Questions About Playing vs the AI (how to best practice)

[rainman2015]

I am in a quandry on what to do. I have only played the Germans so far, and am still very much a newbie despite at least a hundred+ hours of playing time.

I find that playing the AI on anything close to normal settings is terrible for learning, as it does some really dumb things and doesn't do other things that a human would certainly do. I have heard others say that the AI is really good now, but it hasn't been that against me, maybe i am missing something. Note i have only played the AI on normal, or with the admin and transport set to 120.

I can jack up the settings to give the AI a chance, but then i am really not learning much, since i am playing against a different type of army (different morales, admin settings, etc) than normal AND it is still doing dumb stuff like leaving itself open to encirclement or not guarding river lines or abandoning defensible terrain and abandoning cities, etc etc.

It is really not good at dealing with the aftermath of a blow like the Lvov pocket, if i do that and then try to learn how to play the Germans after that, i will crush the Soviets in the south. Just tried the Lvov pocket against it, and its defense on turn 2 was really poor. I have heard it can't handle the right hook against Leningrad either.

There is an alternative, to play BOTH sides solitaire, which is what i have just started to do. However, to play the Soviets (i.e. play both sides) is a huge leap for me at the moment (since i have never played them yet) in learning how to manage the mess that is going on for them in the first part of the game, all the army reorganization going on, what armies to rail where, what to do with the air force, how to best evacuate factories, etc. I do learn a lot by playing them though! It is fascinating seeing what my opponent is seeing. BUT, it also takes a big part of the fun out though when you play both sides dang it, even if you turn the FOG on, you know almost everything that is happening on the other side = not nearly as much fun.

So, not sure what the best way to play to learn in between playing a human is anymore, do i keep playing the AI and jack the settings up, or play both sides, hmmm.

What i am a TOTAL newbie on, and need a LOT of practice on is how to handle things after about turn 10, especially when trying to breakthru and encircle the Soviet lines when they are strong. I see this done all the time in the AARs, but i have never encountered it yet. Nor have i seen mud or snow or blizzard yet ever, complete newbie there too! I am getting pretty decent at the game, but need more time spent in the late and post summer 41 time period for sure. If i play both sides, it takes a lot longer to get to those later game turns.

How do you make the AI a competent teacher in the campaign game? What settings would you change and what would you set them to? I don't like changing morale, then you have a whole different type of army you are facing than in the real vs human game.

Maybe i should just play the Road to Leningrad vs the AI and not do the right hook to quickly get to see later game turns when the Soviets are not so easy to break thru and you have to fight really hard for each hex (have not seen this part of the game at all yet, haven't made it past game turn 10 in any scenario!). I need a lot of practice with this grinding part of the game. I also need practice with the breaking thru and encircling the Soviets when they 3-4 deep in a 'wall of steel' in say late August+ 41. Maybe the 'Road to Moscow' vs the AI it could handle and i could quickly get to the later part of the game and experience mud, the wall of steel, etc?

Why DOES the AI do some of the things it does, like abandon strong cities like Minsk, or not put units in the swamps, and leave weak areas of its front that are hugely open to encirclement, one recent game it didn't even garrison the Dnepr river line south of Kiev and allowed me to simply move my panzers across (this was on a 2 or 3 hex wide non-garrisoned front!), no human would ever allow that of course.

Of course, the obvious ulimate alternative is to always play humans, i understand that, but i am talking about practicing in between human turns here.

Thanks!
Randy

[jwolf]

If your immediate concern is how to handle the German advance during, say, the second half of the summer blitz in 1941, you could play both sides in a smaller scenario -- for example, Road to Moscow, or the whole of Barbarossa.

Another thing you can do that would be very helpful is play a game as Soviets vs. the AI. You can beat the AI easily in a campaign (on normal settings anyway) but you'll get a good idea of what the Soviets have to work with, especially during the critical opening blitz.

Finally, for practice breaking and encircling dug in lines, try a later scenario as Germans vs AI. Operation Typhoon is a good small scale operation; for a larger scale, try the 1942 campaign. Even if your goal isn't to play out this entire campaign, you can get some good practice in trying to break through what at least look like pretty solid positions. I concede that the AI's defense is not good but you certainly can see what has to be done in order to crack a Russian line.

