Anybody here like playing Axis and Allies Anniversary Edition?

[Sailor Steve]

Originally Posted by SteamWake

Holy cow I think I paid like 20 bucks for a copy of A&A many years ago and thought that was alot.

I remember when it was released, and played it once with a friend. I wouldn't pay $20 for it. Kid's game. About the same time the same friend bought World In Flames. Now that was a strategic board game! On the other hand it needs lots of friends and lots of patience.

[Castout]

Originally Posted by the_tyrant

Just play the computer game already

The following I learned just by playing ONE boardgame called Shogun, a German game with Japanese theme
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/20551/shogun

That one game has taught me ALL the following:

1. It has taught me to always be under the blanket in life pursuit and not to attract unwanted attention or threaten the enemy confidence that all of them would make some sort of unspoken deal to deal with you first and foremost PERSONALLY denying you victory no matter what. Do not make the enemy fear you or present an image of supremacy early in game! Stay low.
2. It has taught me that it is paramount to understand the enemy and try to guess his mind and plan and act accordingly to outmaneuver and thus surprise and outwit and defeat him by using his own plan to help you.
3. It's wise to appear weak and uninteresting with regard to possessions to the enemy so to distract him to other more worthy pursuit and other players. Give no reason why downing you is rewarding to him or present an impression that it is uninteresting and hardly rewarding to fight you. Make your possessions unregarded. Nobody would want anything that is not interesting and unrewarding
4. Draw your enemy when you need to. Set up trap. Present bait for him to take if he's static.
5. Make contingency always make contingency. No plan that's going to work 100% 100% times.
6. Expect the unexpected
7. Think outside the box, be creative in your approach to a solution or plan. Don't let your intention and plan be guessed.
8. Make a diversion when necessary. Fool the enemy to think that he knows your plan and intention to stop him from thinking your real motive.
9. Sometimes losing is advantageous. Sacrifices must be made to reach bigger goals.
10. Plan ahead. See what's coming in the short and long term and plan accordingly. Also make your plan according to your strategic insight and motive but be flexible to change them accordingly.
11. Take calculated risk. Life rewards those who dare.
12. If you can't win try to minimize your losses. It's not about winning or losing but how well you play the game.
13. If you fight the enemy long enough he will understand your stratagem and learn from them or even copy them. Don't use the same method. In life don't fight for too long so as not to allow him to learn. Finish the enemy as quickly as you can.
14. DO NOT engage in personal rivalry or vendetta. It will destroy both parties and give huge advantage to other enemies even if one won the rivalry. Rivalry is bad it is stagnation. Avoid it at all cost!
15. Do not try to defend the unwinnable unless without choice.
16. Do not attack the hardly winnable or leave the result mostly to chance/luck. It's important to put the focus and strength to plan and effort that would bear fruit otherwise it's stagnation. A pyrrhic victory is no more than a delayed defeat or another enemy's soon victory.
17. Those who stay out of most fight will emerge the strongest because its forces never get reduced and it could continue to build upon them so beware of enemy who stay out of fight mostly while you and others engage in conflict. Most likely he's trying to gain by letting everyone to destroy everyone else before he moves in after everyone's weakened.
18. Having only too little money left means not planning ahead. Having too much money means not doing enough!

*Note
No I don't copy this from Sun Tzu's Art of War. I hardly ever read Sun Tzu but the first few pages and I learned the above merely by playing Shogun. It has become my most favorite board game because it can teach you so much!

And now I know what strategy is.

You see computer games are merely and almost exclusively about entertainment while board games have a social, educative and psychological aspect to it. It can be a brain churner. It's just much much more fun.

Originally Posted by Sailor Steve

I remember when it was released, and played it once with a friend. I wouldn't pay $20 for it. Kid's game. About the same time the same friend bought World In Flames. Now that was a strategic board game! On the other hand it needs lots of friends and lots of patience.

Ah thank you Steve your words in that post is gold you just confirmed my fear that it is a kid's game even though it seems many older people are playing it

Originally Posted by Raptor1

If you're looking for a more complicated strategic level board wargame, you could try GMT Games' A World at War, if it's still in print. We ran a game of it a while ago on these very boards and it was quite awesome (It should still be around somewhere too).

The only thing I'm trying not to buy paper map board game they are expensive for the mere paper map one's getting. I bought one paper map board game for 80 bucks and felt kind of cheated. I ended making a mounted map for it.

