Quote:
Originally Posted by Imp
I think you kinda got suckered there as that was what he was expecting but guess what it cant which is simply verified by the amount of times it fires opening salvos at nothing or where you were rather than where you are.
That being said though the routines are very good better than a lot of humans I have played & it does pull off some blinding stonks at times.
Give it a game where it has lots of arty & all credit to how it uses it just did a large defend in the Himalayas & I could not have used smoke better to block my fire lanes.
That along with a continued barage broke my right flank but it just guessed right.
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The original arty code for the SP games by SSI
had some inbuilt advantages for the AI for its artillery routines.
1) When plotted arty was about to fall, the code would "teleport" the stonk to somewhere more useful, i.e. somewhere near a detected unit of yours. No matter where it had plotted it on the map.
2) Pre-game barrages were based on an "average" of your unit's actual positions, so most would fall somewhere useful to the AI.It was AFAIR an average of your actual deployment plot - so if you went for an "all South" deployment - a good deal of the AI arty automagically would fall down there.
ALL of that, I removed as soon as we got hold of the source code or as soon as we determined there was another AI inbuilt advantage. (Like the free troops the AI selected forces would be given on picking a random force).
So - the original code as delivered by SSI
did have what the OP might have called "borg" artillery routines, but we did not in any way
reinstate it - we
removed it. Which is 180 degrees from his assertion/assumption.
Our pre-game arty plots are based on an average of the entire
deployment zone , with emphasis on roads (if the human is going to advance, it is where he tends to stack units), the front of the deployment area, and just in front of the deployment area (if advancing). Sometimes it will stonk up the rear of the deployment area in hopes of getting your arty park. But it is all
random guessing, it no longer has intel about the human player's pre-game positioning.
In-game arty plotting now is affected by "AI Interest" - as described in the release history, as well as on units actually spotted. If you fire (or pop smoke, make dust trails, etc) from a position, the AI will test for "interest" and the more you fire from an area, the more likely it is to be interested (especially if it currently has free batteries to assign). That allows it to drop presents on the human player who does the "hill dance" - popping up from behind a ridge to snap shoot, but always ending out of LOS at end turn. Some fire events will be more interesting to the AI than others (ATGM and MRL are rather interesting forex) The AI will still use the old routines for plotting unassigned arty (Usually nearby to enemy or neutral V-Hexes) as well from time to time.
(NB - nearby an objective does not necessarily mean within 2-3 hexes. It can be a click or so short, long, sideways or whatever. It's a bell curve distribution. Then add the normal scatter for fall of unobserved shot. But don't be surprised if some arty lands "telepathically" on the platoon of tanks you had 750 metres north of a particular objective cluster and which you
know have not yet revealed themselves. The target was not the platoon - it was the
V-Hex cluster)
And as well - do not be surprised if your tank coy trundles up to a ridge and gets an "instant" barrage. Remeber that arty takes time to arrive, and in this case the player calling "foul" has usually forgotten that 2-3 moves before, his recce bumbled over that hill in full view of the AI. The AI target was therefore the recce, and so if you are going to take a position - remember to allow for time of fall of any plotted AI presents, if you are going to move lead elements over that hill. Or better yet - do not telegraph it at all, and move the scout cars round the side of the to-be-defended hill
!.
So - some of these stonks will be self-called by your activities, and some are just random guesswork.
But there are no more teleported stonks, and no more plotting with foreknowledge of your general location. Nor have there been, since 1999/2000 or so.
Cheers
Andy
Deselecting mine use
Made those early war years tough until the Pz IV vf2 started to show up.
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