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What's with the unit AI?? It's really starting to bother me. Do I have to babysit all my troops all the time? I remember reading somewhere this game has good AI but what I get is dead men and wasted units. [:@]


The reoccuring theme #1

Order movement of unit out of contact with the enemy to another position. Give it move order with "avoidance". What do I get? The freeking idiot runs right into the enemy can gets royal whacked. Ofcourse this doesn't happen every time. But it does regularly. But it's the "avoidance" it shouldn't happen at all!


The reoccuring theme #2

Ordered defend. The enemy attacks my unit and it withdraws to "safety". Now it trys to retake it's former position. And since the enemy is there it gets more casualties and retreats to "safety" again. And after awhile it again tries to retake the position and gets beating back again and again ad infinitum... What what WHAT??? How stupid does it get?


The reoccuring theme #3

Giving orders to higher echelons... *starts to cry* [:-]




And don't get me started about insta appearing thousands of paratroopers fine and dandy right in front of my flak company with plenty of AA-guns and ample ammo. [8|]

ORIGINAL: kukatahansa
The reoccuring theme #1

Order movement of unit out of contact with the enemy to another position. Give it move order with "avoidance". What do I get? The freeking idiot runs right into the enemy can gets royal whacked. Ofcourse this doesn't happen every time. But it does regularly. But it's the "avoidance" it shouldn't happen at all!

Well not really. avoidance just says try and avoid but if there is no reasonable alternative - ie another path that can be traversed in a reasonable time frame ) then it will still plot a route through enemy forces. Now think about it. If we made it absolutely exclusive of known enemy positions, then in cases where you are trying to to Move as part of a withdrawal and you were surrounded, the route would fail and the unit would not even attempt to do what you want it to do. Further, if the terrain constricted movement, eg by impassable rivers, to a single crossing point say and that was enemy occupied, wouldn't you still want the unit to move across the crossing rather than abandon its orders all the time?

The reoccuring theme #2

Ordered defend. The enemy attacks my unit and it withdraws to "safety". Now it trys to retake it's former position. And since the enemy is there it gets more casualties and retreats to "safety" again. And after awhile it again tries to retake the position and gets beating back again and again ad infinitum... What what WHAT??? How stupid does it get?

Read the Manual. What you describe is the default behaviour. If you want your defending units to not retake their [positions, then once they are in position, set their formation to "in-situ".

The reoccuring theme #3

Giving orders to higher echelons... *starts to cry* [:-]

Please elaborate.

And don't get me started about insta appearing thousands of paratroopers fine and dandy right in front of my flak company with plenty of AA-guns and ample ammo. [8|]

Para drops do suffer casualties from nearby enemy units. This may need to be tweaked more. I'll take another look. Thanks.

#1

The latest one that happened to me in "avoidance" path finding:

I ordered AT-gun troop to move from west end of village area south of Den Brink to the main road east of Galgen. There were some enemy units at the north end of the rail bridge and I had a the 1nd Para Batt attacking them in force. At the city are between the northest part of the Rhein and the railroad there were several enemy units defending. Now the troop decides ride 1 km east right into midst of the enemy and then head north but ofcourse it gets nowhere since it get's wasted. Why couldn't it go 1km west and then north and then to Gelden is beyound me. There was nothing stopping it. It had clear roads. Did the enemies in the north end of the rail bridge frighten it so much it had to drive right into other enemies? The one's at the rail bridge couldn't have touched the troop since there was no line of fire in any part of the safe route via west they could have taken. It doesn't make any sense this way or that.



#2

Ok. Does the AI ever give in-situ commands to to it's subordinate units?



#3

It's a total mess that follows. Battalions with 3-4 sub units mostly do well if you carefully consider the formation used and there is only one specific threat to tackle. But bigger KGs and Regiments just pound their head to the wall. They don't manouvre in attack or counter attack in defense. Or maybe Im yet to see those behaviors since Im afraid to use the highre echelon commands since some of their units wind up under 50% in men and equipmen within hour of the first contact. Infact it's more scarier than watching a horror movie or playing Doom3 since you'll never know where your men are going to die needlesly next.