[Skybird]

Not a cosim, but if you want to spend good time with 2 or 3 friends (4 or 5 with material expansions), try "Settlers of Catan", which has proven to attract both younger and older generations alike, and is both rivalry and communication, mild strategy and cooperation (or not ). It's the most successful game from German production of the past 20 years or so. I recommend to use the basic game together with the Städte&Ritter (knights and cities) expansion.

For pure strategy, obviously nothing beats Chess, or if you prefer: Go. If exclusive thought duels are your thing, give Abalone a try, too - simple but elegant in rule design, fascinatinjg and again elegant in challenge and diversity.

I have started threats in the past, one on Abalaone, and one on Catan. Use the search-button for more details and feedback, also computer-versions (of both games that can be tried for free. That would give you an insight into the game mechanisms.

From the pre-PC era, cosims I knew and would recommend if you can get them second hand are Game Desiogner'S Workshop's "Third World War" series (probably my most favourite cosim ever, covering the war from Scandinavia over Germany and the Balkans down to the Gulf and Iran; also nice solitary play, btw), Victory Game's "Gulf Strike" and "Aegean Strike" (not really for beginners), "2nd Fleet" and "6th Fleet" (good introduction to the naval genre, not too complex), and GDW's "Assault!" series. I also owned Avalaon Hill's "Flight Leader" and "Ambush!", a dedicated exclusive soloplay title with - for it'S time - an innovative soloplay mode. Subsim mainpage also holds my feature of that old naval game "Tokyo Express", to be found under "Reviews". It is dedicated soloplay , with a nicely functioning "AI" to control the enemy fleet's movements, and has expansion rules for 2-player game. Complexity can range from beginner's level to quite advanced levels, via optional rules.

[Skybird]

Okay, here you go:

Catan (link)

Abalone (link)

The Catan site offers two computer versions, one for the basic rule set thnat can be played for free online against the computer, and a quite competently done, nice-looking conversion of all expansion rule sets as well. I even bought that game for curiosity, and I like it.

The Abalone program offered, is free. But be warned, it is one of the two top softwares in the world for this game, and it indeed plays absolutely lethal if you let it off the chain. That you indeed start on level one and stay there for a long time, is vitral to prevent you from committing suicide in frustration sooner or later. I mean, the program is a killer. There is no real gap between the human world elite players, and the software. So, you are warned.

[Castout]

@Skybird

I'm aware of Settlers of Catan Skybird just haven't given it enough attention to get me interested while it is certainly very popular.

As for chess. Chess is too abstract to me. The mere strategy is in the move and combination of which, which also doubles as the rules hence the abstraction of strategy which just can't be carried nor related to real life. It's a purely abstract strategy game one which is so abstract that it is purely a strategic game.

As for the others the recommended and interesting titles have overloaded me and that to think I still have a few titles to go after myself. My collection is still so small and I'm not planning to go obsessive on this hobby. It's costlier than PC gaming that much is obvious. I'
ll take a look at the given link though and see if the local retailer has them if they got me interested. Duels are not my thing but the outguessing your multiple enemies I just can't help not to be addicted to that kind of gameplay, the chaos and the trying to plan and seeing what you plan unfolding succeeding under all the chaos and uncertainty.....nothing beats that.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Castout

The mere strategy is in the move and combination of which, which also doubles as the rules hence the abstraction of strategy which just can't be carried nor related to real life. It's a purely abstract strategy game

What do you complain about? It'S at the very basis of any cosim, and has been seen as a valuable tool for military training as well. Compared to it, a cosim's sequence of play and strategic "depth" - I would not call it that - is shallow, and just a sequence of repetitive automtically carried out actions (for that reason real-time strategy games, at least all I have ever tried over the past 15 years or so, hardly are strategy games at all, they do not pose a challenge to your strategic imagination - you just find the one winning playing mechanism that is successful and then repeat that one in every match with your mouseklicks as fast as you can, mostly it is about in what seqeunce to produce units, and producing them fast). The basis of any strategic thinking is the balacning of the three factors space, time and matter (fields, moves, pieces) in various, ever-changing constellation, and how the one can be traded for the other. When you think of it, any military problem comes down to a constellation of these three factors, from logistics over Blitzkrieg to gaining important grounds.

