I like keeping all my options on the table at all times, but I have to agree that this is probably ill-advised if you haven’t planned on Turkey at a minimum. On Round 2 it is almost a certainty that Italian or German units will be in Greece allowing for Turkey to be activated on Round 3. This is going to be crippling for Russia as their defense is immediately flanked and the Axis get earlier access to all their Middle East NOs.
I’m curious as to why the Buryatia stack R1 is considered such a bad idea. Sure, the Japanese can take this out but it comes with an opportunity cost as the air units involved are then not able to participate in the Pearl Attack or hit China J1. Japan then has to keep an eye on Manchuria, too. It’s work done, walk the stack out R2.
If there is a bug, I wonder if it might be that whatever twiddles the dice rolls so that a player can’t lose the tutorial battles is not disabled in the main game.
@Black_Elk Just had the Burytia stack + Russian fighters happen against me in a game. I ended up resigning immediately as my 90% attack on the territory failed as I scored no hits on my first round and the defender had a higher-than average set of rolls on defense. I might have soldiered on anyway but on the UK’s turn they were successful in the 2/3 chance at taking both Borneo and New Guinea. On my counterattack I also lost an extra fighter as I accidentally clicked it to attack New Guinea instead of the UK navy.
Clearing this stack severely limits Japan’s ability to do anything in the south unless you’re willing to risk Russia taking Manchuria R2, especially if you get the UK fighter there as well so there are 3 fighters. But as you said it seems only useful if the plan is full-on KJF.
@Black_Elk said in How does Russia stay alive in KJF?:
Anyhow have fun on the next one! Glad to see Redrum’s AI still pulling out some strong play
Speaking of the AI, it is definitely much improved from when I first used TripleA many years ago. It is definitely an expert at projecting air power, so I always have to watch out for my units at extreme ranges that I usually assume would be safe from attack. Although sometimes this sniping does leave the units vulnerable to counterattack as you point out.
The AI is also expert at realizing Japan is on the ropes. Usually when this happens or just before the entire Japanese air force will be sent to Europe where the Axis can then clean out any Allied fleet with a 1-2 punch (although at the expense of the Japanese air of course). I haven’t seen any human opponents cotton on to this trick yet.
I have this reply now from the Beamdog support staff, so basically you have two modes: transport-picks-up-unit and unit-gets-on-transport. The former is a bit slower to use but the only way to get things to work when the movement is more complex, such as if a transport must pick up a unit outside its starting area or be very explicit in what sea zones it moves to:
From Beamdog
Transport -> Unit Loading (Original, Classic method)
Select Transport Stack (left-click on Transport Stack you want to move)
Load a unit in an adjacent region if desired (right-click on Unit you wish to load)
Move Transport to Region you want to move the Transport to (right-click on target region (blue highlight))
Load a unit in an adjacent region if desired (right-click on Unit you wish to load)
Optional: Move Transport to Region you want to move the Transport to (right-click on target region (blue highlight))
Unload units into target region (right-click on territory you wish to unload the units into. Transport will move to the adjacent region and automatically unload the cargo into the desired region)
Unit -> Transport Loading
Select Unit you wish to load into Transport (Left Click on unit stack)
Move the Unit into the Sea Zone with a Transport (right-click on target sea zone)
Select the Transport Stack in the adjacent sea zone (left click on Transport Stack) OR click on Destination Marker for loading to open the Dossier to select the Transport.
Optional: Open Dossier, confirm which Transport is selected by observing the glow effect around the desired Transport. To select the desired Transport, left-click on the Transport you wish to move)
Move Transport to Region you want to move the Transport to (right-click on target region (blue highlight))
Select Unit you wish to load into Transport (Left Click on unit stack)
Move the Unit into the Sea Zone with a Transport (right-click on target sea zone)
Select the Transport Stack in the adjacent sea zone (left click on Transport Stack) OR click on Destination Marker for loading to open the Dossier to select the Transport.
Optional: Open Dossier, confirm which Transport is selected by observing the glow effect around the desired Transport. To select the desired Transport, left-click on the Transport you wish to move)
Optional: Move Transport to Region you want to move the Transport to (right-click on target region (blue highlight))
Unload units into target region (right-click on territory you wish to unload the units into. Transport will move to the adjacent region and automatically unload the cargo into the desired region)@Imperious-Leader said in 
PRNG dice support group — and ranting:
“Tit for Tat” isn’t bad dice rolls, its a tendency that the defender will hit if you hit and miss if you miss. I am close to 200 games for 42 online and it never wavered in my observation of these results. I do get bad dice at times, but the average results i observe is this tendency.
Keep in mind if this was true, then 1) the game would have to be deliberately coded to cheat, and 2) if the game was coded to cheat in this way, it would have to affect everybody.
Yeah, the current system is pretty annoying. Even after having worked a management-level position in a game development company I’m still amazed by the odd UI quirks that end up in games. I’m always running across things that make me think ‘how did the developers themselves not find this immediately annoying and try to fix it’?, like having your ships decide to move to the ‘wrong’ (from your view) SZ by default.
@hirohito22 Been a while since I wrote that post, but UK can send Transport alone to take Borneo at bad odds while all other warships attack the Japanese DEI fleet at 2/3 odds.
@Brian-Cannon said in I do not see any difference as far as a change in dice rolls in this season.:
Devs said they were reverting to a model they had used previously…
Yes, so if you didn’t like it before, it will be the same since there are no changes yet to ranked play dice. The nature of the headline of your post implies you thought things might be different for some reason.
@Brian-Cannon You shouldn’t expect to see any change if you’re playing ranked games, the ‘stabilized dice’ were only supposed to be appearing in custom games.
