Quote:
Originally Posted by Mobhack
It works as a human against the AI, as infantry blobs are amazingly easy for a human to deal with.
The AI buys for a defence against combined arms - which is what end users tend to use. Its points spent on AT guns, tank destroyers, AAA and ATGM (if MBT) are thus nerfed if you "game" the system with a horde of grunts. And the AI does not know about ammo resupply trucks, either. Nor is it particularly good about plotting arty, and especially on repeating arty on a spot already targeted - it'll happily move a plot somewhere else on a full 2.0 delay to fall, rather than re-plot with an 0.1 delay.
A human defence against a human wave would have (almost) all troops up front, with plenty of MG teams in the second line. If you know it is going to be a horde then there will be no tanks to worry about, and cheap scout cars with turreted MG and 120 rounds carried are king of the battlefield. Plus plenty of on-map mortar elements backed up by ammo trucks.
The key to stopping a human wave is to suppress and rout their front line with a belt of area fire from arty and mortars, with the HMG teams adding to the mayhem. The AI, or a human player that simply tries to add second lines to the first line will find those being suppressed and routed away same as the first line. The armoured cars (or little light tanks with a 20mm - has a blast effect zone) dont get close enough for AT rifles or infantry assaults to effect them, and provide a mobile fire base acting behind the defence line. None of which the AI is capable of, as it is baked in for it to sit passively WW1 style.
The only prerequisite of this is that you need a decent field of fire out front so he does not get too close - it only needs to be 2-3oo yards of open zone. In a deep jungle map then the machine guns lose thier range advantage, and the armoured cars are a bit nerfed too. But as the defender you can figure out the approach lines and seed them with final defence fire points (gold spots) right in front of your defence line for accurate close-in fires. Any core MG teams can then look after open points on the line (if any). In a close jungle or wood map like that, then I would consider double-stacking elements as well, and if its a defend - put those 1 hex behind the rest at the start before moving them up later (gives trenches in the hex behind for the front line to retreat into).
And that is how I fight Japanese when playing nationalist China.
But by attacking with a horde of cheap infantry, on a postage stamp sized map then you are simply playing to the weakness of the AI.
If you want it harder then as said before, editing the turn count downwards will make you need to "press on". As would turning on timed objective hexes (if you want to leave it at the longer time). Giving the human player more time is always bad for the AI since it will simply sit there allowing you to deal with individual pockets of resistance and sweep them up.
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Brilliant post, and you got me halfway convinced.
Since there is necessarily an amount of scissors/stone/paper to it, the AI buying routines cannot cover every possible attacker force structure, agreed.
But a human can defend against the forces the AI will likely use against him, again agreed.
And for attacking, if I want to use default settings, I can throw a bone to the AI and buy a force that is more to its expectations, again agreed.
Finally, to come up with an argument of my own along your line of thinking, I can set the AI defence to Human Buy and buy for the AI the forces that I think the AI *should* use against me.
Two things, however:
The postage stamp maps: Everybody thinks I use them to hurt the AI. Not at all. I use them because I think larger maps make for an unrealistically low force concentration (except in the Western Desert and some places East Front, perhaps).
Second, I still think everything else equal there is a problem with the economy of non-ME games. This will need a post of its own, though.