probably the most important purchase in the game.

I would let an Axis player start over a game where they were favored to win Paris >80% because at the end of the day I’m playing the game to have fun.

@KGrimB:

@JDOW:

@ShadowHAwk:

Even if a normal Paris attack
7 inf 3 art 4 mech 6 tanks results in mutual annihilation for germany and france it will be a pretty uphill battle…

The odds for this battle are 99,916%, that is good enogh. In fact, I once lost that battle against Karl. However, these are the 1 in 1000 games you just lose in G1 due to the dice. Nothing you can do about it.

However, I can only recommend to not dilute the France attack and always bring at least 20 units. Otherwise the chance is too high that Germany loses many mechanized units which is also very bad.

I think 7inf 3art 6tanks is enough to attack Paris. ~97% victory and I disagree that you always need to bring 20 units into Paris. The benefits of taking Normandy or Southern France G1 should not be ignored. The consensus of this thread is that if you lose a battle with French victory below 10% it is a result of luck because the units brought were more likely to score hits. The income gained from taking Paris G1 is what let�s Germany get aggressive and make buys countries hovering at 35 income could not. If you lose Paris playing it out changes the dynamics of the game too much because G2 buy is probably the most important purchase in the game.

I would let an Axis player start over a game where they were favored to win Paris >80% because at the end of the day Im playing the game to have fun.

I just loaded it up in triplea, set the battle calc for 1000x and clicked it several times. It ranged from 94 - 98%. Going into Paris with just 7 inf / 3 art / 6 tanks is super light too me at least. Average units left in that battle is 7.

When Paris rolls a whiff and Germany’s 1st roll is a slam dunk, it looks cool to be taking other Normandy / S. France at the same time or sending your mech to Poland. However, if 7 units left is average units left if attacker won, than 4 or 5 would just be a little under average units left if attacker won. I just don’t see the benefit of losing tanks.

Sending lots of ground into Paris increases chances of infantry being left over which can be cannon fodder for Normandy or s. France.

@Caesar:

I am trying to figure out what exactly to do if Paris remains. I don’t know if it is wise to pull the French out of Paris (if any survive) or to try to get the allies to reinforce it as best as possible and try to hold on to it.

Also USSR fighter can’t legally land on Paris unless Germany declared war.

I’ve only seen 1 game where Paris survived. Since the Allies still controlled Normandy/Bordeaux and Southern France, the British ferried the Normandy troops to England, and the French built 2 transports in Normandy. This enabled 2 infantry, 1 artillery, and 1 tank from Paris to escape. 2 French infantry stayed back in Paris to fight a delaying action.  Also, the British managed to land the Southern France units in Algeria. On G2, the Germans got Paris and the French treasury. Things went poorly for the Axis. The Germans had to spend G2 and G3 building units to hold the west, and an arms race with Russia started in the east (except the Russians had a headstart). On R4, the Russians took Romania, Finland, Poland, and Hungary. Eventually, an Italo-German force pushed Russia back, but by that time Japan was dead, and the US could land a huge army in France every three turns, so the game ended with Germany and Italy getting killed from the west, and being equal to the Russians in the east.

I’ve seen it a few times, usually when Germany got greedy and weakened the Paris attack to do other things (like try to get Normandy and Southern France on G1 as well).

Barring insanely bad die rolls (something on the order of Germany missing all rolls on round 1 and France hitting with all rolls), the France attack failing is always the fault of the player running Germany. Germany has more than ample forces to the job.

Marsh

@ShadowHAwk:

Even 90% odds are good, given that the diceroller has its odd scewed.

Why are you assuming tripleA and the tripleA rolling calc? If the tripleA rolling calc is wrong, use a different one instead of assuming it to be a counterargument.

If you are attacking paris at 90% (with a real battle calc), you are simply not a good player.

Going into this battle with 90% odds is poor play. There is a high probability of losing many of your mechanised units. What is the benefit you would get from that?

In Balanced Mod, I’ll normally strip 3 units from the attack because of the importance of taking down Normandy (96%). If I’m playing standard, I’ll strip 3 less powerful units to attack Sth France (98%).

It’s really hard to justify greater risks. Even those risks (4%) are debatable to be honest.

Going light on Paris with 80% and losing isn’t bad luck, it’s poor play.

Think about it from this perspective:
Taking Normandy and Southern France on G1 (or whatever else you’re using those units for) results in a 1 in 5 chance of losing the game outright. Are those good moves?

Or from your opponent’s perspective:
Wouldn’t you take a battle at 10-20% chance of success if winning it gave you the game and losing it only cost you a couple of IPCs?

Balanced mod, just play it like it is global. Axis still have a massive advantage. Just take France with germany g1. Italy 1 southern france, no need normandy.

^ I don’t know. I think the Vichy rule gives the Axis enough of a benefit to target Normandy G1.

Activating Vichy helps the allies as much as it helps the axis, maybe more.