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Cossaky -> AI runs hot and cold. (12/8/2007 8:43:38 AM)
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Over the weekend I played two games in which the French AI behaved radically different.
GAME ONE - Played as Prussia, with Medium level AI for all opponents.
Austria DOW's me, but has almost no troops in place to actually invade. I pour the Prussian army down his throat and chop the Austrians to pieces 1-3 corps at a time. I was impressed with his willingness to use CAV corps as raiders, but I hunted them down and smashed 'em too. Costly mistake.
In the same game, France was allied to me, at war with GB, Spain, and Russia, but camped a MONSTER stack (~8 corps) on my border for an entire year. No French forces in Spain and there was an unmolested British Free Minor two spaces away from Napoleon's juggernaut.
With Austria soundly defeated (ceded three territories) and France oddly stalled, I abandonded that game in 1806.
GAME TWO - Played as Austria, with Hard level AI for France, GB, and Medium for others.
VERY different game. France and I maintained an uneasy peace through 1805 and divided up the Italian penninsula. With nothing left to conquer (Prussia/France aggressively snapped up German minors) I turned my attention to Turkey. Whether by coincidence or design, the French DOW'd me the same turn I planned to invade the Turks (Apr 1806). Ney swept in with a fast force, by-passed my two INF corps on the border, and besieged Vienna. At the same time, Murat landed three Corps on Italy in a surprise amphibious assault and began picking off the lightly held Italian minors.
I raced my forces back to Vienna, but Ney had already broken in and deposited a garrison. Even though we routed his field army, we couldn't retake the capital and were forced to accept an unconditional surrender. The AI's timing was either crazy lucky or well designed. He hit me while 60% of my forces were in the east and captured the captial just before an economic turn. With my capital in enemy hands, I received no income that turn and my forces had to eat their shoe leather during the march back to take the capital.
The one thing I found supremely stupid was that Napoleon strolled up behind the main force with only the Imperial Guard Corps. My two "sentry" Corps, which Ney evaded, took the opportunity to jump Nappy. Even though I knew the liklihood of victory was small, I had the advantage of numbers and a chance to smash nothing but Cav and Guard factors. Why the hell wouldn't he at least have one other corp to absorb losses. Had my stack been led by Mack or Charles, I might have even captured the French menace.
It's far too soon to draw conclusions about the AI and I'm sure patches will continue to improve its performance. Still, I can't wait to start dealing with human opponents!
Thanks for the fantastic game!
Cheers,
Cossaky
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