General Petrov

[Lebatron]

The AI should not be so eager to use its artillery right on General Petrov himself. I had to laugh when he damaged his own forces sitting in the two buildings. Clearly something needs to be done with artillery targeting here.

[Pawsy]

I managed to drop arty on my units too

[RockKahn]

Yeah. I believe I read in the manual that indirect fire can damage all units in the target hex(es). Friend and foe.

[Jim D Burns]

Also most bombardments have a good chance to get delayed. So chances are the AI moved into the bombard area due to an unexpected firing delay. Or was this an at start bombardment?

Jim

[Lebatron]

Those 2 units stay in those houses the whole game. It's just plain retarded AI to drop an artillery right on the General himself. Obviously artillery targeting needs some more TLC by Eric.

[RockKahn]

I'm not absolutely sure, but I think General Petrov starts the scenario in that hex. I didn't know about the chance of delay, though. Thanks for the tip.

[Jim D Burns]

ORIGINAL: RockKahn
Thanks for the tip.

No problem, from what I can tell so far it's scenario specific, not something built into the engine for all bombardments. So read the scenario notes to see if delays are to be expected.

Jim

[ericbabe]

There is code that tells the AI not to target its own units, but there is a small chance that it ignores this rule. Maybe we could make that chance scenario dependent, or have it reference the score value of units in the artillery blast zone?

[Lebatron]

For this scenario in particular the AI should not drop arty right on those houses for 2 big reasons. 1- killing the General is a goal and the AI just helped me to achieve that by damaging him, and second by damaging the 2 units holding VP locations the AI just made it that much easier for me to clear and secure. No human Soviet player would have made such a blunder. For other scenarios I can see the AI doing a point comparison and taking the chance it does more damage to the enemy than itself.

[Joram]

It's a good suggestion to evaluate artillery but the AI will also need to remember where it puts it and then evaluate whether to move units in harms way. Quickly gets quite complex.
Interestingly, in the 10+ times I've played this scenario, I've never seen that happen! I have seen it on occasion in other scenarios particularly when the units are intermingled.

[Splusmer]

I had a different issue/question with the General Petrov scenario. In the board game (at least the first edition) killing Petrov was supposed to be an instant win for the Germans (I remember this because the first time I played with my opponent I won the scenario on my second dice roll--once to get initiative, and the second time to fire my mortar on him... we spent more time figuring out if it was really a win, but even Ewe conceded that it was valid if very, very lucky).

Anyway, I was interested in trying this in the computer game, but couldn't get the firing solution on the buildings, so went ahead and did it the hard way. I did manage to kill the general on the last turn, but it didn't end immediately, and the result was a draw with each side losing three units (for the Soviets one lost unit was the general).

So is this just a change in the scenario victory conditions from what I remembered, or is it a glitch?