Bug? Does AI Favor Green Troops at Medium Experience?

[kgsan]

I thought I would bring this up again on the board to see what the general experience is. I tried rasing this issue the other day and it sank beneath the waves without response.

Since the 1.01 patch I have noticed that in quickbattles when I set experience level to Medium, and allow the computer to select the forces, the computer seems to almost always choose green troops (I seem to get regulars maybe 1 out of 6 tries or so). Is anyone else noticing this? Is it a new quirk since the patch?

I know green and regular troops are both available at medium experience. However, the computer seems to overwhelmingly favor picking green troops. I for one would prfer the opposite when the medium experience setting is chosen. After all, isn't the low experince setting for those who want the green/conscript challenge?

[Major Jerkov]

I guess its cause their cheaper, the AI can buy all kinds of crappy units. I wouldnt think green would be medium quality, but, they aint half bad.

[Battlefront.com]

We didn't make any tweaks to that stuff inbetween 1.0 and 1.01 as far as I know. Depending on the Year and nationality the QB generator will favor Greens vs. Regs or Regs vs. Greens. I am going to guess that this is why you are seeing what you are seeing. By chance did your 6 tries happen to involve the same basic time period and nationality? For example, Green would be rather common for early war Soviet "Medium" quality troops.

Er... at least that is how I remember it all working. Dang, we coded that up almost a year ago

Steve

[Michael Emrys]

I don't think it is exctly what you are talking about, but I noticed something in a similar vein recently. I started a QB and purchased my own troops. In all cases, I picked regulars. Now, I think it is stated somewhere in the manual (though I couldn't find it just now) that when your units appear on the screen during the set-up phase, approximately 10% will be one step lower in quality than you picked and 10% higher. Okay. In this game, I definitely had at least 10% green troops. But I only had one or two units that were veteran.

This is not a complaint. I'm not bugged about this. I just thought I'd mention it.

Michael

[Oddball_E8]

Ive been playing a series of qbs against a friend of mine... we play one battle per month (in the game that is) and use ai-bought units... first we started off with the russians having random experience and the germans having medium, but out of the first 7 battles i only got regulars (in general that is) once! and that is a bit strange since the germans were well trained and (alot of them) battle proven troops by that time... we have now restorted to the drastic measures of having the germans on high experience wich i dont think is fair to my friend that plays the russians... (although it was interesting to see green and conscript german units fighting veteran and crack soviet units in july ´41 )

[Cull]

I have noticed this too. Can't say that I've tried upping the experience---I will do some testing with that.

[kgsan]

Originally posted by Battlefront.com:

We didn't make any tweaks to that stuff inbetween 1.0 and 1.01 as far as I know. Depending on the Year and nationality the QB generator will favor Greens vs. Regs or Regs vs. Greens. I am going to guess that this is why you are seeing what you are seeing. By chance did your 6 tries happen to involve the same basic time period and nationality? For example, Green would be rather common for early war Soviet "Medium" quality troops.

Er... at least that is how I remember it all working. Dang, we coded that up almost a year ago

Steve

Thanks for the response Steve. I did not realize that what constituted medium experience changed based on the time period. However, even so, I think the results seem a bit odd. Most of the QBs I've set up have been in 1941 and 1942 with medium experience, and the computer is choosing German forces that are overwhelmingly Green rather than Regulars which seems a bit odd to me. Now I get similar results with the Soviets which may make more sense during this time period (but even then, I would have expected some difference in the Soviets between 1941 and 1942). But at least in the 1941-1942 period, both Germans and Soviets seem to get mostly Greens when experience is set to Medium. That doesn't seem quite right to me.

With regard to whether this occurred in the 1.0 version, to be honest I don't think I set up any QBs in which I let the computer automatically pick my forces until after the patch came out, so I'm not in a position to say whether this is only a post patch issue.

[Mikeydz]

Just for grins I ran a shot seris of tests. (Not my normal exhaustive tests, but hell, it's a holiday). German vs. Soviet, June 41. Both ai-choose at medium quality. 1000 pt. 5 Runs

----------Total---C--G--R--V

Run 1

German--34-----0--2--30-2

Soviet----41-----4--33-4--0

Run 2

German--37-----0--5--30-2

Soviet----41-----7--30-4--0

Run 3

German--30-----0--3--25-2

Soviet----35-----0--7--23-5

Run 4

German--35-----0--4--27-4

Soviet----42-----6--31--5--0

Run 5

German--27-----0--5--21-1

Soviet----39-----0--4--33-2

Total = Total # units

C = # conscript

G = # green

R = # regular

V = # veteran

What looks like happens is when you set a medium quality, the computer chooses to either buy a "green" based force or a "regular" based force. This is randomly chosen based on nationality and date. In 41, it looks like a coin flip on if thier troops are going to be mostly green or regular in a certain battle. Germans look to to normally be a Regular force in 41 (5 runs is to small to rule out a Green force for germany in 41, so I'm sure it happens, just much rarer.)

The experience modifier Michael Emrys mentioned i s on pg 219 of the manual, 1st paragraph. My guess on what happens once the cpu chooses a Green or Regular force is that everything it buys is Green or Regular, and applies said modifier to generate the numbers I got in my runs.

[ November 28, 2002, 01:29 PM: Message edited by: Mikeydz ]

[Michael Emrys]

Originally posted by Mikeydz:

The experience modifier Michael Emrys mentioned i s on pg 219 of the manual, 1st paragraph. My guess on what happens once the cpu chooses a Green or Regular force is that everything it buys is Green or Regular, and applies said modifier to generate the numbers I got in my runs.

Thanks; I knew it was in there somewhere. I just couldn't find it.

I just had a further thought on what I had seen recently, and that is that the 10% may not pertain to actual numbers of units, but to purchase points. Thus, you might have five green cheap inf. units balanced by one veteran tank. I don't know if that is actually how it works, but it gave me something to think about.

Michael

[ November 28, 2002, 04:29 PM: Message edited by: Michael emrys ]

[kgsan]

Guys,

Thanks for the replies. I am aware of the fact that currently when you pick medium experienced troops and let the computer automatically purchase your forces it will choose from a base of either green or regular experienced troops. My beef has been that the computer seems to be picking green troops relatively often. I have done several admittedly of unscientific runs during the summer of 1942 in the South region for the Germans and seem to be getting green troops about 75% of the time, which seems kind of high. Now this may just accurately reflect the actual manpower situation for the Germans at that time, I'll defer to the grogs and BFC on that .

Upon thinking about it, I guess I have more of systemic complaint. I suppose my real beef is that if I choose medium experienced troops, I want the computer to provide me a selection of regular experienced troops. Perhaps because I got used to this in CMBO and perhaps because I just prefer to have "plain brown vanilla" experience and restrict my variables to other areas (i.e. the computers force choice, terrain etc.)

I grant this is just a matter of taste and probably rather historically inaccurate. But I miss this option from CMBO. Is there any chance we can get it back?

[kgsan]

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