New patch E.T.A

[borsook79]

I agree 100% The Axis AI should be able to defend France at all costs and the Allied AI to defend Egypt. Its not the case at the present and it must be addressed in my opinion.

I don't know about defending at all cost - this would make the AI ease to trick, just in different ways than presently. The problem is that AI Allies never move a single unit to Africa, nor do they land there.

[syagrius]

The thing is that by losing France and Paris, the German AI is usually totally screwed. To a lesser degree for the British in Egypt. At the present the AI defend Paris with a couple of corps which is clearly insufficient.

[borsook79]

The thing is that by losing France and Paris, the German AI is usually totally screwed. To a lesser degree for the British in Egypt. At the present the AI defend Paris with a couple of corps which is clearly insufficient.

Well, this does not mean France should be defended "at all costs". That could be more disastrous for the AI than the current situation.

Egypt on the other hand while it may not change the course of the war - it does make the "oil" feature in the game completely useless. Playing as Axis at the highest AI advantage you may actually lose the game but still you'll lose it with 999 oil as NO units are ever sent to Africa.

[syagrius]

I agree totally with you, there is no AI movement of troops for the Med and Africa.

Part of the problem seems to be that the AI doesnt strat move. It has strong armies in Russia and when the Allies land in France it has virtually no units to oppose them, its just a cakewalk to get to Berlin. At least Germany should be defended properly!

[Ryben]

Well, this does not mean France should be defended "at all costs". That could be more disastrous for the AI than the current situation.

Not defending Paris or France is catastrophical. Once liberated, the AI doesn´t make anything to stop an attack through the Ardennes or Low countries so the road to Berlin is wide open. In a few turns is all yours and the game is over.

[syagrius]

Exaclty! I wouldnt mind waiting longer for a patch that could address theses issues, the game would be greatly improved. France should be a priority for the AI. Historically it was, just after Russia. The Allies had to fight like hell just to break out of Normandy.

[borsook79]

Not defending Paris or France is catastrophical. Once liberated, the AI doesn´t make anything to stop an attack through the Ardennes or Low countries so the road to Berlin is wide open. In a few turns is all yours and the game is over.

I am not arguing that France should not be defended. I'm just arguing with this:

The Axis AI should be able to defend France at all costs

And I do hope that nobody really claims that AI should put an absolute priority on defending Paris. This is the best way for a quick victory in the east.

[joe98]

Now try playing a PBEM game.

The human Axis player does not have enough troops to defend France.

Normandy took 6 weeks to break out and to contain the allies for 2 turns is about all the German can do.

After that there are few German troops between Normandy and Berlin. In spite of that the Russians usually get to Berlin first!

-

[Maj_Battaglia]

Normandy took 6 weeks to break out and to contain the allies for 2 turns is about all the German can do.

After that there are few German troops between Normandy and Berlin. In spite of that the Russians usually get to Berlin first!

-

Not to put too fine a point on things, but two turns is about six weeks in game time.

But I will agree with your second point: It is difficult to have the proper number of troops to fight on both fronts once the Western front opens. Even after breakout the Germans held on for another 8 months or so (12 turns).

The Germans were able to muster a heck of a lot more corps than is possible in even rosy circumstances (and I am not including the corps that existed only on paper) in the game. In the whole game it is a challenge to even field globally, at any one time, the German starting forces for Barbarossa!

This may be attributable to several things: one could be balance is off (moddable), another could be player priorities of repairing units rather than building new (and therefore forgoing having a larger army of damaged units), it could be that "corps" in the game are abstract (i.e., actually represent larger units when balance is considered), or some combination.

[syagrius]

It seems that our AI concerns have not been addressed in the new 1.05 patch

[KarlXII]

It seems that our AI concerns have not been addressed in the new 1.05 patch

That is really strange. I can only find one explanation and that is that it is not possible with the current AI engine to do improvements within the time fram available or even not at all without going to depths with it, perhaps even forcing changes in upcoming titles as well.

For me CEAW is now unfortunately an ended chapter. I was hoping the new patch would adress the major flaws at least and give my hopes back for an enjoyable single player experience. Now I will leave this game on the shelf since I don´t have the time to play it hotseat/pbem. As such I am still convinced it is one of the best.

[borsook79]

It seems that our AI concerns have not been addressed in the new 1.05 patch

That is really strange. I can only find one explanation and that is that it is not possible with the current AI engine to do improvements within the time fram available or even not at all without going to depths with it, perhaps even forcing changes in upcoming titles as well.

For me CEAW is now unfortunately an ended chapter. I was hoping the new patch would adress the major flaws at least and give my hopes back for an enjoyable single player experience. Now I will leave this game on the shelf since I don´t have the time to play it hotseat/pbem. As such I am still convinced it is one of the best.

