💥 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread

[JohnnyCat]

@black_elk Stated: "What I meant was to type was moving a Hit Point across 6 spaces. It's very powerful in A&A. Like if you fly a dozen bombers from London to Moscow, even on defense those pips flying in at just the right time can make all the difference. The stuff that bombers can do on attack or sbr on top of that makes them all around the best heavy hitter, but even if all they could do was move a single hitpoint across a distance of 6 spaces that alone would probably justify the cost at 12. In A&A I mean. That's the point I was trying to make anyway hehe"

And I still do not understand a word of that mate. Fly a dozen bombers and "pips flying"???

"What I meant to type was moving a Hit Point across 6 spaces " ????

It's all Greek to me - and I am Greek.

Please explain this. THX

[Black_Elk]

pips are the attack or defense value of the unit.

If a bomber defends at 1 (like in A&A) that's one defensive pip.

In A&A bombers also have the 1 hitpoint. So when you fly a stack of bombers their max distance to help a teammate on defense say. To me that's a very powerful if not the most powerful use for bombers in A&A, so like why Allies always fly them to say Moscow, India, or maybe Caucasus (depending on the board) to add to the defensive stacks there and push the odds. Making it harder for the attacker to justify making the attack. The defenseless bomber idea just removes the hitpoint so the bomber can't serve as defensive fodder like that.

In this game USA has a bomber that can move 8 spaces, so whatever it does on defense is that much more potent. For fighters its more thematic that they defend well, and those don't move nearly as far, so I don't think it'd be as much of an issue.

Sorry I use too much jargon probably lol

[Black_Elk]

Oh so a major difference from this game compared to A&A is that most of the armored units function as land transports. They can tow an infantry unit along with them. This is described in the unit tables, but it's using the acronym so like M1 is move 1 space, M2 move 2, if the unit can also transport units (tow them along) it's described as a transport.

There are also stack limits for each unit type, transports usually have a ceiling on the number of units per tile. So like x10 of whatever unit then it caps out.

Terrain effects how far some of those units can move, so sometimes infantry will be able to move farther if they are starting out on a factory. It depends which terrain they're trying to cross sometimes the tanks can only move so many dudes. The land HQ generals are treated like supped up tanks as well. I'd have a hard time explaining all the unit roster interactions, since it's mostly of theDogs designs, and WC adding xml options to make stuff possible that hadn't been tried before.

I haven't seen much intercepting. I think it's better when the computer uses their fighters to scramble into an adjacent tile, which works reasonably well.

Sorry if I was confusing, I'm used to tossing around acronyms and such from earlier conversations we've had when making the thing, but it probably doesn't translate all that well sometimes. It's an issue I have like typing in this weird shorthand for tripleA.

[JohnnyCat]

@black_elk dude I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT YOU ARE TALKING ABOUT!!!

Bombers fly over 8 distances and somehow leave pips !?!?!? Or bread crumbs? Or bundles of cash? Wtf

I’ve played Axis and Allies for 15 years and never heard of bombers flying distances to help friends ….

What friends ?

How does flying over tiles help anything???

Please explain like I’m new

Cheers

[TheDog]

OMG I go to bed early and there are over 20 posts, you guys are having a party without me.

@johnnycat
So many questions.

A Dev is a developer of the TripleA engine
Forum name on here / GitHub name
LaFayette / DanVanAtta
Myrd / asvitkine
frigoref / frigoref

A Map makers/Game maker, usually split into graphics side and code side
Mainly Graphics Black_Elk, ebbe
Mainly Code beelee, TheDog, wc_sumpton
So on here we are map makers.

1941 GCD for me is unusual, my previous games rarely get more than 100 views, Shogun a 1000s, but this one almost 200,000.
This game/map is ridiculously popular.

@JohnnyCat this thread unusually mixes code chat and gameplay chat, bad for you.

