disapointing Victory

[viking42]

I was quite disapointed about what happened:

I played as japanese, historical difficulty and won at 2/15/43
with 51527 points against 12827
the point is that it is a game over, i can't play anymore and continue my conquests, i was hopping the allied would attack back in 44 and giving me a lot of defensive fun, but i will not be able to see that happen.

i wanted to express my frustration of not being allowed to have a continue play and a total conquest

[TulliusDetritus]

1) PBEM
2) Next time, do not take unfair advantage of the AI -it is NOT Karpov, indeed-: do not massacre it when it does stupid moves [:)]

[Tankerace]

Hrm, I guess the people ho said it wouldn't be an issue were wrong. Then again, at Historical level the AI is a push over.

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: viking42

I was quite disapointed about what happened:

I played as japanese, historical difficulty and won at 2/15/43
with 51527 points against 12827
the point is that it is a game over, i can't play anymore and continue my conquests, i was hopping the allied would attack back in 44 and giving me a lot of defensive fun, but i will not be able to see that happen.

i wanted to express my frustration of not being allowed to have a continue play and a total conquest

Play the "hard" level. This is a rare instance where a wargame AI actually plays a bit "smarter". It better anticipates your moves and will actually react in some cases. The levels above "hard" bascially cheat by just using what amounts to force multipliers. But "hard" is the top AI level that doesn't resort to cheating.

But even with that, you have to play HISTORICALLY as the human. Take what the Japs actually took and not much more. For instance, If you blitz in the far southeast Pacific by taking Fiji and Canton and such, the AI will probably not do a damned thing to you. If you reinforce to a very unhistorical level in the early operations (i.e. put three of your original PI divisions on Lunga) the AI will enter a Death Spiral and impale itself on your position. The AI doesn't understand the concept of flanking strategies and can't recognize "fients".

So play the "hard" level and then use a load of personal house rules. You can still have a very entertaining game.

Another method, if you don't want to be tied to the slow pace or restrictive nature of a PBEM game, play yourself in a hotseat game. React to only what your recon and intel discovers. I've discovered that you can generate some truely EPIC battles playing hotseat against yourself in places like China and Burma that you could probably NEVER duplicate in a PBEM game....

[mogami]

Send the file to Mr Frag

[viking42]

frustrating is that i had planned a lot of things, my production for example, and i managed to get just enough oil to the right places to get my fleets running.
I will not play hotseat against myself, that's quite difficult to stay honest then and your fighting no one. pbem is really to long for me.

I will try to play as allies to get some challenge.

the save i have to send is the 03 i believe? the first two being the automatic ones?

[mogami]

I'd like you to post a screen shot of the final map dispositions.
You didn't think the game was too boring, flogging the AI for 400+ turns drains all my energy.

[BartM]

not sure I like the "solutions" here

either play another player ignoring the Single player aspect, or... cheat yourself by playing badly so the AI has a chance....

reguardless how historical you play, the ai (both sides....your enemy and your computer controlled areas) play completely absent minded, and pbem is not a solution to this, unless this game was specificly designed for pbem only, in which case I would think most people would not have bought this.

I am still curious as to why the computer will split up an engineer unit, placing 1 squad on remote islands all over the place, doing the same thing with planes, sending unescorted ships into heavy airbal, not reacting to attacks and islands being taken, not reacting to airbal increases in their area and trying to defuse it.... the list goes on

but really, the a)pbem or b) play poorly is not a sollution [:(]

[mogami]

Hi, The AI is not a "thinking" process. It is a set of directions. It is a set of simple directions. Coding a "thinking" "learning" process would require more space then the game and a single turn would require hours. (The AI would have to analyze the situation at the start of each turn and compute what the proper response would be) The AI has no memory.
This is not a simple game. The AI is only there following instructions. Very basic instructions. And then everyone who playes WITP is a brilliant person.

b.) is not "play poorly" b.) is "stop exploiting the AI"


Do you use the historic turn 1?
Do you stay inside your own air control when invading enemy bases?
Do you mass forces in one area and ignore others? (As Japan do you defend your outer bases or just those you see the AI working towards?)
Do you transfer units from China or Manchuria?
Do you use hundreds of aircraft at some bases and allow other areas to go without any air units?
Do you notice hexes the AI uses for simple tasks like supply convoy and wait there for them?
Do you tinker with the starting air factories that are set to R&D? (cheat)
Do you form surface TF with more then 15 ships per TF
Do you maintain fighter cover over Japanese Home Islands. How many bombers are in Home Defense Command.

