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Thayne -> RE: How is Allied AI? (12/30/2004 5:17:28 PM)
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One of the problems with this or any similar game, which is something that no game can adequately model, is the huge level of ignorance on the part of the leaders when the war starts.
The Japanese player knows far more about what options are available to the allied player (or AI), than any Japanese military commander could have known. Not only does he know what starts out where, he knows how well they can fight, which new "secret weapons" are being deployed, and when.
The game engine is designed to mimic what was, in fact, only known after the war started.
Another issue is that the game is designed to follow the course of the actual war.
What if Japan had attacked India right away in the real war? Well, certainly, the OOB for the war would have been a lot different. Then, the people designing the game, would have had to use the OOB for that particular scenario. At which time the Japanese player in this hypothetical parallel universe, would have had the opportunity to know in advance that the allies sent very few units to the Pacific -- sending them all to India instead, and complained about how poor the AI is.
I mean, the reason that Wasp shows up in the Pacific Theater at all is because the Lexington and Yorktown had been sunk. A heavy attack on India and the Wasp would have likely shown up at India instead of San Diego. The reason the 1st Marine Division ends up assigned to the South Pacific (rather than Southwest) is because of a deal brokered between Nimitz and McArthur.
If Karachi had fallen in the real war, would this have meant that the British were out of the war and Japan could then move its entire force to the Pacific? No, it would mean that the people who designed the game would have had to extend the map to the west a little more to include ports that were not taken.
If all 4 US Pacific Fleet carriers had been sunk in December, we may well have expected emergency work to begin on a score of CVEs converted from large marchant ships -- in which case the game designers would have added "CVE" to the list of allowable conversions at San Francisco.
The game models the war that was. The further players get from that war, the more problems that they can be expected to have. We already start with a very significant deviation from the war that was. Whether we play Allied or Japanese, we know what the other side is capable of doing. We have a level of knowledge that the people who fought the war that was simply did not have. And that knowledge is always going to create problems.
This applies not only to games against the AI, but also to PBEM games. The best strategy will always be to do something so drastically different from what happened in the real war that the model (which fixes reinforcements and capabilities to match the real war) simply cannot handle the difference, and puts one's opponent at a disadvantage.
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