A&A & TripleA
Atk/Def 1 is poor, Atk/Def 4 very good.
+1 adds so is better

In TripleA dice sides can be anything even 7 sided.
1941 GCD use 6 sided dice, a d6 for most combats, but uses d12 for some AA combat.
Most d12 rolls will be seen as 1/2 in the manual, so thats 1/12, this is to keep the combat tables looking the same, by using a base of D6 probability, Battleships can have 3/6 AA, but will Atk/Def v other ships 4/6, see the ship table in the manual.

Best use of Bombers
Attack factories with a HQ-Air, see below
Number of Bombers;
3+ to Destroy an undefended Base-Camp
6+ to Destroy an undefended Industry-Lgt
8+ to Destroy an undefended Industry-Med
10 to Destroy an undefended Industry-Hvy
Escort Fighters will be needed if defended by enemy fighters.

More later.

[JohnnyCat]

@Black_Elk THINK I GET IT

I think you are trying to say that one can deliver a stack of defenders to any spot 6 or even 8 tiles away. And a stack of 6 bombers (at 15 or 11 each) could contribute 6 units of defense 1.

I get it... sorry but all those "pips" and the way you said it had me thinking that they were generating something as they flew...

[JohnnyCat]

@thedog AWESOME - THANK YOU FOR Explaining all that.

"Best use of Bombers
Attack factories with a HQ-Air, see below
Number of Bombers;
3+ to Destroy an undefended Base-Camp
6+ to Destroy an undefended Industry-Lgt
8+ to Destroy an undefended Industry-Med
10 to Destroy an undefended Industry-Hvy
Escort Fighters will be needed if defended by enemy fighters."

Questions :

1. Why does supplying an Air Superhero (HQ-Air) do anything? What does it do? Why is it necessary to add to the stack of bombers?

2. THANK GOD for that table. I was looking everywhere to find that out. And I THOUGHT it was some die role thing - are you saying that If 10 bombers get through the AA and any fighters that the Hvy-Industry gets annihilated ?

[TheDog]

@johnnycat
You dont need the HQ-Air, but it takes damage/a hit instead of a bomber, yes its more expensive than a bomber, but it can move 6+ so keeps pace.

That table is not 100% guaranteed success, its just a guide.

1941 GCD has so many pluses and minuses with unit synergy that even I have to experiment to find out what works and feels right.

You can only stack a maximum of 10 Bombers per territory.

Secondary use of a Bomber
4+ Bombers can take out a Bunker only 1/6 chance as its a ground target, so 8+ for 2 Bunkers.

[Black_Elk]

@johnnycat Yeah exactly hehe

Here's an example, using 1942 second edition A&A

Say Allies have 6 Bombers in London. The bomber unit in A&A moves 6 spaces.

Now say Germany is threatening an attack on Moscow. Maybe they've got odds like 75% chance to prevail. But if the British player flies those bombers to help their Soviet teammate (adding 6 pips to the defense total defense value of the forces at Moscow) the odds suddenly dip down to below 50% making the attacker think twice. But really it's the fodder hitpoint more that the defensive pip at 1. You can see how powerful it is in regular A&A by just running the battle calc and then adding a couple defensive bombers to see how it shifts the odds for the attacker.

I don't know where I got "pip" from, I think it's tournament lingo or Low Luck lingo maybe?

Who knows where these coinages originate. Probably from those Don Rae essays from the late 90s hehe.

Anyhow when I say the bomber is a powerful defensive unit that's the sort of situation I'm talking about. It's the primary use in my view, cause like Strategic Bombing, attacking Ships, all the other fun stuff the bomber can do is obviously badass, but simply being able to fly those hitpoints to a position very far away is super potent in a turn based game like this. All I was trying to say. But I'm long winded and always struggle with brevity.

In this game USA can't just fly bombers to help Moscow like they can in A&A boards (cause of those restrictions on which nations have open/closed borders) but they can still do it for say the Brits in Europe or Asia. Flying over the territories with such a quickness is helpful, because if I had to move the same number of fodder hitpoints on the ground it would take twice as long, and I'd face enemy ground units along the way. That's in A&A though. The fighter in A&A is also the better defense hitpoint cause it has a higher defense value at 4 (so 4 pips to force), but it also only moves 4 spaces, so it can't go quite as nuts. M6 is a lot of reach to bolster defenses even with the lowly 1 on defense power.

