Mystery of Malta

[Lars]

Well see, that would annoy the hell out of me, in this game. Just when you find the buggers and hit them, they all step back one and rebuild. Over and over again. Think what France or El Alamein would be like if we had that. Or anywhere with mountains.

I'm not saying it's wrong for every game, just this one. I've played many games with withdrawal rules, but they had other different mechanics to go along with it.

As for Malta, it goes down in this game just fine if you really want to take it. I don't think we need to change everything for one island.

[Canuck_TAR]

I'm with Lars..........if ya want Malta you can take it easy.

[xwormwood]

I'm with me.

Because it sucks to have a massive moral and material advantage but a lousy 1 strength-point survivor with no moral at all can still deny you any advance.

And to hell with malta. I'm talking about this gamey blocking of entire coastlines with corps, which didn't helped the Wehrmacht any good against any full allied invasion attemp.

"Hammer them, land you troops, kick the survivors out of your beach head" instead of "hammer them first to death, than enter your enemyfree countryside", i say!

Or should i cry "Patton instead of Montgomery!"?

[Childress]

I'm with xwormwood, too. It's about taking Malta the *right* way. :; There are higher principles involved.

[Philippe]

Malta, by the way, poses special problems all its own. There are few small beaches and a lot of limestone cliffs.

Given the small size of the island and the tendency of paradrops to scatter, a Merita-Merkur-style jump would result in a lot of overshoots and drowned paratroopers. Gliders would have been a better way to go, but geology and the peculiar internal geography of the island make the few viable landing zones screamingly obvious (and adjacent and frighteningly exposed to fire from the town of Mdina, which rises from a limestone mesa that dominates the center of the island).

It's a toss-up whether Gibraltar or Malta is worse to assault. The only thing you can really do is try to pulverize the place into oblivion, but one of the problems is that all that limestone has some pretty large caves in it near Valetta (which have been artificially enlarged with flint and antler drills since neolithic times) that act as natural bomb shelters. So the bottom line is that to take the place you'd probably have to use gas.

You can't starve it into submission either -- all the tuna in the Mediterranean make a habit of swimming in circles around the island before they go off to wherever it is they're going to, so when you stay there you end up eating a daily diet of fresh tuna steak.

[SeaMonkey]

So there you are, from the lips of an eyewitness, you can't take the place unless you commit the proper resources.

In SC that means some other theater will be compromised.

You go to war with what you got....not what you wish you had.

[Liam]

Yeah, Malta was interesting. That little Island was bombed into the Stone Age during WW2. Didn't make the target any more easy to take. Though the Axis could've had it... It just meant losing lives... Just like SC2 Though not the Sole Source of Supply in the med, Crete-Gibraltar both played their roles for resupply for ships and SeaZone Control. Western Central Meds... Crete could be a supply hinderance to the Allies...

Also on top of it all The Retreat Rule is merely game mechanics. I do not think that SC2 with it's scale and many narrow ridges can afford a retreat. Now on the Eastern Front, that could be easily implemented. Sapped units, though would suffer a horrendous Morale hit unlike Strategic Command... Some of the units forced to take high casualties in WW2 never fought in the war effectively again. I don't mind retreat rebuild is a lot like it anyways. Both might work.. Though any Player with enough resources could at some point vaporize a strength 1 unit with SC air. I personally really liked Clash of Steele though it was SinglePlayer so that got dull after a month or two..

[xwormwood]

Originally posted by Liam:

I personally really liked Clash of Steele though it was SinglePlayer so that got dull after a month or two..

I played hotseat quite often (in those days that was nearly all multiplayer you could ask for).

In a single player game, Clash offered you a bit more than SC, SC2 or SC2 WAW:

you could play the game till you felt that you would surely win and than change sides, letting the AI play your winnig side while you tried to rescue the mess which the AI left you on it side.

I still can't understand why it is not possible to change player side in SC2. This is a real gift for every single player who can't or who don't want to play games against human player (as good as they may be).

[SixthArmy]

I played hotseat quite often

I tried but when both sides lose its very discouraging

[John DiFool the 2nd]

Hmm you can switch to full AI control for both sides-what happens when you switch back? Does the AI automatically stay in control of the currently inactive side? Someone needs to test this.