First off your post was rather off hand and quite erm....insulting to the developers. Especially when it looks like you havent read the manual properly. Im suprised that someone has offered you advice considering the way you have brought up your queries.

Considering this game's AI has been raved about not only by reviews but also players then your in the minority.

Some of your points show you need to re read the manual or buy the startegy guide. Also the bigger scenarios weren't ment to be played by giving a command to the highest level. Then expecting it to position tropps etc and fight as you would have done. This would have made a very boring gme. Infact you wouldnt really need to do a thing. You would just be a spectator. You really need to work out when its best to micro manage and when you can give control back. Also always remember to give a waypoint for the attackers to form up. Ive seen battles where my units have flanked and counter attacked.

Advice.

Re read the manual and buy the strategy guide. Also the in situ command is very important.

When you play the game right you will see how good the AI actually is. When you dont things go to pieces.

Im sure other shere will give you more advice.

ORIGINAL: wodin

Considering this game's AI has been raved about not only by reviews but also players then your in the minority.

Some of your points show you need to re read the manual or buy the startegy guide...

In overal the AI is pretty good. And the enemy AI in particular. The problem with AI is it sometimes does very stupid things if you rely on it. This doesn't matter when done by the enemy since you don't know it's happening. And I when it comes to strategy guides I really doubt they help the AI from being a stupid dumbass. So far I haven't have trouble beating the AI. I have trouble keepping the AI out of trouble. [:@]

And btw I like being in minority if it means thinking AI shouldn't kill my troops mindlesly.

1) This does happen too often for my taste and it is something that I hope we can address for COTA. The AI for HTTR whilst better than most, isn't perfect (what is?) and should be improved across the board for the release of COTA. Hopefully, there will be an uprade option for HTTR when this happens.

2) Frankly, no! It won't keep battering away until it's destroyed but it will try to carry out your orders until it's reached its casualty limit which is probably higher than you would like. I've grown to use 'in-situ' more often, especially when an attack isn't going the way I planned and the orders delay is set to 'painfully realistic'. That way I can reduce casualties if the attack fails and I don't want the unit to suffer more trying to re-organise to a set defensive position. Should the attack surprise me and succeed then my troops will be in position and I can change the defend order to something more appropriate.

3) I have seen the AI attempt a flanking attack with a battalion when I've ordered a brigade sized assault. It didn't do it very well it must be said and it wasn't very succesful [:(] but it did try. I prefer issuing orders at brigade level wherever possible, only going down to battalion level for specific missions. Battalion attacks will always go in from the direction you order them to (from the last 'Forming Up Point' or FUP) - the constituent units will not attempt to flank an enemy at this level. This is as much a scale issue as it is that of unit cohesion. If you're using the paratroop units at Arnhem and you want to attempt a battalion size flanking attack then issuing an order with the route set to 'covered' and the FUP as close to the enemy as you can get without being seen should do this for you.

I hope some of this helps[:)]

ORIGINAL: kukatahansa

In overal the AI is pretty good. And the enemy AI in particular. The problem with AI is it sometimes does very stupid things if you rely on it. This doesn't matter when done by the enemy since you don't know it's happening. And I when it comes to strategy guides I really doubt they help the AI from being a stupid dumbass. So far I haven't have trouble beating the AI. I have trouble keepping the AI out of trouble. [:@]

And btw I like being in minority if it means thinking AI shouldn't kill my troops mindlesly.

I think because the AI is so good most of the time, we tend to notice the flaws more. I've played HTTR (and its predecessor RDOA) a lot and I can assure you that nothing you posted surprised me. I suppose I've come to live with the odd bit of strange AI behaviour and learned most of the ways of getting around the problems. Like I said, it isn't perfect and still does the most frustratingly stupid thing every now and again. I get angry with it too [8D]

ORIGINAL: wodin
Also the bigger scenarios weren't ment to be played by giving a command to the highest level. Then expecting it to position tropps etc and fight as you would have done. This would have made a very boring gme. Infact you wouldnt really need to do a thing. You would just be a spectator.

