Attacking Arty

[Marching Thru Georgia]

Bloody 8th wrote:

I'm not sure what you mean by aicount. Is the diff harder on veteran or historical?

No that is a variable you must add to sowgb.ini by hand. There is no difference in AI performance at the normal or historic levels. At the veteran level the AI is more aggressive, but not any smarter.

The AI will at times send it's forces in piecemeal, just as some human commanders did. At other times it will hit you with the entire force at once, again just as some human commanders did. The hallmark of this AI is that you can never predict how it will act.

[Bloody 8th]

When you say more aggressive do you mean they will charge more?

[Saddletank]

No, the higher aicount variable sets the AI to assess the tactical situation for longer, so the AI is simply more clever, and considers more options. This does tend to make it more aggressive as well but that does not also man more charges.

Our MP co-op team has been thoroughly embarrassed a few times by the AI on this setting.

[Bloody 8th]

Where can you adjust this

[Jack ONeill]

Tank,

How long have we known about this??? Holy Crap! We can make this already good AI Commander BETTER??? Damn! I'm in! Where and how do we do this, Oh Big-Hatted One?

Jack B)

[Marching Thru Georgia]

Jack wrote:

Where and how do we do this, Oh Big-Hatted One?

If you'll trust a reply from one without a hat, add this line to the [Initialization] section of sowgb.ini which is in the \Work folder: aicount=55
The default value is 40, I believe. We settled on 55 as best for HITS play. The AI units are not necessarily more aggressive, just more clever. After you do that, get your fork and knife out for a nice piece of humble pie. To make the AI more aggressive, change the AI Aggressiveness in the options screen. That is what setting the difficulty level to Veteran and Grognard does automatically. Increasing that number significantly tends to turn the AI units into beserkers.

[Jack ONeill]

MTG,

I have an extra hat, (type: Forage Cap, Blue, one each), around here somewhere I can send you :laugh:

Thanks for the info. Know where it is now. Clever is better than aggressive. Winning is better with fewer casualties. Way more of a challenge there.

Jack B)

[Saddletank]

We've had several really tough co-op HITS games against the AI using this value recently. Corps level battles where the AI can really pull some clever strategies out of that hat (no matter if its big or small).

[Robert E Lee]

Here are some steps to capturing artillery pieces that I taught myself early on when I bought Take Command 2nd Manassas.

1. Move 2-3 of your regiments that are not needed in the main fight into a wooded area nearby (so that your units are not visible to the enemy and even if they do spot you, they are going to have one hell of a time trying to hit your units.) MAKE SURE THAT YOU GO AROUND THE ARTILLERY IN A LARGE LOOP SO YOU ARE NOT EXPOSED!!!

2. Put the regiments that you moved in a "skirmish" formation and place them one behind the other with the largest in front.

3. Get within 160 yards behind the guns.

4. CHARGE!!!




Robert E Lee.

[achilles]

Do regs in skirmish take less casualties from canister? I never found this to be the case, but then again nobody stands up to canister for long so maybe its a question of degrees.