Palora
Posts: 16
Joined: 5/17/2019
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(l.e. jesus those were some large pictures, resized)
Here's the issues I have with the way the AI "deals" with logistic. With pictures for ease of explanation. Sorry about the mediocre paint drawings and the oversimplification. The AI can build free roads, and is always in supply if his unitss have access to a road that connects to a city, regardless of how many Logistic points the AI actually has or how far the truck stations are.
Let's pretend there are no resources in the area.
Can you identify which side is the player and which side is the AI?
That's right, the AI is obviously the one without any logistical buildings outside the city.
But why does that matter?
Because at the moment what the player needs to do to quickly defeat the AI (in this situation) is a double envelopment, to trap the enemy units, cut them from supply and defeat them easily.
Except he needs to do it with units all along the front.
The players can't leave an opening, and can't just cut the road, if for some reason, mountains in our example (the barely visible yellow triangles are the mountains, they looked better on the stupidly big size) he can't attack on both flanks the encirclement fails.
Why? Because if he doesn't, if he just cuts the road, the AI will immediately build a free road to keep his units in supply (technically his units should still be out of supply for 1 turn)
So what you say? The player can do that do, which is true, but he can't do it for free, meaning he can't do it forever like the AI can.
Which becomes even more of an issue when you deal with terrain that makes roads very expensive, like our mountains.
Silly isn't it?
But what about endless logistical capacity?
Well, let's go back to our original double envelopment, it's a success, the enemy forces are starved of supplies and easily killed, now all the player has to do is seize the enemy city... except he can't.
His supply lines don't go that far. Which is fine, is as it should be.
He'll just have to stop and build up some supply extensions to continue our attack.
Which again, it's fine, it's as it should... or is it? Because the AI doesn't have to do ANY of that.
All the AI has to do is get past the front line and seize the supply extension assets.
That will cripple the player in a much faster way with far less forces that the Player would need to cripple the AI.
Afterwards the AI can just seize the Player City much faster than the Player could, he even gets the bonuses from player's supply assets, which he didn't need anyway.
So the AI doesn't follow the same core rules as the player, what's the big deal?
Well as I said in previous posts, it makes the game less fun and more importantly less strategical. The Player CANNOT SEIZE THE AI's supply assets, to cripple him or help his own attack because there aren't any. Meanwhile the player must have a WW1 style entirely manned front or have troops defending key positions behind the line.
You either do a full encirclement of enemy forces, harder done when the AI will have more units and redeploy them faster, or the war ends up in a siege of the enemy city and all of the troops that got away.
Wouldn't it be fun if the AI had some logistic assets we as the player could aim a risky attack against? Wouldn't it be less tedious to seize the AI's supply assets after we've wiped out his forces to keep our assault going? Wouldn't it be better if you had to worry about reaching such an assets fast enough before the AI destroyed it to deny it to you?
Some of you will say "multipalyer is the answer to that" to which I say "How many of you have the time, discipline and patience to do a play by email game?" (because I don't and I envy you) and "You'll still have to deal with AI ignoring the rules"
Did I mentioned the AI could also do this if you let him in about 1/3 the time the player could do it (since the player would have to build supply assets)
P.S. Personally I think even dirt roads built too fast as to make seizing them not that big a deal unlike it was historically. If they took longer to build capturing or cutting them would be very important, but that's a discussion for another time.
< Message edited by Palora -- 6/20/2020 3:26:35 PM >
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RE: AI and supporting his troops ! - 
- 
) in my opinion. 
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