Haohmaru

Thankyou for your reply. Actually you missed my point a bit, I was not trying to say that changing the ai is as easy as modifying mg modelling, I understand it's much more complicated. The point I was trying to make about the mg modelling was that no one was willing to complain about it in CMBO, and the few who did were heckled and abused for doing so. So this is the comparisson I'm making, if anyone tries to complain about the ai they are running up against a brick wall. I think it is counter-productive to stick up for battlefront so devotedly when the only thing people like me are trying to do is to point out the weaknesses of their products. Case in point- Oddball, your comment "SHUT IT!", do you realise how insulting that is? Please remember you are addressing a group of adults, not children, and we have a right to express our opinions. The only people who control this forum are the moderators, and I believe that you are NOT one of these people. If you are so upset about the way this discussion is heading, then please post a new thread to put it back to your liking. It's not difficult to do, just click the "new topic" button. Anyway battlefront I accept your stance on the issue that you have to way up the costs vs benefits of investing time in this. But I would suggest to you that many of your customers are already veterans of CMBO and CMBB, and therefore if you just let the ai go by the wayside and don't invest time to diversify and improve it, you are going to get more dissatisfied customers, because as it is now the ai can only really challenge players who are new to the game. Someone in fact said that the ai SHOULD not be made perfect, well why not? The great thing about combat mission is that there is no perfect strategy, there is no perfect force purchase, and even if you do have a great strategy it can all fall apart in the randomness of war. The CM manual itself says that a lot of what happens relies on luck more than anything else. I am excited by what battlefront was talking about with the idea of aggression settings etc. I don't expect to play a human opponent from the ai, I just want to play an opponent that gives me a challenge and does at worst a minimum of foolish things. [ October 29, 2003, 04:15 AM: Message edited by: Haohmaru ]

Extreme FOW affects only identification, not spotting? No, this is incorrect. With Extreme FOW not only is it harder to spot, units much more easily disappear out of LOS again. In particular, it is not infrequently the case where you will destroy a unit but not actually see the result, it will only disappear and you will only find the body/wreckage after getting very close to its location. For the people who said they would be happy for the tank to get the hell out of there, on this occasion I had manually targetted the gun before the tank came into LOS, furthermore it was pointing 90 degrees away from the tank shooting at something else. Surely on this occasion you would be expect the tank to stop and shoot? It had a blast rating of 49 so it's a reasonably effective gun killer also.... If the gun decides to turn around and shoot back, sure, consider getting out of there, but not before then.

Perhaps I was a bit harsh in my wording, and upon reflection the computer ai never seemed bad until I started playing against human opponents. I have to thank them for teaching me how to play much better than I had been, but it did have the unfortunate side effect of making ai opponents boring. But the fact remains I was quite disappointed with the ai of CMBB, because despite being completely green and having had no practise with the new infantry modelling, orders etc I still found it easy to beat both on defense and attack right from the first battle, even with a handicap. The ai was promised to be improved, but personally I can not see any improvement over CMBO other than it being able to use the new commands, which don't really help you when you use poor tactics. I don't know anything about ai coding and so I can accept battlefront's stance that it requires a lot of manpower. But isn't anyone else baffled that the computer can not keep it's units in C & C, at least in the initial setup?? And why does it place a bunker facing the wrong way? The scenario clearly defines which side of the map is hostile, surely it cannot be difficult for the ai to point its units in the right direction? People keep asking to come up with an example of better ai, well how about Medieval: TW? In this game the ai manages to keep its army in well coordinated formations, it probes weaknesses in your defense, tries to flank you with cavalry, tries to occupy the high ground to give its units a bonus. It prepares ambushes within forests, it brings on reinforcements at opportune moments, it tries to crush vulnerable but dangerous units such as archers. It even has unique tactics reflecting different nationalities, for example the muslims will often feign a general retreat, forcing your heavily armored soldiers to charge after them in the hot desert. Then when your forces are tired and scattered they will rally and suddenly strike back hard. The only foolish behaviour I've ever seen is it will sometimes put it's commanding unit into a dangerous situation, giving you a chance to kill it and route the whole army. Now, some people will point out that this setting is easier to simulate, since soldiers will just line up in box formations and kill each other face to face, whereas WW2 is a whole different thing. But it's still a strategy game, and real time too so the computer doesn't even have "time" to think. As Jason C said, things such as the mg modelling have been improved and fixed. I clearly remember back in the days of CMBO, if anyone complained about machines guns they would be derided by others and there would be explanations such as "the units are not running straight, they are dodging and zigzagging etc" or "it's not just open ground, there are dips and rises in the ground to provide cover." Now we have CMBB and we see a much better depiction of machine guns, people realise it's safe to make fun of CMBO "the land where mgs do not kill." I really hope that CM2 or some future title fixes the ai, then I believe everyone will breath a sigh of relief and laugh about how hopeless the CM ai was before. They can vent their previous frustration without being seen to be saying something negative about battlefront's products. One final note, the best performance I've had against the ai ia a major (or total, can't remember) victory in the Arnhem- Red Devils Operation in CMBO, twice, once as the allies, the second time axis. On both occasions the ai's assistance? +150% forces were given to it! It was particularly easy as the British, once you've cleared the town and set up along the bridge it is wholesale slaughter, the only concern is piat ammo starts to run dry for the massive amount of armor that pours through. When it turns into a shooting gallery it is not particularly fun...

