Posts made by ColonelCarter

It’s on page 22:
@rulebook:

Immediately before the combat is resolved, any defending artillery
present in the attacked territory can make a pre-emptive strike against all of
your offloading land units and fighters as they come ashore.
…
Surviving attacking units then land in the territory and move on to land combat.
The land combat is conducted in the same manner as any other land combat with one exception. If there was no sea battle, any battleships that are in the sea zone(s) from which units offloaded from transports can conduct offshore bombardment.

The bolded segment states that there’s no difference to the land combat with the remaining land units preventing the artillery from defending. If there were, they would have to specify “don’t put defending artillery on the battle board” or something along those lines.

I agree with basically everything Argothair said, but
@Argothair:

because it allows you a guaranteed opportunity to take all of Russia’s income,

Since the errata, the Central Powers have the option to decline the armistice if it triggers. Having the rules in place now only favors the CP since they can take the armistice if it would save them from having to fight a ton of Russians, or decline it because Russia has ruined its army trying to prevent a CP-favorable armistice.

Yes, this is fine. A transport can pick up anywhere along its movement (even from multiple territories), but is only allowed to offload once per turn, and cannot load more after unloading. That’s probably the “bridging” you’re thinking of–trying to “walk” an unlimited amount of units over a transport that doesn’t have to move.

I made a rough representation of vanilla A&A 1914 a while back to test out strategies; here’s the version updated for 1.9.
A lot of stuff doesn’t function automatically, read the Game Notes first.

Note: this is not Flashman’s map/rules. If you were wanting that, sorry to disappoint.

world_war_i_1914.zip

The US can choose to fight the battles in either order, but it won’t matter. Defending planes that lose the carrier holding them in combat get 1 movement to land after the Combat phase is done, so at that point it would already be determined if they had a friendly place to land regardless of the battle order. The landing is done after the whole combat phase to avoid confusion of planes getting to defend twice, which they don’t.

@Bravehart:

Going to continue here in this page:

Off loading Transports, can you off load troops to more than one territory IF your transport is within other territories in that SZ? For example… SZ 36 in Pacific, can you do a multi drop off your choice, in FIC and Kwangsi?

BH

A single transport can’t offload into multiple territories, but if you had more than one transport, they could each offload into separate territories (i.e. one offloads 2 units into FIC, another offloads 2 units into Kwangsi)

That assumption is wrong. While Germany starts the scenario controlling those territories, they are still original Russian territories, similar to how the Chinese territories controlled by Japan at the start of the games are still original Chinese territories, preventing Japan from building major ICs on anything but Korea.

1. Yes, but both sides will have the option to submerge their sub before any shots are fired (as neither side has a destroyer to prevent the other from submerging), so it’s unlikely that the defender will stay to fight the lopsided battle.

2. Yes, subs from opposing sides can share a SZ.

3. Yes. Russia doesn’t get the NO if there is at least one German, Italian or Japanese sub in SZ125, even if they are not at war with the power owning the sub.

4. No. You need a surface warship. They are destroyers, cruisers, battleships, and aircraft carriers, so no subs or transports count.

5. Yes. UK shares all tech between the two economies. Also, both sides can contribute when buying tech dice. For example, UK Europe can spend 4 IPCs and UK Pacific can spend 1 IPC to purchase 1 tech die.

6. Yes. If AAA are the only unit(s) remaining on the defender’s side and the attacker still has at least one unit, they are automatically killed and the attacker conquers the territory, if applicable. Note that the attacker does not get a chance to retreat from only AAA, so you can potentially strand attacking ground units that were intending to retreat by taking all non-AAA as casualties and leaving only AAA to be auto-destroyed.

Hope this helps!

Interpretation B is correct.

I like to consider loading and unloading as part of the transport’s movement. Transports can grab units from coastal territories that satisfy certain conditions (see below) and can drop them in another coastal territory at the end of their movement.
This interpretation falls through for multi-national transporting, but that also has other exceptions and I can still grasp the concept.

