Clear Axis Advantage

[BSWEN]

After many games in the platinum league, its clear to me that the Axis have way to big of an advantage right out of the gate against Russia. I believe that the Gen Con rules have fixed most of the issues in the Atlantic but Russia is far to weak. This is corroborated during tournaments which always have "bids" giving the Aliies up to 20+ starting IPC's because of the disadvantage. The two major problems i see are:

1) India UK are unable to do anything other then build three defensive units all game and trade Burma back and forth due to the large starting navy of Japan and Japans starting sea zones being so large that they can strike up and down the coast without having to commit anything. India units move out and its immediate death to India in the hands of a good Axis player. SLIGHTLY weakening the Japanese navy in the indian and/or pacific would force japan to build a few boats giving the UK some space and a chance at survival if the US invest in the Pacific to help.

2) biggest problem by far is that Russia doesn't not have enough starting troops to hold off a solid Axis player for more than a few rounds. I propose to add more starting infantry units in Russia zones other than zones that can directly affect Germany on Turn 1. These are reinforcement infantry and will help Russia hold onto a few more territories for a a few additional turns which will help balance the starting game. Russia will still be wiped out by Germany if the allies don't help.

For the Devs. please post the win/loss percentage in the Platinum division for the Axis and Allies. i believe it will be revealing..

[Izraador]

I totally agree. Germany always takes the victory of Karellia, then their tanks absolutely devour the rest of USSR. You can entirely surround Moskow and Caucaus without losing too much. The point about India is also very true, often the game for UK will consist of either getting blockaded off the bat or trading Burma back and forth. Occasionally there's Japanese player that just doesn't know how to use transports and you can hold off.

[MisterG]

I primarily play Allies as plat, and there is no question that it's challenging to play Russia against a skilled and aggressive Axis player trying to take Moscow as quickly as possible. I do think seeing the win/loss for for Axis vs Allies at Plat level would be interesting, but I'm skeptical that it is skewed more than 5 or 10 percent. I have maintained a solidly positive win/loss ratio as Allies and I find that Russia can typically hold out for a long time with some conservative play with mostly infantry buys after making R1 attacks on Ukraine and Western Russia and adding a fighter or two... unless the opening attack on Ukraine is a debacle, in which case it is really hard to recover and can lead to the early loss of Caucasus and/or German strat bombing of Moscow early on, either of which can really be a problem. On India, I successfully break out of India all the time versus Japan, it's not that hard unless the US is not putting any pressure on Japan. Building a few tanks and/or artillery in the India factory instead of just infantry allows India to be a powerful offensive base when the time is right. In the end, each turn that goes by, the less the opening setup matters to the outcome and the more the choices of what to buy where matter.

[Focus1984]

Following

[O Lucky Day O]

This is a pretty concrete fact for 1942SE at this point.

The game is nearly 10 years old and has always been heavily Axis favored in both the out of the box and LH rules. I don't know that anyone plays seriously for balance between the sides without bidding.

[BSWEN]

Considering this game does not have bidding and I doubt it will ever be added it would be nice to get the game balanced. I dislike the concept of bidding anyway as I think it’s just a cop out to actually putting some time into balancing things. Wish LH would spend more balancing this game. Probably the only way we’re going to see it ever get done. Love the game though, especially the epic long games of 10+ turns. That’s where the true fun in this game lies IMHO.

[aardvarkpepper]

Bids allow variation. You get a single static setup, it gets analyzed, then everyone just goes through the optimized decision tree.

[O Lucky Day O]

Originally posted by Mons:

Considering this game does not have bidding and I doubt it will ever be added it would be nice to get the game balanced. I dislike the concept of bidding anyway as I think it’s just a cop out to actually putting some time into balancing things. Wish LH would spend more balancing this game. Probably the only way we’re going to see it ever get done. Love the game though, especially the epic long games of 10+ turns. That’s where the true fun in this game lies IMHO.

I think I'd disagree, bidding is likely to be added to this edition some day.

Bidding is a concept that works within the construct of using it in the store bought version (i.e. I could buy the game off the shelf and use bidding with no extra materials). It has also been promoted and used in other licensed versions that Wizards of the Coast has released, Game Table Online being one.

The road map for this game and the developer goal seems clear in not adding features or balance to the game that would not fit with the retail release, I assume per the licensing agreement they have.

Bidding is the most suitable and flexible way to balance this game. If there was an agreed upon rule set and initial board starting positions, players would be using it exclusively and it would have surfaced years ago.

Larry Harris doesn't work for Hasbro any more as far as I know. The LH rule set was added to this edition I assume because it's the quickest solution to the problem (the base game is at a severe imbalance). I wouldn't guess he's actively working on a balance for this edition, since players have decided that bid is the standard.

[Focus1984]

I'd love to see bidding added. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard of an option to add??

[Julius Borisov]

Hello! In October 2019, we released the following stats:

"Since launch, we have been keeping an eye on statistics for the win and loss ratios for both factions:

1942 2nd Edition out of the Box (Online Games)
Allies Win Rate: 35%
Axis Win Rate: 65%

Larry Harris Gencon v3.0 (Online Games)
Allies Win Rate: 45%
Axis Win Rate: 55%"

https://www.beamdog.com/news/Patch-5-Turning-Point/

So with the Gencon setup, the Axis advantage is not big, but yes, it's there.

Personally, I can recommend custom games where you decide not to do combat during Round 1. It can address the balance issue. For that, you need to talk to all the players outside the game (probably via the Discord channel).

For ranked games, the rankings for Axis and Allies are separate, so the balance issue is not affecting the rankings in any way.


We have feature requests logged in (re/bidding) but have no information to share. We're exploring alternative ways of balancing the game through additional starting configurations or other game setup options.

[BSWEN]

Thanks for the reply! I think that’s great that you guys are considering taking the step and changing the start up configuration a bit. I look forward to hearing what you guys come up with very much. The community appreciates all the feedback that you give us Julius.

[GreaT_Cornholio]

Originally posted by Julius Borisov:

Hello! In October 2019, we released the following stats:

Larry Harris Gencon v3.0 (Online Games)
Allies Win Rate: 45%
Axis Win Rate: 55%"

to me this is pretty fair cause how would it ever be literally 50/50?

[aardvarkpepper]

Originally posted by ThunderKat:

Originally posted by Julius Borisov:

Hello! In October 2019, we released the following stats:

Larry Harris Gencon v3.0 (Online Games)
Allies Win Rate: 45%
Axis Win Rate: 55%"

to me this is pretty fair cause how would it ever be literally 50/50?

with bids

[gbelle]

And what would be a fair bid your estimation? 12 for 4 extra inf? I can see how that bid would completely change shift the % in the other way. Possibly even farther off a 5 % difference. Unless there would be a bid placement rule of only 1 added unit per territory.

[aardvarkpepper]

Originally posted by gbelle:

And what would be a fair bid your estimation? 12 for 4 extra inf? I can see how that bid would completely change shift the % in the other way. Possibly even farther off a 5 % difference. Unless there would be a bid placement rule of only 1 added unit per territory.

adjustable bid with static placement rules (e.g. one per territory in which there's already a unit belonging to the placing power) is used, meta adjusts and adapts, new bid used &c. bid isn't supposed to be fixed.

bid also allows handicap matches &c.

[Focus1984]

Thanks for the reply dev.

I don't think you even need static placement rules. Competitive bidding will allow allied players to bid what they think is right. Dev stats on bids would give us an idea of what those bids tend to look like. Personally, within Larry Harris, I'd feel pretty good bidding two infantry.