1.08.02 ... some comments

[loki100]

Not sure if this is useful as feedback but this shows the situation of a game vs the AI the turn before the blizzard offensive in Dec 1941. Usual good and bad with the AI, it makes too few pockets, too quick to rout units out of encirclement, so no real pressure on the size of the Red Army. Too many low odds attacks. Good is it is basically competent and kept up a lot of pressure on key sectors.

With no +1, before the mud turns in November I made a total of 2 attacks (and one failed). If I'd been paying the sort of attention that I'd do in PBEM there might have been more but then my army would have been smaller and off-balance. So stripping out the +1 seems to reduce this to a game of attack vs defense. After the mud, the AI got rather over-extended and I managed a few localised attacks.

Only needing 4 wins to be considered for Gds status is quite a payback though. Even in PBEM, this should yield a decent stock of Gds unless playing an ultra-cautious German player.

Since I got out almost all my HI/Arms Pts, no real test of the new supply system. Like the flexibility, as you can see I set the air production low (why bother to build that many 1941 planes when the VVS is useless and they will be obsolete in 1942?). I really like choosing which air units to build, have basically concentrated on F/FB/TB with a few transport and recon. Equally good to be able to build bases rather than the old silliness of needing to ensure that they stacked with rubbish just to generate reinforcements in late 1941.

Being aware of the supply cost of digging in makes me a bit more organised with the deployment of rear area units, trying to fortify around key cities/river lines rather than all over the map.

Again, hard to judge for PBEM but didn't feel under much more pressure over admin pts ... but then I have got a lot better at managing SU generation and allocation.

Interesting to watch the supply-ammunition relationship reflect the intensity of fighting. That was just over 8,000 in the mud turns and as high as 22,000 when the fighting has been at its height.

The swap/refit routines seem to work exceptionally well, no longer having older TOEs hanging around.

Like the idea of units defaulting to Stavka when their corps command is removed, really helps to organise things and offsets some of the new demands on admin pts.

[morvael]

Too me your feedback looks positive, which is good. AI was never good in blitzkrieg so it's comparing apples to oranges - I assume in a PBEM you would not evacuate all factories. A lot of AP can be saved through improved SU management, but also due to new assignment costs, which are lower, and plane upgrade routines which are working better. So AP costs to build air are simply using up this extra rather than taking away even more.

[jwolf]

Loki, I appreciate your report here. Disclaimer: I haven't tried v 1.08 in any form, and for the foreseeable future I'll be marooned somewhere in the South Pacific in WITPAE. But it sounds like the changes by Morvael (and others??) are really, really good. I don't think any Soviet player will miss the silly airbase game of 1942. Having the flexibility of the +1 rule and mild blizzard option allows for a lot of combinations to adjust according to skill and experience of the players. All the changes you listed look like great improvements to an already great game in WITE.

BTW how do your settings compare to "impossible" difficulty?

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: morvael

Too me your feedback looks positive, which is good. AI was never good in blitzkrieg so it's comparing apples to oranges - I assume in a PBEM you would not evacuate all factories. A lot of AP can be saved through improved SU management, but also due to new assignment costs, which are lower, and plane upgrade routines which are working better. So AP costs to build air are simply using up this extra rather than taking away even more.

Realised there weren't many AARs so felt some snapshots would help give an impression of how the patch is working. I like it, its different enough to mean you need to think and all the changes are much for the better

ORIGINAL: jwolf

Loki, I appreciate your report here. Disclaimer: I haven't tried v 1.08 in any form, and for the foreseeable future I'll be marooned somewhere in the South Pacific in WITPAE. But it sounds like the changes by Morvael (and others??) are really, really good. I don't think any Soviet player will miss the silly airbase game of 1942. Having the flexibility of the +1 rule and mild blizzard option allows for a lot of combinations to adjust according to skill and experience of the players. All the changes you listed look like great improvements to an already great game in WITE.

