ORIGINAL: kev_uk
I had Stalin with his Eastern Front sat in Samara. Not that a powerful a stack, combat power of of 1000, about 26 thousand troops. One of the Siberian White stacks sits outside this city for about three turns, it looked a big stack, so I change the Eastern Front attitude to Defensive, Defend and Retreat (usually by third round). Not worried, because I think this stack is equally worried of me as I am it.
Turn three later, another huge Siberian stack appear, stops Stalin from retreating and they commit. Stalin cannot retreat; come the third round and the Reds fail to pull back...this is a Siberian force all told mustering 70k troops to Stalins puny 25k.
I loose the whole of the Eastern Front. Not happy. But what I am trying to say is the first stack to appear stays OUT of engaging Stalin until his friendly stacks appear, then cut him off from retreating and destroy the whole force. The Siberians will no doubt be recruiting prisoners sometime soon. This was a clever move from the AI...to spot Stalin and call his friends and stop him from retreating.
Now, what the Siberians should do is to roll south and take Tsaritsyn, they could do so easily.
The key of my work on AI is to teach some lessons of geography to the AGE Generic AI. What you describe is what the generic AI may do when it has learnt this geographical curse. The operational maneuver in itself is only due to the AI processes in the exe. The difference is FY is AI knows more often where and when it must concentrate its units and compute such a plan. In its normal state, it doesn't consider very differently the importance of let's say Chita in the Vladivostock area and Samara on the Volga. It doesn't know if Samara is taken, better to retreat from Penza. Both strategical ( mostly mine) and operational ( mostly AGE alone) values of the AI, when added, transforms it in a vigourous and unforgiving opponent.
Don't worry: I suffered myself such blunders. And yet I'm the most aware of AI behaviour in FY [:D]
