Turn 0 Artillery Bombardments

[Karagin]

Okay, reading the manual, yes I know, crazy idea right, I see that the old slaughter the AI with a nice Turn Zero Artillery plotted Bombardment is gone from the Battle part of the game. Okay cool, I get it, but then HOW does the AI get away with plotting on then?

I see the screen that says Artillery is turned off till turn 2, yet the AI seems to ignore this. I can attach the saved game that shows their opening barrage on TURN 1, which means they plotted it during the setup.

So did I miss a paragraph that shows how the human player can go back to having the ability to set up turn zero plotted artillery that strikes once you quit deployment option?

[Wdll]

I have no idea, but, is it a scenario?

[scorpio_rocks]

It depends on the type of battle:
(From the game guide V7 2013 Patch Upgrades:

Artillery can no longer be plotted (including air transports and spotters) on turn 0, or 1 if the battle is a meeting engagement or you are the delayer or defender. A scenario designer can still plot artillery as he desires in his scenario, however. The AI may still plot fire as before. This is deliberate to penalise a human player who packs the approach roads. Note that the bombardment screen may still be entered to plot FDF gold spots, or toggle the blast radius display. The arty units just will not show up till post turn 1 if unavailable in the scenario for pre-game bombardment

So as a player in a non-scenario battle you can ONLY plot a pre-game bombardment if you are the Attacker in an Assault or Attack battle type.

[Imp]

From my experience AI rarely does a turn zero fire in meetings nowadays & if it does normally just back from deploy line along roads.
If your advancing or assaulting however deploying on roads is a risky business

[Karagin]

I get that the players get the one pre-plot, that isn't my issue or concern. I am saying that the AI is getting what we the players once had and it's certainly using it to the same degree with to excel that we the human player did in the older version.

Attached are turns 0 and 1. I also understand roads are a risk, but hey sometimes that risk is outweighed by the need to move toward an objective.

My main point here is if we the players don't get ability in a meeting engagement to have turn 0 and turn 1 ability to pre-engagement bombardment, then the AI should not either.

[Karagin]

Originally Posted by scorpio_rocks

It depends on the type of battle:
(From the game guide V7 2013 Patch Upgrades:

So as a player in a non-scenario battle you can ONLY plot a pre-game bombardment if you are the Attacker in an Assault or Attack battle type.

Yes, I get that, yet the AI doesn't seem to follow the same ruleset. See the attached turns.

[Imp]

That unlike many games is the one single advantage the AI gets to offset the huge advantage that you have a brain so can outthink it.

It's at best a minor advantage you can decide to risk or not with your brain.

I will say that around 1 in 3 games the AI can be surprisingly good at plotting arty, better than quite a few humans I would say.
That however is down to good coding not cheating.

I would hazard a guess of those 1 in 3 games the AI has eyes on you that you are unaware of or gathered info from the air or its recon by death.

[Imp]

When it comes to artillery the AI is at a big disadvantage to.
It cannot use gold spots.
It does not cancel fire missions when it knows target is gone or its very very rare.
It cannot use ammo resupply so that first turn salvo means less ammo later.

[FASTBOAT TOUGH]

John,
Hopefully you won't mind too much that I copied your points from the last post.
1) When it comes to artillery the AI is at a big disadvantage to.

I have to mostly agree to this statement. That being said, it loves to buy it and uses it well. It's just not as patient as I am, so counter battery is a disadvantage for the AI also. But it can and will given the opportunity. The "0" turn issue I've noticed seems to still happen but, to some extent not as much as I remember. This could be driven by the particular battle, I'm not sure. But if the AI has "spotters" out there, or your just holding up progress in it's advance, then you better "standby for incoming", I've learned the hard way that if you're stalemated on the field and decide to "slug it out" you might be toast. Now I just get my armor out of the way if possible as long as my troops are "dug in".

2. It cannot use gold spots.

Therefore neither do I. My feeling is simply this, I choose to only play against the AI for many reasons the most important being my personal time. So knowing well my advantages over the AI, what fun or challenges would that leave for me to enjoy and play this game if I used all my advantages against the AI? I mean really, what would be the point of playing the game under those conditions?

My answer is I would've walked away from the game years ago.

Save that stuff when playing a real player as you'll both be on an "equal footing", the AI is my "other player" and that's how I treat it, though I prefer to say opponent.

3) It does not cancel fire missions when it knows target is gone or its very very rare. Refer to Johns (Imp) Post #7.

I cannot disagree with this statement but as I said above it will react to your presence if in contact or spotted, if the AI doesn't think you should be there. It will shift fire missions fairly quickly in response to what it sees going on the battlefield. The AI does value the use of Fwd. Observers all the time in my experience.

4) It cannot use ammo resupply so that first turn salvo means less ammo later.

I don't see this all the time. But when it comes to speaking about artillery, I stopped using the on map stuff years ago as a matter of routine and only rarely now. I've found the AI is very effective in targeting your on map assets once spotted. You can't just "shoot 'n scoot" because you'll blow your fire missions so at some point you'll just have to stick around or otherwise you're just wasting your time. My RL brain would have buy those units with their RL ammo units, so again for on map artillery, I just chose not to.

Maybe some "radical thinking" there but, I like to think of it as "leveling the playing field".

Truth be told, I do buy ammo resupply for my armor but, I have seen things...Never mind "Blade Runner" again , but bad things happen when the AI sees them. It prioritizes them, blows them up, which can damage your light armor if to close, suppress your heavy armor, wipe out whole platoons (OK rarely.) but certainly you'll lose troops and they'll be routed. Oh yeah, you're losing points the whole time that's happening.

I'm thinking that "whatever" the AI fired at your ammo unit was well worth it, for some or all I just noted above. I find the AI might not be as "dumb" as some think after all!?!

Edited: For some minor wording/spelling errors and to expand my response to item 3 above.

Regards,
Pat