Better AI

[Glenn Saunders]

The Bottomline on the AI is this.

Over time, in teh newer games, the AI has gotten better. Changes to the EXE has made improvement. More emphasis in later games has gone into scripting the AI to do as the designer would like. Kursk '43 was PzC #5 and I don't even know if we had scripted AI orders at that time. If we did I don't think the HOLD AI order was an option. So in a similar game - like like MINSK, I think the German AI will defend bette than the Russian AI in Kursk. YOu will still win, but the Ai will be better I think.

There are a number of issues here - so it isn't just a broad brush - "the AI is dumb". Clearly it is not as good as a human nor will it ever be. Even if we made it twice as smart, it would still not offer a challenge to some of the HTH experts here.

Furthermore, we don't want the AI to be too predictable either so it has to do things differently in situations and sometimes this makes the AI look dumb. And the longer or more complex the battle is, the more chance the AI has to screw something up.

Also - a human gets smarter over time - certainly faster than any program improvements we have made and the series is old enough now - 10 years I think. So there are a lot of players who are damned experienced now that making a scn that is challenging vs the AI for someone who is new is one thing - but against a veteran PzC player like some of the guys here - with ten years and thousand of hours under their belt, is something altogether different.

The AI in the demo is too bad - in fact the Started scn in that game was at first so hard some players I had testing it couldn't win. So we soften it quite a bit to make it winable by mere mortals. The tougher scn was advocated by Dogsoldier and he has it posted for play on this site somewhere.

Anyway - if you want to learn the system vs the AI, try the later games, and teh scns for AI play - you will still win, but hopefully the challenge will be better.

Or - download the demo - play the started scn, play the Campaign and review the PLAYERS GUIDE Created by Bob Barker and then try the harder Scn the DogSoldier posted.

The AI is the AI. It is like playing with your worst Human opponent and yet the ablity to win has more to do with your skill level. Many Scn in Tunisia 43 were easily won by one tester while another person might only manage a draw.

Glenn