I can think of only one word to describe Combat Mission's AI: embarassing. I'm not talking about only QBs but the scenarios included on the cd as well. I know some of you will be very offended by this, but just listen to these examples. People claim that the ai is good on defense. Currently I've been playing the Operation 21st Army Counterattacks as the Russians. The German defenders have nice large amounts of wooded areas that they can fortify themselves in, yet the tactic that they choose to "defend" is to sally forth from these defenses, bum rush my forces and get slaughtered in the process. Some squads will manage to crawl (or limp) back to the woods, only to emerge a couple of turns later. Wash, rinse, repeat. Now to add to the embarassment, several of the computer controlled squads have managed to stumble into their own landmines, even before being targetted by my troops! Therefore they are not doing this out of panic but rather sheer stupidity. They blow themselves up and manage to reveal the locations of these mines in the process, very generous of the ai. I thought it was impossible to plot movement inside mines you know exist anyway? The computer still chooses to do this. I've seen incredible placements of fortifications also, eg. wooden bunkers with their rear facing the enemy's side of the map, sometimes they will be placed right on the edge of a river so they are facing downwards and don't have LOS to anything. Now lets move to attack, one of the cleverest things I've seen the computer do is allow the rear of their AFVs to face my side of the map, this is particularly suicidal with CMBB's slow turn rates. If you are still not convinced about the lousy ai, try playing a game against it with FOW turned off. You will see that consistantly a large number of squads are out of command, and it has a curious habit of making arty spotters move side to side, back and forth, for no good reason in particular. People claim that scenarios can be tailor made to "assist" the ai. I cannot comment on that, but I have to say that I've played a large number of scenarios on cd and they have produced consistant results. The very first time I played CMBO (aside from the demo) I got a minor victory, I was a complete newbie at this time. Surely the scenarios originally designed and shipped with CMBO and CMBB were designed with the ai in mind. Now, to sum up, let me say that I love Combat Mission. It is unequalled for multiplayer enjoyment and I have enjoyed playing it for 3 years now. But I am disappointed that CMBB in my opinion shows no improvement in the computer ai department. The truth is I still enjoy the occasional game against the ai, I give it a minimum 25% increase and +2 exp. bonus. Sometimes it will still do well because tanks are so much more effective with a higher experience level. Overall though I find it disatisfying to have to give the ai a bonus, even if you "lose" you will usually still win on points because you've blasted away so many of its troops. Again let me finish by saying I have nothing against CM and think it's a great game. I just think that people who try to insist on how good the ai is need to open their eyes. And I apologise to the starter of this thread who just wanted to explain how best to use the ai, this thread has been somewhat hijacked already so I thought I would throw in my comment. Haoh

Ok, thanks for the replies. In this battle I was fairly careless with my hunt orders because I am used to tanks stopping and pounding guns until they are destroyed, but with extreme FOW I guess I have to be more careful. I will use area fire more often...

Yes, a visible sighting had been made and an ID of "gun?" had been made. The only thing I can think of is I am playing on extreme FOW so perhaps LOS was lost by the unit. But it's not like guns can move very far so it's pretty dumb of the tank to keep moving, up to that point no shots had hit anywhere near the gun. The tank did actually stop briefly, fire one shot and then kept moving, seconds later the gun was replaced by unit marker as the tank had moved out of LOS

I recently purchased CMBB and have noticed that tanks will tend to ignore guns when in hunt mode. I've noticed a couple of times they will target the gun but will keep on driving, even if the target then goes out of sight, thereby wasting their opportunity to take it out. It's not a question of spotting but of behaviour, because as I said the tanks actually started to target but then cancelled after moving out of LOS. This is different from CMBO where a tank in hunt mode will always stop to target a gun it spots, until LOS is blocked or the gun is destroyed. Has anyone else noticed this? I must ask why this change was made as I find it quite irritating. After all, most guns are a threat to any AFV, so surely if they find one in hunt mode there would be a priority to take it out. It's been suggested I should try move to contact instead, but that's not particularly satisfying as then the tank might suddenly halt upon finding some infantry. Or should I use a covered arc order instead? Any comments or suggestions would be appreciated. Haoh

Great, thanks for the reply Matt. This would explain why I've only recently been seeing this problem. I'll check it out and see if what you've suggested helps.

