[grond69]

I don't usually weigh in on these discussions, but in this case I will make an exception. I think its time to face facts: your initial premise that delay/advance was seriously advantaged to advance, based on your one game, is incorrect. Both of the previous posters played similar sized battles from the delay side and crushed the advancing AI. I just finished one as well with same results: 16 casualties for me, decisive victory 3064:16. Fact is that the delay/advance isn't significantly one sided. The battle you set up was (unintentionally?) one sided. An experienced player would have seen the unit density, dimensions, and time allowed and concluded that the advance would have a decisive victory. The only question was how light your casualties would be. Why you might ask? Because the AI will always attempt to defend all objectives. That means that your high density attack force would only face 1/3 of the defenders. And, given the terrain, likely face single squads at a time. Pretty much what happened, right? The high number of turns was just icing.

Your idea of fighting many battles of equal human to human (and how do you measure that?) has basically been done in the past. This game has been around for YEARS! And you are right in that it is the best tactical game around. But don't expect the AI to give you a challenging game every time. It can't do that. If you find it too easy and don't want to mess around with settings, seek human adversaries on the "players wanted" section. I've played this game since the very first version came out, and expect to continue. I usually play long campaigns (hundreds of battles) and admit that I enjoy stomping all over the AI. Small of me, I know. Although, every once in a while, the AI still surprises me and I get a tough fight!

Don and Andy have made huge advances in improving this game and I believe that this will continue. Its up to us as the players to look at a random setup and be able to decide if it is fair to the AI. If we are looking for a fair fight....