Slitherine

Hi

Bought the DS version of this game last week. Looks fantastic, but I am beginning to have issues with the AI. It is nowhere near tough enough.

I have put it to maximum favour to its side and I am playing with FOW.

I tried this with the Barbarossa scenario. With the AI as the axis it was very cautious and captured Minsk but no further. The African campaign was not even supported. The AI seemed to also favour just saving its resources rather than buying new units. Not sure what its labs were doing.

With the AI as the allies similar issues the African campaign recieves no aid and the Italians captured Cairo...

What can I do to make this a challanging game. It looks and plays fantastic, a marvalous interface but I am concerned that by next week I will be bored with it as its no challange.

I must admit at this point that I do play alot of board wargames, such as Totalier Kreig!, Advanced Third Reich etc.

The best thing to do is play from the start of the war with maximum advantqge to the AI. The AI is more challenging if you play from this point as it has more time to develop its strategy. Generally AI's find it easier to defend than attack so playing as Axis will proviode even more challenge and if you turn the oil option on you should find a few headaches to deal with as Germany!

Do yourself a favor. Take the DS version, and sell it on ebay or sell it to some used game store. Then take the money from that and put it towards purchasing the PC version. I agree the AI is pretty dumb and 100% predictable, but the multiplayer is absolutely superb. Go to the AAR section of the forum and take a look at a few of the BJR mod AAR's. You will see that with a human opponent, the possibilities are endless. There is nothing quite like playing as the Allies right after the fall of France and wondering whether your opponent is going to launch an invasion of England or charge through Egypt towards the Iraqi oil fields. The replay value is infinite.

Is there a reason why the DS version was not at least given the option to hotseat. Ramping up the AI to max gives it more resources which makes it difficult to beat but it makes the game dull as its like wading through treacle and no longer a simulation of the war. The AI just builds enough units so that it you cannot kill them quickly enough and then husbands its resources.

The Axis in the last game I played without FOW had 999 resources points, but no units in the line...go figure.

A hotseat option would have been nice as the interface is fantastic and this would have been a useful game to teach my son and have fun together.

Shame...

The DS version is perfect, don't sell it. For mobile gaming, this is one special game. I agree, the desktop version offers much more - love it on my iMac.