The Earth Moved for Me

[scJazz]

Is there any way to get the AI to tone down the Artillery purchasing? I'm late in a campaign with a 5 company (support purchases included) force total value around 7500. I'm in a defend mission and the enemy just unloaded 24 to 30 offmap artillery on me. Along with the on map mortars looks like I'm facing about 40 artillery units something on the order of 150 tubes. Needless to say this hurt quite a bit. Is maybe 40 artillery units perhaps just a little bit much? While we are at it perhaps the AI could tone down its AAA purchases?

[Mobhack]

You are in the defence, so the enemy is making a deliberate assault against you. That is the mission where most arty gets assigned.

- the AI does not use artillery as intelligently as a human opponent would
- As a defence, get an experienced core arty battery or two, with range >= the usual enemy arty. To get experience, best buy the battery in the initial game of a campaign. Just leave them idle, and they will get some CB fires in.
- As to AI AAA, see the existing recent thread on this. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=47909

Cheers
Andy

[scJazz]

Having a high experience offmap artillery unit dedicated to CB is not an effective solution. High experience American arty is extremely costly and generates a feedback loop as the AI purchases even more Artillery because of the increased Value. In addition CB fire is IMHO reasonably ineffective as the unit, appropriately, doesn't fire CB missions often. Another drawback, the Enemy frequently has significant numbers of offmap Artillery which frequently CBs my offmap artillery. As a final nail in the coffin offmap artillery is effected by lose of communication perhaps more often than it should be.

I don't know what the percentages are for unit purchasing. Perhaps diverting some of the purchase toward onmap artillery would be a reasonable compromise? After XX offmap units purchased the AI starts buying onmap units sometimes.

[EOT]

If your doing just a battle then purchase the units for the AI's OB you think you'd be up against.

[scJazz]

I always do campaigns so not an option

[scJazz]

I was reading in another thread about people not using Fast Artillery in a PBEM game. Is slow artillery more effective?

[Cross]

Originally Posted by scJazz

I was reading in another thread about people not using Fast Artillery in a PBEM game. Is slow artillery more effective?

No, they are identical.

Fast Artillery just has the game graphics show all the artillery hit at once, instead of one round at a time. Fast Artillery is really just a feature for scenarios where one or both sides have a lot of artillery and you don't want to sit through 5 minutes of watching individual rounds hit.

In PBEM people almost always want to see every round hit. It's a real pain when your PBEM opponent has Fast Atillery turned ON, because it means you won't see the rounds land, even though you have Fast Artillery turned OFF.

Cross