Thanks, it just seemed odd to list this as a benefit when you already have the ability. Guess it’s just redundant . I’ve always played with 2 being the max, I’m just teaching a group of people to play next week and came across a play aid online that implied differently, so I reread and questioned my interpretation.
A&A and G40: AI Critical concepts and foundational principles of gameplay
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Sacrificing units to achieve Objectives, Victory conditions, or Capital capture: Basically knowing when it is advantageous to destroy more valuable units like (aircraft) in order for a ground unit to take the territory.
I think this should be called Air Blitz
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Agreed. That’s a better way to put it. The sort of thing you see a lot during the climax.
I edited the above to read Air Blitz. Good looking out
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Abuse of Victory Conditions. Knowing when a disadvantagous attack on a VC still means winning the game. Disadvantagous as in: battle itself can be won but will be crippling in the long run. Still, very high chance of winning the game by occupying the VC without the other side being able to do something about it the next turn. Closely related to can opening and blocking concepts.
Example:
USA went KJF, so Europe is a German dreamscenario. 7 VCs are already under Axis control, including Moscow. The IJN, IJAF and IJA (in ~10 transports) are on the run for the USN and fled into the ME area. Now they kamikaze-attack Cairo where all invading Japanese units are destroyed. So very disadvantagous for Japan, but if Germany (or even Italy after a similar German kamikaze) can grab Cairo and hold it for just 1 turn, they win the game. -
Abuse of Victory Conditions. Knowing when a disadvantagous attack on a VC still means winning the game. Disadvantagous as in: battle itself can be won but will be crippling in the long run. Still, very high chance of winning the game by occupying the VC without the other side being able to do something about it the next turn. Closely related to can opening and blocking concepts.
Example:
USA went KJF, so Europe is a German dreamscenario. 7 VCs are already under Axis control, including Moscow. The IJN, IJAF and IJA (in ~10 transports) are on the run for the USN and fled into the ME area. Now they kamikaze-attack Cairo where all invading Japanese units are destroyed. So very disadvantagous for Japan, but if Germany (or even Italy after a similar German kamikaze) can grab Cairo and hold it for just 1 turn, they win the game.I did that exact maneuver in a league game and won. I called it the “throw Japan under the bus” maneuver. I even took planes as casualties to maximize my occupying force of land units.
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Ok. Kind of besides the topic…… The hard AI is
1. waaaaay better than medium AI
2. Builds too much navy as germany
3. Does not build Chinese units, just collects money
4. Leaves transports and bombers unprotected
5. Often no war between soviet and Germany, leaving east germany / west soviet unprotected
6. Often no war between uk and Japan/ Japanese does not take DEI
7. AI attacks true neutrals waaaaay too often.Good things. Does alot of unpredictable stuff. Not all of it is bad. Makes you reconsider the established truths
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Abuse of Victory Conditions. Knowing when a disadvantagous attack on a VC still means winning the game. Disadvantagous as in: battle itself can be won but will be crippling in the long run. Still, very high chance of winning the game by occupying the VC without the other side being able to do something about it the next turn. Closely related to can opening and blocking concepts.
Example:
USA went KJF, so Europe is a German dreamscenario. 7 VCs are already under Axis control, including Moscow. The IJN, IJAF and IJA (in ~10 transports) are on the run for the USN and fled into the ME area. Now they kamikaze-attack Cairo where all invading Japanese units are destroyed. So very disadvantagous for Japan, but if Germany (or even Italy after a similar German kamikaze) can grab Cairo and hold it for just 1 turn, they win the game.I did that exact maneuver in a league game and won. I called it the “throw Japan under the bus” maneuver. I even took planes as casualties to maximize my occupying force of land units.
:-).
I did a ‘reverse maneuver’ once, during a KGF. Took the entire German army from Bryansk and marched onto an already isolated India to take Calcutta. That allowed Japan to focus more on the pacific itself and take Hawaii very early and build up pressure on Sydney, SF/Mexico/Panama and Alaska. Convoyed ANZAC into a non-existent income of 3IPCs/turn anyway.
So I kinda threw Germany under the bus FTW ;-).
