Bug in AI buys?

[snake]

I think I've uncovered a problem in campaign buys for the AI?
My force value is 3750 (German) and I have 4100 points saved up to fix/purchase new equipment later.
My next mission was a meeting engagement against the Belgium Army.
The AI buy was overwhelming to say the least. At the end of the mission, I calculated I would need over 9000 selection points to buy what the AI had bought. Yet, I assumed that in a meeting engagement with a value of 3750 that the AI buy would be roughly the same amount (4000) give or take.

My question then becomes: did the AI calculate it's huge buy based on my 3750 value PLUS the saved 4100 points? That would explain the large purchase power of the AI in this case.

[Mobhack]

The AI will have bought around 3750 points worth of kit if it was a meeter.

You may be looking at the default 70exp/70 morale default level, and not the (probably) less values the AI will have used for the force buy (probably about 55 exp and 60 morale?).

Probaby - since an ACG-1 cost in Mobhack at the default experience is 34 points, but in an AI buy I just tried, 27.

Cheers
Andy

[cbo]

Its a partly a Troop Quality/Country Training issue. Assuming the time is May 1940, I bought at 3700 pt German force and had the AI buy the Belgian force.

With "Training" on, the Belgian AI bought 250 units, with "Training" off and Troop Quality=70 for both, the Belgian AI bought about 175 units.
The AI was buying basically the same kind of units, just less of them, as the price was higher with "Training" on.

However, even if Troop Quality is the same, the Belgian side buys more because many of the units they have a are generally cheaper, reflecting their inferior capabilities compared with the German ones.
This seems to be particularily true if you have "AI Tank Heavy" on in the preferences, as the Germans have more expensive tanks, generally, than the Belgians.

Claus B

[snake]

Hmmm,
That seems to make sense. I had training on and the Belgians bought about 250 units.
So where does the 'lower training' and 'cheaper' buys make itself known because those bad boys sure fought well if they were 'cheap' troops. I assume they should be harder to rally and the army morale should break sooner?

Perhaps the trouble is that cheap artillery buys still function as well as expensive buys and the ability to purchase 30 - 35 indirect units is VERY powerful.
Maybe a limit needs to be set on types of units purchased. A horde of low morale troops is WAY different than some low morale troops and a horde of artillery!

[Mobhack]

Low training arty will arrive later, and drift off target more, and will if off-map, not fire counterbattery fires much.

Low morale arty, if hit, will tend to have the crews run off map, or if off-map, take longer (if ever) to recover.

In the Yom Kippur War, 75% of Israeli fire missions were counter-battery. I tend to use 1-2 off map batteries of reasonable ranged arty (I use the 10cm K18, not the 105 as range is good - 214), for a bn (4 coys, usually 3 rifle co and a tank co) sized force. Those are usually left "idle" as counter battery firers for most of the game. On map, i have a heavy mortar group (with ammo supply) and/or a 15cm SIG section and they deal with on-map arty mainly. Each on-map coy has a mortar platoon, or 2 halftrack SP-mortar platoon assigned, and these are used to support the coy with direct supporting fires against infantry targets, breaking up attacks etc. The reamining arty is really only released from CB duties once I have dealt with the arty threat from the opponent.

Andy

[snake]

Perhaps the problem in the buy lies in the fact one can select a type of unit without restriction.
In the "Other" steel panthers game, there is a 'rarity' factor that doesn't allow a player to select all the same equipment. In other words Flak 88 guns can be purchased but only so many like 1 or 2 batteries and then the selection is greyed out.

I bring this up because of a long campaign mission. Germany Delay versus Great Britain Advance in June 1940 in the Balkans.
My German force value was 4500 points. The British got 9740 points as close as I can tell BUT......
He bought 69 MATILDA II tanks!!!! That's ridiculous. He also had 2 Spitfires, 8 2pdr AT's, 6 3" mortars, 9 40mm Bofors, 3 25 PDR art, and 8 4.5" art.
He also had: 3 A13, 3 A9, 14 Armored cars, 10 Dingos, 20 Marr-Herringtons, and 4 Valentine II's.
He also had 200 units of infantry.

