Beef up detailed battle AI

[Squamry]

I tend to play the detailed battles as I'm a wargamer at heart. I'm finding the AI pretty easy to beat at the moment.

Some things I've noticed:

1) AI never seems to form lines to maximise firepower.

2) AI spreads its units out. This may be to limit damage from morale losses in other units, but the result is that they can't support each other. I also tend to take a defensive stance at the start of the battle and the AI seems to be attacking me piecemeal.

3) AI cavalry units do no take many opportunites to charge disordered foot. This is one of my favourite ways to make morale start to collapse.

4) AI is poor at protecting artillery. i always maintain a unit nearby to protect mine and make capturing my oppoennts artillery a high priority.

Below is my general battle strategy for defeating the AI:

1) Form a solid defensive line between two points, usually villages, woods or lakes. Put cavalry on the wings and in reserve.

2) Keep a mixture of columns and lines. Once at one hex form line (if the chances are reasonable).

3) Keep a few units in reserve.

4) As the AI makes contact slowly advance. Keep units supporting each other. Charge enemy units that become disordered, with cavalry preferably.

5) The AI likes to force foot into square. Alway get out of square if the chance of success is reasonable. The AI then forces you into square again, but would go and do the same to another unit if you stay in square.

6) Try to keep one or two cavalry units undisordered for the pursuit.

7) Capturing enemy artillery is high priority.

8) When the enemy breaks everyone goes into column.

9) Surrounding enemy units, especially during pursuit, often forces them to surrender. Foot and artillery may surrender if only partially surrounded.

[Hard Sarge]

howdy
one thing, while the AI may be weak, or the player may be better, don't forget, the AI is playing with the skill level of the troops it is commanding

if they don't have the training to do some of the things you think it should be doing, it won't do it, and if the morale is low, they will not be able to do too much either

I have seen the AI, move in, form line and fight toe to toe, shift the Arty from side to side, and look for weak spots to fire on, and as you say, the AI cav likes to try and force you into square, which when it has the chance, it also tries to pound on the square as soon as it is made

I have had a few battles where the AI had the better troops, and I had to work to pull my troops out of the battle before they got slaughtered (of course, that said, I doubt if many players by the middle game will face many armies that are better then theres. if so, shame on them)

it is not the best AI in the world, but it is getting better

HARD_Sarge

[Ralegh]

Firstly, some of your observations aren't fair to the game - if you play against the 1805 French, you will see they adopt line with depressing regularity, for example, and often have cavalry to use against disordered foot and during pursuit. You are seeing the concequence of where your enemies are up to: if their units dont have much chance of getting into line, they will prefer to fight in column... (And the British seem particularly good at protecting their artillery, for some reason.)

I agree, however, that the AI does not effectively use combined arms attacks enough (ie. arty to break the formation followed by a charge); and spreads its units too thinly. I think it is a bit too much "fire and maneuver" instead of fixed lines, too. The patch makes a few tweaks in the right direction, and more are on the drawing board for later.

The increasing challenge for me comes from going up difficulty levels, which helps the AI economy, and normally means they have superior quality and or quantity to me in detailed battle, which keeps the battles challenging. (And changing countries - the French are so good they do get boring after awhile. The other countries all have very different flavours, which does encourage very different styles of play.)

There is a tricky challenge though: should we encourage WCS/Matrix to teach the AI to fight more like the generals of the period, or to adopt really good tactics for the units of the time? Part of the challenge is that you - a keen player of tactical games - would actually have a significantly better tactical education than the guys of the time... After all, you have not only learned from Napoleon's experiences, but also 200 years of military thinking since then. More historical behaviour from the AI would make for a worse game, IMHO.

[Squamry]

I've played most of the major nations as I'm getting to learn the game. Although I'm not making a very good go with the economic and diplomatic stuff I can at least win on the battlefield. I've found that defensive tactics even allow me to win when I'm up against better quality troops.

Hard_Sarge said:
"I have seen the AI, move in, form line and fight toe to toe, shift the Arty from side to side, and look for weak spots to fire on, and as you say, the AI cav likes to try and force you into square, which when it has the chance, it also tries to pound on the square as soon as it is made "

The square bashing is one good bit of the AI as it usually uses infantry to attack the square, although it does not always move to the adjacent hex to pin the square.

Ralegh said:
"I agree, however, that the AI does not effectively use combined arms attacks enough (ie. arty to break the formation followed by a charge); and spreads its units too thinly. I think it is a bit too much "fire and maneuver" instead of fixed lines, too. The patch makes a few tweaks in the right direction, and more are on the drawing board for later. "

The AI does keep some units back as reserve, but far too much back. This may be one of the reasons it looks so spread out. I keep my reserves right behind my front line. Although I may suffer morale consequences the ability to pass through the front line and deliver an attack is well worthwhile.


I see that the patch is going to tweak some AI parameters, so I'll wait and see.