Matrix Games Forums

ORIGINAL: MakeeLearn



VPs are so HOT!!!

ORIGINAL: Yaab

Seems the two VP locations were developed simultaneously to a healthy 4(4).

ORIGINAL: Revthought

I hate to break it to you, but take it from a data scientist--me--every unit we use to measure is arbitrary by definition. You could chose to read that pejoratively, and maybe you should because there is some truth to the critque, but if you do so you are also making a pejorative statement about how we chose to measure length, temperature, speed, voting behavior, etc.

So when I say, the system is arbitrary, it is because all systems of measurement are. The people who designed the system might have what they think are "good reasons" to use points to represent "victory conditions" in the way they do, but in the end there are literally an infinite number of other ways one could have chosen to measure victory.

And I will double down on my statement, even in front of the newbies:


If the claim is that the historical Allied victory would not be a "total victory" in WiTPAE is true, then I think the arbitrary system that was chosen to measure victory in the game does not adequately do what it claims to do. Of course, assuming that we, arbitrarily, use actual history as a litmus.

As always, players are free to play the game as they chose. It is, after all, a game. I can only tell you how I use victory points: I think they measure something, and I use them to gauge lots of things during game play, but "victory" is not one of them.

The fact is, I enjoy "re-playing" the war, but differently. Therefore, I ground the whole idea of victory in what I think would have been the war goals of the side I am playing. I never use auto victory, because in real Second World War, Japan was never going to get the Allies saying "uncle."

In reality, "victory" does not even matter to me. I am playing to "win the war," but not beat the other player. I am not competitive like that when it comes to games of this scope.

This does not mean other players should think like me, or are doing something wrong if they enjoy the competitive aspects of the game. That is fine; however, in regards to the original poster, I do not mind offering my viewpoint.

From my perspective, focusing on the game being "unfair" because you did "better" (by an arbitrary metric, because all metrics are arbitrary) than Japan did in World War Two, and you did not get a Japanese "victory" according to the victory point system, is not seeing the forest for the trees.

That is all.

ORIGINAL: Revthought

I hate to break it to you, but take it from a data scientist--me--every unit we use to measure is arbitrary by definition. You could chose to read that pejoratively, and maybe you should because there is some truth to the critque, but if you do so you are also making a pejorative statement about how we chose to measure length, temperature, speed, voting behavior, etc.

So when I say, the system is arbitrary, it is because all systems of measurement are. The people who designed the system might have what they think are "good reasons" to use points to represent "victory conditions" in the way they do, but in the end there are literally an infinite number of other ways one could have chosen to measure victory.

And I will double down on my statement, even in front of the newbies:


If the claim is that the historical Allied victory would not be a "total victory" in WiTPAE is true, then I think the arbitrary system that was chosen to measure victory in the game does not adequately do what it claims to do. Of course, assuming that we, arbitrarily, use actual history as a litmus.

As always, players are free to play the game as they chose. It is, after all, a game. I can only tell you how I use victory points: I think they measure something, and I use them to gauge lots of things during game play, but "victory" is not one of them.

The fact is, I enjoy "re-playing" the war, but differently. Therefore, I ground the whole idea of victory in what I think would have been the war goals of the side I am playing. I never use auto victory, because in real Second World War, Japan was never going to get the Allies saying "uncle."

In reality, "victory" does not even matter to me. I am playing to "win the war," but not beat the other player. I am not competitive like that when it comes to games of this scope.

This does not mean other players should think like me, or are doing something wrong if they enjoy the competitive aspects of the game. That is fine; however, in regards to the original poster, I do not mind offering my viewpoint.

From my perspective, focusing on the game being "unfair" because you did "better" (by an arbitrary metric, because all metrics are arbitrary) than Japan did in World War Two, and you did not get a Japanese "victory" according to the victory point system, is not seeing the forest for the trees.

That is all.

ORIGINAL: cavalry

OK thanks for all the comments and observations I can see many of you have thought about it a lot. I will propose in future games that the allied player should agree to take Tokyo(or something similar)as that was the allied plan I think... and use 3 A bombs to give me one notch in my favour Failure to take Tokyo by Aug 45 would be another level off.

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

Coming to the thread late, as it's probably reached its lifespan, but this perennial topic is always worth a swing. For newbies who haven't been through the VP wars anyway. When players I respect, such as Lokasenna and obvert, weigh in I figure why not add some gasoline to the fire.

There's a great legal term of art: "engaged in a frolic." It's found in the law of torts in the doctrine of respondeat superior. When an employee who is performing duties in the course of his employment commits a tort, his employer may be found liable under the doctrine. But if the employee departs from his duty--if he "engages in a frolic"--at a certain point his employer is no longer liable. Some of the case law is absolutely hilarious.