[Mr.Frag]

Send me your file, as promised, I will zap the score and let you play on if you want, but I'd really like to hear what your starting options were as well ...

Since we have identified the bug with aircraft replacement/upgrades, I wonder just how much of the Yanks you were actually playing against.

[viking42]

ORIGINAL: Mogami

Hi, The AI is not a "thinking" process. It is a set of directions. It is a set of simple directions. Coding a "thinking" "learning" process would require more space then the game and a single turn would require hours. (The AI would have to analyze the situation at the start of each turn and compute what the proper response would be) The AI has no memory.
This is not a simple game. The AI is only there following instructions. Very basic instructions. And then everyone who playes WITP is a brilliant person.

b.) is not "play poorly" b.) is "stop exploiting the AI"


Do you use the historic turn 1? nope
Do you stay inside your own air control when invading enemy bases? no comprendo
Do you mass forces in one area and ignore others? (As Japan do you defend your outer bases or just those you see the AI working towards?) nope, all bases protected
Do you transfer units from China or Manchuria? yes, once chinese defeated but only 2 div or so
Do you use hundreds of aircraft at some bases and allow other areas to go without any air units? nope, always naval search units in many bases but i concentrated a lot on attack bases
Do you notice hexes the AI uses for simple tasks like supply convoy and wait there for them? yes
Do you tinker with the starting air factories that are set to R&D? (cheat) nope
Do you form surface TF with more then 15 ships per TF yes bombardement ones
Do you maintain fighter cover over Japanese Home Islands. How many bombers are in Home Defense Command.

lots of poor fighters in japan (nate in training), few bombers in training (about 4 squadrons)

[ZOOMIE1980]

ORIGINAL: BartM

not sure I like the "solutions" here

either play another player ignoring the Single player aspect, or... cheat yourself by playing badly so the AI has a chance....

reguardless how historical you play, the ai (both sides....your enemy and your computer controlled areas) play completely absent minded, and pbem is not a solution to this, unless this game was specificly designed for pbem only, in which case I would think most people would not have bought this.

I am still curious as to why the computer will split up an engineer unit, placing 1 squad on remote islands all over the place, doing the same thing with planes, sending unescorted ships into heavy airbal, not reacting to attacks and islands being taken, not reacting to airbal increases in their area and trying to defuse it.... the list goes on

but really, the a)pbem or b) play poorly is not a sollution [:(]

Since when is using basic historic strategy playing "poorly"? Attacking only when properly supported by friendly air cover. Not leaving important areas go undefended so you mass huge number of forces in other areas. Moving units completely outside their assigned areas of responsibilities? IMHO this game is FAR to lenient on allowing player to move forces all over the map. There is NO WAY the 25th Army commander and staff would have allowed his forces to be canabalized for the 15th Army operations nor would the Southern Area Army easily allow its subordinate commanders to do so even they wanted too! Same thing on the Allied side.

No way in HELL would the Dutch just give up their empire without a fight, allowing other commands to just take their best units. No way in HELL would MacArthur allow anyone to deplete his PI forces without a major fight. No way the Ausies would EVER allow home defense units to be canablized for operations that would leave the homeland less secure!

The AI plays a good, solid game against a human player who does largely what the Japanese did. And the Japanese did what they did because that's how operations are carried by professional commanders. They follow the chain of command and they follow well established plans of attack that required full air cover, target preparation and meticulous logistical support. You play that way an the AI does a reasonable job. And playing that way is NOT playing badly. You play the way a lot of human players play against an experience PBEM opponent or hotseat and you would likely be the one on the losing end of the auto-victory system, not the other way around!

