mcaryf Posted January 19, 2006 Share Posted January 19, 2006 It may be a bit late in the day to be raising funnies on SC but it is a new game for me so here goes anyway! I am playing as Allies (versus AI) and have already caused Italy to surrender - Germany battles on. The Axis had conquered Greece some long time before but now there is a German unit sitting on Athens. I send various fleet units to batter the port and I get reports such as Italy loses 2mp. Is this just a reporting error or is the strategic damage not actually hurting the current owner Germany? Regards Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerseyJohn Posted January 20, 2006 Share Posted January 20, 2006 Mike, Sounds like fun. What year is it? There a lot of things the AI won't do as either side. As the Axis, I don't think it will launch amphibious operations. No Sea Lion, no invasions of any Scandinavian country, no Middle East strategy, nothing like that. It pretty much invades Russia and that's it. As the Allies it will ignore the Mediteranean, if the UK falls, the U. S. stays where it is, the UK will never invade France till the U. S. enters the game etc & etc. I think Edwin's written more posts on the AI short comings than anyone else, but a lot of that is scattered throughout this forum for the past two years or so. If you want an interesting game from the AI you've pretty much got to create scenarios that give it the things it won't go for, like if the AI is the Axis, give it the Scandinavian countries (including Denmark) and, with the extra MPPs and countries it would never attack on it's own, it would play a more challenging game. But it will never be much more than a punching bag; okay to practice on, but the only way to enjoy SC is against a human opponent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcaryf Posted January 20, 2006 Author Share Posted January 20, 2006 Hi JerseyJohn This was actually only my third full attempt at a game. My first was as Axis on 50%/50% difficulty which I won by destroying the Allied navies with a U-Boat pack (most AI's do not understand the principle of force concentration), my second was as Allies on 100%/50% difficulty which ended as a draw with me battering at Berlin and Rome in 1947. My third (this game)as Allies 100%/50% has ended in victory in Summer 1945. In the first two games I had made some errors due to not fully understanding the HQ/supply rules but I think I have it about right now. Most AI's have difficulty in understanding the big picture but I think SC does a pretty reasonable job of tactics. The main weakness seems to be that it tends to use air attacks first. Since a player has most flexibility in deploying air, I guess a human would be more likely to use air after the dice rolls for ground attacks have been revealed and opportunities to destroy enemy units are more apparent. Regards Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JerseyJohn Posted January 20, 2006 Share Posted January 20, 2006 Mike, I'm not an authority on how to play the game but your reasoning sounds right to me. The best game tips in posts come from Terif, who won something like 220 games in a row against competitive human players. The best thing is to just use the search function for this forum and look under Terif and reading his advice you can't go wrong. Kuniworth, Rambo, Zappsweden, Ranug and a few others have also offered good advice during the past couple of years. Overall strategy, Bill Macon and I believe Dan Fenton (sorry if that's wrong) wrote a strategy guide that's available in the FAQ area and there is also a lot of info along those lines written by Carl von Mannerheim, also in the FAQ area. Playing the AI is really the best way to learn the game. Once you learn all the things the AI won't do it becomes more fun to play it because you can give it advantages to compensate for it's shortcomings. As the Allies, I've done things like give it just about everything starting from 1939 (have France and the UK conquered with U. S. starting in the outset), place some German units and an HQ in UK, and battle back from there. I agree with what you're saying regarding AIs in general. The only AI I've seen in a game similar to this that I thought was challenging, was the DOS game, Clash of Steel, but in order to achieve that situation the game designers gave the computer a huge number of breaks and special rules to make things easier for it. Additionally, though the land part of the game was hex based, the sea zones weren't. This helped the computer greatly as it only had a small options to consider. Some of us, including myself, liked that idea much more than ocean and sea hexes, but we seem to be in the minority. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaMonkey Posted January 20, 2006 Share Posted January 20, 2006 So Mike, how are you liking SC compared to WaW? About your initial question. Just observe the MPP level of the Germans before you make the attack and compare it to the value after. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.Dozer Posted January 21, 2006 Share Posted January 21, 2006 i have played clash of steel recently i like the sea zone they have for the computer but i think its to simple for the germans to use air and navy to acieve naval superiority if any. on naval superiority any advice on it, subs, battleship :mad: cruiser Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr.Dozer Posted January 21, 2006 Share Posted January 21, 2006 also that brings another thing, i find playing people they never attack italy or gain med land control Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mcaryf Posted January 22, 2006 Author Share Posted January 22, 2006 Hi SeaMonkey I actually enjoy both WAW and SC for differing reasons. Compared to WAW I like the more frequent turns of SC and the availability of corps sized units. I think the naval element in SC is somewhat better but WAW scores in having the whole world including Pacific. The impact of random chance of R&D improvements in SC is possibly too big a factor - if you are going to spend many hours playing a game I prefer the random element to be relatively low. As far as I can judge it seems that SC2 is majoring on better (?) graphics rather than extending the scope. Personally I am not too bothered with graphics (I would still be quite happy with push out cardboard counters apart from cats knocking them over!) so that seems a shame to me but hopefully SC2 will have some other novel features and I am looking forward to it. Regards Mike Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SeaMonkey Posted January 23, 2006 Share Posted January 23, 2006 Couldn't agree more Mike, especially the graphics requirement. I believe you'll find that SC2 will extend the already appealing list of features to a greater degree. The editor will be very flexible and I have no doubt that a global scale will be possible, what trade-offs will be required, I can only guess. Anyway, glad your enjoying SC, welcome to the forum and we'll be expecting your input on the SC2 developments. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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