Active French 'Defense'

[mavraamides]

Last night I decided to see how the AI does on offense (since I'd only played as Germany so far).

So I started a game as Poland and got immediately crushed. So far, so good.

Then I started a game as France and on turn 2 took the 'attack now' option.

So far, I've taken 3 cities including Dresden and Franfurt. Poland has just fallen and the Germans are starting to pull troops out of that battle and send them towards me.

I know I can't hold off the German Army which is way more powerful but I intend to take as much ground as I can and then trade space for time as I retreat back to the Maginot line. I'm hoping the delay and temporary deprivation of production will have an impact later in the war. Also, its more time to crank out more cannon fodder divisions to wear down the German machine.

France does have a small number of good units. If you assign leaders to them and move them as a group they make a pretty good assault force capable of taking a lightly defended city. The rest of the units are pretty much only good to hold ground and occupy cities and fortifications.

[winky51]

Unless I am wrong, Germany only had light holdings vs France in 1939 so an attack could have been made successfully vs German forces.  The French just pussied out and sat there historically.  Just seems like you are doing what they should have done in the 1st place.

[mavraamides]

ORIGINAL: winky51

Unless I am wrong, Germany only had light holdings vs France in 1939 so an attack could have been made successfully vs German forces. The French just pussied out and sat there historically. Just seems like you are doing what they should have done in the 1st place.

Agreed.

One tweak that would be nice would be if Germany's reaction to France choosing the 'Attack Now!' option would be for the AI to divert all production to infantry divisions and place them in all unguarded cities within range of the French forces.

Optionally, Germany could strat trans 3 infantry from the Polish front (where they are overkill anyway right to those cities and hold them till Poland is done.

Not sure if that sort of thing is scriptable.

Still, I really like the fact that you can play any country in this game. Or any combination of countries. That's pretty cool and a lot more flexible than most ET games.

[sullafelix]

Well Germany should not be more powerful than the French army. It only lost through mismanagement and stupid decisions. To reflect history the French AI should be hampered by lower movement and other ways to make it historical, only one or two multiple attacks allowed etc. These could probably not be included in a computer game but were normal in board wargames.