Game balance against the AI

[Horseman]

After reading a couple of the balance topics I see several players asking for more balance against the AI, now as the (awesome!) GS 2.0 is balanced for play against human opponents it is (as was the original) not all that challenging to play against the AI. I for one would not like the team to spend time fixing this and am more happy for them to spend their free time (and unpaid time!) adding some of the awesome new features like para troopers and amphiboius invasions but have yet to fully get involved in PBEM (its a time thing, whilst I can probbaly manage at least a turn a day I feel the pace of the game would require more)

My solution? Do a bit of modding myself!

Its simple enough to add extra untis for the AI side at the start, increase their manpower. give them extra oil (if you dont want to play with it off) extra starting PP's, free labs, increase starting tech and stop some silly opening moves. Axis always declare war on Switzerland at the starrt? Mod them to be Pro Axis with no join date or if you prefere with a join date to give the Axis some more free corps.

So in conclusion, if you want to up the challenge use the available tools to make the game what YOU want it to be, all the above changes are easy to do with just a simple text editor (I use note pad)

Happy gaming

[pzgndr]

There are a few unanswered questions up in the Modders Corner about editing the general.txt file for improving AI performance. Beyond a few simple at-start changes, it would be nice to know how some of the conditional scripting works; e.g. if German units can appear in Finland, then other units can appear elsewhere. For those of us without ULTRA to devine the secrets of the general.txt file, some answers to questions and a few editing tips would be greatly appreciated. Clearly there are several players interested in improving the computer opponent, if only a little bit here and there.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

If you start the game with e. g. major Allied advantage when you play the Axis against the AI then you will see that the AI gets more production, labs etc.

[Horseman]

Do we need to be able to spawn units through out the game? So far what I've seen are mostly 'bonus' units to reward historical choices such as the free German corps in Finland if you have invaded Norway or Sweden or the Axis minor units if you invade yugoslavia or greece. Simply adding in units to the start will surfice for the object of making it harder.

@Stauffenberg - I actually dont like harder difficulties as I don't like being left way behind in tech which always happens on harder difficulties. Instead i like to emulate the other effects (more PP's) by just simply increasing the start amount and modding in extra units for my enemies

[Bern]

Its simple enough to add extra untis for the AI side at the start, increase their manpower. give them extra oil (if you dont want to play with it off) extra starting PP's, free labs, increase starting tech and stop some silly opening moves.

I do not favour enhancing the Axis AI - such improvements are not necessarily appropriate from an historical perspective and would persist in place throughout the game. IMO a preferable alternative would be to restrict the strength of the minor powers units. I cannot see a way to do that - actually I also didn't realise that it was possible to mod Switzerland. I'll have a look at that.

I would also love to know how we go about stopping the 'silly opening moves' through the modding process.

Bern

[Horseman]

Its simple enough to add extra untis for the AI side at the start, increase their manpower. give them extra oil (if you dont want to play with it off) extra starting PP's, free labs, increase starting tech and stop some silly opening moves.

I do not favour enhancing the Axis AI - such improvements are not necessarily appropriate from an historical perspective and would persist in place throughout the game. IMO a preferable alternative would be to restrict the strength of the minor powers units. I cannot see a way to do that - actually I also didn't realise that it was possible to mod Switzerland. I'll have a look at that.

I would also love to know how we go about stopping the 'silly opening moves' through the modding process.

Bern

Histoicla perspective or not, I play games to enjoy myself and a little tweakign makes it far more fun!

Its possible to mod them all, if you want more infomation on how to I can do a simple guide...you can set all the minors to neural, pro allied/axis, date of joining war, manpower levels (start and 100%) even starting tech levels of the minor units.

No idea on how to stop the silly opening moves though (except the declatation on switzerland) You could stop the declaration on denmark the same way but then you'll stop them ever invading there! the strength of minor power unikts is already restricted as they can only ever be 2 'levels' behind their parent major faction

[pzgndr]

Do we need to be able to spawn units throughout the game?

It depends. Will the Axis and Allied AIs transport units to North Africa or not? If not, then spawning units can help provide some additional challenge in that theater to make games more interesting. If we can do this by editing general.txt, then it would be nice to try.

Unit spawning appears to be generic, ie it happens regardless if you're playing Axis or Allied side? To give just the Axis AI side bonus units, say, there should be a way to set this. Otherwise, separate general.txt files could created for each side and players could copy/paste them into the active directory when playing. There are possibilities with all this.

[Horseman]

Do we need to be able to spawn units throughout the game?

It depends. Will the Axis and Allied AIs transport units to North Africa or not? If not, then spawning units can help provide some additional challenge in that theater to make games more interesting. If we can do this by editing general.txt, then it would be nice to try.

Unit spawning appears to be generic, ie it happens regardless if you're playing Axis or Allied side? To give just the Axis AI side bonus units, say, there should be a way to set this. Otherwise, separate general.txt files could created for each side and players could copy/paste them into the active directory when playing. There are possibilities with all this.

But the units spawn regardless of whats going on so could you not just set them to start there?

Though saying that I guess it would be nice to set triggers like axis unit next to port said spawns X units in Y for the allies.....damn you've got me thinking now!

[Bern]

Its possible to mod them all, if you want more infomation on how to I can do a simple guide...you can set all the minors to neural, pro allied/axis, date of joining war, manpower levels (start and 100%) even starting tech levels of the minor units.

A simple guide would be useful and much appreciated.

Bern

[Horseman]

I'll whip one up either today or tomorrow in the modding section of the forums unless some one else beats me to it

[Bern]

Cheers for that.

Bern

[pzgndr]

The CEAW MapEditor already has a helpful 12-page manual. This latest general.txt file for GS 2.0 has stuff that needs some explaining. THAT would be helpful.

[Horseman]

Sadly I'm no expert on the general text file...some of it I've figured out and some of it eludes me

[Peter Stauffenberg]

You can't use the vanilla game editor to edit scenarios or maps. That will corrupt the GS v2.0 ones. We have a special editor we use for editing.

[pzgndr]

We have a special editor

Which begs an obvious question. Will this editor be made available to modders at some point, with a manual of some sort, or is it off-limits to customers?

[Horseman]

We have a special editor

Which begs an obvious question. Will this editor be made available to modders at some point, with a manual of some sort, or is it off-limits to customers?

In all fairness the people who made the mod and 'own' the editor are customers too

[Bern]

You can't use the vanilla game editor to edit scenarios or maps. That will corrupt the GS v2.0 ones. We have a special editor we use for editing.

OK to further display my ignorance, does this mean that modding in GS v2 is impossible.

Bern

[Horseman]

You can't use the vanilla game editor to edit scenarios or maps. That will corrupt the GS v2.0 ones. We have a special editor we use for editing.

OK to further display my ignorance, does this mean that modding in GS v2 is impossible.

Bern

Not at all, its just not as simple as using a scenario editor - I'll get the guide up to modding the scenario file later today hopefully and you'll see its not hard, you just need to know what all the numbers mean!

[pk867]

We laid out the general text is such a way so that the various parameters are grouped. So that the game can be modified by changing parameters in the general.txt and that you and your opponent can share that file and play a game. Also we changed the game setup so that you can explore how the game plays by changing the options at game creation. We did this so the game will play differently without

having to modify class files and you could crash the game.