River crossings

[johndoe2]

What other people think about these – to me river crossings are cringeworthy example of AI stupidity.
Just played Narva – depressing. What is the point of this scenario? Sitting behind the river and kill the AI units one by one as they came for 20 turns!? It’s boring it’s depressing it’s pointless. This continuing insistence in creating these scenarios is confusing because obviously they don’t work... And so early in the game I don’t need the break - Dnipropetrovsk comes to mind (did we really needed a break then as well?) In my opinion river crossings should be left to human player only.

PS
Reading the DLC 43 Belgorod evaluation and it's all there. Quote from another player: 'IMHO the AI attacks over the bridges are a little bit too easy. Defending them is like a lunch picknic on a sunny sunday morning. I think the AI lost around 15 units to these defenses ...'

No lessons learned for DLC 44?

[Kerensky]

Not everyone plays on the same level and many of our players welcome these breather scenarios. If they are too easy for you, it is always possible to increase the difficulty settings.

PRESTIGE PRESTIGE PRESTIGE! who thought of this torture well devs ya got the prestige problem that old PG had, knocked

just finished Prohkorovka for a DV. and all I could see is my prestige gains melt before my wide open eyes as I battled to that city in a galaxy far far away it seemed

some of my old children units were down to 2's and 3's and 5's and so on. all was fine until those counter attacks from the north of Kartashyovka and only the PzC god's know how many tanks, infantry, rocket launcers you name it came at me from the east of Prohkorovka, then I had to cry as I gave BIG amounts of prestige to my children to keep them alive

the StuG IIIG's are having a tough time along with the StuH 42's. used my reserve HE 177A's and they got blasted. after one rebuild each during the battle, they got parked when the brass told me there would be enemy planes, they forgot to say how many as in MUCHO!

I was determined to get a decisive it was going to be Valhalla or a DV....pure and simple

well now I'm down to 1234 prestige after rebuild of Core going into Dnipropetrovsk. it's not as bad as it seems. at Prohkorovka I upgraded some Pz IIIM's to
Panther D's and purchased two new Hummels and a Elefant. only thing is now I'm only allowed 39 units to deploy where as at Oboyan I was allowed 40.

probably let some infantry sit it out at Dnipropetrovsk to use my new equipment. it's a defense scenario and probably going to take MV's from now on in preperation for 44'
don't want to sell off my new Elefant. they got a +2 initiative hero in their first battle. what's holding the other Elefants back

[johndoe2]

I’m sorry but am I to understand that the game is designed to lose 2/3 of your core units each battle and that you have to rebuild you core for every subsequent battle?
How about returning to the core elements of the game: building, upgrading and KEEPING alive you core so we do not need imbecilic sitting around the bridges and blowing one unit after another so we can replenish our core.
Isn’t more fare to tell the people who play on Manstein to suck it up? Because the rest of us (any other lever I think) would like decent scenarios with decent playability and surely the AI river crossing are none of that!
And last but not least - how about the DLC 45?
Seelow heights battle? That was a river crossing - how are you going to pull that one out? This should be the pivotal battle of 45 and the Germans should be losing. With this type of river crossing it will be a laugh (on any level!)

[johndoe2]

To be more constructive - how about bridgeheads?
Any history book will tell you that containing Soviet bridgeheads was one of the primary type of battle for the Wehrmacht in 44 (and very, very hard as well) I think bridgeheads is the way to go - just turn your river crossing into bridgeheads battles and thing will improve dramatically...

[Bonners]

To be more constructive - how about bridgeheads?
Any history book will tell you that containing Soviet bridgeheads was one of the primary type of battle for the Wehrmacht in 44 (and very, very hard as well) I think bridgeheads is the way to go - just turn your river crossing into bridgeheads battles and thing will improve dramatically...

In most of the river crossing battles I've fought the Soviets always seems to have at least one or two existing bridgeheads.

[johndoe2]

Yes, but the AI needs to be programmed to pour reserves through those bridgeheads plus none in Narva, none in Belgorod, none in Dnipropetrovsk... Are you happy with those scenarios? That’s my point - are people happy with those scenarios? I’m not. If others come forward maybe they’ll made changes for DLC 45 (probably too late anyway...)

