There's a discussion about this derailing another thread right now, so I figured I'd give it a home of its own. We don't really know much about what tom has in mind for simultaneous play, except that it will exist. So now is the time for wild speculation. What do you want to see for simultaneous play mechanics?

Personally, I always found the Warfish BAO to be overly complicated, or at least, so different from normal play that it took a short novel to explain how it works to people. And on Warlight, its kind of a black box with all its %'s and luck %'s -- plus, working with a % is helpful for multi-attack, but is really a big fucking PITA when you have 17 armies and want to attack with 4. I shouldn't have to get out my calculator to figure out how to attack with 4 armies.

Speaking of multi-attack -- no. Don't do it tom. Just don't. One of the big appeals of BAO, I thought, was that a game progressed one step at a time. It provided enough difference to enable totally different styles of maps. Multi-attack pretty much plays out the same as 'normal' Risk, just ... simultaneously and a little bit more unpredictably.

Back to the mechanics of BAO/Simuplay:

I liked the idea of rolling 1 die per army. I would like to see that idea stick around. But instead of rolling against a floor, lets roll against each other as in normal play. So, attacking with A armies would roll A dice. Defending with D armies would roll D dice. Compare the D highest attack dice against the D defend dice and use the same tie goes to the defender system as normal play. I think this would play nice with the current borders and modifiers setup. You wouldn't have to introduce a new modifier type to adjust the Floor/Armor/Whatever-its-being-called-on-one-page-but-not-another.

What about uneven amounts of attackers vs defenders? If you have 8 armies you are attacking with and there are 4 defenders you roll 8 dice and compare them to the 4 dice the defenders roll. So does the defender automatically lose the territory and it's just a matter of how many attackers are left to occupy?

Well, you don't automatically lose by being outnumbered. If the Defender rolls four 6's and the Attacker rolls eight 3's, then 4 attackers die and no defenders and no territories change hands. If the Defender rolls two 6's and two 1's, and the Attacker rolls eight 3's, then 2 defenders die and 2 attackers die and no territories change hands. And if the Defender rolls four 1's and the Attacker rolls eight 6's, then 4 defenders die and 0 attackers die and the 8 attackers move into the Defender's territory.

Without doing any math at all in my head, it seems like that would favor the attacker wouldn't it?

Cramchakle wrote:

RiskyBack wrote: You attack with 6 that get modified dice for an attack advantage and then the 4 remaining are set to defend so they get modified defense dice. Perhaps the floor value changes so that you roll larger dice (12 side v 10 side) by designating but that the floor value alters in a way so that you could potentially kill more armies but you also have a chance of losing more of your attackers.
Again, not fully thought out but I'd like to see something where there is more designation of units rather than just straight dice with or without modifiers.

I do like the sound of this.

 That sounds complicated as a "basic Simul" play, or is that just a new option?

What if the defender rolls 3,6,2,5 and the attacker rolls 5,2,2,6,4,5,2,3? Would you take the best 4 dice of the attacker 6,5,5,4 and put them against the defenders so the attacker would lose 2 and the defender would lose 2 and no territory would change hands?

RiskyBack wrote: What if the defender rolls 3,6,2,5 and the attacker rolls 5,2,2,6,4,5,2,3? Would you take the best 4 dice of the attacker 6,5,5,4 and put them against the defenders so the attacker would lose 2 and the defender would lose 2 and no territory would change hands?

Line them up in order and compare highest to highest.

Yertle wrote: Without doing any math at all in my head, it seems like that would favor the attacker wouldn't it?

Only if you're attacking with more armies than the defender is defending with...

If you're attacking with X and the Defender has X armies also, then the Defender has the advantage due to winning ties.

In order rolled or in order numerically? Do you mean 4 dice vs best 8 dice?

Cramchakle wrote:

Yertle wrote: Without doing any math at all in my head, it seems like that would favor the attacker wouldn't it?

Only if you're attacking with more armies than the defender is defending with...

If you're attacking with X and the Defender has X armies also, then the Defender has the advantage due to winning ties.

K, who wants to make a big math table with the differences between the two?  Cram or Hugh or 11s or someone else that LOVES to do math? 

RiskyBack wrote: In order rolled or in order numerically? Do you mean 4 dice vs best 8 dice?

In order numerically. There would be no consideration of time order of rolls. If the Defender rolled 4, 2, 5, 3 and the Attacker rolled, 4, 2, 3, 5, 6, 3, 4, 2 you would compare

D v A

5 v 6
4 v 5
3 v 4
2 v 4

4 defenders would die, no attackers, and the 8 attackers would move onto the freshly conquered territory.

