Odd AI Behavior

[DRG]

What you are seeing is the normal reaction turns build into the game for all battle types kicking in. It's simple enough to see, just set up a normal battle. Set player 1 to all computer and set player two ( the AI ) to all computer except deploy and set that to human. Press continue then autodeploy and click on the HQ button

Click on each formation and take a look at the "reaction turn" That's the turn they will react. In most cases how they react will be OK within the game setting up counterattacks that keep people on their toes but occasionally it won't and your save showed the perfect "it won't"

Andy and I will discuss how this is handled.

Don

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by DRG

What you are seeing is the normal reaction turns build into the game for all battle types kicking in. It's simple enough to see, just set up a normal battle. Set player 1 to all computer and set player two ( the AI ) to all computer except deploy and set that to human. Press continue then autodeploy and click on the HQ button

Click on each formation and take a look at the "reaction turn" That's the turn they will react. In most cases how they react will be OK within the game setting up counterattacks that keep people on their toes but occasionally it won't and your save showed the perfect "it won't"

Andy and I will discuss how this is handled.

Don

One if these threads I did mention where the reaction threw a monkey wrench into my plans, so it wouldn't be good to eliminate it.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by RERomine

Since it seems to be coming up, I figured I would start a thread on AI actions that seem out of the ordinary or illogical:

1. Running into their own minefields, before visible contact established between opposing sides.

2. Dashing West out of prepared positions during a defend, before victory point hexes have been captured. The time this happened, my units had been spotted and engaged, but the AI units were actually heading away from those units. I was in the enemy rear at the time and do have a nice screen print of this.

3. AI dropping artillery 9 hexes in front of my LD before I have even moved on turn 1. Impossible for me to be there yet.

4. Auto pivot to face frontal armor toward firing unit. I understand what the intent was here, but this gets more tanks killed than anything. Normally, the firing unit is off at an angle to the target and this angle creates an artificial armor slope which the code takes into account when determine shot effectiveness. That artificial slope causes shots to deflect the vast proportion of the time. I know often I won't get a kill on a target at an angle when firing a gun marginally capable of killing the target. I just keep firing until the pivot and then the kill comes. When I fire, I always angle my armor off full frontal so that I get benefit from that when the target fires back, if it doesn't die. I have to re-angle my tank after each responding shot. It renders British 2pdrs very ineffective except at very close range.

1) No idea - never seen that one, since if the defender it will generally be stationary. If 2 below - then it might decide the quickest path is via the mines, if there are no nearby gaps, of course.

2) The AI will sometimes do a mini counter attack even before you have taken any objectives. Usually with armour, but sometimes not. This should be quite rare - in 2 recent WW2 long campaigns the defenders have come at me maybe twice with a tank platoon before I was near the objectives. (Being near the objectives if spotted by the AI can sometimes trigger counter attacks too, though generally you need to flip one or more).

3) If you mean dropping arty ahead of your deployment zone, it will sometimes aim at the front of the deployment line and then there is the usual spread of fires which may take the aim point off and away into the neutral zone. But fires landing ahead of your deployment zone can drop on the next turn as well thus splatting your advancing troops from turn 1 if you decided to risk running into the shelled zone. And if heavy arty, then it can crater approach roads in front of your advance which also may slow your approach down.

4) Before that was introduced stugs, marders etc were simply dead meat if engaged from a flank as only turrets would turn to engage. It also solved problems with Char Bs and Lee/Grants which would almost never use the hull guns, simply engaging with the sub-turret unless a human player manually hull-turned them - which the AI rarely did.

Cheers
Andy

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

1) No idea - never seen that one, since if the defender it will generally be stationary. If 2 below - then it might decide the quickest path is via the mines, if there are no nearby gaps, of course.

Seems like an reconnaissance probe. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. In the case where they hit the minefield, the units were East of it before they started and there were no gaps.

2) The AI will sometimes do a mini counter attack even before you have taken any objectives. Usually with armour, but sometimes not. This should be quite rare - in 2 recent WW2 long campaigns the defenders have come at me maybe twice with a tank platoon before I was near the objectives. (Being near the objectives if spotted by the AI can sometimes trigger counter attacks too, though generally you need to flip one or more).

