ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay
ORIGINAL: ralphtrick
ORIGINAL: panzerariete
(3) the don't use their weapons wisely, in another desert fox huge scenario, Italian mass forces attacked my British army new sollum after advancing 20 tiles, they were decimated very easily by me, later I turn the axis in manual to see how they organize their attack, to my great surprise, ALL their artillery remains 20 tiles behind their assaulting troops, staying immobile for 20 turns, I mean All the artilery units
#3 sounds like a problem with the scenario.
I'm pretty sure he's talking about CFNA, and in the specific circumstance the Axis forces are under "very cautious" strategic bias, simulating Graziani's stalled push into Egypt. And they're on a objective track in which the objectives end at Sidi Barrani. So the Axis are at the end of their objectives and wouldn't have any aggression even if they weren't.
That shouldn't have mattered. They Artillery still should have advanced.
But even when the PO isn't hamstrung in that scenario (with "bezerk" bias and a track with objectives all across the map) it's no more than a practice dummy to get familiar with the scenario. The PO works best when objective and formation densities are very high, so that the entire map is covered with objectives. That's impossible with CFNA. The map is too huge and the unit density too small. If nothing else, there are only 39 objectives per formation, while the map is about 280 hexes long.
What is CFNA, and where can I get it from?
You DON'T want to put objectives all over the map. That's not necessary or advisable. In special circumstances, you may want to do that, but the PO knows how to follow a straight line.
The PO is being looked at, but I don't know exactly what will or will not be done.
Just in case you've missed it, I'll repeat a post on the PO I earlier left on the StrategyZone board:
"The main problem with the PO, as I see it, is that it is singularly focused on positional objectives with virtually no consideration of enemy force dispositions. This results in the PO ignoring enemy forces in its rear area once they have been forced out of objective locations, until those enemy units retake those objectives, forcing the PO to then double back and force them out again – repeat over and over. Also, they will advance without concern to their supply communications. Finally, they will often abandon a complete envelopment of an enemy stack, allowing it a retreat path from combat, not to mention a supply communications path.
Yes. That's a shame that works that way. Someone really should change the way that works. That doesn't make any sense, and isn't 'fun' to play. I hope that changes for the MGE[;)]
Therefore, my suggestion to improve PO performance is to add an item to the PO logic as follows:
The PO should never completely vacate an enemy controlled hex, once a friendly unit has occupied it.
An unlimited number of friendly units could pass through that hex so long as at least one remains in it. Under this condition, the only way that the PO could normally completely vacate that hex is via combat or enemy movement. The value of this change would be that the PO would always at least leave something behind to address enemy units left in its rear, communication paths would be held open by such units, and enemy retreat paths would remain blocked by them. PO performance should significantly improve.
Some will suggest that there are situations where it may be desirable to completely vacate an enemy controlled hex, such as during a general retreat. But it is usually best to leave a rear-guard, even in those situations, and it is probably too much to expect the PO to discern the cases where it is not. But, if desired, there could be conditions that would trigger the PO to temporarily cancel the above rule, such as immediately after a track change. Also, some formation orders (example – “Advance”) might be exempted from the rule."
I also want to point out another adverse consequence of the PO's ignoring the existence of enemy ZOCs - disengagement. I often see an entire PO formation, one unit after another, pass through an enemy ZOC, suffering disengagement attack after disengagement attack thereby incurring completely unnecessary attrition from those attacks. This is another problem that would be fixed by my suggestion.
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That's an AI setup issue. There is 'Lunge forward' which has that behavior, and should be used very rarely, and 'Push Forward' which does not have this behavior, it should pause when an enemy is encountered. This will probably be explained in more detail in the MGE edition of TOAW.
You'd end up leaving too many units behind, if you never vacated. Especially on the desert scenarios, there just aren't enough units.
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