Bulge to the Rhine

Gary Grigsby’s War in the West 1943-45 is the most ambitious and detailed computer wargame on the Western Front of World War II ever made. Starting with the Summer 1943 invasions of Sicily and Italy and proceeding through the invasions of France and the drive into Germany, War in the West brings you all the Allied campaigns in Western Europe and the capability to re-fight the Western Front according to your plan.

Moderators: Joel Billings, RedLancer

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tyronec
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Bulge to the Rhine

Post by tyronec »

I am playing as Allies vs AI. On T1 the Axis player made several land attacks at the following odds:
48:512
262:350
172:145
14:49
68:395
7:90
27:152
54:129
18:25
107:194
So it should have lost all of these battles but by some good fortune managed to win every single one. Reminds me of a PBEM game I had once...
Is there some sort of fix built into this scenario for the Axis AI ?
The lark, signing its chirping hymn,
Soars high above the clouds;
Meanwhile, the nightingale intones
With sweet, mellifluous sounds.
Enough of Stalin, Freedom for the Ukraine !
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RedLancer
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RE: Bulge to the Rhine

Post by RedLancer »

Not that I know about. The AI normally plays strictly by numbers but we script and balance T1 to ensure historical results so I'm not surprised. What difficulty level did you use?
John
WitE2 Asst Producer
WitE & WitW Dev
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tyronec
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Location: Portaferry, N. Ireland

RE: Bulge to the Rhine

Post by tyronec »

Vanilla settings. I note that playing Axis I cannot make any progress towards Aachen whereas the AI just stormed it.
Is not a complaint - would make sense to give Axis a bonus for the Battle of the Bulge but was not sure if that was the reason or perhaps something else at play.
The lark, signing its chirping hymn,
Soars high above the clouds;
Meanwhile, the nightingale intones
With sweet, mellifluous sounds.
Enough of Stalin, Freedom for the Ukraine !
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Joel Billings
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RE: Bulge to the Rhine

Post by Joel Billings »

We script turn 1 for every scenario. In order to counter randomness and provide a good opening move, when the script is executed in a game, every attack automatically wins (odds should be set to 2 to 1 at the end). The key is for the scenario designer/scripter not to take advantage of this capability. We try to create a script where the attacks being made should win, and with any AI help are even more likely to win (because they will win when they execute). We can't predict the exact retreats and routs that will take place, so it's possible that AI units will accidentally bump into retreating units that they didn't encounter during the making of the script. These unintended hasty attacks will also win automatically, although they aren't likely to do much more than push back the defending units.

I just ran the script with no help and I can see lots of German units in the area of the Bulge never move. I'm not sure if the script is failing for some reason, or if one of the scenario designers made an intentional or unintentional change to the script. Although it's pushing some units back too easily, it clearly has more units available to launch attacks that aren't moving at all. I'll contact the scenario designer and try to figure out if we need a new script or if something else is going on. Thanks for letting us know what's happening in the scenario.

BTW, if you see an attack end in 2.0 to 1 odds on turn 1, odds are it was an attack that failed but was automatically set to 2 to 1 in order to win the attack. There are many cases however, where the initial odds may look bad, but the battle ends up flipping things with the attacker correctly winning. Initial odds are just an indication of how the battle may go, and sometimes odds are very misleading because the losses/disruption caused in the combat can change the odds dramatically for the final calculation of winner/loser in the battle.
All understanding comes after the fact.
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