Desert Dave

And let's not forget the snake-bitten, old testament, chariot stricken Egyptians. Actually, empiric-rational-logical-linear Science does NOT have ANY answers to metaphysical wonderings and yearnings. They may have interesting observations -- as individuals, but not as practicing scientists. When we are afflicted, or in dire straits, or deathly pale or accosted by riders on mighty pale horses -- who is that we beseech? The Scientist? Or the Priest, Minister, Shaman, Curandero, Guru, Rishi, Ancient Medicine Dispensers, etc? They mostly say that such & such a "miracle" is either coincidence or invalid due to inadequate evidence, or they refuse to acknowledge so-called superstition at all, which is surely an indication that those particular "cult-ists," are rather... ignorant, yes? What is deigned inexplicable, whether assigned to the clock-work machinations of a posited "god" or no, is and remains exactly that, just as almost every theory I have ever heard (excluding a VERY FEW in the realm of physics and biology) is ALSO nothing but speculation -- pretty sound and negatively verifiable speculation, but speculation nonetheless. But, these theories must be constantly updated according to ever-new evidence, yes? Does "god" interfere in the trivial doings of the human? :eek: Maybe. Probably not an awful much, but there is no way anyone can prove to me that this is NOT true. Any more than I can prove otherwise, so we are tied up -- all even Mr Scorekeeper, and not me or other intutive/superstitious folks one "touch" down with the clock running out. So, did God send tremendous thunder & lightning the trembling night of the Armada -- Spanish or Allied or Axis? Oh sure, could have... (... sorry, just a few lazy Sunday sorts of thoughts...)

Disagree Bill -- Britain should NOT be allowed to build in Alexandria, though I would favor some ANZAC Corps arrivals now and then. As earlier surmised, this could be random and once a yearly, and better if this also includes Suez City so to provide greater rationale for Axis even bothering with the area. If Britain plans ahead, they can have Montgomery and a tank detachment in Egypt BEFORE Italy even enters and those bristling U-boats are any tentacled menace. Otherwise, the unrealistically realized Brit units would have the advantage of HQ enhancement. The minor armies naturally would not. In addition, the Axis U-boats would not have a chance to intercept the deployment, which should happen IF around-the-Horn movement is eventually implemented. However, I do agree with you that German units should not be built in captured, size-5+ cities, but should only be "operated" there. Even if you allow for conscripted/enslaved foreign legions, this current set-up probably allows too much of an inexpensive reinforcement.

First of all, quite thoughtful comments on many of the problematical aspects of this game (... as befitting an attorney from Cleveland, a middling lake & loam land wherein my much beloved Indian baseball club gambols and... sometimes misses the long elusive World Series victory -- by ONE SINGLE LAST STRIKE... perhaps due to once upon a time being christened -- "The Spiders"...) :cool: As for tech, I have always argued for allowing the probabilities to have their whimsic say. Sure enough it is a relatively small sample size, but the anomaly caused by outliers is going to be fairly rare, and is cause for a learning opportunity (or, on-the-fly change in strategy) and NOT an occasion for wondering how we may have offended the gods. I agree however that some moderation is in order, and proposed limiting research to 3 per area. I now also coincide with your thinking, in that there should be some penalty for switching to another area (... after all, there is some resemblance and synergy, in that general empiric-technic tasks have similar underpinnings, BUT not completely). Therefore I suggest that the cost be one-half of original investment, so that you pay 125 MPPs to switch. We must remember that the play-testing has balanced the game in such a way as to account for the early Axis advantage. If we now curtail that early "blitz-ability," then we certainly must go back and adjust other game-play factors so that the Allies are not now even MORE favored, yes?

Fair points and a good sound rejoinder all around. :cool: Yes, it is a small sample size, so some immoderate events will occur. I would actually favor limiting the investment to 3 per area, and maybe another simple, easy to code "governor," but am uncertain at the moment which might be best. I kind of like those arguments already advanced that propose some sort of cost to upgrade existent field units, but that is probably beyond the pale for this version of SC? (My knowledge of computer software coding is nearly NIL.) I have concluded that I was being a bit drastic after all -- too much caffeine this morning perhaps. Playing the devil's advocate in part, but also surely convinced that the game does need some random elements so to insure replayability.

Or even, the Mississippi summers, when the heat is akin to a velvet fist.