While I'd love to see some AI improvements, I cannot fail to notice that 1.05 made the game much, much more playable. I do hope Johan will fix the AI problems eventually (and add undo ) maybe development of CNAW will help here... That said while AI is terrible in some respect it is overall decent and can be very challenging at higher difficulty.

[Ryben]

That is really strange. I can only find one explanation and that is that it is not possible with the current AI engine to do improvements within the time fram available or even not at all without going to depths with it, perhaps even forcing changes in upcoming titles as well.

For me CEAW is now unfortunately an ended chapter. I was hoping the new patch would adress the major flaws at least and give my hopes back for an enjoyable single player experience. Now I will leave this game on the shelf since I don´t have the time to play it hotseat/pbem. As such I am still convinced it is one of the best.

I agree with you. It seems that the AI could not be improved at all, at least without going for major changes...it´s a shame as the rest of the game is solid as rock and probably one of the best turn based games ever created.

Unfortunately it will spent rest of the time on the shelf as, for single player, it no longers offers a challenge for me. Axis campaign are quite fun to play until you realize than nothing would happen in the Mediterranean. I won´t bother again with allied campaign. West front is a walk in the park.

I hope developers are taking notes of this and don´t allow happen again in CNAW. And i wish a CEAW 2 would be under development some day...

[borsook79]

I agree with you. It seems that the AI could not be improved at all, at least without going for major changes...

I really do think and hope you're wrong. CEAW has one coder, and it's his first game. The performance improvement in the last patch shows that Johan is getting better Every code can be tweaked and optimised, of course to a degree. I wouldn't assume AI improvement is impossible simply because it has not been done so far.

[syagrius]

I agree with you. It seems that the AI could not be improved at all, at least without going for major changes...

I really do think and hope you're wrong. CEAW has one coder, and it's his first game. The performance improvement in the last patch shows that Johan is getting better Every code can be tweaked and optimised, of course to a degree. I wouldn't assume AI improvement is impossible simply because it has not been done so far.

I agree 100%. I dont know why the dev doesnt do it, it would make the game so much more enjoyable. Many of the games I own had their AI improved following patches: Knights of Honor, Hearts of Iron II etc...

[Ryben]

I agree 100%. I dont know why the dev doesnt do it, it would make the game so much more enjoyable. Many of the games I own had their AI improved following patches: Knights of Honor, Hearts of Iron II etc...

In previous posts discussing AI issues the developers excused themselves about the poor strategic AI (tactically is quite good) argueing that in the last 30 years not much advances have been done in wargames AI and thay we should play PBEM games and quit complaining so much about single player. Or something similar, i can´t remember all the conversation.

I couldn´t say anything bad about them, they have put a lot on effort on CEAW and they always patiently answer our questions. Be should be grateful...but, at the same time, merciless

AI can´t be improved? Sorry, i don´t buy that.

[borsook79]

I agree 100%. I dont know why the dev doesnt do it, it would make the game so much more enjoyable. Many of the games I own had their AI improved following patches: Knights of Honor, Hearts of Iron II etc...

In previous posts discussing AI issues the developers excused themselves about the poor strategic AI (tactically is quite good) argueing that in the last 30 years not much advances have been done in wargames AI and thay we should play PBEM games and quit complaining so much about single player. Or something similar, i can´t remember all the conversation.

I couldn´t say anything bad about them, they have put a lot on effort on CEAW and they always patiently answer our questions. Be should be grateful...but, at the same time, merciless

AI can´t be improved? Sorry, i don´t buy that.

Well, Johan did say they will try to improve the AI, just said we shouldn't expect a dramatical difference. He did not back out from this, nor said that 1.05 is the last patch. That said there have been a substantial improvement as far as AI goes in the last 30 years. Though rarely did a first game of any dev team have a good AI. And there have been games that boasted a good AI which made users grumble and forced devs to add lower difficulty levels (original Massive Assault for example).

[syagrius]

I started an Axis 1941 campaign yesterday and I have to say that it is more balanced than the 1939 campaign: the British are much stonger in North Africa and the Russians give me a hard time to reach Moscow (I play with moderate advantage Allies and still patched 1.04 since I have a Matrix copy of the game).

[firepowerjohan]

I started an Axis 1941 campaign yesterday and I have to say that it is more balanced than the 1939 campaign: the British are much stonger in North Africa and the Russians give me a hard time to reach Moscow (I play with moderate advantage Allies and still patched 1.04 since I have a Matrix copy of the game).

Nice!
So, did the Russians or Wallies beat you up ?

[syagrius]

No, its just Oct 1942, I managed to beat the British in NA however I dont own Suez yet. The WA began to do landings in France and I dont have much in the present to oppose them. On the Russian front its more like an attrition war. In the Atlantic I only have a few subs that can't do much. Good game so far.