[Liam]

I don't think I'd bother with this feature, personally I wouldn't want my BrainChild being ruined by the AI. I like to build my own Empire in other words. The Challenge I guess was important. To model a realistic AI or a challenging opponent that isn't human really isn't worth the price. Probably would cost more than the game itself!

There were 3 Strategic games covering ETO released between '89 and '95 and Third Reich-COS-Storm Across Europe. I owned them all and just like Gary Grigsby's World At War. Got boring fast vs the AI

By the way they finally made that MultiPlayer with a new Release, after ALL THIS TIME! And you have to spend MORE MONEY! What a bunch of Crap...

Even still those games had a PC life of about 1 to 2 months before the AI was beaten, 1 week if you were an addict max! Once you learn 1 AI the next will even be easier. Some of these games I played once and won on the hardest settings So the challenge isn't in giving a dumb 2 year old Steriods to create a Giant. I'd prefer playing Play by Email or Play by Mail... The latter which is before my time.

You see Strategic Command 1 was more like 1989 game interface aside from the IP aspect. That was modern. So it brought me back to the Genre. HOI was way way ahead of it's time but the RTS factor and the immense man hours and planning make MultiPlayer for it available but only for Diehards. The AI for HOI is not so good

Though just like for any game I cannot see how they can be a challenge for anyone. After you learn the patterns the AI will take you will win every single time. Without Fail!

We shouldn't make strides in AI technology. Most people discussing and debating this here have access to E-mail so MP play is available. Advanced AI is 20 or 30 years off this date... I'd say with the 100-200 PBEM opponents that you can then often schedule an appointment and IP them the last 2 hours of the match, why bother.. SC2 and SC2WAW are is good as it gets now.

Features that need to be implemented are streamlining the IP capability of the game, streamlining it's interface, and enhancing it's Engine.. I know a lot of people disagree with me but when the only challenge is ignorance these days with AI techs I have abandoned them altogether other than to learn the "Games"

Originally posted by xwormwood:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Liam:

I personally really liked Clash of Steele though it was SinglePlayer so that got dull after a month or two..

I played hotseat quite often (in those days that was nearly all multiplayer you could ask for).

In a single player game, Clash offered you a bit more than SC, SC2 or SC2 WAW:

you could play the game till you felt that you would surely win and than change sides, letting the AI play your winnig side while you tried to rescue the mess which the AI left you on it side.

I still can't understand why it is not possible to change player side in SC2. This is a real gift for every single player who can't or who don't want to play games against human player (as good as they may be). </font>

[xwormwood]

Originally posted by Liam:

I don't think I'd bother with this feature, personally I wouldn't want my BrainChild being ruined by the AI. I like to build my own Empire in other words.

You got this one wrong.

It is about playing a challenging scenario with a very personal history in its back, because YOU (or better: the player) fought this entire war until YOUR NEW SCENARIO begins. You know exactly why this or that ship went down to the bottom of an ocean, YOU know when Kiev was captured or why Turkey entered the war etc.

I buy a game to play it alone. If i can play a human player as well: great, but in my personal life there is little time to organize a game against a human player. And than there are different time zones etc. etc.

And i don't need a PERFECT CHESS-LIKE AI. I need an AI which in not too stupid, which gets here and there improvements (new ways to act, via patches / updates) and which doesn't have to cheat. I hate those scripted new units for the AI (like in WAW), because this really feels like cheating. I could wonderfully live with reinforcements for the AI a la "AI captured Minsk and gets therefor one additional corps, you russian sucker!" or "AI sunk more than 200 of your sorry convoy mmps and can therefor spare enough tanks to get one new unit in 3 month". This would be in a direct connection with my failures or the success of the AI. Pumping the AI up without telling me is too disgusting for my taste.

[carverrt]

I just read through this string and find it interesting. Granted, the case Malta presents may be unique in the European theater of operation, and might not be worth devoting a large amount of development effort. However, this discussion is pertinent if we ever want to improve scenarios designed for the Pacific.

This is an idea: Allow land units in amphibious transports to attack occupied single island hexes. If the attacking unit is victorious, it then advances onto the vacated island. If unsuccessful, the attacker takes high losses and stays at sea.

