From: barich@bach.udel.edu (Dewey H Barich)
Subject: Re: A&A: how much time do you have?
Keywords: A&A
Organization: University of Delaware
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 18:15:25 GMT

In article <goudswaa.718272679@sfu.ca> goudswaa@fraser.sfu.ca (Peter Goudswaard) writes:
>Regarding Eric Mullins' guide to crushing Germany, interesting piece of work.
>You know guys, I don't know *how* you can reply to these so quickly!  Hey
>Dewey, I read all your responses, gawd, you're pretty active, guy!  Late
>nights?  Or do you have an A&A board set up at work/school?

Well, I work late nights (10pm-2am three to four nights a week), though
I don't read and post unless I can spare the time.  I am pretty active,
but only in the sense that I never sleep (average of 5 hours a night).
High metabolism or something :-)    I don't have the board with me, but I do
have it in my head.  It's rather disgusting, actually.  When I play
games via e-mail, I don't have to keep track on paper (I do, of course),
I just remember the setup after each turn.  Me thinks I play the game
too much!  But, I like it.

>BTW, no one commented on the post I made about the pictures on the back
>of the A&A box -- old news?  Sorry.  Must be before my time, at least
>a year in this group.  But I still think it would be interesting to
>find out the pre-production rules to A&A, and why they didn't work,
>or what changes they made.

Saw the post, I've been wanting to look at my box.  The game used to be
a product of (correct me if I'm wrong) Nova.  I'm not sure how long ago,
but I have the impression it's at least 2 decades ago (within a few
years?).  Anyway, their rules were actually rather different, and what
you see is probably a step in the transition.  The Nova game had nuclear
weapons, which could be bought and carried on bombers that would then
not come home.  The germans could designate an armor unit as a panzer on
each turn, which increased the attack factor.  All this was posted maybe
1.5 to 2 years ago...

>I've been collecting various strategies and testing them out against
>each other, and finding out which are crap, and which work sometimes.
>One thing I did learn quickly was that there is no single strategy
>that will work everytime.  I think it's hilarious when some newbie
>posts "hey, carriers for Russia wins everytime!".

Exactly.  I've seen a bunch of strategies.  Only one recently has given
me trouble and the solution I came up with was the exact opposite of the
intuitive solution.  Even predicting outcomes was useless.
Experimenting is the key!

>I really hate being such a lurker, but I really never have time to
>analyze the strategies, only collect them for later (manual) analysis
>and playtesting.  So who is it who has the program that fights multiple
>battles and gives odds?

It's me!  Along with a friend. It's a simple program.  It asks what the
attacking units are, what the defending units are, and how many times to
run the battle (When time permits, I go for 10000.  1000 should be more
than enough, but occasionally you get a battle that's close enough that
it takes a larger population to produce close enough results when
repeated.  Navy battles, for some reason (a wider variety of attack and
defense factors?) take more repetitions).

Also, the program keeps track of how many units of each type survive
when that side wins.  So, for example, if the USSR attacks Ukraine on
turn one with 8 infantry and 3 armor, it should take and hold the
territory with 4 infantry and the armor.  The success rate is rather
high (over 90% as I recall -- I'll run it and check).

Well, I guess that's it.  I'll talk to you later!

Dewey