And what of all the many many millions of Americans who believe in a Higher -- Being, Power, Essence... WITHOUT also believing that the Higher Whatever -- DOES interfere in the tiny & mundane doings of the various human colonies? Or, who believe that post-modern reductionism and easy to please Irony -- is now, and really should be -- passe? Or, who believe that mighty coastal artillery and daring P-38s and citizen soldiers with their lanterns and broomsticks are an illusion? As, the transports out of the Atlantic mist, are an illusion? In the way of the Buddha or cyclic reasoning bhikkhu? What then? (... it is the sound of one hand clapping, sorry, but that's all that anyone needs... ) [ September 06, 2002, 03:25 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

It is indeed. Until map is enlarged (... what a short happy trip it's been, eh Papa Fritz?) this option is frivolous and, as Les the Sarge has said, out of the realm of reasonable possibility and therefore MERELY gamey. Could the Axis have invaded through other places, such as Mexico, or set up bases in Cuba or Bermuda? Yes. IF Germany had soundly beaten Russia and reached a political consensus about VASTLY upgrading the Kreigsmarine. To include countless transports and carriers and trained marines. So what are we looking at -- 1947, 48? Out of the scope of this game surely. But IMO, as currently constituted, taking a sliver of the East Coast would not have "conquered" America anyway. When the map is significantly larger, then it would be a fair encounter, but not until then.

Disagree. Somewhat. If you allow Britain to muster troops in Alexandria, they will (or should) quickly over-run the Med land areas. True, there should be some mechanism to allow Commonwealth troops from India, NZ, Australia, South Africa, BUT -- it could only be done IF there was some limitation applied. Previous I had suggested a random, once a year reinforcement (or, may not arrive at all) of one corps -- say from '41 to '44. This could take the form of a minor (... no HQ assistance) army that cannot be rebuilt and that would have less offensive capabilities. Also, adding Suez City with around the Horn, time-bound movement would be something to consider in order to allow Britain some (much delayed) relief. Otherwise, you have unfairly un-balanced the power in the Med and given Britain too much potential power. Perhaps those in favor are sitting and smoking a corn-cob pipe in the Allied commander's chair?

Selecting research areas, and how much to invest are all part of the "grand strategy." You choose to be risk-taking, or not. The results, along our symmetrical continuum, can be fairly reliably predicted. Therefore, it is not a gamey tactic, and is not disruptive to the outcome. What it is -- disbelief! grief! Job in the throes! woe-is-poor-pitiful-me!!... when we LOSE, BUT... right on! I AM that I am -- like the butterfly boxer Mohammed Ali -- the greatest !and wisest! (... luck? Pshaw, had NOTHING to do with it... )

I guess I am in the other camp, the one with flimsy tent flaps and a piddling mud puddle instead of an Oasis, so OK -- why? Luck arrives -- not willy-nilly and anthropomorphized as a fickle and capricious Greek God, but -- statistically, along a symmetrical "bell-curve," with MOST of the chance encounters bunched in the middle, and a gradually sloping curve until you reach, possibly, some outliers. In other words, there will be very few games when one side gets all the advances, and the other only a few. In the vast majority of games, each player will have roughly the same advances -- over the defined time span, as the other fellow. That's a statistical FACT, NOT the exception to the rule. I favor the current set-up (... though, I wouldn't quibble about seeing a small limitation -- which could easily be a house-rule, such as no more than 3 or 4 investments in any one area) and am not put off by the occasional "outlier." Let's take a hypothetical: Player A is of average tactical ability, whereas Player B is more experienced, and takes more time to complete each turn, and so is -- dedicated to success. Player B gets slightly less (... remember this is the norm, not the exception) tech, while Player A, the less talented one, is smiled on voluptuously by ol' gamin-eyed Lady Luck (... though he may well be more Empirical and less Superstitious and so he will disdainfully disregard her whimsies, chalking it up to his OWN fast improving skill). And so, the game is equalized. On any given day, like they say, yes? :cool: Or, Player A gets LESS tech than hapless, unsmiled upon Player B. Now his troubles are magnified, and so he loses, and he loses his satin shirt and his gargoyle socks and the actual twinkle in his eye, alas. So? If he is self protective, he says -- DADGUM IT! the ONLY reason I lost is 'cuz that other Cat got better tech! If he is disinterested in safeguarding his self-esteem, he says -- ho hum, that Evil Opponent got me this time, BUT, ruff-ruff, every dog has his day. The point is that we NEED to have variability in a game that is so very limited in terms of what can be done over a 5-6 year span. You invade Poland, you do Scandinavia, you blitz the low countries, etc, etc, etc, etc. So one game the other evil fellow got level 5 jets within 2 years and you, MOMENTARILY plucked naked and out of luck, got zilch -- what to do? Well, surely you have gotten (or surely will get) a few advances of your own (... unless you are a social outcast or a statistical outlier) and must maximize what that particular advance or two has provided you -- an OPPORTUNITY, and NOT -- a reason to curse the screen and give up. You might switch a few points to Air, or Air Defense or -- change your Grand Strategy altogether! Again, you must adjust and go with the flow. Rather than worrying about your particular place on the hiearchy (... begin beaten by what you consider a lesser opponent or lesser god, implies that you care to be higher or better than the status quo or the norm), you might learn from the occasion and eventually do better. We needn't win every time, do we? To sum it up. I have no concern for the occasional strange game -- it can be instructive. Most of the encounters, however, WILL fall within narrow parameters given the nature of probability. In any event, there are other factors always at work and play, and it may well have been one of those that caused all my troubles... or, all my success. In either case, and appreciating that a game is meant to provide fun & leisure, why worry about it?

