will AI be improved greatly?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick
What is CFNA, and where can I get it from?

Campaign for North Africa. A suite of scenarios by Bob Cross intended to faithfully create a board game by the same name (which so far as I am aware it does very well, for good or ill),

http://www.toaw.co.uk/Scenarios/C0026_c ... icacow.zip

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.

It can indeed. The trouble is it can't really tell (or doesn't care) if the line between two objectives is cut. So if you had one objective at Benghazi and another on the Egyptian border, the Axis at the latter location wouldn't react if the Allies cut off their supply, so long as Benghazi was still in Axis hands. An extreme example, but it would work at a lower scale too.

[DanNeely]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick

What is CFNA, and where can I get it from?

Campaign for north africa.

http://www.the-strategist.net/RD/scenar ... .php?Id=45

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[;)]

heh heh heh

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick
That depends on the scenario too. I suspect that some scenarios suffer worse than others.

Well, any scenario where any one sector of the front contains objectives for only a fraction of the PO's formations. Then one can focus one's effort on one part of the front and then slip behind the enemy's flank as a gap emerges.

This was most spectacularly demonstrated in a Bagration scenario I played with the PO as the Soviets. My Germans were fairly effortlessly able to roll up and destroy the entire Red Army south of the Pripyet Marshes.

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick
What is CFNA, and where can I get it from?

Campaign for North Africa. A suite of scenarios by Bob Cross intended to faithfully create a board game by the same name (which so far as I am aware it does very well, for good or ill),

http://www.toaw.co.uk/Scenarios/C0026_c ... icacow.zip

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.

It can indeed. The trouble is it can't really tell (or doesn't care) if the line between two objectives is cut. So if you had one objective at Benghazi and another on the Egyptian border, the Axis at the latter location wouldn't react if the Allies cut off their supply, so long as Benghazi was still in Axis hands. An extreme example, but it would work at a lower scale too.

I've thought about doing some things, like if less than 50% of a formation is supplied, head for the previous objective hex, etc. I'm looking into a lot of things like that. I need to be careful not to break too many scenarios, though. I don't know if any scenarios count on units being unsupplied, but I don't want to break those, and a change like that might really break it. It would also lead to players waiting until the last couple of turns and using ants to cut off supply to force the PO off objectives. Some of this may have to wait for future patches and enhancements, too.

One advantage that TOAW has is that it DOESN'T have random maps. Most of the scenarios should be tunable to where the PO will give you a decent game.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick

I've thought about doing some things, like if less than 50% of a formation is supplied, head for the previous objective hex, etc. I'm looking into a lot of things like that. I need to be careful not to break too many scenarios, though. I don't know if any scenarios count on units being unsupplied, but I don't want to break those, and a change like that might really break it.

So make it optional- or alternatively have it triggered by units suddenly becoming unsupplied.

[bwheatley]

I remember back in the day when i played i think it was Robert E Lee 2 or civil war general 2 something like that. But it had fixed objectives for VP but also it would also notice how long you had a battle line setup.

IE it would say ok north and south forces are meeting at this line and they are fighting at these hexes over and over. And it would overtime give VP to those hexes to give incentive to take them since this is where you were battle.

Would something like that help the AI be a little bit smarter with where to do?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: bwheatley

IE it would say ok north and south forces are meeting at this line and they are fighting at these hexes over and over. And it would overtime give VP to those hexes to give incentive to take them since this is where you were battle.

Would something like that help the AI be a little bit smarter with where to do?

It would help the PO behave more like a human player, but not necessarily a very good one. Ground does not become more valuable just because it is held by the enemy.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious
Given that the map is linear, it would have been fairly straightforward to use all three objective tracks, switching between them as the battle raged across the map. That'd give you a better objective density.

All three tracks are in use.

etc. Even if the PO were able to fight intelligently in one sector, the fact that it can only think at the level of individual formations is crippling.

