Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: micheljq

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ORIGINAL: Froonp

I don't believe that this discussion is good for the game, on the contrary, because it is trying to design the wrong way. Look, I am not a game designer, neither do you nor no one here, so let's not pretend we know the job better than Harry Rowland.

If this discussion was happening on the playtest list of WiF FE, I would not be saying the same. Harry have a much deeper understanding of the intricacies of the rules, better than anyone here, so I'd rather trust his judgement.

In other words, I'd much prefer a rule change from him.

Of course, Harry Rowland must have the final word. But is he aware of the many discussions that did occur on this particular subject at least?

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ORIGINAL: hakon

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ORIGINAL: Froonp
Hakon, you're an optimizing player, and you got rid of that parameter by saying that you focus on side victory, but while cooperation and side victory are important elements of the game, each country can win including Italy / Japan, and I as an Italian player would not bow to the German player ambitions without fulfilling mine.

Focusing on side victory has been a tradition in my group since before I started playing there, I think. Norway is, after all, a socialist country.

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Keep in mind that an uncooperative Italy will not get any victory cities at all, unless Germany lets him have them.

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A player that ONLY plays italy, is very unlikely to win, anyway, of course, he is simply too small for that (unless the bid is very high). But a Japanese/Italian player can do very well in a super balbo, at least if the alleis do what they seem to be doing in 90% of cases, that is to focus almost exclusively on europe when russia is being crushed.

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ORIGINAL: rkr1958

Pardon my ignorance again but what is the "Super Balbo Strategy"?

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ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

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ORIGINAL: rkr1958

Pardon my ignorance again but what is the "Super Balbo Strategy"?

In a nutshell, the Italian HQ Balbo is sent to Russia with as many Italian aircraft as possible. Those aircraft can perform ground strikes and ground support, then be reorganized by Balbo and do it all a second time, every turn. Since the Italians have their own Action, that can be an air action which gives the Germans the ability to take land actions. The reorganization cost of aircraft is halved if you take an air action.

The net result is that an enormous amount of additional air power is available to the Axis for the war in Russia. The down side is that Italy isn't capable of doing much else (too few BPs).

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ORIGINAL: oscar72se

I have never seen the Balbo strategy in action, sounds interesting but shouldn't CW be able to make minced meat out of the Italians in the Med when there are no Italian air available?

Regards
Oscar

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ORIGINAL: hakon

A player that ONLY plays italy, is very unlikely to win, anyway, of course, he is simply too small for that (unless the bid is very high). But a Japanese/Italian player can do very well in a super balbo, at least if the alleis do what they seem to be doing in 90% of cases, that is to focus almost exclusively on europe when russia is being crushed.

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ORIGINAL: hakon

Steve

By US entry chits, I assume the ones pulled by Germany and Russia (since you are using an infinite pool).

IF Germany tries to break the garrison, the chits pulled by Germany, and even more so, Russia, is much more important than losses taken in France, Poland, etc.

The marginal cost of 1 garrison point for Germany is 4 build points. This means that the difference between Russia pulling a 0 or a 6 in J/F 41, is equal to a different amount of losses equal to 2*4*6 = 48 build points for Germany. (The 2 because the attacker needs 2:1). This is about twice the typical german losses prior to Barbarossa.

Before M/J 41, Russia pulls 10 chits and Germany pulls 20. The contribution of the chit difference, can be expressed as the following function:

Chit Difference = CD = Sum(german_chits) - 2*Sum(russian chits)
Note that the value of the russian chits are doubled to account for the attacker needing 2:1 to break the pact.

Assuming infinte pools (which is true for MWIF), and somewhat equal stdv of each chit pull (which is close enough) we get the following expression for the standard deviation:

STDV(CD) = SQRT(20*s^2 + 10*(2s)^2) = SQRT(60s^2) which is almost equal to 7.7*s, where s is the stdv of a single chit.

Given that s=1.3, the standard deviation of the chits difference is 7.7*1.3 = 10.1 , or approx 10, or up to a 80bp loss difference, which completely dwarfs the standard deviation of german losses in France.

Still, if Russia waits until S/O, after pulling chits, to decide to actually stuff the border or not, they can reduce this standard deviation to:
STDV(CD_SO41) = SQRT(20*s^2 + 3*(2s)^2) SQRT(32s^2) = 5.6*s = 7.3.

At this time, German losses in France, german builds etc will all largely be known, making it reasonably easy for Russia to estimate Germany's potential garrison in 1941.

Assuming that Russia has an advantage over Germany in all known variables at this point of about 7 points, this would give them roughly an 80% probability of holding the pact. If the advantage is 15 points, the probability is about 95%.

