Best Strategy Games - Axis & Allies Strategy

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Die Points

A quick calculation that helps to determine how many units will be necessary is to count up how many die points you and your opponent each have. Die points are calculated based on the hitting ability of each unit involved. For instance, an infantry on offense has to roll a one to get a hit. So infantry get 1 die point on offense. A fighter would thus get 4 die points on defense and 3 die points on offense. You get the idea.

So, let’s say your opponent has 14 die points (1 fighter, 2 tanks, 3 infantry) defending in a territory. To win you should bring 14 or more die points on average.

However, there is another consideration. Cannon fodder. Let’s say your opponent is going to attack with 10 infantry, which is 10 die points. The quick calculation would say you only need 5 infantry to defend evenly, which is 10 die points as well. Yet 10 infantry will usually easily beat 5 infantry defending. Both sides will each get 1.66 hits on average (10 die points / 6 die points per die). The attacker then has 8.33 infantry remaining, which is 8.33 die points. The defender has 3.33 infantry remaining, which is 6.66 die points. You can easily see how the defender is going to lose the battle.

The quick rule of thumb is that if your cannon fodder units (the units you’ll lose first in the battle) have lower die points than your opponent’s cannon fodder units (the units he’ll lose first in the battle), you can win the battle with equal to or even slightly fewer die points, whereas your opponent will typically have to have greater numbers of die points in the battle in order to succeed. So if you start the battle with even die point summaries, but your opponent has to lose a fighter on his first loss (a high die point contributor), and you’re losing infantry on your first loss (a low die point contributor), you’re going to win.

Therefore there are two components to consider in evaluating die points:

1. How many die points do you and your opponent have

2. How strong or fragile are the two die point totals

The strongest possible die point total would be all infantry attacking with 1s. The most fragile possible die point total would be all fighters defending on 4s.

So get into a habit of whenever you’re assessing how powerful your own forces and your opponent’s forces are, calculate the die points. If your opponent has 32 die points that he could attack you with on your next turn, and you would be defending with 43 die points, then you should be pretty safe (assuming your die points aren’t composed solely of a bunch of fighters, which would result in you having a very fragile die point structure that collapses quickly after a few initial losses).