AI purchase routine problem
 

I am playing the Long Campaign as Great Britain vs Germany.

The previous game (in 5/41) was a Defend scenario at Tobruk. When the game ended prematurely I checked the German unit list and was surprised to see very few units. There must have been a problem with the purchase routine for the AI.

The next battle (in 6/41) is also a Defend at Tobruk and the same has happened, AI purchases very few units.

I ran the routine again for the 6/41 battle. The battle type is a meeting engagement and the AI purchases what looks like a full complement of units. This might narrow the problem down to the scenario when AI has Assault.

Because of the number of games already played in this campaign my core has a lot of experience and a very high points value (about 25,000). This means that the AI value may be so high that it is running into some sort of maximum which it can't handle and the end result is a very small points allocation that doesn't buy many units.

T0 save files for both Defend games attached. I have a save file for the meeting engagement if required.

Note because I reuse save slots T0 for the earlier game is in 273 and T0 for the second game is in 235.

cheers,

Tim

Re: AI purchase routine problem
 

MAX_DEFEND is about 26000 points - and a regular battle will limit you to that even if you enter maximum points in preferences.

It may well be that the campaign code is screwing up the total though, and it could well wrap round to a negative number or whatever. I'll check it out.

Andy

Re: AI purchase routine problem
 

You forgot the .CMT files - a save game consists of 2 files...

Please don't do that in future, its a pain having to manually make .CMTs to match

Andy

Re: AI purchase routine problem
 

I really need the last turn of the game before the current one. (The ones you have already have a German force bought, so cannot be used to debug the AI purchasing since its been done by that point.)


Andy

Re: AI purchase routine problem
 

Files for the preceding games as requested. CMT included, and apologies for my error yesterday.

Tim

Re: AI purchase routine problem
 

Those are not really required - I manually made some CMTs to fit.

I do require the previous end of game turn, so I can debug the purchase routine

(The AI had about 1 tank coy, 1 engineer platoon, 1 rifle coy, 1 battery of 75mm + misc support platoons. Obviously insufficient given your core of what must be 150 platoons of (+) arty.... )

Andy

Re: AI purchase routine problem
 

The files in the second zip are the previous end of game turns as instructed.

File 272 is T49 for the 4/41 game. This is the last save file I have for this game.

The 5/41 battle is Gbr defend vs Ger assault & the AI purchase is very small. If I have interpreted your instruction correctly the AI purchase routine that you want to check occurs after T49 of the 4/41 game.

The 6/41 battle is also Gbr defend vs Ger assault. This battle also has an incorrect AI purchase. That is why the last turn of the 5/41 is included, this is file 234.

I hope this clears up the confusion.

Tim

Re: AI purchase routine problem
 

The points value of the core is just over the maximum allowed for a defender in total.

The regular battle code seems to be handling that OK. However the campaign code is not, and the number generated rolls over the local integer value - thus making it a smaller amount than the defender of course.

Fixing that now. Will be fixed in the next release.

I would dump that campaign for now, and restart with something far less expensive & make sure the core does not get up there until the next release.

Andy

Re: AI purchase routine problem
 

You are maxing the game out to beyond it's limits,not many do this,but you have.

Sell off a major amount of your huge Uber core and sandbag the points godforbid! to get within something the current AI can deal with:)

Re: AI purchase routine problem
 

When playing a very long campaign,you need to consider your force value.

If it gets too large some battles will be a train wreck for the AI as far fairness ie: too many elite units,spending every point just because you can seems over kill against the pathetic AI IMO.

Rant over:D

Re: AI purchase routine problem
 

Well, I tried a battle with that core as an experiment.

Any time the German off-map arty fired it was slapped with so many batteries sitting idle. And plotting about 3 pages of 25 pounder on a mortar position soon dealt with that :)!.

In WW2, such a large core really could only be made up of arty units, but MBT has 550 point MBT, and 650 point attack helos..

It did however expose a weakness in the arithmetic. Unfortunately the code can't be fixed to deal with that, so now when a core is too large to defend, then the core will not be allowed to defend. If the core also is too large to delay, then it will not be allowed to delay or defend either.

For now - if a core grows to a value over 26000 points, its best to abort that campaign. Otherwise, the AI forces will be too weak especially in the assault.

Attacker needs 2.5 times the amount, and 2.5 times 26K is 65K, which just fits an unsigned integer.

Of course - the AI will then buy a regular buy with infantry etc, so probably will not use up the full 65K allocated, but we had that discussion a year or so back. the AI cannot be told to go out and fleet buy king tigers or legions of expensive arty to soak up all its points, it has a 500 unit limit same as the player. It already tends to go for high value stuff if it has lots of spare points (e.g buy a mech coy instead of foot, tigers instead of line tanks etc). But it will still buy cheap recce, inf-at and foot to round out the numbers.

I may look into adding an "upgrade" routine to the AI, so if it has thousands of spare points left over then it (say) upgrades the morale and experience levels of the already bought troops until they reach the total value assigned.

Andy