AI 'General' setting

[Amaranthus]

Myrddraal, regarding the AI, I would like to see the option for a setting whereby the AI plays at its full strength, but it is given no production bonuses etc. This what the 'General' setting on PzC does, and is my preferred way to play.

That is, all of the resources/bonuses are 'balanced' for player and computer, but the AI is aggressive and savvy like in Privileged mode. I guess what I want is the experience I get in an MP game against a human opponent, except against the best intellect the CPU can muster.

I assume that the Balanced option doesn't actually give you this, since you noted elsewhere that due to a bug the Handicapped Mode AI was actually playing stronger than in Balanced (or was that accidental improvement just to do with the mis-allocated penalties turning into bonuses?)

[Myrddraal]

The 'Balanced' option pretty much gives you this. IIRC, there are a few scripted opening moves that the AI will only carry out on Privileged, but otherwise the Balanced AI is already playing at full 'intelligence'.

It's true that the AI is more aggressive in Privileged mode, and will make more attempts to outflank and cut off your forces, but this is a dynamic result of the AI feeling more confident because the balance of power is more in its favour. If you maybe weren't playing so well, the 'Balanced' AI would feel equally confident and carry out the same aggressive tactics. One thing I could do is expose an option to play against a more 'aggressive' AI, where the AI takes more risks even when it feels it doesn't have the advantage. Is that the sort of thing you're after?

Having said that, I'll put in a few words of defence for the bonuses the AI gets in Privileged. It gets no stat bonuses or 'lucky rolls'. It gets no morale bonuses. It gets a small one-off bonus to manpower at the start of the game. It gets temporary PP income bonuses.

The manpower bonus is to compensate for the fact that the better player will generally cause more casualties than the AI, and therefore AI manpower will drop faster.
The PP income bonuses are designed so that the AI gets no bonuses when it's armies are at the maximum size their economy can support. This means that ultimately, the AI doesn't get a bigger army than the player can support, but can reach that level of mobilisation faster, and repair and replace casualties faster than the player can.

Generally we tried to introduced advantages which give the AI a boost without being so obviously unfair as to break the feel of the game.

[Amaranthus]

One thing I could do is expose an option to play against a more 'aggressive' AI, where the AI takes more risks even when it feels it doesn't have the advantage. Is that the sort of thing you're after?

Yes, I think that would be interesting. In SP, I find the AI to be brutally logical and tight, but not so 'innovative'. It is easy to be surprised by 'silly' moves in MP that turn out to be troublesome (at least from my experience in PzC, but even in one of the MP games I've just started), whereas I'm never felt like the AI was unpredictable. It's more like a chess computer, where you know you can't afford to make a mistake. I'd like it to be more rash, on occasion, with the pros and cons that comes with that.

Thanks for the explanation too, it's great to have this extra insight into what's going on. Great game, loving it, and really feeling the frustrating (in a good way) stagnation of the western front in 1915 in a SP campaign I just started!