Hi there, I've been having a frustrating time with Combat Mission lately :mad: . Because I don't have enough time for pbem anymore I've been playing against the computer more often and I've had a lot of problems with save game files getting corrupted or going missing. The first time it happened was with the 'Arnhem' operation, loading the most recent save game, and even the autosave, led to my computer crashing to desktop. And recently with the scenario 'All or Nothing', I was going along nicely and was saving regularly with two different files, alternating them in case the same thing happened. I finished one session at turn 50, I even reloaded the game before quitting to make sure it worked, and everything was fine. But the next time I tried to load this file, somehow it loaded a previous save game, and instead of turn 50 it was turn 39! Furthermore, something strange had happened to the autosave file, on the list of save games it had this as the description "tiny, 166097 turns." What the hell is that!!!! In desperation I tried opening it anyway and it just caused the game to freeze. Considering what a large battle this is it really is infuriating and I can't understand why such a game stopping bug hasn't been fixed. I've never had this problem and I've had the game for a long time. Can anyone suggest a solution to this? I've got a dual boot system of WinMe and Win2000 and I play CMBO on Win2000. I used to play on WinMe but now that has a problem with the sound driver. Could Win2000 somehow be causing a problem with CMBO? Any help would be appreciated as I really am losing my admiration for this game, and am having to turn to Soldier of Fortune 2 to release my frustration.

Thanks for your reply Soddball, and sorry for my slow response, internet hasn't been working. You might be right about this, but I can't say that I can see any appreciable difference in the ability of the troops. It is hard to tell since the AI plays a pretty lousy game anyway, but my vets and regulars don't seem to have a problem taking on these supposed Elite troops. I'm still playing this scenario and another problem has crept in which I'm about to post about...

Hi there, I've had CMBO for quite some time and I just noticed that giving the computer an experience bonus doesn't have any effect. I am currently playing the scenario "All or Nothing", I gave the computer +3 but I'm facing regular German units. I tried again giving it only +1 this time and same result, regulars. Incidentally, it also doesn't work for Operations, but I am able to give the points bonus in both scenarios and operations, even though, according to the manual, you cannot give point bonuses in operations. Any suggestions about what's wrong?

I have had this same problem with CM:BO. Last night I was playing the Arnhem- Red Devils operation included with the game. It was about turn 11 of the second battle. I saved the game under two separate files, and later when I tried to load either one, they caused a crash to desktop. Furthermore, the autosave also caused a crash. I could load other saves normally including one made earlier in the operation. It is very frustrating and disappointing that a bug of this nature still haunts the game. I also have Win2000, a fresh install. Is there something I can do about this? Are the saves repairable somehow?

Says here in the manual about victory points... victory points are awarded for the following: -control of victory flags -casualties caused to the enemy -captured enemy (counts double that of casualties) -exited units... -any bonus set by the scenario designer So what's the story with points for captured units??? Is the manual lying or have you made a mistake? I always thought it was a good thing to capture units as they would be more valuable alive, and it is a very difficult thing to achieve. If they are worth less then we might as well be executing prisoners with the area fire command if we have the ammo to spare. Such suggestions by people in the past have made them labelled as psychos but if captured units are worth less you could say that it's good play.

Hey there Commander. I think you already know I'm not a beginner I don't know about everybody else but I've been beating the AI quite easily ever since the demo unless I give it a handicap, so I guess I'm medium skilled having finished 5 PBEM games. I'd definitely like to sign up for this tournament. Those Pershings better watch out...

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Cubbies Phan: If you still have the Demo on your HDD, you can just copy over the Vally of Trouble.cmb file to the Scenario folder in your CMBO folder. Why they left it out? I have no idea. However all 3 scenarios from the Beta Demo made it into the full version. Those include Chance Encounter, Last Defense, and Reisburg.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> Ok, that is strange. I don't have the demo after all this time, but thanks for the info.

On the topic of Valley of Trouble, I was just wondering the other day why it wasn't included with the full game. Does anyone know why it was taken out? I personally prefered it to Chance Encounter, which is still in the full version.