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RayKinStL -> My thoughts on 1.03 (w/ a few screenhots) (7/26/2008 11:15:17 AM)
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Well I just finished my first full playthrough of the Beta for 1.03. It is hard to be objective about my thoughts because I am not sure whether this version played more stable or if the things that used to give me trouble are now understandable and no longer a hindrance. There were definitely a few bugs I had run across in older versions that I noticed were properly fixed. In fact, in my total game, I only had one error message. I have 3 screenshots, and will put one of each in 3 follow up posts. While I still think there are a lot of things about the interface that I find unintuitive, it does play a bit easier once you get a feel for it. There are many little nuances and annoyances I'd love to see changed, but that's a subject for another thread.
So when I started the game, things seemed very good. As GB, I immediately made a run at Sweden and Denmark, and after returning home, I built my army up. I had offered alliances to everyone, and everyone but Turkey eventually took me up on it. With my army full, I began to mobilize forces for a SPanish DOW and invasion. It was in the process of moving my piddly 5 ship transport fleet that the AI made its first major stupid screw up. As the transport fleet cruised by, the Frech chose to intercept and managed to capture and destroy my transport fleet (whoopdee doo!). The result of this, however, was to pull his fleet out into open ocean waters, and I pounced immediately next turn, sending everything I had at the now vulnerable French fleet. The resulting 7 (with the +1 modifier) was disasterous, but the Holland fleet bore the majority of the losses. I then decided to try something, and with my full stack, i moved back and forth between the two sea areas that the retreat port the French retreated to was sharing. I then noticed that the French attempted to intercept everytime! This of course means we need an AI tweak that would allow the computer when to decide to intercept, andwhen to let the ships just pass them by. It took almost 2 full turns of moving back and forth before the French rolled a 1 (the only number that allowed a succesful interception), and they engaged in a sea battle that all but wiped out their navy. A port raid a few turns later, and the French were done. So here I was a little over a year in, and I had destroyed the entire French Navy at the cost of about 20-30 light ships.
I now moved my attention to the Spanish, who were sitting with all his forces in Lisbon, doing absolutely nothing. In fact Spain even allowed Austria to capture Morocco?!?!?! With his ships in Cadiz, I dropped off a full British army, and took Cadiz leaving the Spanish fleet dead in the water. I now basically controlled the seas, and at the cost of nothing more than 40 of my light ships TOTAL (I attacked Spain in port and immediately recovered 3 of the 4 PPs I lost for the DOW). I then picked up my army and decided to see what would happen if I tried to attack the Spanish amry which obviously had numbers on me. Some good rolls pushed the Spanish out of Portugal, and my high morale allowed me to survive long enough to secure Portugal and receive reinforcements (as well as pick up some garrisons from GB and ship them down). I managed to survive the 3-4 battles that ensued, winning 2 and drawing the other two. The fifth battle saw a massive Outflank destroy the Spanish forces, and the march to Madrid and the resulting unconditional surrender were far too easy.
Now one asks what was going on while I was duking it out in Spain. Well after a flurry of activity in the first year, including numerous DOWS and alliances, I noticed the computer wasnt doing much. As someone else noticed, Prussia was being super agressive with her DOWs and grabbed a large chunk of real estate in central Europe, and the French just let it happen. In fact, the French stood in almost the same spot the whole game, with one monster stack that I never saw move (see the second screenshot). In fact, after the crazy start, I never saw another DOW the rest of the game (nor a surrender) from any other AI player. Once all the minor countries were occupied, it was like all the central European countries got bored and just decided to sit still the rest of the game and do nothing. This is obviously an AI tweak that needs to be addressed. The French got rolled earlier on in the territory war and then were content to just sit in the middle with a monster stack and do nothing.
So for a while I piddled around in North Africa, snapping up some minors, including Naples, while stealing Rome from France. With an excellen springboard to Turkey, and my full forces in the Meditterean, I decided to give it a go. With his forces spread all over, the march on COnstantinople was easy, as most of his troops were near Egypt for some reason (even despite an ongoing war with Russia in which I never really saw either side get the least bit aggresive. This is where the game got really annoying. With the Turkish capital occupied, and a quick fall into the fiaco zone, the Turkish simply refused to give me a surrender. And their only attempt to remove me from their capital involved a couple worthless attacks from some cavalry corps (yearly regenerating ones, I guess?) whihc barely lasted the first roll of a battle. I sat in the Turkish capital for over THREE YEARS waiting for my surrender. Not only did he refuse to give it, he refused to mobilize any of his forces in Egypt or on his northern border to try to remove me. In the third screenshot you can clealy see a broken Turkey with all my troops in his capital. I sat like this for literally 3 years, just buying infantry for garrisons (I had 36 MP after a +2 economic manipulation). You can see by my gold that my reserves just kept going up, and this included a few turns of some expensive ship builds (simply cause I had nothign better to do). Sadly, I never got my surrender, winning on VPs before he ever threw in the towel. I hope this is jsut an AI tweak that needs fixing (Turkey would surrender in the last version when it was called for), and not indicative that Turkey will act like a sore loser who refuses to give a surrender when it is so obviously called for.
Well if you read all this, I applaud you. Sorry it's so long. I really feel like maybe we are moving in the right direction, but it seems like there is a step backwards after the two we take forwards. The AI INITIALLY was certainly more intelligible, and maybe sound decisions, but this was quickly marred but extremem inactivity. It's almost as if the answer to removing the dumb single corps attacks was to remove the AIs inclination to attack all together! I applaud you on your efforts Marshall, and I know you are trying hard, but we definitely still have a long long LONG way to go. If the AI had played with teh same fervor and pace it showed in the first 6-12 months, I truly believe the game would have been very exciting and dynamic. Instead it turned into a lethargic episode of auto-foraging with unused movement points.
So has anyone else played the computer? What were your experiences? Did you notice things different or contrary to what I observed?
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