Expert versus Intermediate

[majpalmer]

I won fairly easily as the Entente playing on Intermediate. As an experiment, I tried playing on Expert, but without any of the bonuses. I wanted to see if the AI played better at Expert, or if the main differences were the bonuses. What follows are my observations.

On Expert, the AI did play differently. It was far more tactically aggressive. It was as if the CP had copied Plan 17 and applied it for three years! It would attack even when the loss ratios were unfavorable. There was one turn I remember in the winter (snow) of 1916-1917 when it attacked everywhere. In every attack without artillery support, and that was most of the attacks, the AI CP suffered horrendous losses, often not even inflicting damage on the entrenched Entente unit.

At sea in the summer of 1916 both the German and AH fleets sortied. The Germans withdrew all their forces from the Baltic, which has since been a Russian lake. Both CP surface fleets were all but destroyed.

Currently, April 1917, the US is still not in the war (90%). French morale is about 60. German and AH morale is in the 50s. The Ottomans are at 1%! British and Italian morale is in the 70s, and the Russians are in the low 60s! Bulgaria isn't in the war, and the Rumanians and Greeks are. The Serbs have lost Belgrade but are still holding on and when the Ottomans collapse all those UK fores are headed to Greece! I'm actually doiong better than IK did playing at Intermediate.

Next time I'm going to try playing at Intermediate, because I think the AI actually plays smarter rather than simply adopting l'offensive a'outrance! I'll give it the MPP advantages and the efficiency (or whatever the term is) advantage.

[Bylandt11]

I always assumed the bonuses were the only difference between the difficulty levels. But you could be right that the AI behaves differently. In that case not applying the bonuses might actually disadvantage the AI if the higher agression level relies on the experience bonus.

[Hubert Cater]

Just to confirm, the AI doesn't actually play any differently under the different modes (it is not currently programmed to) and the levels are essentially linked to the bonuses. However, there might some UNIT script bonuses that are tied into the different levels that will then help the AI just by having a few extra units, i.e. on defense or offense or garrison duty etc.

My guess is that since every game is a bit different, with different rolls on combat and results, it may have just been perceived to have played differently and some of the outcomes could indeed have been slightly different as well.

[majpalmer]

Understood.

[Chernobyl]

Are you saying that you get some extra units depending on difficulty level?

Also does the AI get some extra units that the human does not? I haven't confirmed it but it sometimes feels like the AI is getting more units than if I control the country.

[Hubert Cater]

Yes, at the different difficulty levels as well as at the default level. If you navigate to the OPTIONS->ADVANCED->SCRIPTS screen and then take a look at the UNIT event list you'll see all the unit events that are marked as AI events only.

These are all the bonus UNIT events and they can be turned on or off as desired before or during your games against the AI.

As an aside, I would not recommend disabling any of them in order to ensure an optimal game play experience, as they have truly been fine tuned to provide a good game in return for the bonuses to help the AI at key game play points, but of course the option is there as needed.

Hope this helps,
Hubert