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Well, the last time I played full campaign as the Allies was not soon after the release and the AI wasn't very impressive at the time, even worse when I tried the campaign as the Germans - it had trouble mounting a decent landing in Italy and was easily pushed and drowned in the sea. I played the Operation Torch and it was not that great either - kept retreating and not even delaying me at all in Libya, and in Tunisia it mounted very half-hearted operation to the south, near Kasserine, but never went "all the way" to try to push me away. In the northern part it tried to attack me but succeeded just a few times, never achieving anything of note. The worst, however, was no attention given to Tunis - most of the panzer forces were stationed in the southern part of Tunisia, with a few small German units and Italians defending the most crucial objective. I managed to take it in the last week of february, quite a long time ahead of schedule.

Is it just me or is the AI that prone to mistake? I remember that while it wasn't really impressive in Italy, it at least managed to evacuate Sicily really efficiently and then mount a defensive line in the correct historical place, but failed to defend Italy once I broke through the Gustav Line (I entered Nice and Marseille BEFORE June 1944), and later on failed miserable in France - essentially, after maybe a month it kept retrating, and failed to delay my troops - the only thing it did well was defend easily defendable ports. Therefore I wonder, is the AI more capable now? Does it provide a challenge? What difficulty settings should I play? Should I use FOW for both sides or just mine?

The first question is what play level were you playing at? Once you are familiar with the game rules at Normal (usually after 1 or 2 games), you should bump up to Challenging Level, especially if you are playing the side that is on the Strategic Defense (Axis in WitW). We've found over many different games that the attacking AI needs more help than the defending AI. Another half step option is to boost the AI's side to 110 help levels while keeping yours at 100. However, if you do this, for the Allied AI, I'd suggest boosting it's morale level to 120, while keeping other AI levels at 110 and yours at 100. If this doesn't provide enough of a challenge, you can move up from there.

Since release in 2014, Gary has at times adjusted the AI, sometimes fixing bugs, at other times trying to prevent overt AI cheating. Sometimes these changes improve the AI, sometimes it fixes it in some situations and changes it's behavior in other unexpected ways. It's hard to say exactly where it is compared to at release, but like with most games, once you know what you're doing, you need to give it help to get a challenging game.

I am playing on challenging and it is challenging when you're actually fighting, but becomes too easy once the AI makes too many mistakes - leaving Tunis and nearby airports undefended will allow me to take them easy anyway, even with a more challenging difficulty; the same with Italians who can't delay - I am in Tripoli way too soon, and once I'm there - one Italian division is there to defend it, and it routes immediately. It's worse from there - the AI can't decide what to defend and goes for a half-hearted attack in the south, but stopping it in the middle, without breaking through my lines which was possible, even though at this point it wouldn't help them that much, but would still have been better than just standing there, waiting for the Tripoli to fall and Monty's men coming from the south (little to nothing was done to stop them even once they were in Tunisia).

I wonder whether the AI is capable of defending against amphibious landings and then of establishing defensive lines soon enough. The last time the AI didn't retreat well and I defeated undefended fortified units and flooded Northern Italy without too much hassle. I'm asking because I rarely have enough time to play PVP.

I began the grand campaign (43-45) as the Allies, and used the AI air directive creation to test it, and the result are missions that are way beyond the escort capabilities (curiously enough, no escorts are available whatsovered for a mission over the Ruhr. Being a long-time Gary Grigsby's Bombing the Reich it doesn't seem realistic - if I tried bombing Frankfurt in that game I would have lost the bulk of my forces and their morale would drop significantly, preventing me from conducting missions for some time. It makes much more sense to bomb targets closer to home, and those are available (I have chosen to bomb fuel and heavy industry, both are damaged but still operational in the Ruhr, Bremen, and Hamburg. Also, when I chose bombing U-Boats, the game picked Hamburg-Luebeck-Bremerhaven, leaving the safer Wilhelmshaven and Emden alone.

Overall, not to end on the bitter note, the game does seem to be making a good job in picking targets and missions in the southern theater, but the strategic campaign results in high losses, although still lower than in Bombing the Reich (418 planes for all fronts, but a very large part of those are my strategic bombers). I don't know if I'm correct - maybe I'm just trying to lose BtR logic in a different game, albeit made by the same designer; and true, 418 planes lost is not that bad, so maybe the AI is not that wrong.

In the game it looks like you have to wait to 9/43 to get the bigger drop tanks on the P-47s. Until then, you can only fly partial escorts to reach all of the Ruhr. Depending on where the mission is set up, it probably won't show the fighters have the full range. If left on auto group selection, with partial escorts selected, you'll probably get some air cover over part of the path to the target. A human player making adjustments can do better than the auto ADs, especially in these kinds of situations.

As for Torch, it requires such finesse that it's especially hard for the AI. If Challenging isn't hard enough, bump the AI morale up to 120 or 125. The AI is notoriously bad at locking units into key hexes (like Tunis). When we've tried to do that, it ends up having less units on the line and doesn't do as well. The AI is not a strategic genius by any stretch of the imagination. [:)] Having played a few games of Torch against human opponents, I can tell you it has a very different feel (and is one of my favorites of all the WitW/WitE scenarios. It has a small enough unit count that you might consider trying to play H2H sometime, although I fully understand how that can be impossible to do given availability and time constraints.

I do believe the AI has improved since release, at least in terms of the ground game, but you're likely going to need to bump the difficulty higher.

Joel,

Why not have a "learning" AI? People can upload their games every so many turns and the Grand AI can look at what moves resulted in the greatest VP gain for each turn for a side in question. Than people can download this evolving AI and have a great gaming experience?

I'm playing the 43-45 campaign as the Axis versus the AI using a customized difficulty setting (about halfway between normal and challenging).

I'm only into December 1943 but so far I've been pretty pleased with the AI. It threw me for a loop by choosing to occupy Corsica instead of taking Messina and then launching an invasion west of Rome in early November, thus forcing me to abandon my original defense plans and relocate forces much further north than I planned.

I know no AI is ever as good as a human opponent but for now I'm having a good time with it.

I'm playing the 43-45 campaign as the Axis versus the AI using a customized difficulty setting (about halfway between normal and challenging).

What do you have for the AI settings?

ORIGINAL: Commanderski

I'm playing the 43-45 campaign as the Axis versus the AI using a customized difficulty setting (about halfway between normal and challenging).

What do you have for the AI settings?

Morale: Axis: 90, Allied AI: 110
Fort Build Level: Axis 94, Allied AI: 100
Logistics Level: Axis 95, Allied AI: 105
Transport Level: Axis 92, Allied AI: 110
Admin Level: Axis 95, Allied AI: 105