“Loading/unloading uses up the complete movement of a Land unit for this Turn” means that to load, you need all your movement points, i.e. a multi-move unit can’t move before getting picked up by a transport. Similarly, unloading also uses all movement points, i.e. a multi-move unit can’t move after unloading, even if it was loaded on a previous turn.

@Shin:

I don’t know why HBs would even matter.  Your bombers effectively attack on 5 rather than four now.

yay?

He’s talking about old heavy bombers. The ones that rolled 2 dice @4 and kept both results. Those were pretty much game over.

The advantage is that you kill Philippines material that otherwise would escape, and vastly reduce British income a turn earlier while ending up with the same amount in captured territory as you would get from the peace NO with the US. Earlier FIC factory, too.

This comes at the cost of a stronger China and ANZAC, (US loses as much material as they gain in money, and money is worse than initial units) but those ANZAC IPCs aren’t as big an issue if you have a strong presence in the south Pacific. Trading your navy down with the US early lets ANZAC’s smaller force be significantly more effective against the whittled down Japanese.

Alternatively, skip the Hawaii attack. Sends fleet in the wrong direction and isn’t an amazing IPC gain material-wise.

I think y’all are underestimating the amount of US material required to hold SZ6. It’s an insane amount if you aren’t going to use blockers, and using blockers bleeds you in Sub for DD trades every turn. Any planes Japan builds on Japan can attack the SZ as well as their whole fleet and airforce in China. The most productive part is the threat to advance to SZ6: that forces the IJA to stay in range to counter, preventing it from finishing off China/India without a one-time use airbase.

The US will basically never have threat of actually taking Japan: mass transports are incredibly telegraphed and mean no naval reinforcements will be coming. To actually get it done you need to bomb Japan into the ground while doing so, and there’s no way Germany won’t have the game in the bag by then. Japan can even just gun for Egypt if need be with all the US resources going into the capture of the island.

I think there might be one kind of in development but not as a huge priority, since it requires adding new mechanics to the TripleA engine.

I made a representation of it for myself with what mechanics worked, but a) it required some bit of editing for the stuff that didn’t and b) I lost the most recent version that was a significant upgrade in terms of editing-intensiveness. And I haven’t been motivated to remake it to that point. I might be wrong, but contested territories not producing and single round combat might have been some of those features.

@SubmersedElk:

There is no sea battle on ANZAC’s turn in that scenario, so there’s nothing to scramble against. You can’t scramble against an opponent’s fleet without a combat move into the adjacent SZ.

You can scramble against amphibious assaults however, whether there are combat units or not.

@Auswanderersland:

japan owns carolinas, has 2 troops 3 fig on island.

america takes carolina island waters, but no amphibious assault.
non combats 4 transports loaded with anzac troops.

on anzac turn they attack from trans with no bs/cru

Does Japan get to scramble and auto kill us trans?  how does this work?

If Japan scrambles and ANZAC has no sea/air units to fight the sea battle, the transports are prevented from offloading, but not destroyed. The battle would end with essentially nothing happening.
If Japan doesn’t/can’t scramble, the units can conduct the amphibious assault.

Destroyers aren’t forced to stop in a SZ with subs in it. Subs don’t make a SZ hostile, so any sea units can travel through it without problem.

Retreating aircraft stay in the territory/sea zone the battle was in–they need to use their remaining movement points to land in the noncombat phase, just as if they had won the battle. If they have none left (fighters/tacs expecting to win the battle with a carrier, for example), then the plane(s) will be removed at the end of the noncombat phase.

@eames57:

@ColonelCarter:

Some I can think of:

-AAA is fired before bombing planes split up, allowing Tactical Bombers to be lost instead of Bombers when bombing an IC and an airfield/naval base

I’ve been doing this one wrong, it seems.  But Triple A allows you to select tacs as fodder in an IC SBR.

