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In the past I looked at the IPC value of a bid and concluded that a "fair bid" is in the range of 19 through 21. Now I want to look at the actual placement of units to see where units should go to increase the chance of an Axis victory.
Between games 9044 and 9473 there are 170 game logs posted. I entered the details of the bids for these games in a spreadsheet and then looked at the percent of Axis wins for given units in each territory. Each territory was looked at individually and not in conjunction with any other territory. In other words when I looked at the percent of games the Axis won when 2 INF were bid in ALG the rest of the bid was not considered. This is an analysis of just parts of bids and not of the entire bid. If less than three games had a given unit/territory, then that combination was not reported.
Infantry
More infantry are bid than any other unit so lets look at the placement of INF first.
Behold the glory of TABLE ONE !
The average Axis wins overall was 44%. Any time the listed percent is greater than 44 we can say that the bid helps the Axis. Any time the listed percent is less than 44 we can say that it is a poor bid.
| # INF in Bid by Territory | ||||||||
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | |
| EEU | 36 | 57 | 54 | 47 | 30 | 71 | 50 | |
| UKR | 41 | 67 | 58 | 33 | 50 | 57 | 57 | |
| FIN | 42 | 50 | 66 | |||||
| LIB | 38 | 43 | 61 | 45 | 0 | |||
| ALG | 44 | 50 | ||||||
| MAN | 41 | 43 | 50 | 47 | ||||
| KWA | 42 | 70 | 50 | |||||
| BUR | 42 | 57 | 50 | |||||
| Table 1: Percent of games won by Axis considering the number of INF bid in a territory. | ||||||||
| Color Key | |||||
| Worst | Bad | Average | Good | Better | Best |
Europe
EEU: If no bid units are placed in EEU the percent of Axis wins drops to 36: bad news. One or two INF in EEU helps out a lot. A Power Europe bid of five or six INF in EEU is also good.
Interestingly, a bid of four INF is particularly bad. Perhaps four INF is not enough for a Power Europe strategy, and those one or two extra INF could be better placed elsewhere.
UKR: It looks like a Power Europe bid with five or seven INF in UKR works pretty well. For some reason placing 3 INF in UKR is a bad idea.
Surprisingly, the Axis won 67% of the games where just a single INF was placed in this territory. I have no idea why.
FIN: Placing 1 INF in FIN is good, placing 2 INF is better.
Africa
LIB: This is the second space that should get at least 1 INF (EEU was the first). 6% fewer games were won by the Axis when no INF were here. The balance doesn't tip into the Axis' favor until 2 INF are in LIB. More than 2 INF delivers diminishing returns (place those INF elsewhere).
ALG: Placing 1 INF in ALG seems to work for some people.
Asia
MAN: Placing 1 INF in MAN doesn't seem to help much. 2 INF here does help a bit, but 3 INF may be too many.
KWA: This is the most startling thing in the table: when the Axis bid had just 1 INF in KWA, they won 70% of the games! Maybe this one INF discourages a Kill-Japan-First strategy, maybe it ensures the destruction of the US FTR in CHI, maybe it us used to recapture MAN if Russia takes that space on turn one, maybe it's an anomaly due to not-enough-data. Heck, I don't know.
BUR: 1 INF in BUR is a good thing. More INF seems to lead to diminishing returns.
Armor
Bids frequently have one tank somewhere, so lets look at ARM now.
| # ARM in Bid by Territory |
||
| 0 | 1 | |
| LIB | 44 | 42 |
| ALG | 41 | 80 |
| MAN | 44 | 33 |
| KWA | 42 | 54 |
| BUR | 45 | 38 |
| Table 2: Percent of games won by Axis considering the ARM bid a territory. | ||
Looks like an ARM in MAN or BUR is not worth the price. Placing a tank in ALG or KWA works more often. Note: there was a discussion on the boards about placing an ARM in ALG: go take a look.
Big money units
18 of the 170 bids I looked at included more expensive units: everything from a TRN, to a BMB, to an IC. Seventeen of those eighteen games resulted in an Axis loss.
Lesson: just bid cheap units.
Summary:
• Make sure something is bid in EEU and in LIB.
• If you have one extra INF and you are not sure where to put it, consider placing it in UKR or KWA.
• If you are doing a Power Europe, then bid 5 INF in EEU.
• Don't bid expensive units.
Why you should ignore all of the above
• Some of the results above are based on only three games. - Not enough for sweeping proclamations
• I looked at parts of a bid and not at entire bids. An ARM in MAN just might be a good idea, for example, if the rest of the bid is arranged a certain way.
• Bids should have a strategy in mind. None of the above analysis really considers strategy.
• It's often more fun to experiment than to do things by the numbers.
Have fun,
airship