Well, it seems as though your opponent has encountered vast misfortune somewhere along the road -- too much tech investment without adequate return, or a series of bad dice rolls, or not enough Sturm & Blitz. The German player right at the outset of Barbarossa (... France as well -- true Good Soldier Svejk, you CAN blast holes through the old guard grognards... )MUST attack and attack and move lightning fast. :cool: If you allow the Russian player time to clog up the tundra with untold no-name corps, then you are already in the process of defeat -- better to begin the long march home sooner as wait until later when all the daffodils are pale and wilted. This is not WWI nor a leisurely stroll along Disney World walkways -- get the forward leaning Wehrmacht stoked up! and choked with experience and the ME 109s & Stukas spitting mad, else you really have no chance. Pretty nice little Queensbury punch & parry ain't gonna get it.

Presumably a HQ would have more resources to draw upon than your ordinary unit, such as new troops being sent to front-line armies, and other assorted last-ditch staff defenders, such as MPs, cooks, clerks, brass polishers, etc, so it seems reasonable that the HQ could muster more strength (... plus, it was likely very well protected to start with -- no General is going to camp out without some close-by reserve to call upon... ).

Update: Last two pbem turns, I DID NOT delete any files first, and -- I WAS able to type in the password on the first try, so somehow (... small sample size -- I'll keep checking) these two are related in H.A.L.'s -- impeccable mind...

Interesting approach, but I like the idea of random tech advances since it makes each game unique. :cool: Or, in order to make the effects less wild and haphazard, you could have a house rule with your opponent, as I have done. The issue of cheating is not an issue for me (... I try not to worry over things I cannot control; if someone beats me 9 times in a row, then I will briefly wonder, but otherwise... ), but I can see where and why you would be concerned. Tone it down a bit? Perhaps. But not to the extent that each game resembles every other.

Thanks. :cool: I played two more PBEM turns today, and the first time I COULD successfully type in the password, but -- the next time, once again I could not. And now, the alt-tab sequence does not function. The only way to work it, is to cancel the password box, and try again. BTW, sometimes I will delete old PBEM game files before I try to load the incoming file, and sometimes not -- I haven't yet noticed if this action has some relation to the other problems? [ September 02, 2002, 02:57 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

Hubert, perhaps this belongs in the Tech section, but since the topic is PBEM passwords... What happens is this: when the pop-up box for entering your password comes up, I cannot type in the password -- when I work the keys, nothing happens, nothing appears on the sign-line. So, I cancel the box, and try again, and NOW it accepts my password -- but, ALWAYS refuses the first time, and ALWAYS works the second time. :confused: Used to be, I could not get the pop-up box announcing -- "use your alt-tab to close..." to work, I had to hit the "escape" key. Now, this seems to mostly work, but the other problem persists. I am inclined to think first of gremlins, but that is hardly empirical and accepted as a post-modern rationale -- any ideas? (... this is not critical, the games go on without interruption, just wanted to let you know about a minor quirk on my system -- 1 year old computer with ME op sys, with all the up to date components, etc, but I have had no other difficulties thus far... )

Hubert, perhaps this belongs in the Tech section, but since the topic is PBEM passwords... What happens is this: when the pop-up box for entering your password comes up, I cannot type in the password -- when I work the keys, nothing happens, nothing appears on the sign-line. So, I cancel the box, and try again, and NOW it accepts my password -- but, ALWAYS refuses the first time, and ALWAYS works the second time. :confused: Used to be, I could not get the pop-up box announcing -- "use your alt-tab to close..." to work, I had to hit the "escape" key. Now, this seems to mostly work, but the other problem persists. I am inclined to think first of gremlins, but that is hardly empirical and accepted as a post-modern rationale -- any ideas? (... this is not critical, the games go on without interruption, just wanted to let you know about a minor quirk on my system -- 1 year old computer with ME op sys, with all the up to date components, etc, but I have had no other difficulties thus far... )