TripleA isn’t perfect. Some other flaws with it I can think of on the spot are activating a friendly neutral not stopping movement for mechs/tanks, and mechs being allowed their second movement in noncombat if they captured a territory with their first movement in combat.

Seems overly complicated to me. Also, you can end up getting worse luck than dice (at least in smaller battles); for your 2 inf, 1 bomber example:

Dice: 5/6 * 5/6 * 1/3 chance of 0 hits –- 23.15%

Fudge dice: (1/3 * 1/3) + 2 * (1/3 * 1/3)=1/3 chance of 0 hits — 33.3%

Maybe it gets balanced out by the fact that the opponent also has bad odds, but not to my fancy.

Two defending infantry not having better odds than one other than the extra hitpoint seems…off to me as well.

@Bravehart:

So….

If the ukP land units claim the pro allies territory like Persia, the 2 ipc value goes towards… UK E cos its on the European side? The standing army would go towards UK P?

BH

UK Europe would collect for the territory. The units would just be British, there’s no distinction to be made. (One power, two economies)

Unescorted transports can ignore subs as long as they are not in the sea zone that you are conducting an amphibious assault from. That’s when you need a warship to ignore the sub(s).

@Whackamatt:

�I agree that straight stat efficiency isn’t the only thing, but other factors can change the overall efficiency, even though that value is impossible to truly quantify.�

We agree here, but that�s not what you said originally.

It was, but I worded it weird and you misinterpreted it. My fault I suppose.

Their goal was NOT to move troops to Europe. Their stated goal was to simply counter the German navy, and they did. They didn�t buy additional transports until round 6 or so. Actually, they may not have purchased any and just used their starting transports and moved the Indian one around the horn as well. I really didn�t pay attention much to them around the UK, as I was Austria/Ottomans.

I guess my point then is this: Britain spent the entire game “countering” German navy, but what did it really accomplish in the end? Protecting US transports who are already 2-3 turns behind the German navy that is being built, at the cost of losing income and not gaining income in the south. Is that really worth it? Next game Germany builds navy, try ignoring it as Britain and see how things pan out. Let America defend their transports if they need to.

�Britain starts with 30 (and climbing) IPCs against the Ottoman peak of around 23 (and falling from there) IPCs. Britain should manage to push them back eventually, probably get Ankara Rd ~7-9�

That math doesn�t work for me. In every game to date, Ottoman�s have taken Romania, Sevastopol, and sometimes Greece. Throw in Bulgaria, and the Ottoman�s routinely make 27 and perhaps fall from there.

Too many variables. Austria doesn’t have that money then, Russia might be able to contest it, who knows what the German situation is, etc.

The point is there are trade-offs for everything. I�m trying to encourage discussion on strategy. You have too many assumptions here.
Why is Austria �hard-pressed� to beat Russia with full German support? Since the UK is doing nothing against them, couldn�t Germany do a lot of that heavy lifting? Yes. France is far enough away that Germany can hold them off solo until Russia falls, correct? Beating Russia as soon as possible is imperative for the CP. I don�t think taking Paris first is really viable with all of the close support they can get.
Luck plays a part in all strategies, as you yourself stated you hope Russia and France are strong.

Full German support still takes a long time (probably longer than Austria since Germany starts with fewer troops as close but a larger income), all the while France can push you back alone. Russia+France start with more units and more income than Germany, and advancing needs a significantly larger army than the defender, so whichever way Germany doesn’t go will lose hard if Austria doesn’t cover it. Austria can’t cover Italy and France easily.
By hope I mean I hope they’re playing well and taking the advantages given them.

�Ultimately I’m not saying your strategy is bad. In fact it is quite sound. However, you seem to think it better at the exclusion of all other options. How many times have you tried to take Berlin/Vienna at the exclusion of the Ottoman’s? Have you tried to adapt the strategy if it didn’t work? I need evidence to prove something won’t work before dismissing it.�

Considering it hasn’t lost in my group (whether playing for it or against it), we haven’t needed to come up with other Allied strategies.

