AI Review

[Stelteck]

Hi, so how do you rate the AI ?

I only played the St Vith scenario, as the german, so the AI was in defense. I think the AI did a good job to be in my way.

I noticed two things that may help improve it (of course it is a subjective advice) :

- It was already the case in Shadow empire, but i think the AI always prefer to fallback to restore a coherent front than to try to hold a defensive position. It is a good thing when in the open, but when it is a critical bridge, or a critical defensive objective point (like St Vith main town), it is odd.

- I think the AI may not use artillery enough, may not fire artillery enough. Maybe it is moving to much ? allied Artillery was supposed to be punchy.
Unlike artillery, the AI do a good job using air support i think.

- Maybe the AI could blow more bridge ? I'am not sûre how many bridge were blown in the historical operation.

And you how do you rate the AI ? Also did you tested it in offensive operation ?

[comsolut]

I thought the same on bridge blowing in the St. Vith scenario, but playing now as the allies, bridges are hard to blow without engineers and there are not many available on the 16th. Using non-engineers takes valuable action points with little chance of success so may be working as it should. Probably need the campaign to get more data.

I saw a lot of interdiction artillery fire and it became more and more frustrating as it hindered my ability to move critical units into battles. Found this very effective. However, counter-battery fire was not observed.

On normal the AI did well, but next time will raise the AI one level as I was learning and expect to do better.

[Bertram]

Did only a few scenarios. What I noticed:
- on the attack, it seems that the AI does advance its artillery to much, and does not keep it in cover. I managed to hit quite a few enemy artillery units while traveling on road with my artillery. That wipes them out pretty quickly. In several instances it also ended up with artillery on the front line.... not good.
- it seems the AI often attacks a hex in several waves. It frequently moves a single infantry unit adjacent to a target hex, bombards it with artillery, and then assaults it. If it does not win, it moves up the next infantry unit, bombards again and assault - till it either wins or runs out of units. This works well against weak blocks (where followup forces can exploit), but is (I think) suboptimal against stronger positions (as both artillery and stqacking limts keep in place for subsequent attacks). The AI seems to have trouble distinguising those two.
- I have good succes with advancing not to far (as Germans) and digging in. The AI exposes his troops to much, and in a piecemeal fashion. Which means I can blow away infantry in the open in the valleys, bagging 2 to 3 times as many Powerpoints as I loose. It only goes wrong when the AI masses troops somewher and dislodges me. But it seems to have trouble formulating these "Schwerpunkts" (or maybe it is scripted, and it succeeds when I do what the script expects).

All in it seems to be a decent AI, which will teach you the do's and dont's. But playing agwinst a human will certainly be of another level, and you should be carefull not to develop bad habits against the AI - a human opponent wil certainly point those out to you.....