Yeah I could see that, since taking on AI teammates is also a way to handicap yourself. I think much depends on the scale of the map, like how many factions are involved, and also how long it takes the AI to complete a normal gameround, when you're only playing as a single faction among many. For example, in Iron War if you just play as Germany or Japan there can be a lot of down time between turns, compared to something like v5 where you'll be back up again pretty quickly.

It's also kind of curious for me to ponder what makes for a good/enjoyable experience playing against the HardAI in general, since it's never going to match PvP in terms of the challenge, even if you really juice the income bonuses. I think a big part of the appeal comes simply from that desire to paint the map you're own colors in new ways, or just to see a deep endgame situation that might be unlikely in PvP, where a human opponent would have already thrown in the towel a while ago lol.

Thinking about this stuff, I'm also reminded of other games that were primarily aimed at solo play vs the computer, and how they maintained engagement. Like say MTW 1, where you'd have stuff like Glorious Achievements (i.e. special victory conditions, where the player has to achieve specific goals within a certain timeframe for a given faction) or other randomizing events like rebellions or civils wars and such to mix things up on campaign. A&A style gameplay is of course a bit different than Total War, since the mechanics here are a lot more transparent. There's just not as much happening under the under the hood, to obfuscate what's going on with all that stuff. In a game like v5, giving the computer opponent starting tech advances can also work. You know like Japan starting with Super subs or shipyards or whatever, which is sorta Iron Blitz style I guess. Still I think stuff like special Victory Conditions, might worth exploring. In my view its better if the game/designer lays out some difficulty parameters or guidelines in the launch settings, since leaving it up to the player to invent a challenge for themselves ad hoc, is rather less satisfying somehow.

@lafayette You don't need any installation. You just sign into the website and make a server and send invites. Now I would say check for tutorials in setting up a server as in making channels and moderation and bots as IDK anything about that

Reminds me of several postings here on this forum from ignorant users not caring about the fact what our TripleA actually is. 😄

@radrod2006

Answering my own question: Luckily I was able to open several different saved games. Selecting a previous save managed to get me out of the error. i can now reselect other maps.

@ezeeric1 It is played a bit over on the A&A forums: https://www.axisandallies.org/forums/category/33/team-games

Deleting the essay I just wrote and instead giving these bullet points:

the game player is not an input to the dice rolling function game players and dice rolls are not linked together the engine does not even know if a game player is human or AI controlled.

Hopefully this puts the question of whether AI are given an advantage to bed.

It's just unlucky dice and confirmation bias at play. Humans are pattern recognition machines on steriods, we see patterns all over the place, often
where none exists (animals out of clouds, a face on the moon, a tiger in the bushes).

Re: resistance - The resistance is perhaps misperceived. It would be one thing if someone said:

"I have generated 100 sets of 1000 numbers using TripleA and have found that 82% of those
sets fail the diehard tests". You can read
more about randommness tests here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diehard_tests

Instead this conversation is often couched as "AI is given an advantage", or "one player is given
an advantage over another". That is impossible to distinguish from mere confirmation bias, no
matter how unlucky or seemingly impossible the circumstance described. I am not saying there are
zero problems, but so far nobody has used the above mentioned statistical measures to objectively
show there is a problem.

Meanwhile, The development backlog in TripleA, for one person, goes out years if not decades.
We need low effort and high value activities. Anything that is high effort is unlikely to be done
at all. If the effort were reduced here, there would be a higher likelyhood it'll be done.

In this case, we have a dice system with no known, proven problems. I'm not saying there are none, just nobody
has used a statistical technique (see the wiki article above about randomness tests) to objectively show
there is a problem. Beyond this, nobody has proposed any kind of alternative. We can whimsically choose
a new algorithm, but the value derived from this is low. To show this is a high value activity, we first need
to show the existing pseudo-random number generator is defective. Then to actually fix the problem, we'd
need to find another pseudo-random number generator and show by the same measure it is less defective.

Hence the "resistance". Development is being asked to spend a medium to high amount of effort for almost no
value. It's not really "resistance" actually, it's just this task, as framed, does not have a compelling
rate-of-return on the investment.

With that said, I would love to see a
compelling analysis showing 'mersenne twister' as used in TripleA is broken according to objective statistical
randonmess tests, and then I would further love to see a similar analysis showing an alternative algorithm is
better (and not ony that, but the algorithm is provided by an existing java library so we don't have to code it!)