I guess the idea would be to experiment with a strat bomber concept that doesn't have any sort of defense value or hitpoint, but which can only operate as an attacker or for sbr, which is sorta how they work now, except for in edge cases like where bunkers might be involved or where they can't be targeted for some reason. Right now I still think of this scenario as mainly a single player experience so it's not too bad if I just don't go too crazy with the bomber builds. Air transports can do some similarly crazy things, but it's a little harder to get them into position early on. I think once a beachhead is established though, they're pretty formidable since they can fly a bunch of the Infantry Elites around to punch holes. I feel like each unit type becomes kind way more powerful once they are stacked together like half a dozen or more. Everything just kinda opperates on a much bigger scale, but also because some of the attack values are low relative to A&A the battles are swingier. There's also just more information to parse generally, which creates a kind of fog for the planning. To me this sorta works, like the player is playing with incomplete information sometimes, but that's different than just like trying to learn how the units all interact.

Probably the game notes just needs another annotated manual. I use the Help tab Unit Help to see the descriptions, but then sometimes it's not quite clear, for example which units target or can't be targeted by.

Here's how the German Light-Armor unit is described in Unit Help

Type: Land Att | Def | Mov: 2 | 2 | 2

Targeted Attack for Combat: 1/12 Flak with 1 Attacks for Unlimited Rounds

Targeted Defense for Combat: 1/12 Flak with 1 Attacks for Unlimited Rounds

Support on Attack: 1 Offensive Support Power to 1 Allied Bomber-Tac and Inf-Motorized

Amphibious Attack Modifier: -1

Can Blitz

Can't Target Some Units

Is a Land Transport

Transporting Cost: 4

Placement Requirements: Industry-Hvy or Industry-Med or Industry-Lgt * Includes Armoured Cars & Light Tanks * Can carry/tow 1 of Inf-Conscript, Inf-Trained, Inf-Elite, Artillery, Anti-Tank * Support attacking allied Bomber-Tac

---

Admittedly kinda hard to parse

The "Is a Land Transport" part describes how it can tow another Inf Unit

"can't target some units" is the part that I think becomes confusing. You basically have to cross reference other Units to see which ones because it won't all fit in the tooltip. I think anyway.

[TheDog]

@JohnnyCat
#4 HQs / Super Heros units do not give movement only the 3 Industries.

#5 In your example units were being towed/Land Transport, yes that is a bit random as to which units are transport, but if you take the time you as a player can select them.
Land Transport was included to help the Germans and Russians move otherwise they move so slow if away from the industry rail lines.

#5 Blitzkrieg is the +1s to combat that various units give each other as shown on UNIT SUPPORTS pages in the manual

#6 Interceptors, the AI(just like a player) has already decided you will probably lose the air battle, so Intercept only if you think you have a chance.

[Black_Elk]

Broad strokes these are some of the main differences from standard A&A that stand out to me...

Phase Order: In A&A you would typically have repair/purchase, combat move, combat, non combat move, placement, collect income (sometimes the first two phases can be switched by player preference, but that's the standard for A&A)

In this game the phase order is Collect Income, Combat Move, Combat, Non Combat, Repair, Purchase, Place. The idea is twofold, first to prevent double dip trading of territories (eg. what you'd see in A&A with France trading hands maybe 3 or 4 times in a single round and thus generating way more income than it's actual production value displayed on the map), and second to ensure that the movement phases are all grouped together to create a kind of flow or momentum that favors the action. The player doesn't have to split their attention between purchase and combat movement which is what usually stalls things in A&A, so hopefully helps the pacing to feel a bit swifter. Especially since turns/rounds are pretty involved and can take a while between player turns.

Production: Factories which can generate income by themselves, and which can be destroyed as well as captured. Here factories also provide a movement bonus to ground units, 3 spaces across normal terrain. The theme is basically rail lines built into the factories, but the practical effect is that the ground game takes place across a distance of 3 spaces instead of the normal 1 or 2 spaces, at least when units start their movement from a factory territory.

