Has the AI been tweaked?
 

I ask this because I have not played it for ages & seems to have improved, I may have had an overcritical memory of its past performance but these are my observations upon playing it for the last couple of months.

Deployment - Generally very good though does on occasion spread its self a bit thin on the defence & can on the odd occasion place tanks without infantry support. Tends to cover routes flanks bunkers etc well.

Path finding- This may be my memory but seem to get far less lemmings just piling one after the other into the same hex. Infantry will still do in woods but thats fine as can overwhelm the defender but otherwise units will try another route. Often just an adjacent hex but sometimes an entirly diffrent path or it may elect to sit & wait.

The rest seem to happen all together & about 1 game in 4. I have checked to see if stuff running in background effects performance somehow. It does not its just for 1 in 4 battles the AI comes on song & if it starts the game this way it will play the whole game with an intelligence boost. Most of the following will happen.

Arty- even with long call times of say 3 it is very good at predicting movement plotting where it thinks you are going not where you are. I would say it does better than some humans.

Force cohesion- seems to send out what I will call a scout force larger than a human would but it does not have his finnesse. The main force though will hold together pretty well tanks wait for there escorting infantry, APCs do not rush off ahead. I have also noticed tanks will on occasion form up waiting for other nearby units then come round the obstacle or whatever as a group even occasionally going to combat speeds. Example entering a treeline it will wait till can do so in force.
They still normally fail to unload riders if they have them waiting till forced off by a hit.

Path finding- gets even better as I have gone to flank units only to bump into its forces doing the same.

When this all comes together the AI produces some great little gems writting this because it just put everything together for a combined arms attack.
Its armour waited forming up as I was outnumbered moved a few more tank here & others slightly to better range for a kill. Now found out why it waited steel rain poured down on positions I had just taken up. Now its tanks attacked & cavalry came rushing out of a nearby woods. Luckily I knew they were there if somewhat surprised at quite how many but due to the arty strikes had a real moment here this turn hurt.

I am talking about generated battles here & even if you have not tweaked it would like to say considering the constraints you probably have to work with due to the program & the complexity of decision making it can surprise you. Just like you take a simple task like walking for granted (apart from moving limbs you are observing surroundings & speed placing feet sensibly staying upright using balance etc) you probably make loads of calculations before using a unit based on threat terrain weapon capabilities the game can never hope to match the human computer in this process but I would just like Andy & Don to know all ther hard work has not gone unnoticed arty routines really impress me at times & it is capable of throwing a curve ball at times. Now if only you could get it to do that 1 game in 4 everytime:D

Re: Has the AI been tweaked?
 

Yes of course it's been tweaked. What do you think we've been doing for the past 10 years ? :D It gets a tweak for this or that almost every release. If you want to see what the "AI" used to be like try the same tests with SP2

Don

Re: Has the AI been tweaked?
 

Its noticeable I am sure they are "only little" adjustments but it makes a marked diffrence overall

Re: Has the AI been tweaked?
 

Some are little, sometimes it's a matter of increasing the variables a bit to make it less predictable but some required considerable coding to achieve

Don

Re: Has the AI been tweaked?
 

A bit slow on the uptake here but begining to grasp the magnitude of the task you guys took on. No idea about programing but can sort of relate & if you just look at things like unit info which is in effect a data base its massive.
Cheers for perservering as I think this is the end of the road for this game no one is likely to take on a project of this scale again. If you look at most games offered now all the units would fit in one countries OOB & I don't know of any other game that has been constantly tuned like this.
Funny thing is the 1,000s of hours you have spent on this has translated into millions of hours being lost world wide playing the damn thing:happy:

Re: Has the AI been tweaked?
 

To late to edit but on point
Virtually anything car stereo athlete the first 95% is the easy bit its squeezing the last 5% out thats the hard part thats partly why high quality stuff jumps in price.
If like this program you can't just start with a clean sheet but have to make do with constraints in place already it must just make the final squeeze harder

Re: Has the AI been tweaked?
 

Imp just to let you know how the AI can suprise you. I just finished a battle where I had to advance against the Germans and cross a stream to seize the objectives. On the turn that I grabed the last objective, the AI had a PZ III whip out of nowwhere and take back three objectives that were forward (or back towards my rear) of all of my units. He had cut all the way around the map (100X100) just to have a contingency plan. Luckly I had a TD in the rear that was able to come out from cover and smoke him, but I was worried for a minute as all I had back there were some understrength scount units. You have to learn to watch your back with the AI around.

I am in total agreement with Imp, Don and Andy. Thank you for a great and wonderful game. The time you have spend on it, and continue to spend is very precious to me and, I'm sure, hundreds if not thosands of others. Thank you.

Re: Has the AI been tweaked?
 

I've posted stats before but here are the latest figures for the OOB's in both games

winSPWW2

Weapons - 4,714
Units - 12,055

winSPMBT

Weapons - 14,943
Units - 35,022
Formations - 15,786

Formation count data NA for SPWW2 but assume it would be around 5,400

Each weapons has up to 12 data entry points in either game

Each unit has up to 60 data entry points in WW2 and 68 data entry points in MBT

Each formation has up to 20 data entry points in either game



Don