A constructive critique from fisrt impressions

[Alan Sharif]

I think the AO is a great enhancement to this title, and I hope, many more to come.

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: Chris Merchant

Hans,

I would observe that:

AI is unstoppable

is not the same as

So far, the AI is unbeatable!

cheers Chris.

Offer any degree of criticism whtsoever and the fawning sycophants come out of the woodwork to split hairs over every statemnet in order to dispute them. Cute!

In this particular game I ran into a phenom common to the series. Once I built a solid wall in the north the AI just gave up. For the past two turns all it has done in the northern salient is shift troops back and forth in the line without attacking or even bombarding a single hex in the line.

If no one ever bothered to point these things out you would never have an oppurtunity to address them and improve on your product. I really don't care that the sycophants would prefer I remain silent.

[e_barkmann]

There's no need to name call, I was merely pointing out that what you thought had been written was in fact something quite different.

cheers Chris

[HansBolter]

ORIGINAL: Chris Merchant

There's no need to name call, I was merely pointing out that what you thought had been written was in fact something quite different.

cheers Chris

Now you're presuming to know what I think????

Perhaps I simply knowingly chose to use different terminology.

Do us both a favor and give it a rest Chris.

[e_barkmann]

No problems Mr Bolter, please do continue with your constructive critique.

cheers Chris

[hank]

Maybe another inquiry will chill things a bit.

In regards to players stripping parts of the front to fight elsewhere; in the Decisive Battles games (BiN in particular since that's the last one I had) stongpoints could be manned by deployed forces of a unit.  For example in the TAO scenario, the north and south shoulders of the bulge had southern strongpoints manned by the 28 I.D. (I think) and the north had another division manning those strongpoints.

The game required those units to stay put to keep those stongpoints enforced.  I always thought that was a good and realistic feature since stongpoints are normally manned by soldiers from of a larger unit.  If you pulled those men from those strongpoints they became a non-factor.  If you stayed there, the stongpoints were fairly good at providing a defensive line.

Did that feature go away in K:DonD (and BF)? 

If its still an option, it would make a player think twice before abandoning a defensive line by moving his forces elsewhere.  The way it is in K:DonD, the stongpoints are always there unless destroyed thus you don't need units to make a line of defense.  You need them to hold against attacks but you can actually keep an eye on those unmanned areas and move to block attacks when they happen. 

I think the way DB modelled strongpoints in that manner is more realistic than the way they are now.  You have to get soldiers to man those bunkers from somewhere.

Also in DB, I don't think the player could set up units in deployed mode, the scenario builder did this. It would be a good idea to let the player deploy forces like this.

[Carl Myers]

Well, if a battalion from a regiment was manning a strongpoint, I would say that the strongpoint needs be be a bit more stronger and robust. On the other hand if a single platoon from each battalion is manning the strongpoint, a regiment could man three or four strong points and move towards Kharkov to do battle minus a single company.

[Gregor_SSG]

I don't think it helps to characterise people as 'pro-this' or 'anti-something else'. Lets just treat all views expressed on their merits and we can all get along.

With regard to the AI behaviour, the real problem for the AI is that, with those two panzer divisions in Kharkov, the Russian attack really needs some help from the German player to succeed. If that help is not forthcoming, then there's not much point in the AI beating its head against a brick wall. Remember, the Russian player loses his Indirect Fire and Attack/Artillery Supply bonus after turn 5, and this makes a big difference to both its willingness and ability to conduct attacks.

With regard to strongpoints, the scenario designer still has the ability to tie strongpoints to specific units. It just depends on his judgement on how strong he wants a defensive line to be and how restricted he wants the defensive player to be. The Russian defensive line in the south is much weaker than their defences near Kharkov, and doesn't really do much more than briefly impede the Germans. It's only really there to stop cheap shots from the Germans.

Gregor

[mazorj]

ORIGINAL: Gregor_SSG

Its encouraging to see people treating the AI as if it has knowledge about the game in the same way that a human player does, as this means that its doing a reasonable job. In truth, like the Wizard of Oz, it's all done by smoke and mirrors. The AI doesn't 'know' anything about your forces, and certainly doesn't know that it has a left flank - that's a very human concept and the AI is nowhere near smart enough to deal with such a fluid concept.

What the AI has is a bunch of rules and hints/commands from the scenario designer and each formation applies those rules without ever trying to consider the bigger picture. The bigger picture is supplied mostly by the change of ownership of geographical objectives. For example, the Russian 6th Army and AG Bobkin will continue their offensive towards Krasnogrd and Kharkov until Izyum falls, whereupon they get a new plan.

The big advantage for the AI with the new AO system is that the area that it operates in and the forces that it has to operate with are precisely known. This makes it much easier for the scenario designer to give precise instructions.

In the example above, the question of whether the AI worries about its left flank is primarily answered by the scenario designer. If he wants the flank guarded he can specify some defensive hexes that the AI will try to protect. However, even if he doesn't do that, the AI does have underlying routines that will cause it to seek out enemy units and attack if possible so AI units could end up on the left flank anyway. It's hard to be more precise because the scenario designer is mostly giving high level commands/suggestions and the underlying routines that are finally in charge of moving and attacking are necessarily autonomous.

So to summarise, the AI never sees the whole game like a human player does. The only possible advantage that the AI could have is its ability to calculate all possible combats and attack at the most advantageous odds. This is removed by the fact that we give the human player access to the same ability through the Combat Advisor and that the only basis the AI has for choosing between competing high odds combats is the higher level hints from the scenario designer, which never be as acute or relevant as those generated by a human player able to look at all levels of the game in a single glance.