Terrain: the map has a number of territories with a terrain feature. This often effects the M2 units specifically, like Armor, by reducing their movement -1. Or some other malus/bonus may apply to specific unit types on attack/defense in that spot, but the movement thing is I think the most important. Just the idea that any unit stationed on a factory can move further than they would otherwise be able to, but then there are terrain tiles scattered around to interrupt this a bit, or to create pockets across the map where armor is more effective and some where it's less effective.

Maintenance. Every unit on the board costs 1 PU to maintain. This is very different from A&A as it creates an incentive to purchase the more expensive heavier hitting units over time, instead of purely spamming the cheap fodder hitpoints. This is offset somewhat by the inclusion of convoy income (which in this board just means that every sea zone has a value of 1 PU.) Taken together the idea is provide more incentives for the purchase of stuff like tanks or naval units, beyond what we usually see in A&A which tends to be dominated by the big Infantry wall.

Units Caps. Along those same lines, in this one units are capped at a given number per territory or sea zone by the unit type. Only so many can exist in a tile at once, and if the player is at the cap movement into that tile will be blocked. In A&A there are no such restrictions and you can stack as many infantry or fighters as you can afford, or have the placement capacity for. Here there is a ceiling on that. This is basically a handicap for the player, and a way to force the AI to shift it's unit stacks around. The FastAI doesn't always take this into account when purchasing, but instead the fanning out is more accidental. Sometimes I think it may botch it's moves when it's operating at the unit cap, so you see transports and such preventing the most efficient movement of units. As the player you can usually work around this a bit by moving the ships in smaller groups or working around those cap limits. The computer just sorta hits the wall sometimes, but generally it seems to have them pushing around with stacks of 10s and 20s per unit type as the game goes on.

Order of Battle, Unit Targeting. This is very different from A&A so much so that tripleA has difficulty actually displaying all the stuff that's happening. The practical effect is that a bunch of dice are being rolled and the player may not be entirely sure of what is shooting at what. It all happens pretty quickly. The only real way for me to parse what's happening is to either trial the battles several times to see what targeting what, or to use the calculator to get a ballpark estimate going. Even with that though, I often feel like I'm in a the dark a bit and never quite sure if I have enough juice to hold a territory after taking it vs enemy counter attack. I see this a bit like fog of war or the wheel of fate, even if we know what's where and what feels likely, in the moment anything could swing pretty hard and the dice roll so fast that it can be hard to know exactly why you won or lost a given battle. This is different from A&A where the results tend to stabilize around the units that have attack values at 2 (like artillery) or 3 (say tanks and fighters), and it's just easier to predict by the raw numbers what's probable. Here's it's just kinda question mark over any battle that doesn't involve a pretty large attacking force. Esp. for amphib stuff.

Bunkers: I think this would likely be the most unfamiliar unit, and the one that is probably the most significant to the play pattern. They are frequently paired up, so x2 bunkers across most of the territories where battle is likely to occur. What these things do is to make the battle even swingy-er than they would otherwise by creating a 2 hit unit on the ground, which also provides a boost to regular combat units stationed in that territory by redirecting the hits. I think they're maybe some sort of cross between an immobile land battleship sorta unit and an artillery-like unit (but one that's used for defense), just in the way that they can be very potent if supported, but not so spectacular all by themselves. To carve them up there are some units that are more effective than others, like the Tactical Bomber or certain heavy hitters, but when they are well defended they can make a territory much harder to take. Especially with amphibious landings, where many units have a malus -1 as they unload onto the beaches, Bunkers can mix up the odds quite a bit. I think they are the most challenging for me to get the head around, like just harder to ballpark what an odds on fight needs to look like attacker vs defender when the bunkers are involved. Or to really get a feel for how much more powerful the second bunker is compared to a spot that only has 1 bunker.

