I, like many players, find the AI in War in the Pacific to be pretty pathetic (hopefully the Admiral's Edition AI will not be so bad, but that is a tangent . . .), and I started up this thread Helping the AI to Challenge Me in the WiTP forums to get some feedback.
Here is one one guy, "R8J" suggested
Three day turns.
Do not bomb any airfields. It's to easy to destroy the AI airforce on the ground.
All units involved in an invasion (air/sea) must be preped to 100.
Max aircraft at an airfield is size x 50.
All ships with sys damage 20 or higher must return to base and can not sail until in the green.
No air missions unless morale 60 or higher.
LCUs can not be committed to new combat until fatigue/disruption is down to around 0/0.
Units must be assigned to HQ before being comitted to combat.
All convoys must have an escort ratio of 5:1 (5 transports: 1 escort).
Do not upgrade aircraft until pool is exhaused.
Stick to above rules!
Now if you don't know WiTP, some of that might be 'Greek' to you, and obviously very little of those suggestions are going to be directly applicable to a very different game like COGEE.
But the general point I want to make here: we all need to be realistic about what we get for $50 or $60 in a computer game. Expecting the AI to be as 'smart' as your 10 year old brother is simply not realistic. AI in _most_ games is 'stupid' and only manages to challenge accomplished players with advantages, and/or having information that the human is not privy to.
We are privileged to live in an age in which we have incredible access to information, incredible game graphics, and even simple decision-action algorithms in the form of computer-game "AIs," but calling these things "artificial intelligence" is really a total misnomer.
There is not a single game out there today (with the possible exception of some of the most advanced chess programs) that arguably really reaches a sufficient level of agency and adaptability that is appropriately referred to as 'intelligent.' In the case of the chess programs, you have to keep in mind that, they are dealing with a mathematically VERY simple decision-space. The board is always the same, as are all the pieces, there are a large number of permutations of pieces on the board, and with diminishing numbers of pieces even more, but even so: the complexity of the decision space in which a chess app has to operate is nothing compared to a game like COGEE, or most contemporary strategy games (e.g., Civ, EU, etc.).
Until there are major advances in the AI coding world, and/or in the hardware we use to run these games, we need to be realistic and play appropriately. Criticizing gets no one anywhere; but if you are open-minded, perhaps a bit creative, and mature, you CAN have fun in a computer game that you overall love, but which is nonetheless limited by having a less than brilliant AI. For me WiTP fits that description; I love the game and the chance to play the role of supreme commander of the Pacific theatre is just too engrossing, no matter how pathetic is the AI (and I am not a big PBEM fan). But to really enjoy myself now that I have more-or-less mastered the game, I MUST impose self-rules, or constraints on my own actions within the game in order to not simply mopup the AI.
Though I think the AI in COGEE is considerably better than the one in WiTP, similar principles apply here: Once you have 'figured out' the AI in one of these games, if you really want to maximize your fun, you might want to consider making an active and devout point of NOT taking advantage of your insights, your ability to be creative, your capacity to exploit the poor weakling computer. This doesn't mean you have to 'play stupid,' but simply avoiding doing things that border on unrealistic can often be enough.
Some ideas for what you can do to help the AI in COGEE challenge you? I started this thread for us to discuss/list/enumerate the myriad of answers to that question.
To start, I will quote Russian Guard from the Do You Often Lose Battles thread.
ORIGINAL: Russian Guard
Another thing relating to how well the AI plays is whether you try to recreate "historical" type battles or not, in terms of how you move and deploy your units.
In my experience if you deploy your troops like a traditional Napoleonic battle (center, flanks, etc), then the AI can give you a real good whipping sometimes, especially if you do not play France.
Alternatively, if you "take advantage" of the AI by knowing things it will fall for and moving units around in a fashion that isn't necessarily "Napoleonic", then its easier to beat the AI.
No criticism intended or inferred either way; players play as they will, which is as it should be.
While RG refers to tactical matters of how you deploy, move and use your troops in the detailed battles, the same principles could be applied to strategic level actions, building, diplomacy and the balance of naval and land strategy too.
In short, if you play a game 'in style' for the period, leader, character, nation you are portraying, you are almost always more likely to achieve less ahistorical results, or results with which the AI cannot cope. If you play primarily to whup up on the AI, then you shouldn't be surprised if that is exactly what you accomplish!
So what other methods can you guys propose or suggest for helping the AI in CoGEE to challenge you?