And Russia always have the opportunity to DOW Italy, if they should pull very poorly after S/O. (The Japan option was taken away) This way they gain 4-5 reserves, which when reorganized and put at the border, are worth 8 or 10 CD points. On top of this, they can build mil, which is easily worth another 10 or so points, for a total of up to 20.

So even if the advantage is zero, Russia can get almost a 100% chance to stuff by DOW-ing Italy, which means that taking that 80% risk is not as dangerous as it sounds, if you are willing to sacrifice those 4 US entry chits if you pull poorly.

And if Russia, after seeing their S/O40 chit, decides that they have too poor chits, they can simply fall back during the next 3 turns, which if properly executed means that they will most likely be able to reach a reasonable line it time. They can even start building non-pact-optimizing units at this time, such as anti-tank units and HQ's, and still have them out before Barbarossa starts.

Russia can (and should) keep several chits face down in early 1940, to put pressure on Germany's ability to hold the pact when they are fighting in France. They can choose to have either high or low chits face down. If they are worried about the pact, they could keep their high chits face up, but if they want to break the garrison themselves, or if they they have so high chits that they feel secure, they can show th e low chits only, and hide the high ones.

All-in-all, this gives Russia all the power to control the development of the game, and to decide which games come down to a stuffing contest and what do not. Germany on the other hand, really need to decide in 1939 or early 40 if he wants to do a MED strategy, sealion or eastern strategy, unless he wants to be at a severe disadvantage from the beginning.

So, basically, Zarachus is quite right in his analysis. When playing against players understanding the above, and that are willing to stuff, the only sane thing to do as Germany, is to go west.

I think that this may be a very real threat to the success of MWiF, since other player may react as Zarachus, and simply stop playing the game after being stuffed a couple of times. (I would react simmilarily to him, though luckily, I've usually been playing with players that agree to house rule that Germany can break the pact in 1941, regardless of garrison.)

While many WiF veterans may be used to this mechanic (the ones that could not stand it, have probably left the wif community already), I think many potential new players will react very negatively when encountering this kind of behaviour.

Indeed, this is somthing I've been saying for years.


Cheers
Hakon

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Chit Difference = CD = Sum(german_chits) - 2*Sum(russian chits)

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Sum(german_chits + units garrison value) / Sum(russian chits + units garrison value)

• US -entry chit distribution used by MWIF
  
• 39 mean: 2.33 STD: 1.19
  
• 40 mean: 1.79 STD: 1.08
  
• 41 mean: 2.6 STD: 1.22
  
• 42 mean: 3.33 STD: 1.2
  
• 43 mean: 2.87 STD: 1.37
  

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Sum(german_chits) / Sum(russian chits)

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Sum(german_chits + units garrison value) / Sum(russian chits + units garrison value)

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ORIGINAL: ullern


The formula

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Chit Difference = CD = Sum(german_chits) - 2*Sum(russian chits)

is a bad estimation, when the function for the ratio is

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Sum(german_chits + units garrison value) / Sum(russian chits + units garrison value)

When a +1 in the denominator would affect the calculations much more than +1 in the numerator.

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Using the same number for units garrison value that I found doing my estimation for all options on and a historical Yugo DOW MA41 with Hungary and Romania aligned and USSR DOWing Italy to produce MILs, I find that
total garrison ratio = mean 1.84 and STD = 0.17

Meaning it must be something like a 84% chance that Germany can break the pact in MJ41. (Since mean + STD = 2.01 so the 2.0 is within the standard deviation and approximately 68% of results are within standard deviation but results outside of standard deviation causing lower ratios will also benefit the USSR.)

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Of course it's likely that the USSR should try a forward set up only if his own chits are close to or above average. As Haakon pointed out it's usually safe to reassess this in late 40. This means that the times the USSR puts a forward set up, his chance will be better than what I calculated. But in something like 40% of the cases I would still recommend against trying a forward set up.

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What if I calculated in losses to either side? Well let's assume Germany lost units worth 20BP and USSR lost units worth 10BP then the average would increase, because in garrison optimized strategy without any losses Germany had to build quite a few units which gave 1 garrison point for every 4 BP. While the USSR still was building units which gave 1 garrison points for every 3 BP. (So this means that with these losses GE would lose 5 garrison points while the USSR lost 3.3 garrison points, which would make the garrison ratio closer to 2.0). But I'd say there's a more than 50% chance the German losses are more than two times the USSR losses...