My point above was saying you seem to be set on knowing the �best� strategy of going through India, to which I�m asking: How often have you NOT gone through India and what happened? Have you tried it, or just convinced yourself with math that you shouldn�t even try?

I haven’t tried it; the math of a 100% win rate has convinced me otherwise. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

@Whackamatt:

MATHEMATICS
It is clear that A&A has a lot of economic factors to it. My point was that you can�t make ALL of your decisions based upon just the simple math.

…

SO IN SUM (as I suffer from logorrhea), the key to most A&A games is knowing when to trade your economic efficiency for positional efficiency.  Sometimes as the Axis there is only a window of opportunity, and once closed, the Allied economic might will be your fate.

We’re actually seeing eye to eye here apparently. You called it strategic advantage, I (perhaps over-) simplified it to effective efficiency that can change over the course of the game. Like a transport that threatens 3 places is more efficient than one that only threatens 1, or mechs/tanks being more situationally efficient than inf/art. I agree that straight stat efficiency isn’t the only thing, but other factors can change the overall efficiency, even though that value is impossible to truly quantify.

@Whackamatt:

A NOTE ON TRANSPORTS AND THEORYCRAFTING

It is more expensive to move units via transport, but only at the cost of the transports. In a game where transports provide no hits or defensive rolls, you should never have more than needed to transport the number of units you can buy in a round. And if you�re splitting fronts between the UK and India, not even that much. A total of 24 IC s over the course of the game isn�t that much. Once purchased, unless you�re careless, you don�t need to buy them every round. A transport on round one that moves 20 infantry in the game added only about 0.3 ICs to each inf they moved.

�I appreciate this, but my comments aren’t based on theorycraft; they’re based on actual game experience.�

Theorycrafting is usually a negative attempt to tear down a proposed strategy, without adequately taking into account the negatives of their proposed counter strategy. If it is not intentionally negative, it often involves hypotheticals to the point of becoming strategically irrelevant.

It�s not saying your ideas are based on theory, it�s saying that you can propose hypothetical counters to any stated move without the confines of an actual board setup in front of you.  The game has a myriad number of options, so when a specific is stated, someone can always come up with a �I got in the last word� type of counter. It usually occurs along the lines of �This strategy would never work against me, because I would simply do X or build Y.�

EXAMPLE: I state that you only pay for transports once.
COUNTER: Except that you have to defend them if Germany builds navy to threaten them, sinking more IPCs into there. If you don’t have those transports, you aren’t forced to spend on navy to “counter” German navy

We�re into �what if� territory. Your counter is all highly conditional. It could happen, if the Allies buy transports, CP builds a navy, and then the Allies build protection. It could also not happen. What if the CP say screw it, I�m not going to build a navy, I�ll stick to all INF? Or the Allies want the CP to waste money on navy and simply don�t build protection? See my point?

I was trying to make these comments within the context of the game you outlined. Germany built navy every turn, so for Britain to achieve their goal of moving troops to Europe, they had to continually build up navy, increasing the cost of those transports.

@Whackamatt:

LONDON VERSUS INDIA
My open ended question could highlight my theory crafting idea.

I believe there are benefits to deploying in either, but I don�t think feel that the strategy is as cut and dry as you make it out to be.

Part of the advantage of transports landing in Germany is that it is another front for Germany. Less troops going to Russia/France means they will be collecting less money. Instead of growing the UK economy by destroying the Ottomans first, instead you are keeping German grown in check via UK support. It�s a trade off. How that plays out is up to numerous factors. You may have a preferred way to play the UK, but I can�t state one is superior to the other.