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Great stuff! That last concept of understanding the Victory conditions, and knowing when to throw everything at it is especially important for global. Though technically it should be the same for all games since Revised, even if a lot of people ignore VC wins and go for unconditional surrender on the basic boards. I think respecting the VC win will be important for the AI games. Basically if the HardAI sneaks in an “Honorable Victory” on you, then you should concede to the machine, respectfully, without flipping over the table ;) Hopefully HardAI can be made to gun a bit harder in such situations, and know when to throw everything at the win. Whether its by VC techinical wins, or just the normal capital capture exchange, something that a human will take a high risk on would be nice to emulate.
I guess also for G40, understanding things like the DoW is pretty critical too.
One other thing, more generally for massing or magnifying unit abilities by grouping them in large numbers. In other threads I’ve called these…
Magnified Builds or grouping units of the same type together: Basically the difference between having a couple bombers scattered here and there, and a dozen bombers all in one spot all focused on one target. It works for any unit type, whether fighters or tanks or artillery or infantry, or at sea with Carriers and the like. The AI actually seems to highlight this already, as they will often stack like that, with their Air, at least on attack.
I suppose the alternative would be appreciating something like…
Mixed Builds or grouping units of a different type together: knowing when its better to have mixed forces, and exploit a different kind of magnifier, when you have less total units in the expeditionary force. Like for example the mech + tank + planes combo, or dd + cv + transport combo and things of that sort. Building basically at different scales… where, if its a smaller force, then the mixed type works better, but as the force gets larger, then the power of having one unit magnified can be more potent. Not sure if I’m phrasing that correctly, but something about it seems somehow on target. Basically the Minimum mix necessary for a unit group to be effective on its own, vs how to take that mininum mix and then Max it out, by adding a stack of a particular unit to it.
I think what both of those ideas come down to is know when you can split forces up, and when its better to keep them together, and how to support either approach through building strategy. Either piecemeal or all at once. Along those lines, another concept related to production might be…
Saving IPCs for the heavy drop Knowing when _no_t to spend every last dime right now, but instead save up for a multi-round purchase. This has been a popular strategy for humans, especially with Nations like UK, or sometimes Germany (sea lion focus, or late game entry into the Naval arena). Usually this is when buying the same units little by little would put your newly purchased force at risk of destruction, so instead you save all your cash for a round, and then “drop them” all at once. Thinking here especially of UK Carriers with US fighters, or German transports etc. Another component of this type of thinking, would be “not showing your hand, until you’re ready.” USA often does this, if they want to keep the opponent guessing about which theater they will go after.
As Shadowhawk notes, its pretty hard to get the AI to appreciate all this stuff, but I still think its helpful to think about and to try and tease out general concepts, from the more map specific strategic stuff. And who knows, maybe someday the AI will be schooling all of us. I mean hell, just look what Google DeepMind is doing with those old Atari games! There are probably “Pong Tunnels”, or Centipede style “Mushroom Blobs” for A&A too, and we just haven’t gone through enough iterations to see them all yet hehe. Even now, looking at the way HardAI transports ground and pushes their stacks can be fascinating to observe.
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I think you’re phrasing it just fine.
Unit concentration could be another way of wording it. Based on the old adage “concentration of force” . :) -
In both 1940 and 1942 Globals I’ve found Hard Japan sells out on the Pacific to go all in against China and Russia with mainland IC builds and huge concentrations of air units. In 42 it’s especially tough since Germany will go all in as well against Russia and Japan starts out with a huge income edge that must be addressed immediately by the US.
In 40 it is interesting to see the Hard German AI track the UK player’s builds to determine whether to make massive investments into Sea Lion. It’s not particularly creative in building a fleet, it just believes in battleship escorts for transports. What is odd is sometimes it will attack London or Scotland but if their defenses are relatively strong it will just send the fleet into the North Atlantic with fully loaded transports begging to be attacked.
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Might interest some people here that the latest pre-release Jar for hardAI includes scrambling logic. See the AI dev thread if you want to download it and give it a go. I believe Redrum is working on fighter landing and transports next. Have fun all
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