Does the AI see what the player sees?

[Blaugrana]

If the AI can, in certain situations 'see' a regiment (its strength, position, facing etc) when LOS=true when a human player sees very little due to vegetation getting in the way, it would seem the human is at a disadvantage.

Correct.

That was the whole point I was trying to make. The only effect that HITS gives, which is that humans might not physically see a unit because of vegetation or hills in the way, does not apply to the AI at all.

IF (and it's a huge 'IF') my understanding of how this bit of the game works is correct, then there are some cases where vegetation will hide troops from humans but not from the AI. If so, it's a bit of an exception to the general rule.

Hills surely effect AI and humans the same? ie, if there's a hill or a building in the way, the game calculates that LOS=false and the AI commander won't know the invisible regiment is there. At 2-yard HITS, a 'hill' can be very low and still get in the way.

[Garnier]

The game will render the flags of any units that are spotted by ANY unit on your team, and within (I believe) 2000 yds. So in this example, suppose A does not have LOS to C, but B does. So C spots B. Suppose A is the player. Then C will be visible and rendered. With HITS, it's possible the hill will block the player from actually seeing C's sprites and flag -- or not.




Now for the AI. There are two obvious ways the AI LOS might work. It's possible that AI commanders are only aware of units their commander has game LOS to. OR, the AI might be aware of all units that are spotted on the map, just like the player is, even though the player might not actually see some of these units due to hills or tree sprites.

I don't know which of the above is the case, I expect it's the former, but unless norb said something, this is just speculation.

[Davinci]

My guess would be that if A and B are in different Corps then the information is not relayed to the other AI units.

But, if A and B are in the same Corps Command – the information is relayed to all brigades in that particular corps.

I just had a test game in-which a part of my army were in-between two separate enemy corps units, one of them engaged me, while the other one moved away from my position and kept on marching to their objective point.

davinci

[Saddletank]

I think you half misunderstood my post.

No, I understood you. I am disagreeing with you.

With the elevated heli-cam option in play the human players "flag tip" is elevated high in the air (and can fly from side to side) and an LoS calculation is made from this extremely tall flexible general (!)

This is not true at all.

What is happening then, to explain how an elevated camera view gets sprites rendered on-screen when a ground-level camera view does not? It seems completely logical to me what is going on. The elevated camera view overcomes many LoS blocks such as hills and so enemy units are displayed much further away and behind intervening obstacles. In effect the player has a 200 foot tall general.

Some of your other points are contradicted by what I said in the other thread.

Well, you may have contradicted me, but then I'm not entirely in agreement with you. I did say you were half right. I think you're half wrong as well

I would add that the elevated cam-position only true benefit would be that it gives the player the ability to cheat and view the AI ’s movements from above.

Only in the sense that you can see over the tree sprites. No new units will become spotted if you use different camera settings. LOS works the same regardless of camera.

What's your basis for this assertion please? It seems to be going against the logic of the LoS rules I've seen demonstrated in-game.

In GCM games I could see enemy troops literally miles away, over hills. In HITS games I cannot. But its also true, from my experience, that the AI is not responding to enemy units extremely close to it that are blocked by intervening terrain.

[Blaugrana]

Here are some screenshots of the scenario I remembered as almost unplayable in HITS with the vegetation 'on'. In this case, they are my troops, not the enemy, but my point about the importance of vegetation to human players is made. I cannot see how big these regiments are, or which way they are facing. Ordering them to move accurately is almost impossible:

The attachment Flagsvisibletroopsnot.jpg is no longer available

Toggle off the vegetation, and all is revealed:

The attachment Vegetationswitchedoff.jpg is no longer available

[Garnier]

There are two kinds of LOS and I believe some of our disagreement is in naming.

In all of my posts, I've used "LOS calculation" to mean the game determining which units can see each other.* This is entirely unaffected by camera settings, and this is the only thing the AI can use.

The other kind of "LOS" is what rendered units the human actually sees through the tree sprites and rendered hills. This is what is affected by camera settings and T mode, and this kind of "LOS" does not exist for the AI. (obviously, units that are not spotted by the player's team in the LOS calculation are not rendered at all, regardless of camera)


* As I said, units that the LOS calculation determines are spotted by your side can be rendered if they are within 2000yd, regardless of camera settings. I believe the game is optimized to not render units that your camera angle doesn't see, but that is irrelevant.

[KG_Soldier]

Come on Norb, jump in anytime and end all this speculation.

I mean. . . it shouldn't take you but a couple of days to word it in a way I can understand. Let's go. . . get off your duff and do some splainin'.

[norb]

Someone summarize the question.

There is only 1 LOS calculation. Everyone "sees" the same stuff. This is different than the drawing or rendering to screen (which tries to only draw what's necessary).

[Garnier]

I believe the question was "does the AI use HITS" which you will probably laugh at.

Now all of us will interpret your statement to mean exactly what we were saying.

Like this:

The only effect that HITS gives, which is that humans might not physically see a rendered unit because of vegetation or hills in the way, does not apply to the AI at all.

[norb]

No, the AI knows nothing about hits. Hits only affects what you VIEW on screen. It has no affect to the logic behind the game. Sure it will draw less to the screen but only because you are low to the ground and therefore it does not have to draw as much.