The Ottomans have usually done well in my games, even when the UK is attacking them. I dispute that you�ll eventually get Ankara and Smyrna as a given. A lot of luck is involved along the way, as well as other factors like Russian interference or gained Ottoman money by going into Russia.

If you want British transports to open another front, you’ll have to face mines at least once, and in my experience Germany moves their Western Front reinforcements through Kiel anyway so it’d be difficult to take and hold so that you can stop rolling mines. Britain also has to consider the potential remnant German fleet from the Rd1 naval battle that could be defending the coast.

Britain starts with 30 (and climbing) IPCs against the Ottoman peak of around 23 (and falling from there) IPCs. Britain should manage to push them back eventually, probably get Ankara Rd ~7-9

@Whackamatt:

Question: How would your UK strategy change if Austria gets control of SZ17 with transports? All Ottoman forces go straight east, and their coast is protected and reinforced by Austria?

Never happened because Austria is already hard-pressed to beat Russia when spending 0 IPCs on ships. France and Britain can reinforce it with their starting navies. If it somehow did the strategy wouldn’t change much; I don’t rely on attacking the Ottoman coast much, just pushing them back overland with more troops than they produce. US would have to accommodate for the Austrian navy, and Russia or France would hopefully be strong.

@Whackamatt:

VICTORY CONDITIONS

I think you�re short-selling the Allied ability to put the hurt on Germany. There are two over-arching strategies for the Allies, Berlin + Austria, Berlin + Constantinople.

�There’s not much Britain can do in Europe to take Germany and Austria when the Ottomans are making more than them and sending it all to defend Vienna (or even navy to stop America).�

Questions: How long does it take for the Ottomans to make more than Britain. By the time they reach that income, how much support have they really been able to send to Vienna? Couldn�t the US send support to Africa down south and France support Egypt?

It happened in your game, how long did it take for the Ottomans to overcome the British income? If Ottos don’t get anything from the Balkans or Russia, the only need Persia+India to pass Britain.

@Whackamatt:

Ultimately I�m not saying your strategy is bad. In fact it is quite sound. However, you seem to think it better at the exclusion of all other options. How many times have you tried to take Berlin/Vienna at the exclusion of the Ottoman�s? Have you tried to adapt the strategy if it didn�t work? I need evidence to prove something won�t work before dismissing it.

Since you seem to attribute the Allied victory in your game to luck, shouldn’t that be evidence that it is not a sound strategy?

Still wondering what Russia did as well.

@Whackamatt:

Anyone who places all of their strategic decisions on “simple math” will fail at Axis & Allies. Period.

Like it or not, A&A is a game about economics (math) and statistics (math). The less mathematically efficient a strategy is (in total, for example you can sacrifice direct economic stat efficiency to save positional efficiency by building mechs and tanks in Global), the more likely it is to fail. If I’m missing something here, please tell me.

@Whackamatt:

To remove the option for the UK to place ANYTHING in London is an asinine assertion.

I’ll admit, I went too far with the extreme here. If the Atlantic is safe and you have the money, transports to move the troops off Britain/Canada are good. But they’re gravy, not the primary focus, in the early game (~Rd1-8). Also, if you are being strangled by USW (probably not going to happen without a house rule to boost it), it’s important to break free of that for economic reasons.
@Whackamatt:

Yes, transports have a cost, but once paid it’s done.

Except that you have to defend them if Germany builds navy to threaten them, sinking more IPCs into there. If you don’t have those transports, you aren’t forced to spend on navy to “counter” German navy.

@Whackamatt:

The real question is at what strategic value do you place on being able to deploy troops a dozen spaces closer to Berlin (and in a myriad of locations in two turns) rather than through India? Please remember the victory conditions: Berlin + one other. The Ottoman’s could be made completely irrelevant through non-engagement if they get Austria.