Except in my case, the AI didn't run to the sound of the guns. At the end of the battle, it had possession of my deployment zone, but I didn't have anything back there. My entire force was in AI deployment zone.

3) If you mean dropping arty ahead of your deployment zone, it will sometimes aim at the front of the deployment line and then there is the usual spread of fires which may take the aim point off and away into the neutral zone. But fires landing ahead of your deployment zone can drop on the next turn as well thus splatting your advancing troops from turn 1 if you decided to risk running into the shelled zone. And if heavy arty, then it can crater approach roads in front of your advance which also may slow your approach down.

Desert battle in this case, without roads. I've seen the AI hammer roads before so I don't deploy on them. The fire came in too far ahead of my deployment zone to be a risk to anything and I definitely wasn't going to go through the impact zone with artillery still coming in. If I'm receiving incoming mail, I get out of the impact zone and if I have to go where it is coming in, I wait. I suspect this is true for most people. The only exception to this would probably be the last turn or two of the battle and the impact zone is on victory hexes not controlled by the player.

4) Before that was introduced stugs, marders etc were simply dead meat if engaged from a flank as only turrets would turn to engage. It also solved problems with Char Bs and Lee/Grants which would almost never use the hull guns, simply engaging with the sub-turret unless a human player manually hull-turned them - which the AI rarely did.

Cheers
Andy

For fixed or sponson mounted guns, it makes sense. They are going to turn to fire. For other units, auto pivot's usefulness varies from tank to tank. Some it helps, some it doesn't.

Coding for each situation is not something that I'd want to tackle. You would have to run a numeric calculation for each unit to determine the optimum angle each time it ends it's turn or receives fire. Can't do it by unit name because names can be changed. Since armor values also can change, it would have to be a run-time calculation unless you calculated it in advance and maintained the values in a table. Then you have to consider multiple threats to the tank. With a 50mm L42 to the right 30 degrees off at 16 hexes and a 50mm L60 to the left at 20 degrees, 22 hexes off, which is the bigger threat? Has one of the guns been suppressed and really isn't a threat? Could it possibly recover and become a threat before the next turn starts? You see where all of that goes. Coding it would be a project in and of itself.

Auto pivot at worst puts the player and AI on the same playing field. If the player chooses to angle a unit before firing or at the end of their turn to optimize armor, that gives them a leg up on the AI. No reason to complain there. When I first brought it up, I saw the advantages to manually setting tank angles. As Don pointed out, it was based on my experience. When I get to Tigers and Panthers rather than various versions of the mark IIIs, I'll worry less about tank angles. Things are fine the way they are

[Mobhack]

Except in my case, the AI didn't run to the sound of the guns. At the end of the battle, it had possession of my deployment zone, but I didn't have anything back there. My entire force was in AI deployment zone.

Counter attackers should head off towards any flipped V-hexes eventually in order to retake them. Or, go for nearby located enemy. This results in AI units appearing up your rear, as has happened to me on woods maps with T34s appearing up the kilt of my assault group..

They will go deeper into your rear while those conditions are not met. Sometimes that will result in a force running over your artillery park.

However if the AI counter-attackers never saw anyone nearby (e.g. visibility is way low) it wont have something to attack, and if you only flipped over the V hexes right near the end of the battle then it may not have time to go back from its rear-area mission and attempt to retake them.

Cheers
Andy

[RERomine]

Originally Posted by Mobhack

Counter attackers should head off towards any flipped V-hexes eventually in order to retake them. Or, go for nearby located enemy. This results in AI units appearing up your rear, as has happened to me on woods maps with T34s appearing up the kilt of my assault group..

They will go deeper into your rear while those conditions are not met. Sometimes that will result in a force running over your artillery park.

However if the AI counter-attackers never saw anyone nearby (e.g. visibility is way low) it wont have something to attack, and if you only flipped over the V hexes right near the end of the battle then it may not have time to go back from its rear-area mission and attempt to retake them.

