delatbabel
Posts: 1252
Joined: 7/30/2006
From: Sydney, Australia
Status: offline
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I've just finished my third solo game, start to finish of EiA. Well it's not completely finished yet, but it's late 1814 and I've just beaten an unconditional surrender out of France and the game probably doesn't need continuing from there. I've played Prussia all three times -- the first two I abandoned due to me not being familiar enough with the computerised game system to get things to work (it took me ages to figure out how to siege / assault a city, so I couldn't conquer a minor or take a province).
The main issue, as expected in solo play, is the AI. AI for something as complex as EiA is always going to be tricky, and by and large it did reasonably well. There are a few things that could be improved, however, which are:
- I've done my numbers and played this game often enough -- it's obvious that France has a better quality army than the combined Prussia/Austria (even with Russian assistance) but the Austrian/Prussian/Russian army builds faster, especially if British money comes in. So the only real way to beat France is to fight a long war and go with the attrition play. This is done by, each land phase, getting the maximum number of AU/PR/RU corps into the fray against the minimum number of French corps (or smallest), picking high casualty options such as escalated assault, and hoping not to lose too many battles. Things that can help include staying out of Napoleon's way when he has a large stack, staying away from Murat when he has cavalry, and using Blucher and Charles to best advantage. The AI, playing as France, makes this far too easy by the propensity of the French to hang around in single corps stacks. Pick two of these each turn (preferably in open terrain) and hit them with 4 corps each and the war quickly swings your way. I managed to capture Napoleon (twice) as well as a few other French leaders (once each) by hitting them with large stacks when they were with a single corps. I once managed to hit Napoleon when he was with a corps containing only 6 militia -- right at the start of a turn when the French AI had inexplicably decided not to move first and GTFO when I had Blucher and 4 full strength corps in an adjacent province.
- Counter to this, your allies are also brain dead. I didn't manage once to convince Austria to attack an area that I had pointed out. Most of the time it seemed to rely on a die roll whether they'd accept the challenge to attack or not, and even when they did agree to attack (say) Zurich, they didn't actually carry out the attack. The programmers should probably fix the AI to assume that an ally had the best interest in mind, and be more likely to carry out attacks and follow up on them.
- British AI should be more likely to loan money. In a real EiA game I am pumping money into the Prussian economy every turn (provided Prussia is actually at war with France and not fiddling about on the Russian border). On the other side, I shouldn't really be asking Austria for money.
- The AI goes to war too easily, and doesn't resolve peace at all. Despite being allied to Austria and Spain, and all three of us were at war with France, Spain inexplicably decided to go to war with me. By the end of the game Spain was at war with everyone (including Russia) and had made no attempts to white peace or even attack most of its enemies. Similarly, Russia and GB went to war early in the game (causing me to break an alliance) and stayed that way for most of the game, despite both being at war with both France and Spain. France and Turkey allied at the start of the game but did nothing to aid each other. Turkey and Russia were at war the entire game but neither made attempts at peace and by about 3 years in neither were making attempts to attack each other either. Once, for no really good reason, GB declared war on me (meaning my money supply was cut off for a year while we resolved it, except that I managed to beat a surrender out of France in that time).
- The AI doesn't follow up on victories. In one war I managed to get hammered -- lost 2 corps completely destroyed against Napoleon, got outpicked in the chit department in 3 or 4 battles in a row, had some crap die rolls, and I was looking very shaky. Berlin was in strike range of 2 French corps, and I only managed to get Blucher out of the low countries alive by sacrificing Hohenloe. In the next 2 turns the French armee dissolved into single corps nuisance stacks and I offered an informal peace which was accepted. 12 months later I had an army again, France and Austria were at war, and in I went for another unconditional surrender.
- The AI doesn't evaluate the political situation. In one war France unconditionally surrendered to me after I had captured Napoleon, and after a few minor victories. I was threatening Paris. Austria and Russia were also at war with France, but France surrendered unconditionally to me alone, meaning they then got whumped on immediately after (I took the FULL reparation option -- no money for them for 6 months). A conditional surrender to all 3 powers would probably have been a better and probably accepted option.
Apart from that:
Strategy and tactics -- probably nothing you need to do differently in this game to the real board game. Remember that the eye should be on long term victory so (especially fighting France) stay on the ball of where the French corps are and which can be attritioned down. Going 4 corps vs 1 in open terrain, especially if the French corps is not full strength, and picking esc assault is probably the main game. Picking Echelon with Blucher vs more French troops that include militia (especially if you can get lots of guards/cav/poles to back you up) may get you a good morale victory where you can use your cav bonus to shred the French forces.
Military aid -- this doesn't happen in the computer game. In the board game you get large Austrian or Russian stacks marching through Prussia, supplied by Prussian depots and backed up by British money. With the lack of ability to interact with your AI allies, this just doesn't happen on the computer.
Fleet rules -- well the naval rules in the computer game don't suck any less than the ones in the board game. As Prussia they weren't my primary concern, although like the AI for the corps, I saw Nelson hanging about in the channel with one fleet far too often.
I did have a whole raft of minor issues with the user interface, for example:
- The button with the tick on it at the top left corner says "I have done this, move on to the next thing" to me, however it's the one that exits to the main menu. The button that should have a tick, that does actually move on, is next to that. I'd expect an exit button to have a cross on it and be top right.
- Many of the other buttons weren't immediately obvious as to their function until you hover the mouse over them. The buttons showing VPs, political status, alliances, surrender terms, etc, are all just a jumble of small and hard to identify icons. Most of these could be cleaned up and put on a menu -- e.g. "Victory" menu having VP, political status, and history of +/- pol status adjustments on it, then another menu containing all of the alliance / at war / surrender stuff.
- You have to pick surrender conditions before the surrender happens. That doesn't make any sense. There should be some dialog pop up when you accept / give a surrender saying "conditional surrender from France to Prussia has happened, choose your options".
- As has been commented on various times before, the garrison icons are too large and get in everyone's way. Garrison values should also be public, they are in the board game but not in the computer game.
- Generally, I have never played Empires in Harm and found many of the differences, especially in the German minor states, hard to get my head around. I wish there was a "vanilla" EiA mode where the minors are set up as per the original board game. More scenarios and a scenario editor would be useful over time as well (I think the AI may actually fare better in a 1792 scenario).
- Movement and selecting units is illogical. You select a unit with a left click, then move it with another left click. You then have to right click on the map to deselect everything before you select a different unit. Wouldn't it be easier with left click to select, right click to move?
- Aside from that, I haven't been able to get my head around selecting provinces, especially during the reinforcement phase. Sometimes a left click will allow me to select a province to add reinforcements to a garrison, and sometimes it won't. It appears that right clicking to clear the selection and then left clicking again in a different country sometimes solves that, and sometimes doesn't. The whole process needs to be looked at thoroughly with an eye to UI design -- I can't say exactly what's bad about the current interface, but there is nothing good about it.
- Minor quibble: when you are building troops, clicking on the troop type symbol (above the up arrow button) maxes out the build of that troop type spending all available money/manpower. When you are adding reinforcements and you have a unit/garrison selected to add the reinforcements to, clicking the troop type above the up arrow does nothing.
Overall it's a good and somewhat addictive game that has some relatively easy to rectify flaws.
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