HQs: These units basically function a bit like the artillery from A&A in that they boost other units, but the difference here is that the boost applies to multiple units at once. Rather than 1:1 like a combined arms things, here they doing that for multiple units within the force. There are really no units in A&A that work like that, so this is a novelty. The power up provided is pretty extreme so it can be hard to predict without the Battle Calc, but they're basically the most powerful units in the game and make it possible to carve down larger enemy stacks once they are grouped together. It's a little tricky to get a feel, since they stage in and factions are on an uneven footing at the outset. Basically Axis advantage initially, since Allies have more limits imposed on them, such as fewer HQ types available at the start.

Aircraft/Fighters etc: These are pretty different mainly because of scrambling, the way it works here you can scramble the fighters to defend in adjacent tiles, but the stack limits mean there is some tension on where to position them to cover the most ground. In A&A you'd probably want all your fighters doing front line defense, but here there is a reason to have them off the line by like 1 tile, or to position them in spots that connect to several tiles. The advantage of the early vs late type fighters is that they count as different unit types for the cap. So you can have a max of 10 early fighters, but also a 10 regular fighters, for factions that have those available or if your homeland is invaded and conscripts are unlocked, for later tech types like the P51s you can scramble them together. The tactical bombers are more like the forward attack aircraft, they soften up the bunkers and can target the heavier enemy ground units or ships somewhat more effectively. All the aircraft still have low hits at values on both attack/defense. It's lower than say the A&A fighter which is hitting on a 3 or 4 (on the d6), but then they're also cheaper and the economy is higher so there are more floating around. Basically to be used effectively they have to be grouped I think, although the computer will sometimes push the odds very narrow with air attacks, I think as the player you'd want to pad stuff and hold off until you can start flying in at the cap. Again just a different way of approaching it. I tend to lean more like A&A, but then I appreciate this spin, I just think it's a lot more variable esp in smaller engagements here. Like to the point where a lone fighter or two I just never know if they're going to make a difference, or just die, or randomly stalemate, but even there sometimes they have an impact. The way fighters interact with each other with intercept or air battles preceding is a bit hard for me to parse, I think the scramble is easier to get my head around though. Just think of it as being able to launch those 10 fighters into any spot nearby that's being attacked, and I can get into that hehe.

To me those are the real biggies. The other stuff I think can be intuited more easily, and sorta familiar from other higher economy tripleA games with the WW2 setting. Not sure if any of that is helpful for getting the bearings. Just sorta my general impressions from playing around with it over time. Started drifting there at the end, but that's how I was thinking of things.

[JohnnyCat]

@black_elk said “ The idea is twofold, first to prevent double dip trading of territories (eg. what you'd see in A&A with France trading maybe hands 3 or 4 times in a single turn and thus generating more way income than it's actual production value), and second to ensure that the movement phases are grouped together. ”

I have two quick questions

1. I don’t see how this game’s phases does anything to prevent the situation you mentioned where France changes hands.

2. What does the following mean ?

“ and second to ensure that the movement phases are grouped together. ”???

3. Did you say factories GENERATE INCOME????

-JC

[Black_Elk]

1. Lets say a spot in France is worth 6 PUs. When income is collected at the beginning of the phase order it means you must have held the TT for an entire round in order to collect that 6 PUs. Simply attacking and taking the territory isn't enough, it must be held till the beginning of the next turn. In A&A you'd get the cash each time the territory is taken, awarded to the controlling nation. So multiple factions could collect that same 6 PUs in the same round. Here the income is nerfed to whatever you own at the beginning of your turn.

2. It means that the player can focus on the Combat move/Combat immediately and then on Non Com Movement as the very next thing. Whereas in A&A you would have that interrupted by a Purchase phase somewhere along the way. It's not so hard there because the purchases are smaller in A&A (less money, fewer units) but here with dozens and hundred of units in play the phase order is a sort of designed so that the purchase/place will come more naturally after all the moving of stuff is done. Less guessing about what you might need, or padding for whatever might happen in combat, because it's already occurred. Just meant to speed things up a bit from the player's point of view.

