Mike Wood
Posts: 2095
Joined: 3/29/2000 From: Oakland, California Status: offline
|
Hello Ed...
I wrote the artificial intelligence routines and have some insight into them. I appreciate your frustration. The game is somewhat complex and has many subtleties. In the case of early war USMC vs. Japan, the main three problems you will face are the very high experience and morale of the Japanese, their ability to shrug off the desire to retreat and the large size of their squads. In the early war, they did win a lot of battles. Let me see if I can explain what is happening in the program, for you. It may not resolve your complaints about the game, but I may at least be able to provide some insights as to what is going on.
The counter battery fire routine is called every time an off board battery fires. The routine has no idea who the firing battery belonged to, human or computer opponent. It just makes the range and experience checks. It also uses a couple tables that help it determine the technological state of the country that is attempting counter battery fire. The Japanese have extremely high experience. In the early war, the USMC is not so high. The tables give the Japanese a higher chance in the early war, as well. As the war progresses, the Marine experience levels and technological tables become higher. So, in the early war, the Japanese have a much, much better chance to counter battery than the Marines.
Off board artillery are not dedicated batteries, that is to say they may have other commitments. Also, the radio and field phones are not terribly reliable. They will often not be available for a fire mission. When they become out of contact, an experience check determines when contact can be reestablished. This means the Marine batteries will be in contact for longer periods, later in the war. The routine that checks for off board battery contact does not know if the battery is controlled by a human or the computer opponent.
In the case of the Stuarts, an experience check is required for the machine guns to fire at ranges greater than 4 hexes. There are, after all, only 4 men in the tank and they have duties other than firing machine guns. And only 3 of them even have access to a machine gun and those three may not all have a line of sight to the target. This rule applies to all tanks for all countries, with human or computer opponent. As the war progresses, you will find they will fire the machine guns more often at longer ranges. The routine that checks for machine gun fire does not know if the firing unit is controlled by a human player or computer player.
You may also notice that your Stuarts do not have a good chance to hit, even at close ranges. Once again, experience plays a dominant role here. The highly experienced Japanese troops are just hard to hit, for rookie Marines. The numbers will improve as your core units gain experience. The routines that determine the to hit chance and damage to units does not know if the firing unit and the target are controlled by a human player or the computer opponent.
I understand how frustrating it can be. I have played several Marine campaigns. What I find are a lot night battles with a one or two visibility and unstoppable Japanese Banzai charges coming out of the darkness. I have found it useful to place a whole platoon in a single hex, along with a tank or two and hope I can kill all of them on my turn. If not, I fall back and try again. After the first year or so, your troops will be good enough to take them on, man to man.
Don't count on artillery too much in this kind of campaign, as the Japanese are very hard to kill with artillery and the terrain, lots of rough jungle hexes, offers too much cover for the artillery to be as useful as in the steppes of Russia.
Hope this helps...
Michael Wood,
Lead Programmer
Matrix Games
_____________________________
|