Yertle wrote:

Cramchakle wrote:

Yertle wrote: Without doing any math at all in my head, it seems like that would favor the attacker wouldn't it?

Only if you're attacking with more armies than the defender is defending with...

If you're attacking with X and the Defender has X armies also, then the Defender has the advantage due to winning ties.

K, who wants to make a big math table with the differences between the two?  Cram or Hugh or 11s or someone else that LOVES to do math? 

I'm retired from math.

How would the stack be decided? If a player 1 lost a territory in an attack that came earlier in the stack and those units from player 2 were moved into that territory then would player 3 who attacked that same territory but later in the stack attack the new units that are there from player 2 and the dice would be rolled for that battle?

What about 2 sets of rolls for attacking and defending by both sides so that the attacker v defender would be rolled first and any units left by the defending territory would roll for their attack v the other players defense? Off the top of my head, I kinda like that.

RiskyBack wrote:

What about 2 sets of rolls for attacking and defending by both sides so that the attacker v defender would be rolled first and any units left by the defending territory would roll for their attack v the other players defense? Off the top of my head, I kinda like that.

So you would resolve a round of AvD, then after that was done, the defenders would automatically counter-attack? Could those defenders then lose rolls and die? If they won outright, would they move into the territory they counter-attacked (if so, you could shift someone's defense out of a chokepoint against their will and then attack it from a different direction)? If you attacked a pile of 20 defenders with 1, would you then get counter-attacked by 20 defenders or 1?

No, same number of units being used just 2 separate roll offs.
1st attacking units vs defending units in the attacked territory (only defender looses)
2nd remaining defenders remaining units vs attacking units (only attackers lose units)

It's like fighting off the first wave and then counter attacking but defenders can't gain any territories.
I don't think I like it anymore

One 'logical conclusion' type thought on the system I described, is that if a single defender rolled a 6, he could hold back an assault from 10000 attackers. Awesome or awful?

Cramchakle wrote: One 'logical conclusion' type thought on the system I described, is that if a single defender rolled a 6, he could hold back an assault from 10000 attackers. Awesome or awful?

The fix to this would be to give the tie to the attacker.

As long as the attackers were in 10000 different waves, then it's awesome.

The mere thought of figuring out the math for turn-based dice for X number of attacking and defending dice makes me cry.

Ultimately it doesn't really matter what method you use to calculate wins and losses, as long as the results are deterministic (in a probable sort of way).

I imagine you could make a workable system using something simpler than turn based dice or even WF style BAO dice. I'm leaning more towards something like rolling an X sided die when you are attacking with X armies, versus a Y sided die for Y defending armies, then applying some predetermined algorithm to determine losses on each side.

The edge cases could use arguing over.. say attack with 50 defend with 20:

attacker rolls 50, defender rolls < 20 = defender lose all, attacker none
attacker rolls 1, defender rolls > 1 = attacker lose all, defender none... maybe, or maybe the attacker can only lose 20 at most.

Despite these problems I would lean towards something like this, harder to get the algorithm and edge cases settled up front, but ultimately easier in that it would be able to handle any attack situation, and modifiers could simply be the addition of die sides or some other predetermined + or -% to the results.

The real beauty of BaO or Sim play is that you never really know what your opponent is going to do on their turn and so you have to anticipate and/guess what and where would be best to spend your units.  I don't think the specific dice involved are as much a factor in the actual playing.

That being said, I think we need a dice system that is easy for players and designers to work with.  Here's my idea:

• Similar to WarFish's BaO style, each unit on each side (attacking/defending) rolls one die.
• Rolls are made from 1-100 and kills are determined by a percentage chance to kill for the attacker and defender.  (For premium members, the attack dialogue box will give an estimated number of kills while preparing the order).

Having the dice and kills represented by percentages should make things much more understandable for both players and designers to figure out what's going on.

Additionally, I'd like to see an ability to give more specific orders to the troops in the field to make smarter military decisions, so:

• The attack dialogue box can have options so a player may choose to only attack if the territory still has a certain number of units in it.  As in, while making the order you selected 20 units to attack, but now some have died defending so you only have 4 left.  You selected the attack to only happen if you had 10 or more troops, so it does not occur.
• With non-fog games, the attack dialogue box can also have a selection to not attack unless there are a certain number or less troops currently defending.

Those are my thoughts on Sim-play; I think it should work pretty much the same way as Blind at Once style on WF, but with added versatility.  I also think that other forms of play should be developed as well.  Who says we only need to have two types of games to play or design?