Slitherine

quote:

ORIGINAL: MisterBoats

FJ,

In real life, did we not have nearly as many divisions in Normandy in the same time frame? I'll have to check, but I think there were at least ten divisions ashore by June 13th, along with armored brigades. In my WITW Brittany invasion I think I had 5 amphib. TFs (for Utah, Omaha, Gold, Sword and Juno) along the north coast. Three airborne drops, of which one was routed. The Germans immediately hemmed me in with probably 20+ divisions in good order/strength, despite heavy preparatory interdiction coverage.

quote:

ORIGINAL: mike mcmann


Guess we should only be playing humans...?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Red Lancer

The AI doesn't know but it does instinctively understand what can be moved to where in the best manner possible. The AI does have advantages: but necessarily so otherwise it would be a lousy opponent. Humans have no advantages but are more creative.

quote:

ORIGINAL: JeffK



Belphegor's example isnt relevant, he probably attacked the centre of the defnces, not the outside edge.

quote:

ORIGINAL: mike mcmann

Ill give that the recon may not be 100 percent. The issue is the move interdict. I mean, they should be able to move about a max of 16 hexes if fully up. Subtract for the interdiction and only units within about 4 or five hexes should be able to even get to the beach head let alone deliberate attack....

quote:

ORIGINAL: Fallschirmjager

What also may need to be looked at is the German propensity for destruction. In almost every port they left, it was so thoroughly wrecked as to be unusable for weeks/months.

Both issues sound serious. And I do not want to get this thread off topic.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

My understanding is that units moving toward the front line from the rear will follow the basic rules and be impacted by interdiction.

quote:

ORIGINAL: Joel Billings

I'll keep an eye out for those saves as I'd really like to see the situation on the German side after the invasion and see what the AI does vs what a human player could do.

We've taken several shortcuts with the AI movement. The AI cannot analyze the situation like a human player. Even if it could and tried to, it would make the AI phase take much longer than it already does. So Gary strives to build an AI that does not play by the exact rules that human players do, but also doesn't take advantage of it to the extent that it's obviously cheating and doing things a human player can't do. My understanding is that units moving toward the front line from the rear will follow the basic rules and be impacted by interdiction. I just confirmed that this is Gary's understanding as well. We're not sure about the units getting on and off trains and how much it pays for this so there might be some cheat there, but Gary says the AI will try to get off the trains outside of heavily interdicted areas and march in. Units on the front line or within a hex of the front can do what we call the shuffle dance and reposition along the front without being hit by interdiction. This shuffle is a late phase adjustment that tries to balance the forces along the lines. We found that this kind of shuffle is very important for the AI, and is just too difficult and time consuming to make the AI follow all the movement rules and suffer interdiction. Even with the shuffle, the AI isn't as smart as a human player and often leaves weak points. In addition, the AI suffers horrible command penalties in combat because it doesn't do as good a job keeping command integrity with its units as a human can. This also weakens it's chances at reserve commitments.

Gary has already worked on reducing the amount of teleporting of units from bad situations based on several saves we received that showed us how this could still happen. The bottom line is that in order to provide a decent opponent we have to do some cheating. But we work hard at trying to limit the cheating to moves that come close to the net results that a good player could do. When we get clear cases of the AI going too far, we try to fix the AI to avoid the obvious cheats. It's a balancing act, and getting saves from players helps us improve the game. Without a save, I can't say whether this case was a case of overt AI cheating or just a good reaction like Pelton's in Belphegor's screenshot. A lot depends on just how much interdiction you have placed down and how deep it is behind enemy lines. The D-Day campaign is a case where good deep interdiction can make it difficult for German units to get to the front on the first turn (and those that do get to the front do arrive somewhat shot up).

In Belphegor's case, all I can say is that Gary's answer would be to use heavy interdiction on the front and to the rear. This will make the front line Germans susceptible to attacks and allow the Allies to expand the beachhead. It will also make it very hard for the Germans to counterattack. It will also blow up freight moving to and from depots (hitting the nearby railyards is not a bad idea as well to help take out the depots). It will also make it harder for the Germans to bring up additional forces and commit reserves to battle. The German generals on the ground discovered very quickly that Allied airpower in Normandy was a game changer. This becomes very clear very quickly in the final Liberation Trilogy book The Guns at Last Light. The massive Allied airpower stationed in England in 1944 makes this intensive interdiction strategy possible.