1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread
@johnnycat I think that's a totally fair criticism, since I struggled with the same thing too, like just trying to get my head around some of this stuff that felt way different to me. I spent the first year or so testing the openers by just taking control of the entire team and assuming a more PvP type match vs the computer 1v1, like granting the computer a larger income bonus or bid and thinking about it in terms of that sort of challenge.
Until I finally realized that what theDog had in mind was more like taking control of a single Nation and then having the FastAI teammates almost like an albatross hanging around the neck. Or almost as a randomizer, like have an unreliable teammate basically hehe.
The FastAIs deficiencies are offset a bit by the bonuses they are granted when controlled by the computer, so they just get more to work with than the player would. I think this still leaves room for a match where the player can control the entire Side (say Axis, or Allies) just without any of the built-in bonuses being awarded to their side, and perhaps some additional resource modifier to the FastAI (more income per turn, or less cost for maintenance). But the FastAI definitely struggles when trying to coordinate multi-nation attacks or multi-nation defenses vs a human being. Like it just doesn't really anticipate the double hit to take a VC or Factory, or plan for that type of stuff when calculating it's moves, so having that kind of edge over it as the human just leads to blowouts.
The downside to controlling just a single Nation is that the game round feels like it takes much longer, since it's mostly the computer making moves. Sometimes I feel like the battle windows and rolling dice are quite distracting, and often I wish I could just minimize all that out of view to survey the map in a particular area without the camera jumping around to show me what the FastAI is trying to do. I don't mind the pop-up battle screen when I have to give actual input, like a decision to scramble, or to select casualties as defender, but I just mean the sort of 'observer mode' we get thrown into when only controlling 1 nation as opposed to a whole team. Upside I suppose is that you can just sorta tune out and walk away, come back 10 minutes later after the Gymnastics Event Finals have concluded lol. It's just a slightly different gameflow and a different way of painting your nation's colors around the map.
Some of this stuff remains very opaque to me. For example just how exactly to overcome a particular force when say amphibiously assaulting a territory that has Bunkers and dug in defenders. I mean you can just run the battle calc on some stuff to see how things shake out.
Example might be defender has 4 infantry and 2 bunkers. How many units as the attacker, and which unit types to bring to overcome a force like that at odds?
Like I started with 6 infantry Elites all coming along on Cruisers to bombard, odds to the attacker 0% lol
Then I add another Elite, an artillery unit and a tactical bomber - still very low, maybe 2% odds to the attacker. So I keep adding more units and watch how the percentages for a Draw begins to climb, but the chance for Attacker to actually win is still hovering at only like 10% odds.
Then I add in an HQ and suddenly it's like a 50/50 coin flip, even though as the attacker I have way more hitpoints, the attack value penalties coming from Amphib assault make it very challenging to just ballpark it. As the forces get larger towards the cap the numbers tend to stabilize, so the larger engagements are much less swingy (similar to what happens in A&A where the curve flattens and the odds become more predictable) but going in with light forces anywhere has that sort of fuzzy head math getting in the way. In A&A you can quickly count pips to get a ballpark, since there are lots of units that hit at 2s or 3s and you can sorta LL to parse the odds. Harder to do here because there's just a lot of +1 or -1 along the way to complicate the bean counting. I like A&A for it's elegance, but it's also a board game, so the counting house stuff has to kinda assume a playscale that works for ages 12+ and up there, and also that many players probably won't have a calculator on hand. Here the battle calculator is a given, and so we have a bit more flexibility to scale up.
I also really enjoy that idea of building out bases and production on the front lines! Like getting a smaller force into position and then having to hang on by the finger nails. It's probably coming from the old Classic strats from when I first learned how to play Allies, like double factories for India and China, or the factory in South Africa vs like all-in on Carrier builds. That sorta trade off in grand strategy, between expanding frontline production or just building from the safe spots in the backfield and moving into position. One thing I particularly enjoy here is just that there are more tiles capable of supporting production, so the player can build as they go. The FastAI was supposed to be awarded factories as part of their bonus units, but I just don't see them place very often. I think it would change the bombing dynamic a fair bit if the FastAI was consistently trying to build factories on any tile that could support one. But usually what I see is that once a factory is destroyed, they don't really replace them. Why the Bomber SBR becomes very OP to me in the mid game, once there are many Bombers grouped together, all focusing on a single target. Even losing a bunch of Bomber TUV to Flak, if the computer isn't going to rebuild those factories, to me that would be a reasonably efficient use of the bombers for the cost. Just since they can bomb the FastAI off the board or trap them in awkward positions that way, and it's harder for them to coordinate counter attacks at M3.