So the problem in the buy seems to be that there isn't any limits on equipment. A player or AI could easily substitute more Matilda II's for some of that other stuff.

This is sort of the problem I had with the Belgians getting so many units because they only bought 1 basic type of infantry and 'covered' the map with men.

In a meeting engagement with France, I faced 40 Char bis, 19 H-39, 15 Somoa, 6 Char D2 and 270 other units including over 30 indirect art fire units. I don't think 46 Char tanks is realistic either.

It would be like the Russians facing nothing but Tiger tanks and Brandenburgers in a Russian campaign mission. That kind of equipment just wasn't mass produced but the AI purchase routine isn't bound by any rarity factors as far as I can tell.

Perhaps all units, like radios, should have a rarity factor during the purchase routine to prevent selections like this.

[Mobhack]

AI rarity in picking troops is already covered with the radio code. See the mobhack help for details.

Cheers
Andy

[narwan]

snake said:
In a meeting engagement with France, I faced 40 Char bis, 19 H-39, 15 Somoa, 6 Char D2 and 270 other units including over 30 indirect art fire units. I don't think 46 Char tanks is realistic either.

CharB1's were concentrated in formations (although perhaps not always). Here you see the OB of the french armored formations in 5/40:
http://perso.infonie.fr/enpointe/dcr.html

The DCR's each had 2 battallions of 34 B1's each. So 46 Chars is not unrealistic as it is only 2/3 of the total number in a heavy half-brigade. At best facing 46 is not likely, but certainly possible.
Also see scenario 277 which is based on historical events.

Narwan

[Charles22]

The thing we have to remember about this game is that it's not meant to be a force representing the "average force" such that every unit represents 100 or 1000 or the real life units.

No, the truth of the matter is that you have a special force here that meetes it's enemy on largely equal terms (apart from the mission type). By equal terms I eman the enemy attacks or defends with the sam points as you always will. If you run into a high concentration of a unit which wasn't available in very high quantities, then and only then should there be a problem of sorts.

A good general rule of thumb to looking at this sort of situation is to remember what divisions usually carried. Most divisions had at least 25-50 tanks to a regiment, so if you see that sort of concentration of a tank that was usually rare, it's not really that rare when you consider that most AFV's didn't get thrown about in penny packets. By that I mean they didn't give every divison their own Tiger tank. So while it may seem ratio-wise that 30 Tigers are too high a number for the enemy, remember that it was normal for them to be grouped together like that, though they may not had been attacking all at the same time.

In a game of SPWAW once, I fought over 150 French tanks, including 110 S-35's! I had 30-40 tanks maximum with only 2 88's. Fortunately for me I inflicted enough damage on his advance that the French surrendered before he did too much damage to me and I had a decisive victory. Another 5-10 turns and I would've lost objectives and turned into dog meat. That's one advantage to striking the enemy early on with some long range fire in that you might be going against an enemy that has low enough morale that it will break. I don't think I've ever seen this sort of thing happen in SPWW2, and in SPWAW's case only once or twice.

[snake]

Charles,
Well, the very next mission against GB was a meeting engagement and guess what? Yep, almost all Matilda II tanks again. That's now 4 in a row counting 1 French nothing but char bis buy.
In fact, the AI bought 35 Tanks. 3 A13, 4 Valentines and 28 Matilda II's. There were also 16 light varients plus cars and the usual 9 40mm, 8 25 pdr, 2 4.5" and 4 3" artillery sections. The rest of the 175 units was rifle sections - no transport.
So I'm not sure this rarity thing is working regardless of points available?! BTW my force value was 3960.

As a side note, I turned down art effectiveness to 10% while I wait for the patch to fix indirect fire top hits but it didn't make any difference that I can tell. The art falls near my armor - boom - armor gone. But at least I can do the same to him!