ORIGINAL: Szilard
Say I've got a long river line which I want a formation to defend along - what's the best way to set up objectives? Scatter them at equal intervals with a sawtooth back to a fall-back line? Do I need to have every hex in the line covered by an objective - I assume not, but is there any way of estimating the best density?
Check Jamiam's response and see if that makes any sense.
For several maneuvers, Elmer actually looks in a radius around the object, not just at the objective itself. For example, when figuring if he's flanked, and to modify his stance, he looks at the relative strengths in a circle of a radius of between 5 and 9 hexes around the center of your formation, depending on his intelligence. His old behavior was definitely triggered by objective hexes, his new behavior is much less programmed in general.
I'm still learning the code, so I haven't gotten all the subtleties down, so you'll have to experiment some. I'm hoping he's strong enough to be able to play against himself for rough play balancing.
There are two ways that you can try. I'm not sure which one will work better, or even if there is one 'best' way.
Method 1 would be the shotgun method proposed by Jamiam, small formations, all-inclusive objective tracks...
Method 2 would be the method that CommC switched to, which is larger formations.
Elmer's biggest problem right now is the fact that formations don't coordinate well yet. You can overcome that by either using larger formations, or more inclusive programming of the objective tracks.
I'm lazy[;)], I'd try the larger formations first, and if that fails, add in the extra work on the objective tracks.
Ralph