BTW how do your settings compare to "impossible" difficulty?

guess its a sort of challenging +. I tried a test at 80% on the Soviet settings and it was nearly impossible not to have the bulk of the army unready most of the time. The extra morale for the Germans seems to mean the AI does well over the first few turns and has the CV to turn its brute force attacks into something of a threat. The extra engineering values helps offset that it doesn't predig fort lines.

I'll do something similar at the end of winter, be interesting to see what no +1 and mild winter does overall, even vs the AI

[jwolf]

ORIGINAL: loki100

I'll do something similar at the end of winter, be interesting to see what no +1 and mild winter does overall, even vs the AI

Best case -- and this isn't out of the question at all -- you may even have a scary 42 summer. Would be pretty cool.

[randallw]

130 morale for the Axis seems a bit murderous.

[comsolut]

ORIGINAL: jwolf

ORIGINAL: loki100

I'll do something similar at the end of winter, be interesting to see what no +1 and mild winter does overall, even vs the AI

Best case -- and this isn't out of the question at all -- you may even have a scary 42 summer. Would be pretty cool.

+1

[micheljq]

Are you saying German AI is better with v.1.08.02 or it is the boost that you gave?

Michel.

[loki100]

ORIGINAL: jwolf

ORIGINAL: loki100

I'll do something similar at the end of winter, be interesting to see what no +1 and mild winter does overall, even vs the AI

Best case -- and this isn't out of the question at all -- you may even have a scary 42 summer. Would be pretty cool.

If the game seems worth it, I'll sit down at the end of the winter battles and make it into a scenario. The advantage is I can sort out the AI's OOB for it and concentrate its Pzrs. In particular move 4PZA from its inevitable obsession with Cherepovets et al partly by redeployment but also by giving it new objectives. The pain to all this is having to reconstruct the reinforcement schedule [;)]

ORIGINAL: randallw

130 morale for the Axis seems a bit murderous.

I was actually wondering about putting it higher for T1-3. Those are the only turns in which the AI really makes and seals pockets that actually reduce the size of the Red Army (in a manner closer to the norm in PBEM). It has an interest in encirclements and does that stage well, just then lacks the patience to ensure surrenders rather than routs

ORIGINAL: micheljq

Are you saying German AI is better with v.1.08.02 or it is the boost that you gave?

Michel.

Unless Morvael says different, my understanding is that the AI code is as it was before? So you've just got to accept it is an AI (actually a pretty good one) and help it along. If the game goes into 1943, I'll adjust its fortification bonus to take account of the lack of pre-dug fortified lines and so on.

There is a lot in 1.08.02 that is noticeably better. TOE and equipment swaps, air upgrades, control over build routines and the wider supply system all work much more intuitively. For air upgrades, its now a lot more feasible just to leave the bulk to the AI.

[gingerbread]

There is this from the 1.08.00 What's New:

49. Adjusted morale difficulty modifier CV bonus, so it is affected only once (for example at
morale difficulty 50 final CV will be half of the original value, instead of quarter). This
allows scaling the difficulty linearly.
------

so morale 130 is not what it was in 1.07, at least not in combat where it was close to 170 (1.3**2). Maybe 150 for T1-3 is what it takes. Now Soviet NM of 36 is '42 is brave, I would expect more than half of the army to be unready.

Pray tell more about the reinforcement schedule reconstruct, seems like a job for a .cvs --> excell to decrement delays where delay <250 --> .cvs --> editor, done! Or are there devils in the details?

[jwolf]

When I changed a save to a scenario, I had to check and/or reset the Axis withdrawals for every single unit. [:(] Arrivals were kept as in the original scenario but all withdrawals were erased. If there is a nice way to do this it would be really great.

Loki -- a possible alternative -- can you reset the game so you play both sides for a few turns, in order to move 4th Panzer army etc? Or is it the case that do this you would need to rewrite your save as a scenario (and take care of the withdrawal schedule)?

[randallw]

ORIGINAL: loki100

I was actually wondering about putting it higher for T1-3. Those are the only turns in which the AI really makes and seals pockets that actually reduce the size of the Red Army (in a manner closer to the norm in PBEM). It has an interest in encirclements and does that stage well, just then lacks the patience to ensure surrenders rather than routs

I guess we simply have to live with the idea that computer opponents just won't be able to simulate human thinking.