Not sure why I started thinking about this…
In chess (as far as I know) you only have 1 rating even though there are two sides to play. Yet in A&AO you have a separate rating for each side. Let’s say for the sake of argument you need a 80% win rate to be a platinum player. So how can you maintain an 80% win rate against people who also have to win 80% of the time? Having 80% for one side would seem to imply that the other can be 20% at best. I’m presuming this can only be possible if a loss lowers your score far less than a win does, but it still seems odd.
@EricB said in UK to 10 IPC's?:
So, Germany basically has 4 rounds to try to take out Russia if it’s going to. I think defending against all tanks would be dicey because the US can’t get there quick enough.
Yes, the Axis gets round 4 to do whatever they can do under this plan. I don’t like ‘defending’ against this strategy because the whole idea is that the Axis is just gambling to win. Germany may have 30% - 40% odds to get Moscow G4, and if they don’t, then the Japanese stack certainly will. These odds are just good enough that I can see why some Axis players might like to try this strategy, but if it fails then it’s a bit unfair to the Allied player since there’s no real backup plan for Axis victory. You can’t stop a player from gambling if they want to and these types of games are not fun for me.
The biggest choice the Allies make on defense I think is when to pull out of India (I discussed this on the A&AO discord). If you pull out UK2 then you can lower the odds of the Moscow attack, but then you have nothing left in Asia if Moscow goes down. If you pull out UK3 then there’s a chance of liberating Moscow and getting Russia back into play.
If Moscow falls and is not immediately retaken I doubt the Allies have any chance even though Germany will be weak in Europe at this point. They will likely not be able to retake every territory that the Allies can grab in the round 4 attacks, but likewise it will still be several turns before the Allies could actually take Berlin, especially with Japanese planes arriving for defense and Japan starting to bleed off UK income in Africa.
@EricB said in UK to 10 IPC's?:
Another tactic to get rid of some German planes is with Russia. If you attack Ukraine and the battle goes really lucky for Russia and you’ve got something like 3 tanks, 1 artillery left in Ukraine, then pull in an AA gun. Set it to die first in the battle. Germany either has to risk planes taking it back, or they have to bring in a lot of tanks to take it. Either you’re picking off their planes or their tanks.
I’m starting to wonder about this a little as I try it. It may encourage Germany to go too all-in on Ukraine G2; I usually see things like 4inf 5tanks sitting there on R2. Even if I can destroy this stack then the majority of Russian units will be lost on the G3 counter, making Russia too weak. And if Ukraine is not traded this gives a big boost to the German position.
Literally right after I make my last post I try to start another game and I get an Axis opponent that buys a Carrier and Subs for the Mediterranean. I’m reprinting here a post from Julius in the Steam forums as it might help other players who aren’t reading those posts:
“If you want to minimize chances of connecting to a player of not “your level”, then don’t leave the game searching for a match for too long. Cancel the process after about 1 minute and start searching again.”
Although I would mention it shouldn’t be up to the players to have to jump through hoops to avoid getting matchups that are potentially too out of balance.
Bumping this up a little so I can rant rather than make a new post. I’m getting so frustrated with the online games but since my family doesn’t do gaming to the degree I do my gripes have no significance for them and my outlets for venting are limited.
I continue to be undefeated with my Axis partners in unranked play since the Allies players are so terrible. Everyone insists on either doing full KJF or some hybrid where the US player tries to keep both theaters going equally. Even with this, I don’t think I’ve had a single opponent send their US fleet to the Solomons, it’s always up to Siberia with the Alaska IC.
So then I look to ranked play to get some more quality opponents, but since I got into the last season very late I didn’t get past silver, so now I’m starting in silver again. Over here I’m getting games where Axis opponents do stuff like buy 4x transports + carrier to try a G2 Sea Lion (as I just mentioned in the Steam forum). I guess I’m supposed to happy to be in a situation where I will be heavily favored to win, but such games just feel like a waste of time and are not fun to play. I don’t enjoy winning just because my opponent chose to gamble and lost, and players can and do drag things out long after it should be obvious that the game is effectively over. If I knew how many of these games I’d have to slog through to try and get up to gold level where (presumably) this kind of heavy gambling isn’t taking place it might be different, but right now it’s just a chore that really cuts down my enjoyment of the game. At this point I’m not even sure if I will continue playing throughout the season.
@djensen said in 
Roll Call! Who is on AA42 Online?:
@Imperious-Leader Because it’s Eqqman and not Eggman?
Sorry for any confusion. ‘Eggman’ is one of the most popular user names and almost never available. I switched to the double Q variant a long time ago as it’s usually open. Goo Goo G’Joob!
@aardvarkpepper said in How does Russia stay alive in KJF?:
@Eqqman - I don’t mind if you edit your posts. But you gotta understand sometimes I’ll be writing responses to stuff you edited out or whatever. Like how Imperious Leader addressed your saying Germany buys a carrier and stacks Norway to threaten invasion of London, and now I think you edited your statement about that out.
My edit actually just added new content, originally I was only focusing on your insistence on being the Donald Trump of the A&A world (personality-wise, not as regards any alleged ability to accomplish anything past, present, or future). I get the idea you prefer to focus on discussing facts, but the medium of the message does matter. Something I don’t get is how you feel people will listen to the portion of your message that is worth hearing when you go out of your way to deliver it in as insulting a manner as possible. I actually feel bad for you as I can’t help but point out that nobody else (as far as I know) was publicly willing to join you in a game when you were looking for an opponent in the Steam forums. These two things are likely connected.
In the future I’ll try to just make new posts rather than add to existing ones if I think I left something out, sorry for any confusion I may have caused. Since your main reply is another massive wall of text I haven’t read it all yet and will have to put it off for when I’m in a more snark-tolerant mood.