AI and cities

[Redmarkus5]

I haven't spotted a lot of commentary on this, but I sense that it must be a really key issue in terms of AI performance.

Here you can see that even on Turn 44 the AI is STILL refusing to take Kiev, even when it is very lightly defended and should be critical to the AI's own defensive positions.

[Redmarkus5]

And here the AI has voluntarily pulled out of Cherkassy, even though the city is on the western side of the Dnepr and should represent a strong defensive position and sits on a rail line. No Soviet attack has been made here by the way.

[Redmarkus5]

Same story in Krivoi Rog - that AI just pulled out and I marched in without a fight. The AI then formed a line in the adjacent hex, so this isn't just a matter of it computing attack/defense strengths at unit level and making a wise decision to pull back.

[Redmarkus5]

IIRC, the only real comments I have had on this issue from the devs or testers was a quote from a book saying that the Soviets didn't defend their cities in 1941, or words to that effect.

However, the Axis were notorious for using Soviet towns and cities as centres for defence, to the point where 80% of most major urban centres in the East were destroyed by urban combat.

IMO, the AI needs to be adjusted to give priority to holding onto city hexes with strong infantry units. In particular, any city hex with a river on its eastern sides, or a rail line, should be top of the Axis AI's list, and the Soviet AI should defend every city from 1942 onwards, if not before. The AI should accept encirclement in such cases and the human player should be forced to attack every city on the map in order to take it, possibly excluding the turns that occur during June and July '41.

[Redmarkus5]

Does anyone from the development or test teams have any comments to make on this issue? Is abandoning the cities another case of WAD or a bug?

[Lieste]

The Soviets seem to have defended cities by protecting them - their defense line was often set in front of the city, and the bypassing mobile forces would pocket the defenders, city and all...

But that doesn't mean they should abandon a town/city if it fell into the front line - they held Brest Litivosk for some time, and also were fighting in the suburbs of Leningrad, and would have fought through Moscow as they did Stalingrad and Sevastopol.

Don't forget that an absence of strong fighting in cities during German offensives has as much to do with were the panzer spearheads went as it does soviet intentions...

[Redmarkus5]

Absolutely. The defenders of Brest fought on until October '41, with a few holdouts lasting even longer. It was an epic and bitter struggle that gave the Axis a warning of what lay ahead. Not much is said about it. Has anyone ever seen a good film on the topic?

[Redmarkus5]

Turn 50. 28 May '42.

The AI abandons Nikolaev...

[randallw]

The AI certainly has some strangeness when having a chance to capture/defend a city.

[Redmarkus5]

Do you see examples of this too? I had the impression that it was only me.

[randallw]

The Axis AI doesn't consider it important to capture Riga.

[Redmarkus5]

I had that problem too. It comes up again with Kiev and Odessa. Even on turn 51 the Axis still hasn't attacked Odessa, but it went for Leningrad like a bulldozer. There's a design issue or a scenario set up issue here.

[randallw]

Perhaps the Germans didn't like the goulash served in those cities' restaurants.

[Redmarkus5]

Ha ha...