The analogy I'm about to make has nothing to do with the law of torts. I just think it's a great phrase.

When players of AE ignore the VP system, when they ignore the defined victory conditions, they are not playing the game. They are engaged in a frolic. It may be fun. It may be satisfying. But it's not a game. Games have winners and losers.

Football without points is large men running around a pasture. Golf without a card may be a nice walk, it may be an agreeable time with friends, it may be practice with the clubs, but it's not golf. Baseball without runs, soccer without goals, basketball without points--not games. Each sport in the Olympics has three winners; all others are losers. Even hide-and-go-seek has a winner and loser.

The game AE is most commonly compared to is chess. Chess is built around the concept of check and checkmate. A winner, a loser. That the idea of a king being killed, even as his wife was expendable, was abhorrent to the inventors is interesting, but whether by checkmate or surrender there's a winner. Imagine playing chess without checkmate. Sure, chess fans play out problems without it, often playing both sides. They probe strategies. They develop skills. But it's not a game of chess. Now imagine doing that for four years. Imagine thousands of new chess pieces that flow onto the board across those years. But still no winner. It's not chess.

So when AE players sniff at the VP system and the victory conditions, especially when they use terms like "arbitrary", they really don't get it. And they really aren't playing the game.

Same as chess, AE is built around the victory conditions. And when you play under them and recognize VPs, you begin to see GG's and Henderson Field's genius. The OP asked if they are balanced. Yes. A thousand times yes. Unlike chess, AE is tremendously asymmetrical. "Japan can't win the war" has been said so many times here it's trite. (It's also not true if non-equally-matched players are involved.) But Japan can win the game. I know this as it happened to me. In stellar fashion. An auto-victory on 1/1/43. A great learning experience.

The victory conditions are genius because they are varied and also stratified. In many wargames territory is paramount. Stand on it on the last turn and you get victory progress. But AE expands well past that simple premise. By awarding VPs for many other activities the game allows for a range of game styles. It isn't mandatory that the Allies strat bomb the HI to win. It helps, but there are other ways. Japan can defend different vectors than historical. It can turtle. It can invade India. It can massively blow out its air force and roll the late-war dice. And inside that, the game also weights VPs. It's not an accident that a dead Japan device is worth only half the VPs of most Allied devices. It's not an accident that a dead Chinese device is worth half a Japanese. Or that a 4E bomber is worth twice what a 2E is worth. Or that a DD with a crew of 300 is worth only 5X what a 4E bomber is, with ten crew and lot less manufacturing. The OP asked about balance. There it is.

Beyond that, as Lokasenna pointed out, the bases are carefully weighted in stock to guide the balance objective. Look, for one example of hundreds, at Soerbaja and Batavia. Close to each other; same island even. Both large. But one has oil and the other resources. One has a big shipyard; the other does not. Now look at the VPs. Huge difference. With the "more attractive", to the Allies at least, less valuable. And the higher VP bag is "west" (in AE map terms), and not "north", toward the HI and the inner perimeter. So the Allied player has a decision to make. A trade-off analysis. Remove VPs though, and there's no incentive at all to go for Batavia.

Decisions like this are all over the VP system. Two more that frolickers miss. First, the decision to build up base infrastructure. Each base has escalators built into its VP total. They vary widely. For bases like Canberra or Noumea the base value when fully built out is multiples of its core VP value. Are these numbers accidents? Arbitrary? Not at all. For Japan they represent constant decisions. Build now and get the benefit of the port and AF? But also give the Allied player "free" VPs when he inevitably takes the base? Without VPs it's an easy decision.

Second, the victory system's provision that bases, to earn their full VPs, be in supply. In our game, I sometimes see Lokasenna's Japan VPs jump in Tracker, and I think "The train just got to Chungking." On one turn with no real fighting my VPs jumped about 200 points, and he said, "You just re-supplied Noumea." And he was right. Why does that matter? Well, the supply generated by LI and HI and refineries in stock is predicated on that mechanism. It really matters for Japan, especially late game. To stay afloat in VP terms, Japan has to position supply on bases that they may otherwise wish to leave as unsupplied shells. In a frolic "game" there's no pressure to do that. All of that supply is available to Japan to fight with. The intent of the designers is circumvented. The careful calibration is overturned.

There are a lot of other reasons to play the game with attention to VPs. And, despite claims otherwise, players who play the game and don't frolic are not all steely-eyed madmen obsessed with wringing out every VP available in the code, gaming the system and laughing maniacally as they do so. Same as with checkmate, VPs and the victory conditions are a discipline measure, the "spine" of the game as it were. Not the whole body.