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I'd probably not use it myself, as I don't think it's important enough, and because it makes it more risky for Germany to attack Spain (If Germany goes for a Spain campaign, if would be safe for the USSR to set up forward anyway, and if the Spain campaign starts slow, Germany may easily have to abort after MJ41 because USSR could break the pact.)

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ORIGINAL: Skanvak

What I don't understand is why wanting to tweak the number to a specific value. Why not put the optional rule as variable and let the player enter variable value. That will save Steve A LOT of time trying to figure out who is right or wrong.

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ORIGINAL: hakon

Hi, Ullern, it appears that you do not understand my calculation. I'll try to explain the point's you're not getting in some more detail:

The criterium for breaking the garrison is, as you write, as follows:
2 < Sum(German chits + German forces)/sum(Russian chits + russian forces)

=> 2*Sum(Russian chits + Russian forces) < Sum(German chits + German forces
=> Sum(Germanc chits + German forces) - 2*Sum(Russian chits + Russian forces)
=> CD > FD

Where CD is the Chit Difference function of my previous build, and FD is the force diffence function:
FD = 2*Sum(Garrison value of Russian forces) - Sum(Garrison value of German forces)

Now, since the FD function can be (pretty much) calculated deterministically, the statistical part can be reduced to calculating the probability that CD > some constant. (FD will tend to be somewhere in the range of +5 and +20, depending on behaviour).

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Now to comment on your post:

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Using the same number for units garrison value that I found doing my estimation for all options on and a historical Yugo DOW MA41 with Hungary and Romania aligned and USSR DOWing Italy to produce MILs, I find that
total garrison ratio = mean 1.84 and STD = 0.17

Meaning it must be something like a 84% chance that Germany can break the pact in MJ41. (Since mean + STD = 2.01 so the 2.0 is within the standard deviation and approximately 68% of results are within standard deviation but results outside of standard deviation causing lower ratios will also benefit the USSR.)

You mean that 84% is the chance that Germany can NOT break the pact, yes, since they need +1 STD of chits to break it? I would like to see exactly what garrison values (from unit only) you are assuming here. With a DOW on Italy, I would expect the probability for Germany to break the pact to be much smaller.

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ORIGINAL: Edfactor

What about a Japanese DOW on Russia and Japan not taking Vladivostok but instead pushing on toward other Russian resources? Can Russia afford losing a few corps and resources to the Japanese for a year or more?

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ORIGINAL: hakon
And of course, this all relies on using the new version of the compulsory peace optional to have Japan surrender at a time that makes it EASIER for Germany to DOW Russia. Imo, this is NOT a way that we should want the players to be forced to play in order to execute a Barbarossa at the historical time. Basically, its a simmilar type of gamey as having Italy conquering Hungary to be able to ZOC up russians.

Cheers
Hakon

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ORIGINAL: hakon

lavisj: 120 bp is not more than the axis can kill, especially if you include what they can capture, and even more so if Russia starts at the border with Germany. Besides, the allies know what kind of chits are in the US pools. If they are are not very high, it will cost less than 3 turns of US entry. In fact, if the US is not due to get option 34 until 1942 (which is not so late in a Barb game), it's more likely that it costs only 1 turn.

Say for instance, that the US loses three 1's and a 2 by the DOW, this is less than they typically pull in one turn in 1942. Add to this that germany and russia continues to draw chits throughout 1941, instead of returning all their chits to the pool in M/J-41, diluting the pool. If Germany doesn't DOW Russia until M/J 1942, this effect alone can mean just as much as the Russian DOW.

On the other hand, if the US chits are high, the Russian ones may be quite low, and Russia may be forced to pull back anyway, regardless of the Japanese agression. Or the Russian chits may be high enough that the Japanese agression doesn't matter.

All-in-all, it's may well be worth it to DOW Italy with Russia in late 1940 or 1941, and especially so if they suddenly starts to draw low chits near the end of 1940.

At the very worst, the Japanese agression forces Russia to draw back as if they had not tried to stuff in the first place.

And of course, this all relies on using the new version of the compulsory peace optional to have Japan surrender at a time that makes it EASIER for Germany to DOW Russia. Imo, this is NOT a way that we should want the players to be forced to play in order to execute a Barbarossa at the historical time. Basically, its a simmilar type of gamey as having Italy conquering Hungary to be able to ZOC up russians.

Cheers
Hakon

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ORIGINAL: lavisj
And in my mind those gamey tricks are fair game to cancel the effects of the stuff rule, which I consider highly unrealistic.
Jerome

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ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Some of this analysis is moot in MWIF. The MWIF chit draws are from an infinite pool (using a probability distribution), so there is no interaction between the Nazi-Soviet pact and US Entry as far as chits are concerned.