[Bonners]

Yes, but the AI needs to be programmed to pour reserves through those bridgeheads plus none in Narva, none in Belgorod, none in Dnipropetrovsk... Are you happy with those scenarios? That’s my point - are people happy with those scenarios? I’m not. If others come forward maybe they’ll made changes for DLC 45 (probably too late anyway...)

Have to admit out of all those scenarios listed I've really enjoyed them and found them useful with a bit of planning to get a bit of a breather and I'm certainly not playing on any of the hard difficulty levels.

[johndoe2]

Kerensky : 'If they are too easy for you, it is always possible to increase the difficulty settings'

I'll take Dnipropetrovsk as example

There are around 10-12 infantry units just sitting at the bridge waiting to be blown up. Why not change half of them into brukenpionere with five stars exp? Set them to charge the river at different points. Change the other half into long range artillery that will pound you across the river and at some point send those 20 so tanks that are at the back of the map across the river. That’s what want to see that’s how I want to see my scenario develop. Soviets were masters of artillery support. I’m not seeing that in any of the scenarios – triple the artillery presence! That's how I want my difficulty increased!
I don’t want to compensate for lack of programming inventive by playing on Manstein - I mean even on that level there will be same 10-12 overstrength infantry units across the river just waiting to die...

[El_Condoro]

Kerensky : 'If they are too easy for you, it is always possible to increase the difficulty settings'

I'll take Dnipropetrovsk as example

There are around 10-12 infantry units just sitting at the bridge waiting to be blown up. Why not change half of them into brukenpionere with five stars exp? Set them to charge the river at different points. Change the other half into long range artillery that will pound you across the river and at some point send those 20 so tanks that are at the back of the map across the river. That’s what want to see that’s how I want to see my scenario develop. Soviets were masters of artillery support. I’m not seeing that in any of the scenarios – triple the artillery presence! That's how I want my difficulty increased!
I don’t want to compensate for lack of programming inventive by playing on Manstein - I mean even on that level there will be same 10-12 overstrength infantry units across the river just waiting to die...

I'll chime in with a little of my experience with this kind of thing. The AI would need to be changed to accommodate what you're asking for, or the equipment file changed. Bridging engineers are not guaranteed to be used by the AI for bridging purposes. In fact, in my Red Dawn mod where I wanted the Russians to do pretty much exactly what you want, I had to modify the Russian bridging units to have a MV = 0 and place them on the river (not adjacent to it) so as to guarantee the AI didn't just move them away! Even then, the AI is not capable of mounting the kind of concerted attack that a river crossing demands; it would not necessarily send units across en masse or with effective support and could be wiped out fairly easily unless the player is placed far enough back so as not to interdict the crossing. If the AI's artillery has transport it will mount them up and send them across first!! I now do not give AI artillery transport and set them to Defend, Active to alleviate this problem.

That is all a long-winded way of saying Kerensky is working within the bounds of the system he has and is doing a good job within its limitations.

[johndoe2]

Thank you El_Condoro (you've explained it better) because that is what I wanted to say when I started the tread - AI is incapable of river crossings DON'T create scenarios with river crossings!
Always have the AI in possession of the crossing and make the point of reaching the crossings one of the victory conditions (for the human)!

[Kerensky]

Well part of the issue is that in such a long campaign, devastating scenarios are simply not in the cards. How would someone be expected to play 30 more scenarios if their CORE has been gutted? So we intentionally don't let the AI go all out on the player (attacking in waves instead of all at once, attacking across rivers too). That said, it is possible to goad the AI into using bridge engineers, as we should see in DLC 1945. That's when the gloves come off BTW, because there are no more campaigns to follow after DLC 45 and also because it is most likely going to reach it's historical conclusion.

[johndoe2]

Hope you keep you word

[Kerensky]

I'd like nothing more than to prove it with screenshots, but at this point DLC 45 content has to remain hush hush.

[ivanov]

I'd like nothing more than to prove it with screenshots, but at this point DLC 45 content has to remain hush hush.