Chess is not about a given strategy in a specific constext or environment, like in a cosim where you have these and no other rules and this and no other map, and such counters and no others. It is about strategy itself, and the need to constantly change and adapt it. A Cosim does not give you that challenge raised by ever-changing challenge, it'S always the same limited set of types of challenges. A cosim teaches you strategic thinking at best in the context of the game system, but not beyond. You cannot carry it over to for example economic problems or behaviour at the stock market in reality, because your way of handling space, matter and time within the cosim'S context cannot that easily, if at all, taken over to the way you want to set up the policy and competitive behaviour of your business company. Chess trains your strategic thinking at a much more profound, basic, general level less depending on the context of the rules of that game, and that game alone. And that's why you can benefit from that in real life as well - not from the rules of chess, but your habit of being used to handle and balance these three factors on the chessboard, and in a cosim and in real life as well: space, time and material. It'S a bit like being a "culture-free" (="game-rules-free") training of strategic thinking.

Not related to real life...?! I must say that chess has had a certain, maybe not spectacular but still undeniable influence on my way of thinking and analysis. It'S hard to tell whether I liked chess because it met my analytical mindset, or my analytical attitude emerged due to having learned chess (in my early childhood). Probably a mixture of both.

However. The other things chess can teach you wonderfully, are: patience, and discipline. Not before and not after the right time has come, you carry out the most appropriate action. And that also is an art you can use very well in life. The right move at the wrong time, the wrong figure for the right task, a misled situational understanding while having advantage in time and material - and you nevertheless spoil it. Only when all three come together, you secure the win: time, space and material.

-----------------

BTW, there are quite some competently done PC cosims. It helps you to save table-space, and money.

A classic is The Operational Art Of War III, which is a reference title. I do not like the font and am not happy with the itnerface, but I must admit with that complaint I seem to be alone - I never heared anyone else complaining about it (except the fonts).

I currently digged myself into the matter of Modern Campaigns: Danube 85, doing the full campaign with the front from Denmark down to Austria. Again, I initially cmplained about the interface giving me some visual problems due to the smallnesss of some things, but I have adressed that by using a map mod, and having edited the design of unit counters myself, so now it is a bit more friendly to the eyes, or so it seems to me. A title I also would recommend.

And available for free, there is Steel Panthers: Main Battle Tank (or World War II, if you prefer that era). Still an outstanding title, despite the looks showing it's age.

[Raptor1]

Originally Posted by Skybird

A classic is The Operational Art Of War III, which is a reference title. I do not like the font and am not happy with the itnerface, but I must admit with that complaint I seem to be alone - I never heared anyone else complaining about it (except the fonts).

The new patch (3.4), which is now in beta, changes the graphics extensively, and I believe there are new fonts as well. Though I don't think the interface itself is changed too much.

I haven't played it yet, though, waiting for the completed release.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Raptor1

The new patch (3.4), which is now in beta, changes the graphics extensively, and I believe there are new fonts as well. Though I don't think the interface itself is changed too much.

I haven't played it yet, though, waiting for the completed release.

Ha, that is synchronicity - I got 3.4173 (a new Alpha even is 3.4196 or so) just hours ago, and had a first look at it. Maps look much better, and as far as I remember: the counters as well (or I get fooled by memory, I am not sure). However, the fonts are still the same golden bitmap fonts in microscopic dimension, against no neutral but greyish background structures and greyish pictures. I checked the forum of theirs, first visit there since 2006 or 2007, I think, a hint at how to chnage the fonts to Windows Arial did not work - or I misunderstood something vital. Many people seem to complain abpout the fonts, back then and still now. I wonder why they have not adressed it over the past 3-4 years, if such complains are coming up time and again.

I tried some font mods as well, but they seem to be for earlier versions 3.2 and before. Somebody posted a screenshot of simple fonts yellow against dark grey and white against grey background, no structure and pics. It was relief to the eyes, my eyelids started to clap up and down in applaus extatically. But not in my version. The stupid interface buttons, also no joy to look at, also had been simplified and kept in 2-colour 2D only, which also helped a very lot.

If you find out something, let me know please. I always hated to bypass TOAW3 due to the frustration of needing to stare at the monitor until it hurt (on 2 different screens). Currently I exclusively focus on Danube 85, but in some weeks or months I would love to give TOAW3 another visit, if the fonts now can be altered.