Matrix Games Forums

This has probably been mentioned before but i'm curious.

Started my first long campaign this week with WAW. I'm noticing a trend with the AI that is impacting the playability.

The AI seems to consistantly spend over half of it's allocated points on either mines (for assaults) or artillery for meeting engagements/advances.

2nd last battle i'd say the tally was more like 65%. Never saw so many platoons of 81mm mortors in any game i've played! So much so that the Finns only had a few platoons of infantry to attack and only 3 tanks

Current assault has revealed very few entrenched troops but no less than 3 complete belts of mines extending the entire length of the map!!!

Is this a correctable issue?

As I recall, one of the big problems in pre-version 5.0 generated campaigns was that minor countries and france, when played by AI, would stockpile forces with armor. This resulted in very unrealistic scenarios.

This was corrected as of version 5 (Paul or Wild Bill to confirm). The result is that defending forces will be comprised of art. infantry and mines, epsecially in defensive stances...

Maybe more tweaking is necessary, but highly unlikely to happen. My advice is to play campaigns that are pre-made, like the MC's. The first MC is a gem...

That and buy Engineer's.......lots of engineers.

If Finland had any stockpiled mines.....she's used em all up in this one battle

I hope all those destroyed tanks ar'nt coming out of my paycheck

And, no matter how much the AI's buy routines are tweaked, it'll never be 'perfect'. The main problem with a random campiagn is that it's random. It's also no guarantee that if you play a human you'll see good - or realistic - OOBs from your opponent

Designed campaigns, IMO, tend to be much better than random ones

Alex

I’ve been ranting about the generated campaigns for some time. They aren’t any fun, once you realize the AI sets up in a completely predictable pattern. You should try getting a ‘partner’ to set up battles for you, that you link up in a campaign. It is very easy to do, using the campaign editor. The main advantage is you have your partner pick or generate a map, purchase and deploy forces, and move victory hexes to logical areas – behind hills, bridges, towns, etc. This can be done quickly – I can set up a battle this way in 20min. And on occasion, your partner can throw in a trick or two – reinforcement, counter attacks etc. Any you can use the premade maps which are great.

I did a US Airborne campaign this way. Once I finish it, and tweak it a bit, I’ll publish it for others to play.

These campaigns aren't as polished as the designed campaign Alexandra mentioned, but they follow course that you set (ie, parts of the war you are interested in), and can vary with your ability - the generated battles can get pretty easy.

On a slightly different topic this reminded me of... at one time it was possible when generating your own campaign (one flag vs. three flags of opponents) to build your own WWII campaign by changing the three flags at the end of the current battle to the new country you wanted to fight. Then the functionality went away and I never heard if that was going to come back, any news on that one?

Thanks, R

Originally posted by Nikademus:

The AI seems to consistantly spend over half of it's allocated points on either mines (for assaults) or artillery for meeting engagements/advances.

2nd last battle i'd say the tally was more like 65%. Never saw so many platoons of 81mm mortors in any game i've played!

I can't argue with what you saw but I have not seen that. I've done 2 scenarios against the Poles, 1 against the French and 1 against the Soviets. All have been mobile (no assaut or defend) and all have little artillery for the AIP. I'm at 6.3. In fact I was wondering why the AIP bought so little arty!

To Larry Holt:

You are at 6.3?
Where did you get it?
or my hears (or eyes) are cheating me?
Bye