Setting the Advantage - what does it change?

[Benedict151]

Thanks for the various thoughts on this, appreciated

[Kool Kat]

I think playing against the ai is a waste of time anyway.  Testing things is good.  But, playing?  You really should PBeM.  If you don't enjoy it, try again.  It could have been an obnoxious opp.  Very rare though.  If the turns are not fast enough, get more games started.

My 2 cents.

Gents:
If my only option was playing against the AI, I would have given up on John Tiller games decades ago. 

[LordDeadwood]

That just shows you how many are missing out.  It is much more of a challenge, not to mention fun, to play against somebody that has the ability to change their mind at any time.

As someone who just discovered JT games a few months ago, and has played other games as well solo for a long time, I can concur with the above sentiment. I just started doing PBEM recently and (aside from getting my butt kicked!) am enjoying it immensely. I never realized how bad the AI was (in games in general) until a recent game of PzB Normandy. The AI allowed a regimental HQ unit to just sit in open terrain within range of an infantry company for multiple turns while I just whittled it away. And it wasn't because I found it there, it was moved there! Another case in the same scenario found a divisional HQ accompanying line troops moving toward the beaches. As in stacked with and adjacent to infantry and armor!

The AI is perfectly fine to learn the basics of the system and to get your feet wet. But after that, human players are a must if you want to really learn the game.

[phoenix]

If, for whatever reason, playing PBEM is difficult, then I've found playing hs against myself much better than playing the AI. If you play a really big scenario then your faulty memory will provide some measure of FOW, but in any case you can game the FOW differences with various internal rules. If you can pretend that you're doing something meaningful playing against a scripted AI as one-dimensional as the JTS AI then you can certainly pretend it's meaningful playing yourself. And it's very cool to move both sides, I think - there's no down time. And you don't have to watch long, slow dull playbacks. From a historical point of view it's also great to get to understand both sides of the scenario and what they were trying to achieve. You need to game it by making plans and sticking to them realistically, and not making any re-plan decisions based on what you remember of the 'other sides' dispositions. Long way better than playing the AI, imho, though undoubtedly PBEM better than both.