Wise advice CvM, but... once you were practicing precise, and now backsliding a mite -- that is H.A.L., whom, we might recall, has uncountable friends in high and low places, not to mention an impeccable memory... And even ol' dark-heart adventuring Joseph Conrad should be wary of misappreciating the surreal and life-lethal ether... well, where did all the fabulous story tellers go? As EA Poe's sill & bust-sitting crow and Kafka with his metamorphed insect and Hawthorne aboard his "Celestial Railroad." Not to omit -- horror smote Joe? Is it that the 8 Continents, like impetuous missionary heads, have been shrunk... or is it? that the pale imaginations have -- too soon faced an... Outer Space, but not confronting any longer -- the really, REALLY treacherous foe -- the shadow-baned inner wilderness places? Come back and say how it is Joe! Tell us if -- the time for indelicate, indecent, deep & dark Psyche exploration -- isn't once again -- nigh! :eek:

Pithy and to the precise point. Seneca would be more than proud, he would exhibit a rare emotion and venture the very briefest and very slightest of smiles. (... ...)

Pithy and to the precise point. Seneca would be more than proud, he would exhibit a rare emotion and venture the very briefest and very slightest of smiles. (... ...)

Yay! Yay! Hooooor-ray! The Peanut Man at Wrigley Field, Chicago USA is Twirling out them behind-the-back goober bags, As we speak! The ball-players are going to stoop to play, That piddly 2.4 mill average salary -- didn't Get in their ever-lovin' way! O say, Yay! Yay! Hooooor-ray! (... now Hubert can get back in on the Toronto Blue Jay negotiations, and make of this team... a Terrific Turquoise Fury!... :cool: .... yay.)

Interesting problem, and good points all around. There are roughly 20 hexes stretching from just below Marsailles to the Low Countries, so at a cost of -- what? 100 MPP each (... assuming at least Industrial Tech 2), that would be an investment of -- 2000 MPPs! just to forestall an invasion of... ONLY France! Leaving Norway (... maybe Sweden), Spain/Portugal, Balkans, North Afrika, and Italy -- which likely are quite lightly defended. (I don't know what the AI would do if confronted with this problem because I have never tried it). This is probably a moot point anyway, since the Axis really cannot afford to defend every possible landing hex and ALSO defeat Russia, can they? If Russia is on the ropes or already defeated, then it seems to me there is no reason to do this -- it is time for more powerful offensive forces for a late Sea Lion. So let's assume that Axis can do almost miraculous Speer-assisted production. Most games, I have seen the Allied AI with 7-8 (or more) Air Fleets in southern England by summer of '43, AND they have extensive experience due to constantly bombarding cities and corps, AND they have equally experienced supporting HQs AND very often -- level 12 or 13 planes. This alone might suggest that they could take out at least 2 or 3 beach-defenders on any one turn -- and if Russia is still putting up the good fight, can the Axis really afford the defensive Air Fleets necessary to help prevent this? And having spent that 2000 MPP for Fortress Corps Europa, how could they have also built a strong enough Kreigsmarine to sink any of the oncoming waves of transports? PBEM may well introduce new variations on this strategy, and I would be very interested to hear any AARs on this.

Usually no later than July-August of '41. Sooner if the dice rolls are fortuitious. (... due to commitments, I'll be off line from Now! -- gotta go! until tomorrow, but will check then... ) [ August 29, 2002, 12:22 PM: Message edited by: Immer Etwas ]

Welcome back! V 1.03 Expert +2. All options in favor of the Allies, though mostly I play without Free French. On average, Russia holds on until about July-August '43 (... and 2nd Front always fails due to premature? France landings -- and Italians have become too strong in Med, so that narrows and complicates Allied intentions -- maybe the Allies are preparing another invasion, but by that time it is usually too late).

In a recent game I discovered that the Russian AI WILL put up a pretty stout defense of the Urals, but still seems not to care about all of those resources in the Caucasus region (only one corps in the entire area). The AI held off the German onslaught in the Urals for a good while because they had built a few corps, which were extremely difficult to dislodge from the mountains. Problem was, the front line consisted mostly of HQs, with high entrenchment levels -- maybe the corps could be on placed on the mountains, and the HQs shielded behind? If the Russian AI would also employ this kind of tactic in the Caucasus you would delay the end-game even more. The Russians should get gradually stronger, as long as they can hold on, so the reduction of MPPs by half once Moscow is surrounded really hurts them (... and results in gamey strategies). Maybe this could be re-considered? Anything to give the Western Allies more time to establish and break out of the 2nd Front would help.