johndoesecond
Posts: 964
Joined: 8/3/2010 Status: offline
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This post by wodin in another thread made me have a thought or two ... quote:
ORIGINAL: wodin I always stayed away from large scenarios in the previous games...however as the Bulge has so many I decided to go for it...the lesson is you have to rely on your sub's more and give orders to regiment or even brigade level....on the odd occasion when the need arises you can give orders lower down....it does demand a different way of playing and to be honest I really enjoyed it...it was liberating....I suggest the Road to Bastogne scenario as the Germans...thats the one I went for and found it alot easier to manage than previously imagined...there are still large scenarios I look at and find daunting....but once you get started with them it becomes second nature....I also find checking all the Obj's and the time they turn on or off and then plan accordingly... So go for it....and think at the level of a higher commander looking at the scenario form an operational view rather than the smaller scenarios which is more tactical. At times you will jump in and give orders to the odd company and battalion...I also always man manage my art...by that I mean at the start I give each of my heavy Arty a defend in situ command....then when the battlefield moves out of range (or just before) I give them a move\defend order closer to the action. Yeah, you're right, that possibility is exactly where this game really shines! I'd be truly interested to know just how smart, effective and quick the AI is at that level of command. Indeed, it seems to me (i.e. that's the impression I get from reading other peoples' playing experiences on this forum) that the canonical level of command is on battalion level: that's basically how most people play, and in fact, Dave's tutorial videos - being inspirational as they are, and revealing the true spirit of the game as authentically interpreted by one of its greatest masterminds - give just that same impression about what is the most "appropriate" level of command. Furthermore, if my previous remarks are true, then I assume that the game has been most extensively tested with that way of commanding, thus probably offering the greatest experimental case base to fine tune the AI (I know that a good algorithm should work on different scales, but perfect fractals exist only in mathematics, not in nature). So, it would really be interesting if we try to set up some sort of a collective experimental effort to see just how regimental / brigade operational commanding compares to mainly battalion-level one. Above, I was wondering about how smart, effective and quick the AI is at that level, for I think these three should roughly be the relevant criteria: smart (and yes, I saw regimental AI do silly things), effective (and yes, I saw regimental AI be self-crippling and ineffective), and quick (and yes, oh boy, I say regimental AI do plans and replans and self-loop over its own order delays and take ages to actually start the things rolling). So, when I say experimental effort, maybe it would be possible to systematically compare how a human player commanding on battalion level performs with respect to a human player commanding on more operational level. Of course, to level the playing field, an essential precondition would be that the scenario in both cases have never been played before, since otherwise the player commanding at battalion level would have the sorts of knowledge the AI of regimental or brigade HQs do not have at the beginning. What are your thoughts on all this? Thank you for your attention.
< Message edited by johndoesecond -- 11/4/2010 2:32:14 PM >
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