Streety

OK, two separate single pink pixels on default summer fir tree 503.bmp (which you can fix yourself with MSPaint if you don't want to wait for my published fixes - both on the left, one high, one low, both amid the branches). Apologies for not spotting them before. I may be tweaking the trees further anyway, so depending on how much needs correcting/updating, I'll either issue an update zip, or re-issue the relevant folder zip in time.

Hi Placebo,
How do you find the CM2 AI compares to the CM1 games?

And oh, I didn't meant to suggest that the AI is terrible, just that it's mediocre or hit-and-miss at best (which is sort of how you describe it too), and seemingly not much better than CM1 games. And that minor improvement in CM2 seems in part (or entirely) due to scrapping truly random maps for a very large number of scripted maps. But that limits the replayability that random maps gave to the solo-gamer and so the pros don't outweigh the cons. And if you find you need to pick the AI's troops to massage it to act better, then once more it reduces the enjoyability for the solo-gamer in knowing what you're going to face.

My main point is that after nearly 30 years of computer wargames, we should now be at the stage of having a great AI. Yes, a CM battle today has a lot more variables and permutations than a reasonably good computer chess program had to deal with in the early 1908s, but then computer power and technology has come on a very long way since then too. So if a computer wargame can't now provide a great enemy AI (which was the main thing that table-top wargames could not provide), then compared to those old table-top wargames the main remaining advantage of the computer game is that it just has pretty graphics (i.e. animations).

I fear that generally computer wargaming has been slowly hijacked by the arcade-game mentality. We see this shallowness in a lot of other media too these days (hollywood films, music video, magazines etc) that style has increasingly supplanted substance in this attention-defecit disorder age.... God I sound so old!

But if anyone can list some other great AI games with random maps for the solo-gamer, please let me know.

That's a real shame that the AI doesn't seem much better than CM1. After a long CM1 career I've recently tried CM2 but yet to buy, and not having a great quality computer enemy is a huge put-off. I hear what you guys say about H2H, but for me, as an old-time table-top wargamer for the past 40 years, what I always expect from any computer game, and what I always thought computers could bring to the genre that pre-computer-age wargmes could not, indeed the very raison d'être of the computer wargame, should be to provide an enemy AI. Without that, all you're left with is essentially pretty graphics.

I wonder if other old-timers would agree that it seems games companies have seen the internet-connected human opponent as a way of avoiding working on the AI, or at least that better graphics cards (and the race to look as good as Call of Duty shooters) has diluted the developers' efforts. That and the fact that for the developer its style that sells a game. But for the gamer it's substance that makes it replayable and thus worth the money. I'd pay $100+ for a CM game if it had a really good AI. And a good enemy AI should not be that difficult (chess computers have done it for 3 decades, and essentially you could treat a QB like a chess game, especially when you keep rivers and bridges out of the QB and represent the buildings as simple blocks!). The AI these days should be pretty much perfect when defending and still good at all other times. However, it requires time and effort (and some highly experienced, top tactical wargmer minds) to develop an AI, and these days it seems style beats substance and computer "games designers" are mostly just 3D modellers with 2D minds.

Ok, I'll go quietly now - at least until my next rant...