Cheers
Andy

You pretty much described the situation. I had not flipped any victory hexes at the time, visibility was low (9) and the units that ended up in my deployment area did not have eyes on any of my units. My scouts had eyes on the objectives and the units that moved out allowing me observe what was occurring. When the AI units got to my deployment area, I'm sure they were pretty lonely. There was nothing back there but the enemy

[DRG]

As Andy noted, the AI will sometimes do a mini counter attack even before you have taken any objectives. That was the intent of the reaction units but something may have gone slightly astray over time as now in a typical assault / defend situation the AI is allowing roughly half of their formations to react on a wide variety of turns. The only way I can know if this has crept up a bit is to run some tests with an older version of the game which I may do this weekend.

However, under normal circumstances these counter attacks are not seen as odd. In the save game you offered the whole situation was radically different than most games with the way you attacked and the visibility in the game. Moderate pointed games on larger maps will have minefields more dispersed than they would be in high pointed games and if a player tends to play those on medium to small maps the incidences of AI tanks running into their own mines would rise so , like many things in this game, what players see and what strikes them as "odd" depends a great deal on their preferences, points and map size

Don

[RERomine]

Another aspect is, being a game, I don't have to stay "honest" so to speak. In reality, if an attack is launched, defensive lines by the assaulting side aren't abandoned as I did in my attack. Beyond the 100x100 battlefield I was on, there would be supply and ammo dumps, hospitals, communications, headquarters, etc. that would have to still be protected. If those things had been back there at in my game, the AI would have had a field day. In the game, I packed up all my "stuff" and took it with me. Also, a narrow front attack isn't typical. Most real assaults are broad based. In the Battle of the Bulge, the Germans didn't punch a hole one mile wide and send everyone through it. It was an assault on an 80 mile front.

Oh well, enough on this. I think it's been pretty much beat to death.

[RERomine]

5. AI clearing it's own obstacles.

Just started an assault and the AI must have a rifle section next to it, because after the pre-turn 1 artillery bombardment, a message popped up saying "rifle section CLEARS 1 STRAND OF WIRE" and showed me the wire at the bottom edge of the map.

This has actually been an issue since the first SP version came out back in the stone ages, but I don't know if anyone has tried to do anything with it.

As a follow-up thought, since the AI tends to target locations with artillery when an obstacle is cleared, will it nail its own troops as a result?

Neither one hurts the player so it doesn't need to be fixed, but I was curious if any attempt has been made to correct this. I have my turn 1 save file and attached a screen print of the message.

[Mobhack]

Originally Posted by RERomine

5. AI clearing it's own obstacles.

Just started an assault and the AI must have a rifle section next to it, because after the pre-turn 1 artillery bombardment, a message popped up saying "rifle section CLEARS 1 STRAND OF WIRE" and showed me the wire at the bottom edge of the map.

This has actually been an issue since the first SP version came out back in the stone ages, but I don't know if anyone has tried to do anything with it.

As a follow-up thought, since the AI tends to target locations with artillery when an obstacle is cleared, will it nail its own troops as a result?

Neither one hurts the player so it doesn't need to be fixed, but I was curious if any attempt has been made to correct this. I have my turn 1 save file and attached a screen print of the message.

Nope - that one has been there since SP 1 days.

SP 3(?) had a manual flag for engineers to not clear mines, but that is of little use for the AI.

In SP there are just mines or other field defences - there is no ownership marker. So the AI engineers/ordinary troops cannot be coded not to clear "own" mines, since all field engineering items belong to the same pool. Scenario designers can do tricks to give both sides field defences so a "defender does not clear mines" global is not a good idea either, since the defender sometimes does want to clear mines (e.g. to open a lane for a counter attack) or both sides to deal with scatter mines in MBT.

The deployment code is supposed to keep troops clear of engineer obstacles, but has never been able to fully keep it so.

So basically there is no real "sane" way to stop the AI troops clearing mines they are deployed on or in front of, but still clear any they should clear (such as when reacting to a V-hex flip by moving through own minefields).

As to targeting own side - the targeting is done for the opposite side (if AI controlled) to the troops during the clearance phase of the owning player. So that should not happen.

Cheers
Andy