[rainman2015]

Typhoon would give me some experience with mud and snow/blizzard both, so that would be good too...

The 42 start is a good idea also for the AI for sure having a good solid line to try and figure out how to crack. I see the AARs of these 4 deep lines, then see them get encircled and wonder, how the heck did the German do that?! I also wonder sometimes, looking at AARs, since i have not gotten that far yet, at how the German pushes thru the last parts of the Leningrad defenses when everything is so tight and the Soviets have 40+ CV sometimes. Wondering how the German troops don't get completely exhausted/burnt out before the can finish off Leningrad!

I am thinking that the AI might be less frustrating and a better teacher if i play the shorter scenarios like Road to Leningrad (without the right hook), Road to Moscow, Typhoon for example, playing those a number of times will teach me a lot and be fun, without the huge campaign game overhead.

Randy

[Northern Star]

Forget the AI please! You will never play at a good level when playing against the AI... And surely a good airfield bombing in the first German turn will be wasted!
I suggest you some scenarios: Road to Leningrad (excellent for fighting in difficult terrain), Road to Moscow, Typhoon (never played the latest version but it was a very difficult scenario during alpha testing) and also the Operation Blue seems interesting.
No one wants to play small scenarios but I think the victory cities rules make the game more dynamic and less predictable than the 41 campaign.

[uw06670]

I'm not sure the best way to get the game into this state, but you might consider playing both sides up to a point (Turn X) and then use that as your base point. You could try to arrange the German and Soviet forces so they are in a fairly vanilla arrangement. Then you archive that save game. Then you can always just start there, and they try doing different strategies on both sides much closer to the time frame you are interested in practicing.

[Commanderski]

There are quite a few of us who only play against the AI. If you set the Soviet AI to 110% or higher on all the settings (I use 112) you will get quite a fight back from the Soviets. You will see counterattacks starting from turn 4 or 5. You also won't be doing as many "Hasty" attacks especially in the South. You also won't be in Kiev as fast as you want to be.

With the Soviet settings that high it will teach you to plan your moves more with respect to keeping your supply lines open and preventing your lead Panzers from being cut off if you get to far ahead (which happened a few times in the real war).

You should also use Random Weather. It wasn't sunny and dry all summer in '41. Both sides were affected by the weather that held up scheduled attacks and counter attacks and adds a good sense of realism when you are all set to try to close the last hex for an encirclement and can't make it because of the mud...[:)]

To get good at encirclements just takes practice, looking at the map to see where there are weak points and gaps in the defenses in the first few turns and planning your moves. This is not a quick game and it rewards players who plan their moves carefully. With the higher AI settings it will take advantage of any mistakes you make


Try this a few times...play the Soviets up to about Turn 3 or 4 and set the German AI to 110 on all settings. It will show you how to do some encirclements.

[rainman2015]

ORIGINAL: Commanderski

There are quite a few of us who only play against the AI. If you set the Soviet AI to 110% or higher on all the settings (I use 112) you will get quite a fight back from the Soviets. You will see counterattacks starting from turn 4 or 5. You also won't be doing as many "Hasty" attacks especially in the South. You also won't be in Kiev as fast as you want to be.

With the Soviet settings that high it will teach you to plan your moves more with respect to keeping your supply lines open and preventing your lead Panzers from being cut off if you get to far ahead (which happened a few times in the real war).

You should also use Random Weather. It wasn't sunny and dry all summer in '41. Both sides were affected by the weather that held up scheduled attacks and counter attacks and adds a good sense of realism when you are all set to try to close the last hex for an encirclement and can't make it because of the mud...[:)]

To get good at encirclements just takes practice, looking at the map to see where there are weak points and gaps in the defenses in the first few turns and planning your moves. This is not a quick game and it rewards players who plan their moves carefully. With the higher AI settings it will take advantage of any mistakes you make


Try this a few times...play the Soviets up to about Turn 3 or 4 and set the German AI to 110 on all settings. It will show you how to do some encirclements.