3. Yeah each Factory unit creates PUs per turn for that Nation. The heavier factory types produce more income. It's in part how Axis is balanced against team Allies, since they have those heavy production cores. By purchasing new factories you increase the totals on income per turn. So for USA purchasing industry each turn scales up the economy. Most nations have at least a couple spots where they can increase their PUs from factory buys, but it's a bit limited. Like mostly Small Factories. That's also a bit of the offset for bomber attrition because if the factory is killed those are PUs the opponent isn't collecting, along with being unable to place from that location, or move at M3 the next turn. The factories also have certain restrictions for units that can be built there. So the smaller factories are focused basically on ground units. The Mediums can build basic air and the entry level ships. The large factories are for all the rest, and the heavy hitters. The lone other unit that can produce is the Base Camp, but that is basically like 1 inf type unit per turn. The idea there was giving the player a way to establish toeholds on pretty much any tile, but where the impact would be somewhat limited and requiring an investment up front to get the base up and running. They are useful for shoring up the infantry logistics especially in areas of the map where there aren't a lot of factory capable territories, but maybe many low values tiles together can get a force going with several bases each producing 1 dude per turn. Those Base Camps don't provide any bonus to movement. Pretty much everything else is a drain on the cash from maintenance, but the Factories can add to the cash here, which is definitely different.

[TheDog]

@wc_sumpton said in 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread:

@thedog said in 1941 Global Command Decision - Official Thread:

What were you thinking?

I was thinking along the lines of what happens to these non-air-SBR units after the SBR attack. Basically, they disappear from the battle.

I've created a map property that would allow these units to patriciate in the territory battle.

Just was wondering if this was the reason for the removal of "isStrategicBomber". If I remember correctly, I seen it in 1.170, but when I went to check and test with 1.175, it was no longer there.
Just Ideas.
Cheers...

Currently isStrategicBomber Artillery could SBR for 1 round and not fight for the rest of the 7 rounds, yes?

With your new property true
isStrategicBomber Artillery could SBR for 1 round and also
fight for the rest of the 7 land rounds, yes?

I was testing artillery "isStrategicBomber" and it got left in.
In the early days of GCD there was a Artillery-Hvy unit, but it did not have enough difference with Artillery-Med, so they were merged in to one, Artillery.

My thoughts on Artillery isStrategicBomber

• The current Artillery could have isStrategicBomber
• USSR/Russians could use what you are proposing Artillery-Hvy with the ability of "isStrategicBomber".
• Germany on the eastern front could benefit/deliberately destroy Industries, so could use Artillery-Hvy
• The other nations need the Industries they take over, so are unlikely to use isStrategicBomber

Also outside of WW2 other maps might use the ability to represent siege artillery & warfare. I have a few fantasy maps that would use it.

[JohnnyCat]

@black_elk Understood - THANK YOU again for expounding upon this. I feel silly now that I did not initially understand that PU thing - but I HAD NO IDEA ONE had to hold the territory for an entire round to get the PUs...

OK and now that I know that FACTORIES PRODUCE PUs I look forward to a new play style where I can see buying lots of those factories now - and SBR units.

By the way, I had no idea that factories generated PUs, so maybe put that into the end of turn announcements and highlight it.

I do not want to criticize but I really believe that you guys know this stuff TOO WELL so-to-speak and possibly cannot see the need for better docs/tips/explanations like I do...

I mean that I have been shooting in the dark for a year with this game trying to sleuth out the game play mechanics AS I WOULD DO ANY SUCH GAME. But that is not a viable way to learn THIS game.

And a TRUTH FOR ME is understanding ALSO that this game has WAY MORE DEPTH than Axis and Allies which, let's admit, is checkers to this game's Chess/Go in terms of complexity and strategy. Thus, I need to adjust my expectations accordingly.

The Problem with having this game be a part of TripleA sadly DUMBS DOWN the situation here.

To put that another way, this game deserves its own platform !!! And ideally would not be directly associated with such a simple game play mechanic such as the Axis and Allies Local Majority Wins simple game play mechanic.