As I said above, I offer this to newbies primarily. Those who read veteran players say, well, all the "stuff" they say about VPs and victory conditions and auto-victory and don't know what to think. I would say, try it. If you really don't like it, drop them. But don't frolic as a first pass. The VPs tick up and down no matter what. You can start paying attention in even long-established, in-progress games.

ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget

The Allied "Downfall" plan for the invasion of Japan consisted of two parts:

Operation Olympic: invasion of Southern Kyushu in November 1945, staging from Okinawa

Operation Coronet: invasion of the Kantō Plain near Tokyo in March 1946, covered by airpower based on bases in Southern Kyushu

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget

The Allied "Downfall" plan for the invasion of Japan consisted of two parts:

Operation Olympic: invasion of Southern Kyushu in November 1945, staging from Okinawa

Operation Coronet: invasion of the Kantô Plain near Tokyo in March 1946, covered by airpower based on bases in Southern Kyushu

Ah, I was only thinking of Olympic and have never really taken Coronet that seriously as plans change often when doing something new for the second time after you've done it for the first time (invading Japan itself was going to be a mostly-new beast)... although with something of that scale, perhaps not.

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: LargeSlowTarget

The Allied "Downfall" plan for the invasion of Japan consisted of two parts:

Operation Olympic: invasion of Southern Kyushu in November 1945, staging from Okinawa

Operation Coronet: invasion of the Kantô Plain near Tokyo in March 1946, covered by airpower based on bases in Southern Kyushu

Ah, I was only thinking of Olympic and have never really taken Coronet that seriously as plans change often when doing something new for the second time after you've done it for the first time (invading Japan itself was going to be a mostly-new beast)... although with something of that scale, perhaps not.

Me too. Given the war-weariness in the US, the availability of more A-bombs toward the end of the Olympic timeline as well as incendiaries dropped by the re-deployed ETO air forces, and the vast ground casualties Olympic would have already caused to the Allies, I think that, failing a Japanese surrender, Japan would have been extinguished from a distance from the air, while the USN put a solid cordon around the HI. What the Soviets did in Asia is another matter, but I don't think Truman could have sold Coronet to the public.

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna




Ah, I was only thinking of Olympic and have never really taken Coronet that seriously as plans change often when doing something new for the second time after you've done it for the first time (invading Japan itself was going to be a mostly-new beast)... although with something of that scale, perhaps not.

Me too. Given the war-weariness in the US, the availability of more A-bombs toward the end of the Olympic timeline as well as incendiaries dropped by the re-deployed ETO air forces, and the vast ground casualties Olympic would have already caused to the Allies, I think that, failing a Japanese surrender, Japan would have been extinguished from a distance from the air, while the USN put a solid cordon around the HI. What the Soviets did in Asia is another matter, but I don't think Truman could have sold Coronet to the public.

Not even considering the US side of things, the Japanese would likely have capitulated after Olympic brought home the futility of further resistance.

When you've expended 70% of your armaments stockpile and failed to hold the island, it takes a real degree of extremism to fight on.

IJ High Command had it's fair share of fanatics, but they were absolutely in the minority and the exceptionally dire circumstances of the Japanese position post-Olympic would be enough to motivate the otherwise indifferent moderates in to action.

ORIGINAL: BBfanboy

ORIGINAL: mind_messing

ORIGINAL: Bullwinkle58




Me too. Given the war-weariness in the US, the availability of more A-bombs toward the end of the Olympic timeline as well as incendiaries dropped by the re-deployed ETO air forces, and the vast ground casualties Olympic would have already caused to the Allies, I think that, failing a Japanese surrender, Japan would have been extinguished from a distance from the air, while the USN put a solid cordon around the HI. What the Soviets did in Asia is another matter, but I don't think Truman could have sold Coronet to the public.

Not even considering the US side of things, the Japanese would likely have capitulated after Olympic brought home the futility of further resistance.

When you've expended 70% of your armaments stockpile and failed to hold the island, it takes a real degree of extremism to fight on.

IJ High Command had it's fair share of fanatics, but they were absolutely in the minority and the exceptionally dire circumstances of the Japanese position post-Olympic would be enough to motivate the otherwise indifferent moderates in to action.

Not so sure about that - based on Western nation experience in Afghanistan over about two centuries, people whose homeland has been invaded will fight back in ways that render the invader's firepower mostly ineffective. If I were a WWII GI, I would have much trepidation about entering the narrow alleys of Japanese cities. Sharp sticks can kill too.