First off, i want to make clear, that i don't want to attack whoever spent a ton of hours getting the AI as good as it is in this complex monster of a game. I can only imagine trying to write an AI for a game like this. That said...

I took my solitaire (play both sides) game after the German's turn 2 last night, and turned it over to Soviet AI as another test, turning the AI settings for the Soviets up to 120 for Admin, Transport and the other one (Supply?, not morale and forts, don't want to turn them up, then you really have a different type of army facing you).

Anyway, the result was so awful i almost took screenshots for this post. The AI did all the usual stuff like immediately abandoning a place like Minsk (in order to go 2 hexes south of there to clear terrain instead), abandoning many very defensible swamp hexes that were right on the German advance path and instead either leaving nothing there or putting the same units in much less defensible terrain, often no longer behind a river either, just case after case like that all across AGC and AGN's area, where i could do so much better than the AI having played the Soviets never before.

Then, in the south, it was turn 2 after the Lvov pocket, and the Germans were cleaning up the pocket but also now driving on Vinnesta. The Soviet AI defense here utterly fell apart, leaving 2 huge gaps in the line (one of 6 hexes with nothing behind it), and also then putting the majority of its troops all in a long right angle line on a rail that could easily be encircled (it has done this several times in the south in the early game before), retreated most of its forces back about 6 hexes, but leaving about a corps back completely left out hanging for encirclement for no good reason (good tank divisions) in 2 places, it was in short, a disaster about to happen in the south if i played it out. I could blame it on the Lvov pocket and it not being able to handle that, but it did most of those same things in the other games in the south that i played against it, including abandoning very good defensible terrain (and always cities!) for instead poor terrain.

What is the aversion the AI has against defending cities i wonder!??

I just decided, i can't play against this, i am not learning how to play, so i went back to playing the Soviets myself in turn 2 of the campaign game. Now, i AM enjoying doing that, and want to learn how to play them, and am learning a lot by playing them (including helping me a lot in knowing how to play the Germans of course, since i now get to see what the other side sees and is really working with, real eye opener!), but i would rather play just the Germans until i get more experience with the later part of the game into 1942 and even later, and i am just finding playing the AI, even on jacked up (partially at least) settings is not giving me a good opponent. Even if i took all the settings to 112 or to 130 even, that would not fix it's actual deployments or how it builds a line, or it's abandoning good terrain and cities for poor terrain, right? It would just make the forts better and the divisions harder and more of them there faster.

Yet, i still feel like i must be doing something wrong, since i keep hearing others say they play the AI all the time (or ONLY), and i can't imagine that right now. Maybe jacking all the settings up to say 120 would change the other stuff it is doing too? I could try that i suppose. Again, then i am facing a different type of army than the one i am facing vs a human, so i am getting both weird AI deployments vs playing a human and a different type of army vs a human, so not sure it is a good learning vehicle at that point.

After seeing the move the AI made last night, i didn't even want to play it in the shorter scenario like Road to Leningrad.

Yet, i have a lot of nights when i am waiting on my opponent to make his turn and would like to play. Hmmm...

Again, especially for those that wrote the AI, i am not meaning to be negative, just feeling like i am missing something in the AI setup maybe. I was just shocked that it left big gaps in its line in the south that were so easily exploited last night, yet had it's divisions in encirclement range once those gaps were driven thru. In numerous places, it was one hex back from a river line with its line in the south also, i am sure since it was trying to retreat fast, but retreat one hex slower. It was as bad as i have seen it, again, maybe it just fell apart due to the Lvov disaster.

Thanks
Randy

[rainman2015]

ORIGINAL: uw06670

I'm not sure the best way to get the game into this state, but you might consider playing both sides up to a point (Turn X) and then use that as your base point. You could try to arrange the German and Soviet forces so they are in a fairly vanilla arrangement. Then you archive that save game. Then you can always just start there, and they try doing different strategies on both sides much closer to the time frame you are interested in practicing.

This is an interesting idea, but it will not fix the deployment issues i mention in the last post.

