Re: [eia] dice re-roll policy

["Kyle H" <menexenus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> My concern is this.  We will probably screw up land orders again at some
> point this game.  I'm uncomfortable with the idea of people reworking land
> orders with fore knowledge of how their battles will go.  I don't know if
> it made a difference for Prussia or if it will ever make a difference, but
> being able to rework your land orders with the knowledge that this or that
> roll will go your way or not go your way seems a bad idea.

    I agree that substantively changing one's land orders after one is aware
of the results of dice rolls could lend itself to abuse, and in such cases,
new dice rolls are approrpriate.  On the other hand, land orders which are
meant only to accommodate a previous mistake and which are not intended as
substantive changes should not require new die rolls.  So I guess it boils
down to what we take to be a "substantive" change in the orders.
    As I pointed out earlier, Prussia's land orders seemed (to me anyway) to
have been revised in the spirit of making as few changes as necessary to
maintain the same results as the previous set of orders.  That is, it seemed
to me that Jim was consciously trying *not* to change anything of substance
in his orders so as not to take advantage of his foreknowledge.  Under those
circumstance, I think a person ought to be able to keep his rolls.  (Recall
that the only change between the first set and the second set was the
location of one corps and its leader.  After having sent my email last night
in which I suggested that Jim move that corps up to make the first set and
the second set identical, it occurred to me that perhaps he is *unable* to
pay for the supply necessary to move that corps forward.  If that is the
case, then it is clear that he has made the minimum number of changes
necessary to keep his orders the same given his budget constraint.)

> Suppose the rolls in question were a foraging roll.  You had a forage
> value of three or four but ended up getting a six.  Then someone points
out
> that you screwed something up and need to change your foraging rolls.  You
> might have turned down an alternate plan that would have had the corps
that
> foraged so badly supplied by a depot.  What do you do?  If you switch to
> your alternate plan, it now looks like you switched away from foraging to
> save the factors and used knowledge you never should have had.  If you
> don't switch, then you intentionally force yourself to turn down a plan
you
> had already made because your mistake caused you to know something you
> shouldn't know in advance.   If you instead say that since the last order
> set was invalid, the rolls that went with it are invalid, then you can
make
> your new orders in the absence of either the benefit or the impediment of
> fore knowledge.

    I agree with you that messed up forage rolls can make for a sticky
situation.  A similar situation has already occurred (at least) once before.
I recall that once Austria risked a 5- forage for a cavalry corps and then
rolled a 6.  As it turned out, though, it should have been a 4- roll, at
which point Everett probably would have paid extra for supply.  In that
case, we agreed that we would just accept the result of the 5- roll and move
on.
    Although that situation was resolved amicably by mutual consent of both
parties involved, it may not always be so easy to reach an agreement.  In
those cases, I guess there would be no choice but to rewrite orders and
re-roll dice.

> With a siege.  Suppose Prussia had blown the Vilna siege roll.  They found
> out it was going to cost more to attack Vilna then planned and decided
they
> would never launch that attack then.  What do you do?

Clearly, in that case a substantive change to the orders has been made and
re-rolls are called for.  My idea is that you only get to keep your rolls if
your orders remain substantively the same.  One must engage in all the
attacks one has committed to, and one should (if possible) move all corps to
their original locations (or as close to those locations as possible).  That
is, when one is consciously fixing one's orders to make them as close to the
original as possible, one should be given the benefit of the doubt.  If one
makes wholesale changes to the orders, then one should re-roll.
    In the case at hand, it seems to me that Prussia was trying to make his
revised set of orders as identical as possible to the original set within a
budget constraint.  The only change was a corps and a leader that didn't
move at all this turn (presumably, in order to save money).  That singular
change is to the *benefit* of Russia, not to its detriment.  (That's one
fewer corps and leader that can continue the attack into Russia.)  So I see
no reason to require Jim to re-roll.

    But leaving the details of this dispute for a moment, is this a
sustainable policy?  The policy would be something like this:  "When changes
to orders are required due to a mistake or misunderstanding, combat rolls
should be kept only if changes are made in such a way as to maintain all
combat declarations and only minimal (and necessary) changes are made to
movement orders."  (I can see that forage rolls can be very tricky and
should probably be dealt with on a case by case basis.)  This policy is
admittedly vague, but I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing.  We're
all gentlemen here; we can handle a little vagueness.
    Here's what I'm afraid of.  Let's take the battle between me and JJ at
Naples.  I made two mistakes in that battle.  I accidentally sent out my
attack rolls before sending out the identities and composition of my
attacking corps.  I also misidentified the French corps as the VIII instead
of the VII.  Now strictly speaking, since I did not maintain the proper
combat sequence and because my identity declaration was in error, one might
argue that my combat rolls were "invalid" and must be rolled again.  I am
adamantly opposed to any policy that would require me to re-roll my combat
rolls because of little mistakes like these.

    When mistakes are recognized after dice rolls are made, they are fixed
as quickly as possible with an eye toward not using any information to
benefit yourself.  I think that's what Jim did in his orders, and that's why
I think he should be able to keep his rolls.  However, I agree with Mike
that whenever significant changes need to be made, we are better off
starting from scratch.

kdh


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