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Weapons Development, or Tech, is the wild card in Axis and Allies. Some players hate it and think it is a game spoiler. Some players love it and base strategies on it. Some think it is just an interesting side show. Many players turn to Tech only in desperation.
This article attempts to reach a better understanding of Weapons Development by looking at odds and game statistics. This is an article about stats and not about strategy. Read on, and we will cover many questions you may have:
What are the chances of getting a Tech if you roll multiple dice?
How much does an advanced technology cost, really?
How much does Tech help winning the game?
Which Techs are best?
What are the chances of getting a Tech?
To successfully acquire a Tech you need to roll a "6" on a Weapons Development die. Easy enough if you are just rolling one die. But what are the odds if you roll several dice, or one die a turn for several turns?
Table 1 shows the odd for up to six dice.
| TABLE 1 | Percent Chance of Getting a Given Number of Successful Weapons Development Rolls |
Chance of Getting One or More Techs |
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| Number of Dice Rolled | 1 Tech |
2 Techs |
3 Techs |
4 Techs |
5 Techs |
6 Techs |
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| 1 Die | 17 % | - | - | - | - | - | 17 % | ||
| 2 Dice | 28 % | 3 % | - | - | - | - | 31 % | ||
| 3 Dice | 35 % | 7 % | 0.5 % | - | - | - | 42 % | ||
| 4 Dice | 39 % | 12 % | 1 % | 0.1 % | - | - | * | 52 % | * |
| 5 Dice | 40 % | 15 % | 3 % | 0.3 % | 0.01 % | - | 60 % | ||
| 6 Dice | 40 % | 20 % | 5 % | 0.8 % | 0.6 % | 0.002 % | 66 % | ||
Lets say you just rolled 3 Wpn Dev dice and you achieved 2 successes. You wonder to yourself "hmm . . . I wonder what the odds of that were"? Easy: just look on Table 1 at "3 Dice" and move over to the "2 Techs" column and you will discover that you get 2 successes on 3 dice about 7% of the time.
A more useful question would be "How many dice do I usually have to roll in order to get a Tech?" Look at the last column of Table 1 and you will see a list of the odds of getting one or more Techs on a given number of dice.
The row for 4 dice is highlighted because it is the magical 50/50 point. That is: if you roll 4 Wpn Dev dice your chances of succeeding are about 50/50. You can roll 4 dice all at once, or 1 die per turn for 4 turns: it doesn't matter. 4 dice are 4 dice and your odds of having a Tech after 4 dice are 50/50.
This might lead you to think that the cost of a Tech would average out to be $20 (4 dice X $5 per die), but that is not the case. This leads us to . . .
How much does an Advanced Technology cost, really?
It turns out that it is easy to figure out the average cost of Tech. It goes like this:
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$5 per Wpn Dev die or $5 / (1 chance in 6) or $5 / (1/6) or
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That bit at the end "on average" is important. If you look back up at Table 1 you see that for 6 dice ($30) you get at least one Tech 66% of the time. Which also means that, for your $30 you get zero Techs 34% of the time. Let me say that again: for $30 you could buy 10 INF, or you could buy 6 ARM, - or you could buy 6 Wpn Dev dice with one chance in three of giving you nothing!
But still: 1 Tech cost $30 (on average).
"Ya pays ya money - ya takes ya chances."
How much does Advanced Technology help win the game?
To answer this I looked at 160 game records taken at random and compared the percent of games won by a player who had NO Tech to the percent of games won by a player with Tech. You might be surprised.
| AXIS | ALLIES | OVERALL | |
| Percent of Games Won by Player with NO Tech |
49% | 56% | 53% |
| Percent of Games Won by a Player WITH Tech |
25% | 45% | 34% |
That's right! Players with Tech lost a lot more often that players with no Tech. This isn't even considering the case where a player spends money on Wpn Dev but comes up empty. This is only considering cases where the player succeed with their Tech rolls. However it may not be that "the player who has Tech loses more games", but rather "the player who is loosing a game rolls for more Tech". The stats alone don't tell us about cause and effect. The stats do indicate that if you are loosing a game you can NOT count on being bailed out by a good Tech roll.
Which Techs are best?
Using the random sample of 160 games I next looked at individual Technologies. The chart below shows the percent of games won by a side which had a particular type of Tech.
Overall, none of the Techs increased the odds of winning over the odds with no Tech at all. Not even Heavy Bombers. For the allies, however, JT seemed to be a great advantage.
The Overall effectiveness of Techs (from best to worst) went: HB, JT, RO, IT, SS, LR.
But this is not the same for both sides.
For the Allies the effectiveness of Techs (from best to worst) went: JT, IT, LR, RO, SS, HB (SS over HB - yikes!)
For the Axis the effectiveness of Techs (from best to worst) went: HB, IT, JT, SS, LR, RO.
The unexpected order of Tech values may be due to the small number of data points (only 16 games involved LR for example).
Generally the Techs seemed to work better for the Allies than for the Axis. But then again maybe the Axis tend to buy Tech when they are losing and desperate, and the Allies tend to buy Tech when they are winning and rich. The stats don't say.
Points to remember
Let's just summarize the main points here:
• Buying 4 Wpn Dev dice gives you a 50/50 chance of getting Tech
• On average, one Tech cost $30
• More games are lost with Tech than without Tech
• No single Tech is a "Game Buster": not even HB
Good luck.
by airship