I will rarely if ever strat bomb a territory that has an AA gun in it.  If there is no AA gun, then I will certainly bomb if there is nothing else for the bomber to do.  But I can’t think of any common situation (in an evenly contested game) where testing my luck with an aa gun for a strat bombing raid is worth it to me.

My experience is that the results of the battles will generally be the same.  The thing low luck does is prevent crazily one sided battles either way.  But the result will be similar to the expected result usi9ng regular dice.  It really changes your play in certain situations though.  Like you can often tell for certain that you can win a certain battle even though the odds using regular rolling would be around 60% or something.  This drastically changes your planning.  Also, consider the situation where an attacker can bring one inf. + planes against 3 inf.  In a regular rolling game you would not make this attack due to the risk of losing planes.  In LL though you know that the defending 3 inf. will only get one hit so oyu can bring 1 inf. and 6 figs and be assured of killing the 3 inf while only losing 1 inf yourself. Â

I really like playing with both LL and regular dice.

Ok, how about this.  If you had to play without a bid and with giving every nation one NA, what would produce the most balanced game in your opinion?

I was thinking:

Rus: trans-siberian railway
Ger: panzerblitz
UK: radar
Japan: detroyer transport ability
US: island bases

These are all somewhat useful in certain situations, but not overly powerful.  And I think it gives the Axis a slight advantage in terms of the usefulness of the NAs

I know that AAR enhanced seems to do a good job of balancing NAs…  But I was wondering what some good ideas are for playing by regular rules using the regular NAs that can still maintain game balance.

I was thinking that if there was a way to alter the advantages in such a way that all of them would be considered to be of equal value, then you could play using random advantages.  Or mabye just value all the advantages and let each side choose up to a certain total value of all advantages?  Or mabye just come up with a fixed set of advantanges that makes the game balanced?

But how do you value advantages?  Any ideas on how to make advantages balances, or on how to use them to balance the game without using a bid?

@Jennifer:

Most british players are going to attack your naked fleet and lose valuable fighters in the process.  Rare is the battle England escapes without suffering at least two hits on their valuable fighters and sinks your fleet.

With UK, I am happy taking out the Baltic Fleet on the first turn.  Even if it means losing some planes…  By takin git out right away you don’t have to place as much navy to protect your transports in the North.  It also lets you immediately park US and Uk naval forces outside of Germany forcing Germany to defend a lot of space.  I think with a country like UK where you are not trading territories as much, the figs are less valuable.

Right, well I don’t usually abandon the baltic either, but I think it’s pretty clear to me now that you either add to the baltic fleet or go for the channel dash.  Leaving it there without adding to it is nonsensical.

My plans for the bid was to use a tank and inf in Africa plus the units that are there to take Egypt.  An extra transport would be great in the baltic but then you probably can’t take Egypt without committing your battleship.

What about a carrier with allies planes on it that is used as part of an attack?  Can the planes attack?  Can they take damage?

That makes sense to me.  If you’re not adding to the Baltic fleet it makes no sense at all to leave that fleet in the baltic to die.

Good analysis.  So as UK which plan would you go for?  Attack with planes only, or bring the fleet in?

If you want to counter this combined navy in sz7 (2-3 trn, 1bb, 1ac, 2fgt) you could hit it with 5-6 fgt plus bmb.  After 1 round GER trades 3 fgt for 2trn 1fgt.  A second round would be 2 hits each.  A third round GER would clear the BB with a bmb left.  With the allies I think I am happy with this.

Is this assuming that the German Med. fleet will be blocked from joining the battle by the Russian sub?

So it would seem that the option for the allies given the expected results are:
1. Allowing the fleet to merge uncontested. 
2. Risking the destruction of a UK fig or two in order to either destroy the German fleet or force it down to one or two remaining subs
3. Trade the entire UK fleet plus one turn’s worth of income for taking out all or most of Germany’s airforce.

If I am the allies I don’t like option 1 at all.  I don’t mind option 3, but that battle would be very risky for both sides so I would shy away from a possible disaster this early in the game.  I like option 2 the most.  But I wonder what others think.

Given this, then is there any reason to not go for the channel dash as Germany if you are not going to be adding to the Baltic fleet?  Unless you get a carrier up there on G1, the UK player choosing option 2 would obviously attack the Baltic fleet.  So it seems to me that you either buy something to add to the Baltic fleet or you might as well channel dash and force an allied decision rather than just sit in the Baltic and get destroyed.  Does that make sense?