Let's get it to fight intelligently in one sector first.

The PO should never completely vacate an enemy controlled hex, once a friendly unit has occupied it.

!!! Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this mean that the PO will end up rapidly neutering itself by flooding its rear areas with units?

There's no way to know for sure how the change will perform without testing. But this would be far more "human-like" than what it is doing now. Do you leave enemy units in your rear uncontested? This should give the PO the ability to clean up its rear areas, just as a human player would do. This is especially true since this change will mean that once surrounded enemy units will stay surrounded - greatly increasing the probability that an attack will eliminate them.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick
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.

I disagree. My design experience (and it's considerable) is that the denser the objective field the better the PO performs.

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.

No. I can assure you that formations given the standard "Attack" assignments (not just the "Advance" assignments) will ignore enemy units once they've pushed them out of an objective, and move on to the next objective. The enemy unit then retakes the first objective, forcing the friendly formation to backtrack. This can then be repeated indefinitely.

You'd end up leaving too many units behind, if you never vacated. Especially on the desert scenarios, there just aren't enough units.

I'd ask that you don't prejudge what the result would be. Try it instead. The units left behind aren't going to just sit there. They would tend to attack the enemy unit, eventually destroying it and allowing them to proceed on. That's just how a human player would deal with enemy flotsam and jetsam in his rear.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick
What is CFNA, and where can I get it from?

Campaign for North Africa. A suite of scenarios by Bob Cross intended to faithfully create a board game by the same name (which so far as I am aware it does very well, for good or ill),

http://www.toaw.co.uk/Scenarios/C0026_c ... icacow.zip

Slightly modified by a bit of input from Ben Turner.

[sstevens06]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

...
I'd ask that you don't prejudge what the result would be. Try it instead. The units left behind aren't going to just sit there. They would tend to attack the enemy unit, eventually destroying it and allowing them to proceed on. That's just how a human player would deal with enemy flotsam and jetsam in his rear.

Not necessarily. In a multi-echelon (1944-5 'Soviet-style') offensive, the 1st echelon drives as deeply as possible into the enemy rear, bypassing enemy centers of resistance which could slow down its rate of advance. These bypassed enemy strongpoints are then reduced by subsequent echelon(s). In fact the current P.O. simulates this approach quite well when on the attack.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

There's no way to know for sure how the change will perform without testing. But this would be far more "human-like" than what it is doing now. Do you leave enemy units in your rear uncontested?

Very different from leaving units behind at every objective. One typically doesn't leave a lot of units in the rear area unless there are a) house rules or b) enemy paratroopers.

Forgive me here, but I'm trying to decide whether or not you're Bob Cross yourself? Hard to tell with all these internet pseudonyms (edit... of course, I forget that I'm Golden Delicious rather than Ben at the moment)- and I know Bob as just Bob at TDG.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: sstevens06

In fact the current P.O. simulates this approach quite well when on the attack.

Yeah- that's my experience. The only problem for the Soviet PO comes when formations get too far separated from units on their flanks. The PO can't react to fill the gap.

Other approaches to warfare are beyond the PO, of course.

[ralphtricky]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick
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.

I disagree. My design experience (and it's considerable) is that the denser the objective field the better the PO performs.

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.

No. I can assure you that formations given the standard "Attack" assignments (not just the "Advance" assignments) will ignore enemy units once they've pushed them out of an objective, and move on to the next objective. The enemy unit then retakes the first objective, forcing the friendly formation to backtrack. This can then be repeated indefinitely.

You'd end up leaving too many units behind, if you never vacated. Especially on the desert scenarios, there just aren't enough units.

I'd ask that you don't prejudge what the result would be. Try it instead. The units left behind aren't going to just sit there. They would tend to attack the enemy unit, eventually destroying it and allowing them to proceed on. That's just how a human player would deal with enemy flotsam and jetsam in his rear.

