Welcome to the Blitz, Silverleaf, glad you are enjoying Eagle's Strike. It is one of the most popular SB games.
I've been around the SB world since '06, I believe, and I do feel that that WWII games get the heaviest play. Advance of the Reich, especially the post-release Advanced Squad Leader scenarios, is a nice compliment to ES, if your fancy is the Eastern Front. There are plenty of user-created scenarios and vehicle/sound mods available for both over on Task Force Echo 4 if you haven't already gone there.
The AI for SB is fairly robust. I've done my share of playing the AI as a newbie, and over the past two years playtesting for HPS. In general, the AI does better on the defense than on the offense, although the past few commercial releases have seen some better overall AI play due to improved scenario design.
If you really want to have a fun experience, play someone in a PBEM match after you feel you've got a handle on the game mechanics. I think you'll find that to be quite a bit more interesting than taking on the AI. The guys here are all great, not uber-competitive in the way of wanting to pound new guys into the ground. Most of us will run a few practice PBEMs before logging something on the ladder to get you out of bootcamp. There's always someone looking for an ES game.
I saw your post over on GameSquad about the map editor. I'm sure if you've poked around the boards you've seen a few debates, some heated, about the lack of a true map editor with the series. That conversation usually elicits a fairly strong response. Some folks feeling that HPS is completely in the wrong about a map editor, demanding that Tiller himself answer the question as to why he doesn't realease one. Others understand that it is probably a calculated business decision to keep that to themselves. What you will find in most SB games are fairly large maps that can be used to design your own scenarios, some are giagantic. It might not be exactly what you want, but as a basis for early scenario design, there is a lot available. I'd love to see more users creating top notch content for SB, and there are several members of the SB design team who are on this board to pick their brains about design, noteably Ozgur Budak (Winter War, Soviet Afghan War as commercial releases plus dozens of others for nearly all the other games), Joao Lima (Spanish Civl War) and Cazart (Mike Cox, Soviet-Afghan War as well as other non-commerical stuff)
Quote:and..yes! single man counters are able to be created.
One comment is that I'd limit single man counters in any scenario you'd chose to design. The game engine would make those single man units fairly hard to kill, unless you chose to use the Alternate Fire Density Rule.
If you have any questions or comments, post 'em here. I'd like to see this board get some more conversations going, especially ones that I'm not starting!
;)