[micheljq]

ORIGINAL: randallw

I guess we simply have to live with the idea that computer opponents just won't be able to simulate human thinking.

AI is quite decent in some games, but it requires a lot of job and coding, testing surely. I think of RTS Company of Heroes, Decisive Campaigns games.

However those do not cover the entire russian campaign. In WitE it is not bad nevertheless, i enjoy the AI, it is... just good. To have better it would require modding from the community i guess.

So far I enjoy it nevertheless, I will have to live with it.

Michel.

[randallw]

I figure the AI works with a lot of numbers for it's strategy; it tries to measure enemy strength in an area ( it does like to fly recon missions ) then compares it to it's own and has a yes/no on trying to capture/hold a city. This seems like a reason level of competency.

How would you go about putting human types of deceit and trickery, though? ( this would be a next level ability ). Put mediocre units on the rails in an area to fake an offensive, then launch a true offensive somewhere else after drawing a defense move. Or maybe it can withdraw, to lure the enemy forward, then the shoulders of the enemy advance are cut off ( to create a pocket ).

[micheljq]

Right now T61, german AI does a lot of losses to me. It is not deep in USSR but he manages to do a lot of losses. I lose 70000 soldiers per turn since mid-june 1942. It is a 1941 campaign. I do enjoy.

I am preparing a counter offensive near Leningrad because it did cut the city rail lines. I am creating tank corps and infantry corps from divisions for a better punch.

I do prepare a counter offensive in the south too.

Michel.

[JocMeister]

Also very pleasantly surprised by the AI. Playing on 120/90. Progress in the south is pretty poor though. But AGC North and Center is the same as historical or better. I´ll probably lose the last Leningrad hex next turn.

Admittedly its my first WitE game since release.

[micheljq]

ORIGINAL: JocMeister
Progress in the south is pretty poor though.

same here

[loki100]

Just to update this, the map etc is for April 9 1942 (first turn of pretty solid mud).

Made no real geographical progress in the winter, in fact lost Leningrad. Really by the start of Jan the only logic to attacking was to gain Gds (all but one cav corps has converted) and/or morale to offset the mid-1942 NM impact.

No +1/mild blizzard has a profound impact on gameplay. Here, as the AI doesn't really do pockets, I had a large army (and that will make it relatively easy to absorb the AI's broad front 1942 attacks), in PBEM that will be missing. In turn, less Gds and less morale gains to ease you into the summer of 1942. The payback for no +1/mild winter is that Gds are easier to obtain, and they are not affected by the NM issue.

So my guess is that the dynamic of 1942 will be set by how many Gds the winter battles generate and how well the Soviet player can protect them in the early summmer.



As to modding, following the discussion above. I was wrong about the reinforcement/withdrawal problem as that is copied from a save to a scenario. There are however, some real problems. First I spent an age re-organising the German OOB and giving units new objectives. When I ran that for a few test turns, it was clear the AI was reverting to its old deployments, so I think there is something in the underlying script that over-rides any revision of actual targets?

Since this was my primary goal I gave up on trying to alter the AI's choices.

Second big problem was with the Soviet OOB. You lose all/most of the win/loss record, units that are Gds retain that status and I think they retained their morale. The mere idea of sorting that out for every line in the Commander report (affects air groups too) is well beyond my patience, esp given the issue with the German AI in any case.

One other question. This may reflect the vs AI dynamics but it seems as if both sides have very few plane losses due to AA?

But for land losses, a lot more were coded as killed compared to 1.07. In my PBEM with SigUp killed at this stage were 295,000 and 400,000 respectively compared to 345,000 and 590,000 in this game. May be no more than a reflection of the AI's preference for regular attacks compared to a more cautious human performance.

[Peltonx]

Good stuff.

[Gabriel B.]

Loki 100

I am curious if you abandoned Karelia and the Volkov river voluntary .
I would have not tryied to keep Leningrad at all cost, but make the defense of those two a must.