Gregor

First, thanks for your illuminating responses. I have a few of my own, in no particular order:

The original post here mentioned time/distance scales. I don't have a problem with the kinds of movements that can be made, they seem reasonable. My concern is the more general one of sequencing movements and attacks. An astute human player will first scan the Combat Advisor's offerings, determine which hexes are priority targets, check for artillery/air support to increase the odds of getting a desired result against each hex, move units out of attack hexes if they are blocking additional attack units from participating, and then sequence movements and attacks to the best advantage. (See below on how to maximize combat results.) For example, eliminating or moving enemy units out of one hex may create another green triangle against the next target, but not vice versa, so you know which one to attack first. On a broader scale, I may go back and forth, making movements and attacks in two different but nearby attack areas, and halfway into those routines, allocate additional available units based on the initial combat results and which of the two attack areas will benefit most from additional combats. After those attack areas are resolved, I'll look for the next ones based on the previous outcomes. And after that, I'll start realigning the attacking units and bringing in other units for an optimum defense configuration against counterattack.

The problem is, some of the movements made throughout this routine require the moving unit's max or near-max movement allowance, which indicates one full day's movement. So these units would have had to start moving at the same time as the attacks I initiated - but I didn't have to order them to move until a half- to a full day's battles already had occurred! This "time warp" advantage increases with the game's basic unit of time per movement, and decreases if a day is broken into two or more moves. So, all other things being equal, a smaller time unit per turn will make for more realistic play by reducing the human player's "time warp" advantage.

Re the Combat Advisor, there's more to it than "don't just blindly follow it and attack where it offers the biggest odds". In addition to looking for the overview, there are many exploits for the human player. After selecting a combat, I try to sneak up on odds. First make an attack with existing units to see what you're up against - not only the current odds, but how many are needed to make the next level of odds. If the defense factor is, say, 49, it's going to take a lot of units to bump the odds, whereas you often can cheaply eliminate an entire stack at 12-1 or 20-1 if there's only 20 or less defensive points. Bring in big units first, try to get the green triangle sides filled, and avoid attacking across major river sides. Exit that attack, refresh the CA, scan to see which units are needed next to bump up the odds, and repeat the move-attack-exit-refresh routine until you get the max (or an acceptable level of) odds. Many times you don't need several of the units that the CA wanted to commit to get the same outcome. The Undo button is your friend. So is moving out units that can't attack so that more attack units can get in play. (Watch how often the CA's odds increase just by doing that!) Furthermore, my priorities for attacks are influenced by whether I can totally eliminate a unit that turn. I'll take even 1-1 odds over a 5-1 on another hex if it means eliminating a unit as opposed to inflicting 1 or 2 steps on a unit that has 6 more in reserve. The AI doesn't do any of that, so between tweaking each combat and the ability to see the bigger tactical and strategic considerations, the human player has a tremendous advantage in making attacks.

Re the AO: Any new feature will be exploited in some manner, but on balance I think it is quite successful in terms of the stated objectives. True, units can get cut off from their HQ when a small excursion through a prohibited AO would put them back in contact, but the designer can say that the fog of war prevented them from knowing that. The only real problem I have with the AO feature is when units on the run from overwhelming attacks get trapped because they are jammed up against their boundaries. I'm not sure that under those conditions, even the most ruthless commanders and commissars could always keep a desperate unit from fleeing the field out of their AO.

I've commented previously on the manual. While some of the critiques here are somewhat marginal, I agree with the general thrust that information often is not in the place that you expect and need to find it. And please lose the background graphics or screen them way, way down. Just because something looks legible on a page layout monitor screen doesn't mean that it will maintain its legibility when it comes off the printing presses.

Bottom line: I started with AH's Tactics II and Gettysburg ~1960 and have been an avid player since then. IMO Kharkov is the latest high point in the continuing evolution of this game genre.

[Gregor_SSG]

It's true that the best human players will be able to finesse their combats and do better than the AI, but they will also be doing better than a lot of human players, including me, who tend not to proceed as meticulously as you.

It's also true that there are many abstractions in the game, with the movement and combat system being high on that list. However, given the nature of wargames, adding more detail doesn't really reduce the level of abstraction, it just shifts it around a bit. We're happy with the current movement/combat/map scale system which we feel provides the right balance between realism and playability.

Gregor

[mazorj]

ORIGINAL: Gregor_SSG

It's true that the best human players will be able to finesse their combats and do better than the AI, but they will also be doing better than a lot of human players, including me, who tend not to proceed as meticulously as you.

It's also true that there are many abstractions in the game, with the movement and combat system being high on that list. However, given the nature of wargames, adding more detail doesn't really reduce the level of abstraction, it just shifts it around a bit. We're happy with the current movement/combat/map scale system which we feel provides the right balance between realism and playability.

Gregor

My meticulous play is why I don't do PBEM. I can easily spend an hour or more, spread over a day or two, intensely working through just one turn to squeeze out every last drop of advantage for my side. I might need a break for several days after 2-3 such turns. For players like me, unless I'm glued to my keyboard and compose my moves ASAP, waiting for Godot can be frustrating for my opponent.

Re how to do the abstractions, fair enough. We can respectfully disagree on some of those issues. (Which, truth be told, is all I can do. You're the game designers!)