Do you have a scenario in mind that is well designed, but behaves very poorly that I can play with?

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

I'd ask that you don't prejudge what the result would be. Try it instead. The units left behind aren't going to just sit there. They would tend to attack the enemy unit, eventually destroying it and allowing them to proceed on. That's just how a human player would deal with enemy flotsam and jetsam in his rear.

I don't think the approach you described is the way to deal with this problem, as it seemed to imply that units should be left behind at the objectives regardless of the situation. Here's a fairly straightforward alternative based on the current system: one could have a setting which controls how concerned the PO is about its flanks. It would be a simple integer figure for each formation which would be the number of hexes (perhaps blocked by certain terrain types) away from its objectives the formation would try to convert any enemy controlled hexes. Naturally if those hexes contain enemy units they will be attacked.

Naturally, this wouldn't work in scenarios with a guerrilla effect.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious
Very different from leaving units behind at every objective. One typically doesn't leave a lot of units in the rear area unless there are a) house rules or b) enemy paratroopers.

I don't know how you play, but I don't leave uncontested enemy units in my rear at all. That's almost always going to be a bad idea. It's an especially bad idea for the PO, since it will almost certainly force it to backtrack as the enemy unit reoccupies the objective it had been forced out of.

Forgive me here, but I'm trying to decide whether or not you're Bob Cross yourself? Hard to tell with all these internet pseudonyms (edit... of course, I forget that I'm Golden Delicious rather than Ben at the moment)- and I know Bob as just Bob at TDG.

Yep. My old account that uses my name is still active. Apparently Matrix never purges its accounts, even if they haven't been used in five years. I don't remember my password and my email address has changed so I can't use the "forgot password" thing.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: sstevens06
Not necessarily. In a multi-echelon (1944-5 'Soviet-style') offensive, the 1st echelon drives as deeply as possible into the enemy rear, bypassing enemy centers of resistance which could slow down its rate of advance. These bypassed enemy strongpoints are then reduced by subsequent echelon(s). In fact the current P.O. simulates this approach quite well when on the attack.

Bypassed strongpoints wouldn't be left completely uncontested. They would be enveloped for subsequent reduction.

[golden delicious]

ORIGINAL: Curtis Lemay

I don't know how you play, but I don't leave uncontested enemy units in my rear at all. That's almost always going to be a bad idea. It's an especially bad idea for the PO, since it will almost certainly force it to backtrack as the enemy unit reoccupies the objective it had been forced out of.

But your suggestion didn't say anything about enemy units; you were talking about newly captured hexes.

Yep. My old account that uses my name is still active. Apparently Matrix never purges its accounts, even if they haven't been used in five years. I don't remember my password and my email address has changed so I can't use the "forgot password" thing.

I was using a new account for a while- then discovered this one lying around. A helpful board admin was able to restore it to me.

Funny that they have all the old user accounts even though they've lost a lot of the old posts (and, more recently, actually gotten rid of the board we were posting on).

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: ralphtrick
Do you have a scenario in mind that is well designed, but behaves very poorly that I can play with?

CFNA (see previous posts for a link). PO vs. PO tests of it often result in almost total reversal of force dispositions. By that I mean there are more units in each side's rear than to their front - most Axis forces to the east of the Commonwealth and most Commonwealth forces to the west of most Axis forces.

[Curtis Lemay]

ORIGINAL: golden delicious
But your suggestion didn't say anything about enemy units; you were talking about newly captured hexes.

Not true. Read it again. The suggestion was that enemy ZOC should never be completely vacated.

It occurs to me that perhaps I wasn't as clear as I should have been. I said "enemy controlled" expecting that readers would understand that to be referring to an enemy ZOC. But You've evidently thought I meant "enemy owned" instead.

Let me make it clear. What I meant was that whenever a friendly PO-controlled unit entered an enemy unit's ZOC then that hex could never be completely vacated by the PO until the source of the ZOC was removed.