This topic is important though and gets such a lengthy response for two reasons:

dice rolls are pervasive. If were a problem, fixing such a problem would suddenly be a very high value activity. The Marti dice roller, as exists, is currently costing the project $10/month. We are likey to rewrite this
for that reason and others, and for it to be written in Java. At that rate we would pretty guaranteed use the
same algorithm for all dice rolls. We could whimsically replace the randonmness generator with something else.
We could invest a day or three or more of research into a new randonmness generator, though the path of least
resistance would have us skip that unless we can objectively show a benefit for that investment.

@lafayette I kind of like the Fast AI when I want things to go faster.

@alkexr @TheDog
Thank you both for taking time to go into it.
This was very helpful. I really appreciate this alot.

@torpedoa if there are no blitz units, I would retreat. However, maybe he wants his stack to go elsewhere in a close battle ?

He'd have to ignore or send 3 dudes to be sure, usually, to kill the blocker. Can the blocker counterattack if ignored ?

Maybe you have reinforcements coming to that TTy and you can just ignore the blocker.

Without knowing the game, retreat most likely, be my guess

@kindwind For every air movement to be legal during the Combat Movement phase, you only need to be able to land all your aircraft by the end of your turn assuming that, by the end of the forthcoming Conduct Combat phase,

all attacked units have been killed or have submerged, all attacking units have survived and all carriers have not retreated.

@kindwind You cannot move a carrier during Combat Movement unless it either starts or ends movement inside a hostile sea zone: if the carrier is meant to move from a friendly to an other friendly sea zone, you must wait Non Combat Movement to move it. Moreover, you can then move it somewhere else or nowhere if, at that point, all surviving aircraft can land without the carrier.

Thank you for your replies. After 10-15 attempts to beat the Hard AI I think I did it this time. It is looking good so far and I have Russia under control.

@panther Thanks!

@schulz Even in Europe-only games, Russia is still isolated and it takes time for the Americans to mobilize effectively. The Allies need a bigger income edge as long as the Axis can effectively win by taking out Russia.

Hi there, I finished our main episode with John Cutter (Cinemaware) about Rocket Ranger and Defender of the Crown. It will be released via Spotify, itunes, etc. in Mid of February 2021.

Now there's some time to flavour the interview with some video as well. I think within the next 2 weeks, the Editing of the interview with LaFayette should be final and will be released. The Larry Harris video is still on hold, because we are about to relaunch our Website. As we're just two people doing the podcast, this is still queued. Meanwhile, on our homepage www.legendarygam.es you may find those pics he has done for us.

In December 2020, we've posted a full Let's Play of A&A in the TripleA engine on Youtube. It consists out of 30+ parts, showing a dice game of 1940 on the side of the Allies. It includes the strategic and tactical considerations of each turn as well as the analysis of the movement of the Axis player. All of this was done in German language. On the link below you may find the first episode of the Gameplay.

https://youtu.be/mbh-ocwXyqw

A second Let's Play will be released at the end of 2021 playing the Axis in 1940.

For all people being interested in Wargaming in common. My brother explains (in German language) all details to Gary Grigsby's - A world divided. This tutorial will be released within the next 2 weeks as well on our Youtube channel.

@Götterdämmerung saw that pretty good you beat me to the punch postign it here. 🙂

my issue is with the german subs in the altantic. i clearly remember that subs in the great war cannot be moved through; this is unlike other ww1 maps.

with this come an idea to slowly scarficie the subs but delay the americans to pass through. e.g.delay the americans from declaring war by 5-7 turns. the only counter seems to for UK to commit more ships to help strafing.

Pros of Big World v3

-Japan's bogged down in China depicted well.
-Representation of British colonial facilities.
-v3 rules, Italian presence

Cons of Big World v3;

-Favours Allies
-Lack of two ocean going USA
-Lack of Soviet factories on Siberia
-Japan's outproducing potential over Germany
-Germany being unable to response US bomber spam.
-One of the weakest and predicatable Germany which sometimes even outproduced by Russia, no reinforcement of Africa, Scandinavia, build-up navy options. No Arctic, Black Sea campaigns either. Only viable thing is turtling or rushing Leningrad and waiting massive Italian and Japanese helps.
-Moscow-Berlin distance is so high.
-Predictable USA
-Overpriced cruisers
-Purchasing phrase is before than the movement one which should have been the other way around.
-Russia isn't the original owner of all German occupied Eastern Europe. Neither Italy is in Ethiopia.
-Useless territories like Bermuda, Novaya Zemlya, Iceland, Caribbeans, some Siberian territories two piece Brazil etc...

@wc_sumpton Thanks!

example.png

The British units can reach Ceylon in 1 round but the US unit cannot with using this British transport even if Britain didn't use this transport in this round.

@SilverBullet thanks bro