Twenty Years at the Blitz

[Mr Grumpy]

Congratulations on 20 years at the Blitz.  My start and stop dates would give me credit for 20+ but life took me away for about 9 years so that's hardly true. 

I will say this about "our hobby", back when the PzC Ladder was started here (yes by me,  ) I would have wagered money that hardly anyone would play these games "against the AI" beyond the first few dozen hours it takes to learn the system.  I'm pretty sure if you search back far enough in the forums you'll find posts by me where I joke about playing the AI being on par with masturbation.  But now that I frequent other places in addition to The Blitz (Face Book WDS pages and the WDS Forum) it has been impressed upon me (by WDS Staff directly) that a far larger number of people play these games exclusively against the AI and never branch out into PBEM.  The Blitz has NEVER been about AI play, so when we speak about "our hobby" and its future it is PBEM or H2H play in particular that must be catered to.  Towards that end players here at the Blitz should encourage others elsewhere to play PBEM and not against the AI, and if at all possible to join the Blitz as well.  It's the only way the Club will be here in the next 20 years.  For the current owners/operators of the Club I would encourage them to do what's within their limited means to boost membership, drive site traffic, and activity.

I had the same experience, having realised that the AI was so easy to beat (and I was not a military genius!) I naturally went looking for more of a challenge in PBEM games and have never looked back, it always seemed incredible that anyone would invest any time playing the AI other than to learn the game system, but like yourself some conversations with the guys behind the scenes made me realise that as a PBEM player I was actually in the minority of people who play the various Tiller series!
That really blew my mind as while I appreciated that not everyone can commit to a PBEM game (and if you can’t finish the game it is quite right not to start it), the knowledge of what a poor opponent the AI is it seems such a shame they are missing out on just how amazing these titles are when you are pitched against a skilled human opponent, every time I thought I had learnt all these titles had to offer a player would show me something I had not seen before, the learning curve was such a joyful journey!
I suspect that HPS/JTS/WDS might be a bit sore that people like me trash the AI and I do realise that a lot of effort has gone into trying to improve its performance, but I am somewhat sad that AI only players will never experience the joy of a human/ human games, I certainly would not have played these games for the last 20 years in there had been no a PBEM option.