Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: lomyrin

About Major Power Surrenders there occasionally occurs a gamey situation in France. Germany can knock out all the Fench units but not declare Vichy nor take more than half of the factory stacks or Paris so that France cannot surrender. This can leave France in a limbo and the US entry chits for Vichy or conquests are not rolled for. It also means that the CW is limited by foreign troop commitment rules from invervening in France.

Present rules have no mechanism to deal with this situation. 

Lars

quote:

ORIGINAL: ptey

I agree that the stuka and the 2 fighters should almost always be LLs to Italy.
I think however that there are a few more details to the LND3 that a worth examining. It should be taken into consideration what LND3's got at setup. The Italian LND3 forcepool in 39 is split pretty much 50/50 between good and bad plains, so if you get 2 good ones, you should imo not build any more LND3's before you can scrap all the bad ones, which isnt untill 42. At the same time, if Germany get some bad LND3's at startup, its propably a good idea to build some LND3's since the chance of getting a good one will be quite big.
This is imo especially the case if playing with the bounce combat option, since most of the stukas have a lower A2A rating than the LND3's, the LND3 have a somewhat better chance of surviving a bounce than the stukas. So Germany should imo focus more on LND3's than LND2's when playing with bounce conbat. Even though the stukas have slightly better tac factor than the LND3's, this is imo easily offset by the better range of of the LND3. Germany really lacks airmissions, and getting the stukas in the right positions all the time can be a real pain. This is somewhat easier with the LND3's since they require fewer rebases to get into position and dont have to be repositioned all the time at the front.
However, if also playing with the oil and variable reorganisation options, LND2's only costs half the oil and half the reorg points that a LND3 costs. This means that LND2's once again become more attractive for Germany. When playing with oil the euroaxis also have less production and it will be even harder for Italy to afford any LND3's.

If however the situation is the opposite of the above (Italy gets bad LND3's from the start while Germany gets good ones). Italy should perhaps consider building a couple of LND3's, while Germany shouldnt build any before it can scrap all the bad ones in the forcepool, meaning that the JU-88A1 should be lended. However most of the time i would prefer just to build the 3 cost Navs with Italy, even if they only have a tac value of 2 while most of the LND3's have 3, they are also much better at killing british and american amphibs.

When all that is said, the most likely thing is that you get a mix of good and bad LND3's with both Germany and Italy at setup. In that situation some of the things i wrote above still holds. So depending upon options i would most likely build some German LND3's in the first half of the game, while building none with Italy. This means that i would like to have the Ju-88A1 in the German forcepool, since its a medium good plain and thus increases the chance of getting a good LND3 when building one.
Then again, if you are a gambler you can also LL to Italy and let it rot in their forcepool, since it would both increase the chance of getting a very good and a bad one. If i feel im "ahead" i wouldnt try these kind of gambles, but if you are falling behind, seeking some of these gambles (and be so lucky that they go through) may help you back on track.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ptey

Most of the thoughts that i tried to convey on the subject, was naturally about if Italy wanted to build the plain or not. Apart from what i wrote, this is ofcourse also dependent on overall strategy by both the euroaxis and the allies, the losses you take, etc.
Most of the time, i dont think Italy should build that many LND3's - if any at all.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
I believe I will change from average/mean value to median value. That is, whether there are more or fewer air units in the force pool that are betterthan the lend lease air unit. When there are more, then the chances of randomly drawing an air unit that is better than the lend lease air unit is over 50%.

quote:

ORIGINAL: npilgaard

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
I believe I will change from average/mean value to median value. That is, whether there are more or fewer air units in the force pool that are betterthan the lend lease air unit. When there are more, then the chances of randomly drawing an air unit that is better than the lend lease air unit is over 50%.

You have probably considered this already, but with the median value you lose info about the quality of the units.
E.g: a force pool contains a number of very poor ac, and the rest (a larger number) is of average strength. With the median value you cannot 'see' whether the poorer ac are 'very poor' or just 'a little below average'.
When playing with PiF/pilots that is not to much of a problem, since there are lots of ac anyway, and the poor ac can just be kept off map if necessary, but if playing without PiF then each ac becomes more important, and drawing a very poor ac can actually mean something.
So with median value the draw becomes more 'chancy' it seems (?).

Same problem probably arises when a major power is to determine whichs units to build. I.e. it is worth building a LND3 compared to the quality of the ac that is likely to be built.

Don't know what solution to present - maybe include both mean value and median in the considerations.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Froonp

I saw comments about playing with or without PiF, but I seem to remember that MWiF will play with PiF all the time. Playing without PiF (or SiF) is not possible.

quote:

ORIGINAL: ptey

Here's another idea (that you probably already thought about). If fx. Germany have 1 great SS armor and 2 bad minor country armors in its forcepool, it should be considered if any of those 2 minor country armors will arrive when the minors are at the brink of being conquered by the allies. 4 turns build time can be long. The same consideration should ofcourse also be done for some majors (Italy and France mostly).

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets

quote:

ORIGINAL: ptey

Here's another idea (that you probably already thought about). If fx. Germany have 1 great SS armor and 2 bad minor country armors in its forcepool, it should be considered if any of those 2 minor country armors will arrive when the minors are at the brink of being conquered by the allies. 4 turns build time can be long. The same consideration should ofcourse also be done for some majors (Italy and France mostly).

A good point. I have a system in place about this for France and Itlay. I'll extend it to minor countries as well.

Another thing I have noticed I need to do in more detail is how to set up each minor country. And the set up may be different depending on the come in for the Axis or Allies.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Yes. Pilots are optional, but SiF and PiF are always in effect.

quote:

ORIGINAL: npilgaard

quote:

ORIGINAL: Shannon V. OKeets
Yes. Pilots are optional, but SiF and PiF are always in effect.

Ah, ok - thanks - that removes two of the (many, many...) variables to be taken into consideration.

(Any particular reason for this? - I can easily see that it helps regarding designing the AI, but otherwise it doesn't appear (at least on the surface ) to be much of a problem to include/exclude the PiF units, since all the non-PiF ac are in the game already.
This is not to re-open the discussion - I assume that it has been discussed at an earlier point. The reason I ask is that in the games I have played we have usually (like most others I guess) used PiF as standard, but in the latest game we are playing without PiF (we grew somewhat tired of the great fighter race, the large amount of BP spent on ac (meaning that some unit types were rarily seen in play), the large number of ac slowing things down in '44/'45, and the 'over-importance' of lba compared to CVs combined with the Air-to-Air combat systems bad design when doing large air battles with lots of ac (eg tons of Axis FTRs/NAVs in the 1/2-box in the Med during invasion of Italy, or huge stacks of CV and lba in 1-2 important sea areas near Japan in '44/'45) ), and it actually works very well with the somewhat fewer ac - matches the action limits, and each ac tend to mean more).

quote:

ORIGINAL: Zorachus99

A rule of thumb I often use is to not allow a minor into my forcepool as Germany unless I have plans to builds its (almost always) inferior units. Finland excepted due to the winterized value.

Also I tend to wait for Jan/Feb of a year to decare them as aligned if possible to get that free unit that comes up for most years. But that doesn't change my mind about allowing them into my forcepool and cluttering it with poor units.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Lothos

Why the bump to such an old thread in regards to AI?