Randy

[uw06670]

Well, do you have more than 1 game going against humans? that is another option. I'd like to play Soviet, have been meaning to setup an opponent request, but I can only commit to 1 turn a week. Depending on how often your other game is going, you could pick up a 2nd to fill in the time.

[Peltonx]

Make sure you have your 1-4 turns down to a science.

You should be past Poskv at Land Bridge and be or about to cross the river in the south. I also see people mismanaging their rail units.

I find I really don't know if the SHC player is any good until about turn 12, some guys look good but fall apart.

Then in 1942 not many people have exp so they have no idea what they are up against.

The way the logistics system works now and will work .04 is rush 1-4 then set the table 5-8.

.04 really turns 41 into a struggle from turns 9-17. Its going to take a different approach then whats been used in the past.

[micheljq]

German AI is dumb in 1941 not enough agressive but able to do some encirclements if you are not enough careful.

I have found that German AI is good in 1942-43 to minimize it's losses while doing much damage to the soviets.

Michel.

[loki100]

I think you can use the AI for a lot of things. Give it enough bonuses and you'll get a good challenging game in its own right. It won't push you to the limit like a player but its not bad.

More pragmatically, WiTE is a game with a lot of long running feedback loops. The way morale varies, the impact of some key ToE transitions, how the returning Soviet divisions in 1941 and early 42 hit their manpower and arms pts pools, how production works and so on.

If you stay on the reservation (ie if you really try to trip up the AI it will indeed fall flat), you can use an AI game to test out this broad iteration between action and consequence. I've learnt a huge amount about the 1.08 changes from an AI game and Vigabrand is paying the price in our PBEM. Some things hit you 3-6 months later after you made the decision and an AI game will allow to explore that dynamic.

As Pelton says, many PBEMs tend to end in 1941 either because the German player has a clear win or gives up rather than play out their doom. The AI can't disappear and will stick at it, allows to get a feel for the big picture at the mid stages of the game.

[rainman2015]

ORIGINAL: uw06670

Well, do you have more than 1 game going against humans? that is another option. I'd like to play Soviet, have been meaning to setup an opponent request, but I can only commit to 1 turn a week. Depending on how often your other game is going, you could pick up a 2nd to fill in the time.

I will PM you.

Randy

[rainman2015]

ORIGINAL: loki100

I think you can use the AI for a lot of things. Give it enough bonuses and you'll get a good challenging game in its own right. It won't push you to the limit like a player but its not bad.

More pragmatically, WiTE is a game with a lot of long running feedback loops. The way morale varies, the impact of some key ToE transitions, how the returning Soviet divisions in 1941 and early 42 hit their manpower and arms pts pools, how production works and so on.

If you stay on the reservation (ie if you really try to trip up the AI it will indeed fall flat), you can use an AI game to test out this broad iteration between action and consequence. I've learnt a huge amount about the 1.08 changes from an AI game and Vigabrand is paying the price in our PBEM. Some things hit you 3-6 months later after you made the decision and an AI game will allow to explore that dynamic.

As Pelton says, many PBEMs tend to end in 1941 either because the German player has a clear win or gives up rather than play out their doom. The AI can't disappear and will stick at it, allows to get a feel for the big picture at the mid stages of the game.

For sure, it fell apart after a watered down Lvov pocket opening on turn 2, leaving the south open for disaster. It was just too much for it to deal with.

In my first games, i didn't do the Lvov pocket or anything really intense like that, and you are right, it was not completely unplayable, although it still as the Soviets in early 41, left itself open for big encirclements in the south (i trapped about 15-20 divisions, mostly strong tank and motorized divisions that were, again, all in a right angle line to the front just begging to be encircled), it abandoned great defensive terrain like swamps and especially cities (why the heck does it do that constantly?), and it didn't defend portions of major rivers like the Dnepr at all, allowing me to waltz right over them. I was on normal at the time, but those are tactical and maneuver issues, not something that will be fixed by upping the fort or morale or admin etc settings i would think.

At the very least, you cannot do some of the things that many humans try, like the Lvov move, or the right hook, etc, as it will fall apart in the face of such moves.

Randy