Needs "Early Victory" ending

[blahblah3502]

Love the new game - it is at the same extremely high level of production and design as Battle of the Bulge, while
having a different feel as a wargame play experience (perhaps BotB more likely to generate tightly knit drama and tension while
DoM has more complex depths and has greater sweep) . Congratulations to Shenandoah, still leading the field on iPad wargame design!

I'm only a moderately good BotB player at best, but I was lucky enough to win my 1st campaign game (already played each of the scenarios once, mostly as Axis) in DoM with minus 40 VPs. I had captured all Axis supply centers and killed all Axis units but had 2 whole turns ("days" in BotB terms) left. I was playing the Soviets vs the Von Bock AI (the take-crazy-and-surprising-risks AI similar to Patton in BotB, I suppose. At one point, admittedly Von Bock did surprise me and got into position to launch a decent attack directly on Moscow; I had to scramble to react). AI design is tough to say the least (I'm sure I will be even more surprised by the AIs in future and I appreciate the quality work on game AI in BotB and DoM done so far), and I would guess DoM is more challenging to do AI for than BotB, and maybe I just had beginner's luck. But the game definitely needs a early game ending for this situation - it was a bit silly pressing pass through all the remaining turns.

[s_nkarp]

AI for DoM is pretty hard, especially the campaign, which has so many options and where small imprecision has so long to compound. The early victory/option to extend is actually pretty complex to implement, explain to players, adjudicate for Elo, etc. -- love to have it, just a question of dev time tradeoffs. I hear you though -- the campaign is loong!

[glenndrover]

I just had the same experience playing against von Bock in the Campaign. I destroyed all German units and held all objectives by turn 18.
I didn't mind passing on turns 19 - 22. It really only takes one pass to end the turn.

This was only my second time playing. The previous go was as the Germans in the campaign, which was more challenging.

Is the von Bock AI too weak, or is the balance heavily skewed toward the Russians?

Despite this, I'm loving the game. Look forward to playing against Rundstedt. I'm sure he's tougher.

[s_nkarp]

Try the campaign against a live human! Out of (perhaps foolish) principle our AI's don't cheat. They're pretty good against novices, but an experienced player will still thrash them handily on a long game (where luck evens out and skill compounds).

[Jarling]

After some games against real-life marshalls and generals of dubious political regimes, I've come to the realization that if ze germans after round 5 (when the Rasputsia sets in) have not accumulated enough points, they've lost.

The one-point cities is of course vital, and absolutely necessary for winning on points, but I'm fairly certain that if the germans at any point after round five have below ten points, they WILL lose. So if you're playing the axis and at round nine have, let's say eight points, you'll be facing thirteen rounds of winter, hell, death, and a certain loss. If you want to reenact the real campain, that's fine, but for most people that would just feal dull.

How about a winning condition like: If after any rounds from round six and on, if the the german have below 10 points, the russians win?

The '10 points' is not absolutely arbitrary, but can of course be discussed.

[thedudeabidez]

Judging from my learning curve with Bulge, I'd say it's too early to say all the strategies and counter-strategies have been tried. Give it a few months and let's see.

[Jarling]

Dudeabidez, i'm not disagreeing with you, and my point wasn't really to change the winning conditions.

But at some point this game game can be lost to the germans, without any doubts, but it's still 5, 10 or even 15 rounds left. I guess everyone agrees that if the germans have minus 10 points when there's 2 turns left, they've lost, right? Ok, how about 0 points when there's 10 rounds left?

So my point was just that there should be some lower, and my upper scores, where there is absolutely no point in playing on and thereby a winning condition to avoid meaningless play.

[Pat]

Is there any particular reason you don't want the side who's obviously losing to use the resign option?

Cheers,

Pat

[Jarling]

No, if one of the player feels this is lost cause, he's free to resign.

And this really isn't a big deal for me, but it stroke me as suiting to have these kind of rules when you also have the rating, and to avoid "dead" games draging on forever.

To counter the question; are there any particular reason that there are no such rules?


Love the game, btw!

[daviddunham]

FWIW, we had early victory in Battle of the Bulge, but a significant number of people wanted to keep playing anyway.

[Jarling]

Ok, ok, ok! I'll stop fighting these windmills

Most of the guys I've been playing seems like sensible and reasonable persons, so I guess there's no need to pursue this white whale anymore.