So are you saying that because the higher echelon AI screws things up I shouldn't give orders to them? Or because it wouldn't be fun giving those orders the AI screws things so that I can't give the orders and hope any results? [&:]

But thanks for your advice. I'll be reading the manual and trying to find how to order units to hunt down retreating enemies and how to issue move orders so that when my units contact enemies they will stop and defend. [:)]

Thanks Eric for your good answers. [:)]

ORIGINAL: kukatahansa

Thanks Eric for your good answers. [:)]

My pleasure [:)]

ORIGINAL: kukatahansa

I'll be reading the manual and trying to find how to order units to hunt down retreating enemies and how to issue move orders so that when my units contact enemies they will stop and defend. [:)]

There's no command to pursue retreating units. This happens so rarely in actual operations that it isn't worth including in the game. Military operations are oriented against geographic objectives - if you want to destroy the enemy, do what they do in real life, and put in a cut-off [:)].

To get your units to stop and defend you need to issue a Defend order. The basic thing to remember about the AI is that when given an order by a human player it will not stop trying to complete that order. This is a result of early development where testers complained that units disobeyed orders. Hence the attack that gets repeated after reporting 'casualty threshhold exceeded' - that report doesn't mean the unit will stop, it means you have to do your commanding genius thing and change the plan.

If you want your units to deploy and engage the enemy while moving, then issue them a Move order with very high aggression. Once they get in contact, however, if you want them not to attempt to complete the Move you will need to order them to Defend in the desired location.

Regards
33

ORIGINAL: kukatahansa

The reoccuring theme #3

Giving orders to higher echelons... *starts to cry* [:-]

I've achieved a Decisive Victory in Advance on Loenen by giving an Attack order to the Regt HQ with a single point on Loenen city - but you wouldn't expect the AI to play better than a human all the time, would you [;)]?

And don't get me started about insta appearing thousands of paratroopers fine and dandy right in front of my flak company with plenty of AA-guns and ample ammo. [8|]

What's wrong with this? It's precisely what happened to the Polish Brigade. In fact it's also close to what happened to 3 Para Bde, their saving grace was that the Axis troops they landed on were a) involved in a firefight already and b) pretty poor troops who routed when the paras arrived. The planned parachute drops will occur when and where they are scheduled - this is what happened in WWII. For another example look at what happened to the Germans who parachuted onto Crete in 1941.

The failure of the AI in this instance is in not securing the DZ prior to the arrival of the para reinforcement, in some scenarios the AI player is inclined do this but in others it's inclined to put effort into securing the ultimate objective at the expense of not securing its DZs.

Regards
33

The strategy guide does help you with what orders to give at what times and which units to give these orders too.

It helps you play the game in a way which then reduces any AI abnormalities.

Honestly its really worth buying. Im not one for guides. Infact this is the only one Ive ever bought. It does help though.

I partially agree with Wodin but before purchasing I'd recommend scouring these forums where all sorts of questions have been asked and answered (we're a helpful lot ..... most of the time [;)]). There's also Markshot's tips thread and the AAR's (mine especially [:D][8D]) that you may find beneficial. It will take up more time of course but it may save you money.

Hi,

I find to the enemy AI to be reasonable. Often it scares me into thinking I may lose. Usually I win but on a few occasions I have suffered marginal defeats. The enemy AI is sufficient to sometimes cause you to have "your heart in your mouth" not to mention keeping you on your toes. Thats a good thing.

Now the friendly AI, for certain units during a game,is sometimes truly frustrating. But I don't mind as people and institutions make foolish decisions quite frequently in real life.

I accept it as part of the "realistic modeling" that units may do stupid things. Thats just the fortunes of war.

However I do wish I could program stupidity out of my workplace but I don't think the developers can help me with that............................sigh.

Regards John