[mogami]

Hi, That was at least half the exploits against the AI being used.

China is a bug bear for the AI. A Japanese player can mop the floor with the AI in China but he has a real fight against a human. One of the fastest ways to screw up the AI is to makea massive offensive in China. Content yourself with just clearing the central RR and you get a better game.

You did not understand " Do you stay inside your own aircontrol when invading."

If you send a TF to land on enemy base could you if needed provide CAP over it?
If enemy TF appears is the base in range of LBA or carrier aircraft? If not you are outside your air control and you are only there because you are exploiting your knowledge of the AI force disposition.

It is an exploit if.......you play against the AI in a manner other then how you would play against me. (or another human)

[Grotius]

What Zoomie and Mogami said.

I don't play "poorly" in my game against the AI. I constrain myself with house rules that reflect historical constraints; I don't exploit obvious AI blunders; and, as Mogami says, I garrison all bases, even those I doubt the AI will attack. The result is a game that has roughly followed the historical evolution of the war.

Playing on Very Hard evens things out a bit, too. I know there are combat advantages for the AI here, but I don't mind. I play Civ 3 the same way.

[Mr.Frag]

Balls back in your court. Play onwards as promised. [;)]

[mogami]

Hi, The game is designed to give a good game against the Ai (but the human should still always win) And allow complete freedom to players against another human (who is able to adjust or not to what you do. Many of the practices that defeat the AI will result in a human opponent countering in ways that produce undesired results. (Mass in China against a human and you'll find he is massing somewhere else. )

Send TF out of aircover against a human.....(sure the Japanese can do it early in the game by exploiting knowledge of enemy force dispositions but there will come a turn when the results show he tried it once too often)

[Mike Scholl]

The real basic point of the thread is that "auto victory" needs to be an optional
setting, not built in. Some players LIKE "flogging a dead horse". They paid as
much for the Game as anyone else, so why not let them "whip to poor old nag"
as much as they want? It's not the designer's task to tell you HOW to enjoy the
product. I've never been able to understand why this wasn't an option from the
start. "Different strokes for different folks"...., and the wider the options available,
the more "folks" will be happy.

[mogami]

Hi, No I think the real issue is the designers decides what victory is. Persons who play a game that produces a winner always know in advance what consitutes victory. What is the point of playing chess after you have mated the other player? When the gun sounds the end of the 4th quarter a football game is over.
There are rules in baseball/softball (not the majors) where 10 run lead ends the game.
You can ignore the auto victory if you want but it is still how victory in WITP is decided. The only way to end a game other then running out of turns is one side gets the required ratio for the period of the war the game has reached. When you begin play your ultimate objective is very simple.
4-1 in 1943, 3-1 in 1944 or 2-1 in 1945/46 If yuo don't want to end the game stop racking up the points beating up the idiot AI. It's just as simple for a player to edit Tokyo and San Francisco to 50k VP as it is for the programmers to insert a toggle and all the other changes the code would need. Do you think the AI would then understand what it was fighting to gain? It's already being exploited now we want to confuse it even more.

(Personally I think you are just breaking the AI when you assign a value of 50k to any base because then the AI will see that it can win the game by capturing 1 base rather then fighting a the war. But if you instead tell the AI points do not matter because there is no victory the AI will like as not simply stop fighting)

[Mike Scholl]

My point was simpler. If you are in the business of selling games, and a loud and
vociferous portion of your market is telling you that they LIKE 'beating a dead horse';
LET THEM! You will sell more games, and it doesn't hurt anybody else who will play
with the "auto-victory toggle" ON anyway. It isn't like this game is an absolutely
total, 100% historic set-up anyway. It's good, with the potential to be better, but it's
never going to be perfect. So why not let these folks have their fun? I agree that
it's not my idea of a good time..., but I don't like scotch whiskey either. Does that
mean no-one should have it available? (On second thought, in the PC age, maybe
I shouldn't ask that question)

[mogami]

Hi, Joel said days ago they would do that. After that I've just assumed the debate was philosophical. But it will not sell more games. The people with the issue already own the game. No where on the box do I find "Allows you to beat the dead horse"