500lb Gorilla

[Timothy]

As explained and pointed out to us above, I like this game design that encourages multiple task forces and base capturing/defending strategies while downplaying and penalizing the “500 pound gorilla” strategy. I think this will definitely give a more realistic and historical feel to this game in the need to secure and defend multiple islands in order to eventually threaten and choke off the “homeland” (ie – win the game).

Having said this, my main question would be whether this game design strategy applies only to multiplayer games or to the AI computer ability (single player game) as well? Due to limited time and work travel, I only play single player computer games that have a challenging single player AI. The short demo unfortunately did not give me the ability to see how well the AI really plays. In fact, the few times that I did play this demo game, it seemed to me that the AI indeed mostly used the “500 pound gorilla” strategy while leaving most of its islands undefended. Were these few demo game results just a fluke? Is the AI capable of playing a more in depth and rounded multi layered attack and defense strategy as stated above, or is this game mostly geared toward the multi-player crowd? I am aware that a short demo does not necessarily give a good picture or indication of what the AI capabilities are. Because I am very interested in purchasing this game, I thought I would post my question for further clarification. (Yes I know that I could wait to see what other players think when they receive and actually play the full game, but I thought a reply from the designer would help me make a decision before that.