Any ways, something to chew on…

[SeaMonkey]

You're right Robert, but just a little refinement of your idea, if I may. Only Infantry Corps or Special Forces(read Marines) should be allowed the attack feature from amphibious mode.

This is also a perfect opportunity to enhance the amphibious tech relevance to motivate the players to actually invest in the tech. Its useless at the moment.

How many of you actually invest in Amphibious technology? I never have.

[Philippe]

The real mystery of Malta

[Timskorn]

I invest a point or two in amphib for the US because I know I'll be using it a lot.

[Liam]

Worm,

I tell you even if you were to give the AI the extras it deserves as you explain rather than scripted Cheat Units it's rather pointless as the only way to make the AI more intelligent is to do exactly that. All standard wargame AIs use cheating to win.. Because they just cannot keep up with your ability to learn the tactics and to compute the information beyond them.

I played HOI2 DD, took me 5-6 games to conquor Europe as Italy and the AI is quite good in that game. Also I bought a new game, in 2 games I won... The thing is I find the competition more important than the game itself. More important than the history. Without it the game is boring and dull. I admit you're right finding opponents is just impossible, though Matchmaking Sites have become Elite and it's not impossible if people put the time into it. I recall Axis & Allies an older Head-To-Head IP game use to have a great level of Matchmaking on MSN Zone.. Plus their Leagues make for players not quiting on you. Though A&A could be finished in a night. Sadly SC2 WAW probably no way... Not unless you've got a good 5-8 hours

I'm confidant that I could beat WAW in 1 game, the hardest settings! I wouldn't mind superior AI, or superior Matchmaking... perhaps in the future we'll be auto-plugged in to one another to play the minute we start up our games that or have an AI that is robotic and that can learn. Otherwise we will never find decent competition that last longer than weeks.

[Hubert Cater]

xwormwood,

As I mentioned in another thread to Timskorn the UNIT event script allows me to not only add in units during the game for both sides, i.e. how the UK receives general reinforcements in Egypt, but it also gives me some flexibility in creating a more challenging AI. The goal is of course not to make it feel like the AI is cheating but rather to make up for what the AI simply does not have which is mostly intuition and a learning curve.

For example, one of the reasons the AI receives a few bonus Corps is simply for Garrison duty as this releases the more important Armies and Tank Groups for front line battles. That being said I'd like to highlight why this is important and it comes down to the idea that the AI has a real hard time anticipating Human moves as well as a Human opponent will. For example the AI has a difficult time understanding the big picture as well as a Human player does and may not realize that it can abandon the entire Mediterranean at some point in the game because it is unlikely the Human opponent will attack there etc. To be safe the AI is set to Garrison most critical landing positions because you just don't know what a Human player may decide upon and it was felt that this safer course of action is better than trying to mimick human anticipation badly. As a result it may require front line troops to acheive this, i.e. the rearguard garrison duty, and in turn lessen the effect of an AI frontline assault. Rather than doing this I finally decided upon, and this was after many patches for SC2, that the best course of action was simply to give the AI a few bonus units to improve the overall game play. Of course it is a matter of the additions being reasonable and not just an effect of throwing many more units at you and calling it a better AI. Good thing is that if you dislike any of the additions, and there are others on top of the Garrison Corps, you can always disable these in the SCRIPTS dialog before you start the campaign.

In the future I am planning on linking UNIT events to the game difficulty levels so any specific UNIT additions can be fine tuned even further, i.e. less at the easier levels and more at the harder levels but all within a strategic purpose.

Hope this helps,

Hubert

[Konigs]

Simple put, the best in the business. I played the vaunted '41 scenario as Axis(100%) and was impressed how hard put I was. Finally knocked out the Russkies in winter of 45 and pushed allies out of France about the same time. Having played PBEM or TCP almost exclusively for 18 months, I was extremely impressed with AI and as time allows I will play through all scenarios......

[Mr.Dozer]

for malta and other island issues couldnt you surround the island in hexes like the hex that connects denmark to its capital. That way ships can bombard and units can land in the hex to invade.

[SeaMonkey]

Don't fret Mr.D, a new tile is coming.