AI "reaction" question

[DRG]

From the AI's POV it makes perfect sense to control the V hexes. That's it's "Prime directive" when the order goes out to counter attack that's what it expects it's troops to do....CA and regain the lost V hexes. The alternative is to sit there and loose the game. However, it cannot know that leaving prepared postions to retake a V hex isn't a great idea if the scenario designer has set up the game to allow certain V hexes to be taken by the human player right away and that trips rule number 1 5% of the time and the scenario designer is confused as to why his troops stay in place most of the time but sometimes go berserker.

We are looking at adding a change to the patch that will allow formation and/or units to ignore the CA order. There are a number of options we are exploring

Don

[Skirmisher]

Sounds good.

When I was playtesting the scenerio I had made where the units moved to soon I had set all the victory hexes to nuetral,in retrospect I should have made them owned by the AI. That way it would not have reacted.

[dita]

Thanks for the rpley Don.

Giving the option to the player to change the "holding" of AI units would be great. Though I do fully appreciate keeping these percentages and inner workings "under your hat"

In my scenario, it was a defence, with all the V hexes controlled by the Human, thus, I assume, the AI was reacting to item 3 in your list.

[wulfir]

dita said:
So I set the reaction to turn 21, assuming they wont "react" and move.

Dita,

reaction turn works, but it's somewhat tricky to get it right. Not knowing your scenario my guess would be that it's a meeting engagement and that is probably why reaction turn doesn't work for you.

Made a short (see attachement), fast play scenario to illustrate what I mean. Indian troops in Kashmir are sent on a sweep a village suspected of harbouring separatist weapons.

In this scenario the AI controled separatist forces (Red OOB)have a delay mission and thus most of their forces will stay put in their assigned positions BUT through use of reaction turn and one more meassure when purchasing units for the AI side, some of the separatists will try to put in a weak flank attack as well as leave the village in a death or glory run with a small civilian car.

No units have movement set to 0.

I'll explain how it's done if you're interested.

[Double_Deuce]

wulfir said:
No units have movement set to 0.

I'll explain how it's done if you're interested.

I'd be interested!

[Mobhack]

dita said:
Thanks for the rpley Don.

Giving the option to the player to change the "holding" of AI units would be great. Though I do fully appreciate keeping these percentages and inner workings "under your hat"

In my scenario, it was a defence, with all the V hexes controlled by the Human, thus, I assume, the AI was reacting to item 3 in your list.

So you did not take note of the big box in the scenario editor section of the manual with the title PLEASE NOTE then?, in particular the sentence begining "In a delay or defence scenario.."

Cheers
Andy

[dita]

Wulfir,

My scenario was a human player defend, and all the victory hexes were in the human players control, I assume that this is what effected the "reaction" and made AI the units advance. I`m sure there is some other trick up your sleeve....so of course, I`d be interested in how its done

[dita]

Mobhack said:

So you did not take note of the big box in the scenario editor section of the manual with the title PLEASE NOTE then?, in particular the sentence begining "In a delay or defence scenario.."

Cheers
Andy

Just to clarify. The scenario is a Human Defend against an AI assault. All the Victory hexes are placed (including the ones set to 0 value not used, located under used ones) and are set to the nationality of the defending side, in this case human UK. From "big box in the manual
"...In a delay or defence scenario, you should ensure that all the victory hexes are set to the delay or defend player's nationality. ...", which I have done. I assume that as all the V hexes are controlled, the AI will go to point 3 on the list, that is "..3]if >=90% of the objectives are enemy held/neutral, the AI will attack with about 45-50% of the formations per turn"

Hope I`m not getting totally confused now...or confusing anyone else for that matter???

[wulfir]

dita said:
My scenario was a human player defend, and all the victory hexes were in the human players control, I assume that this is what effected the "reaction" and made AI the units advance.

Yes, I would suspect that is the case. My method might be of limited use to you though, but it's the only way I know of making the AI sticking to reaction turn. Note also that it isn't 100% foolproof, sometimes the AI makes up it's own mind about how it wants to run things.

What I do to make some units stay in place and some advance is this:

1 - Figure out what units I want the AI to have defending. Set the mission to AI delay and purchase the units. Their reaction turn is automatically set to 99. These troops will not move unless routed or forced to make the 'take back VH flags counterattack' move that usually happens at the end of a game.

2 - Figure out what units I want the AI to move around with. Set the mission to meeting engagement and purchase the units. These units will also have their reaction turn set to 99 so I will edit them to whatever turn I want them to start moving. These troops will generally behave as if they were on an advance mission.

3 - Switch back the mission to AI delay before saving.
- CRITICALLY IMPORTANT! - if the AI mission is meeting engagement, advance or assault reaction turns will be ignored. The AI will advance forces even if starting the game in possesion of all VHs.


Btw, on AI assault missions: you can time AI artillery to land on a specific turn by shifting the artillery around in the bombard menu increasing the delay of the firemission. If the AI is assaulting it will often fire off map arty on turn 0 and depending on the map this might land in crazy areas. Or you can make AI off map assets turn 1 reinforcements (I often do this to prevent turn 0 fire).

[Mobhack]

dita said:

Just to clarify. The scenario is a Human Defend against an AI assault. All the Victory hexes are placed (including the ones set to 0 value not used, located under used ones) and are set to the nationality of the defending side, in this case human UK. From "big box in the manual
"...In a delay or defence scenario, you should ensure that all the victory hexes are set to the delay or defend player's nationality. ...", which I have done. I assume that as all the V hexes are controlled, the AI will go to point 3 on the list, that is "..3]if >=90% of the objectives are enemy held/neutral, the AI will attack with about 45-50% of the formations per turn"

Hope I`m not getting totally confused now...or confusing anyone else for that matter???

Ah! - me was confused - Had thought the AI was defending.

Andy