[JCrowe]

The AI is very much a work in progress. It's light-years ahead of what it was in v1.05, but it still needs plenty of work.

For example, it doesn't invest very much in jets, bombers, or choppers, despite their predominance on the field. It doesn't build many air defense units, either, even when large air fleets menace its borders and gut its armed forces. And when it attacks, it has a tendency to overestimate the capabilities of the units in play. (Under v1.09 rules, you do NOT want to attack 3 cruisers with 2 subs and a destroyer. No.)

Those are relatively easy fixes to make. But there's an issue with the AI's modis operandi that might prove more challenging.

I find that the structure of gameplay in WS is dominated by two operational facts: 1.) Military units are expensive, and 2.) Military units are highly mobile.

Boil these two down into gameplay, and a clear dynamic emerges. Because units are expensive, there's simply no way any player can build a large enough army to guard and protect all points of vulnerability. In simple terms, you can't protect everything, and your empire will always have points of vulnerability. However, the extreme mobility of military units enables players to react quickly to emergent threats or to exploit gaps in enemy defense.

So what I find is that, no matter what strategy I try to follow, I always (ALWAYS) end up with military groups I refer to as Rapid Reaction Forces, or "RRAFs".

The composition of these RRAFs can vary widely - from strictly naval-borne teams to air-only teams to fighter/bomber/tank assault forces. But they are all concentrations of military force that I'll deploy to attack or defend along the line of battle. I can't defend the whole coastline of a large continent, but a RRAF made of a few bombers and some fighters can guard the whole place and threaten anybody who comes snooping around. I can't build enough units to roll a continent, but a strong RRAF can smash any opposition that forms while token "invasion" units seize the unguarded turf. Naval RRAFs configured for bombardment duties cruise hostile coasts and kill anything that moves, for the purpose of either bleeding an enemy through attrition or to thwart the emergence of a credible counter-attacking force.

However it rolls, it's all about tight concentrations of force. The only time I find it necessary (or wise) to disperse those teams is when threatened by nukes, who can stomp the entire RRAF in one shot. But even then, you only have to disperse a little - say, divide a RRAF in one territory into three, so the most at risk of nuclear annihilation in the next turn is one-third of your force (unless your enemy has lots of nukes, in which case, you're pooched no matter what).

THE COMPUTER, HOWEVER ... follows a very different philosophy of war in WS, and one that (in my opinion) doesn't work for a hill a beans. The AI values dispersement, and prefers to keep its forces evenly distributed among its territories - especially those at the front. Almost as if it expects to be under constant nuclear attack - even when it isn't. When the AI decides to strike, it uses the high mobility of its forces to attack the target from multiple surrounding territories. It also apparently values having defensive forces in each of those territories as a bulwark against attack.

In practice, though, what it means is that my RRAFs dominate the line of battle. The RRAF might be weaker or equivalent to the AI's firepower in the area, but because the AI's forces are so dispersed, my RRAF enjoys an overwhelming field advantage in any one given battle. I can target the most dangerous AI concentrations, eliminate them with ease in the first round of combat (first turn of encounter), and then mop up the remainder at leisure in round 2. The devastation of that first turn's attack is usually so devastating that the AI no longer has enough units in the area to sufficiently mass for a credible counter-attack. That and the fact that the AI won't respond to the devastation of this assault by building AAA units and more jets merely compounds the disaster. A nuclear strike would also work, but the AI appears reluctant to use nukes, and really, it's an inelegant solution to a problem that could have been much more easily avoided in the first place by concentrating the available forces into counter-RRAFs and fortifying the area with AAA and new jets or etc.

In simple terms, get there first with the most, instead of being a day late and a dollar short. Heck - if I saw a team of ground & AAA units backed up by 5 enemy fighters, 4 bombers, and 3 choppers, you better believe that I'm going to rush-order some Jets & AAAs for a defensive RRAF, and any RRAFs I might already have within the area are going to hot-foot it to the threat zone. I'm not waiting until a turn or two AFTER they've wiped my arse & handed it back to me on a silver plate before I decide it's time to push back - and have lost all the resource points I needed to do just that.