Due to the nature of combat in this game, Berlin is a tough nut to crack and you will need a significant economic advantage to do so. So that’s where the primary benefit of building in India and attacking the Ottomans comes from: Economy. Persia, Mesopotamia, Trans-Jordan and Arabia are pretty easy pickups, and eventually you’ll get Ankara and Smyrna. So 5-7 IPCs most of the time increasing to 12 before you can take Constantinople. This also means you aren’t losing these territories (and Africa) to the Ottomans and allowing them to get an economic advantage. There’s not much Britain can do in Europe to take Germany and Austria when the Ottomans are making more than them and sending it all to defend Vienna (or even navy to stop America). The Victory Conditions (Berlin + 1 other) are basically impossible to get without an economic advantage, so my strategy focuses on acquiring that before taking the cities themselves.

@Whackamatt:

So please, spare me the epeen stroking about how we didn’t play with “your” optimized, best strategy and imply that everyone that played in my game was stupid. I’ve taken about 4 hours to write up a post-game review for everyone to enjoy, another data point to add to your knowledge, not to come down from on-high about the perfect strategy.

I’m sorry you felt that way, but I didn’t imply your group was stupid, just that they played poorly. I play poorly all the time (that’s why I don’t win balanced games as much  :-D) I guess I should have waited for your Allies comments so I could respond in a more structured manner, so I apologize if I sounded arrogant. But if you didn’t want public criticism/commentary, what was the point of this write-up?
@Whackamatt:

KNOW THIS : I have been playing Axis & Allies for thirty years. I own every version, and have played (excluding online stuff) over five hundred games. Trust me when I say there were no glaring strategic errors, no blunders, and everything made sense at the time the movements were made.

Please, spare me the ego stroking that because you’ve played so long, you can no longer make strategic errors or blunders, or look back and realize mistakes even though they looked alright at the time. (THIS IS NOT A SERIOUS ARGUMENT, just showing the parallels between your argument and what you thought was bad about mine. Fighting fire with fire online is a dangerous path if people aren’t reasonable)

@Whackamatt:

As someone who has played so many games, I like trying new and different strategies rather than parrot what others tell me is the best. Instead of countering theorycraft with more theorycraft, I’ll stick with writing up what happened in the actual game.  Thanks.

I appreciate this, but my comments aren’t based on theorycraft; they’re based on actual game experience. I don’t know what made you assume I didn’t actually play this game; I do. But thank you for the write-up so the community has a detailed example of what happens in a game like this.

---

@Whackamatt:

FRANCE
The French went all land, all against Germany. Absolutely everything and the kitchen sink.
The GOOD: France, with very little aid, was pushing into Germany solo. It was touch-and-go for a long time, but then slowly pushed forward.

The BAD: France did not support Italy at all.  Sorry buddy, you�re $^&*ed! Italy fell hard to Austrian and yes, Ottoman transports. It also took France 8 rounds to start advancing.

What did the French navy do? Supporting the Italian navy would stall the Austrians/force them to spend way more if they want SZ17. That leaves a couple extra subs in the Atlantic though.

@Whackamatt:

US
The US went for an all-transports approach. With the UK blocking in the German navy, they had a lot of land units heading towards Europe.
The GOOD: They brought a lot of stuff into Europe, however, they had to go to Southern France to hold off a surging Austria that had annihilated Italy (literally every Italian territory was taken by Austria).

The BAD: with no protection, they couldn�t support Africa or Italy in the Med. France was all land, and the UK fleet was all needed to fend off the German fleet. Austria had a sizeable navy, that if the US were to counter, it wouldn�t have had enough land units to save Italy. A lose-lose there.

In my opinion America has two general goals: Keep Italy alive and keep France alive. If they’re both doing well, then US is free to be more aggressive and start landings in the Balkans. If France/Italy is doing poorly, US needs to help them out by getting troops there. A prerequisite of getting troops to Italy though is holding SZ17, so the US should build enough navy to hold it if necessary, and the rest on transports, troops and escorts for them if necessary.

@Whackamatt:

…

What did Russia do?