Anyway this is all the more reason why someone impatient to learn, like YOURS TRULY! lol, should write your user manual... cause I will be the advocate for the less knowledgeable and lazy gamer... hahaha

[JohnnyCat]

CAN you wonderful "Map Makers" add a little rule???

The Proposed NEW RULE: Inf units can, under certain conditions, "MAKE" a bunker instead of paying 5 PUs.

For this game I find myself constantly looking at the benefits of involving various neutrals for position and/or to block.

So imagine 1 inf taking a place like Svalbard - maybe via airborne.

Now some turns have transpired and that 1 inf is still there. I propose that he could "make" a bunker if he was there for 2 turns doing nothing else.

I would think this easy to implement but I don't know the code at all so I don't know.

Anyway, I know many of you discount and even discourage the involvement of the various neutrals but I feel that there are many good strats that involve these little guys. Cheers

[TheDog]

@JohnnyCat
It is possible to do, but the AI struggles with this type of 'build', so it is really for the Player only. That is one of the reasons its a no.

The tools for you to modify/mod the xml are available, it is a steep learning curve and you are free to use what is in the download.

[Black_Elk]

@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.

[JohnnyCat]

@black_elk I both CARE and APPRECIATE your comments mate.

But sadly I think was not able to understand some of the first half of your comments.

To help here please tell me what you are referring to when you stated “that’s a fair criticism you struggled with …”

We’ve got a few threads going on in parallel so I’m just not making the connection - besides that I’ve been “criticizing” a bunch now lol

In your comments I’m a tad lost by your reference to the “fast ai”. What does the selection of the fast/easy vs hard/slow have anything to do with anything here?

You said you “took over a team”. What team ? Are you referring to the selecting the “full team” as on playing Italy, Germany and Japan together versus just one nation ?

Miraculously I DO understand your statement : “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.”

But I also do not. It sounds like you are claiming that TheDog’s (one of the authors of this game) intent was for us to play as only one “team” such as Germany, while letting the stupider heuristics (Fast AI) run Italy and Japan.

So what ?

Why is this even something to discuss ? How does it fit into the discussion ?

You stated: “ 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”

And I couldn’t agree more !!! Are there any plans or options to remove this jumping around mechanic ?

Finally you stated, “ 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. “

WE CAN MAKE DOUBLE FACTORIES ???? Where? WHat game?

Please correct me if wrong, but I feel the theme of your entire post was about learning to feel how the game plays… ie the intuition for the game mechanics.

And that is basically a mirror of what I’m experiencing right now as I “get to know and get a feel for the game mechanics.”

I’ve now done hundreds of permutations on simple attacks and defenses to get to know what the units are good/bad at.

And I am VERY HAPPY to report that after going through a steep learning curve, and direct access to the actual developers of this game (which is NOT practical for the public at large) I am finally feeling comfortable with it and now able to move on to game balance and user manual creation.

For the past year I was both TOTALLY LOST BY THIS BADLY BROKEN GAME and TOTALLY IN AWE BY THIS WONDERFUL GAME THAT IS A WORK OF GENIUS!!!

I was getting frustrated by my not being able to readily understand and play it. It was NOT Axis and Allies and, I feel this now more than ever, it seems to me this game should be a stand alone thing and in no way related to TripleA.

The game def had issues. Always crashing. Often freezing. And much more.

But now most of that has been fixed!

And I sort of knew all along that the issues were primarily my lack of knowledge for this game complicated by the fact that I did not know any other game that was similar - and again I see it used TripleA as the game engine, but I feel it has almost no connection to it.

So again I thank all of you for being such active members of this forum.

I now have played three actual non modded GCD games and I’m happy to report that each game felt balanced and fun and challenging !!!

So I’m onto the user manual. But I will take my time for that one.

Cheers

[JohnnyCat]

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR !!!

What the heck is this? Turn 8 or so and Japan has taken the border tiles with India then ALL OF A SUDDEN these Chinese popped up there!!!!

And the game log does not even show any evidence of these units being placed.

Can anyone explain this?