Slitherine

Best archived to date is -50 VP playing the full battle as the Allies, which meant eliminating all Axis units and covering all Axis ZoC. Can anyone tell me whether I've reached my zenith as far as VPs are concerned? No way is this is common for me as the AI still ties me in knots on occasion.

Regards to all!

Still room to go torturing the AI. But since you're doing so well against the comp, time to start against real people thru Game Center -- it's a blast seeing what people do!

Best I've accomplished as Allies is -82. Map was completely allied, with most of the units poised to head into Germany.

Yeah, I haven't kept track, but I think I've hit the negative 80s. You may have cut them off too early, and not enough reinforcements had come onto the board for you to destroy.

FYI theoretically the best score you can have as the Allies is -114 (edited). I say theoretically because that requires no lost units, no lost VP objectives and killing every German unit including the 3 reserves. The best I've managed is the mid-80s though I think I can get above that by allowing the full reserve forces to enter. When last trying for a maximum score I had forgotten that one unit is released each turn if the conditions (supplied adjacent to the Meuse) are met that turn.

Also, my personal minimum objective as the Germans against the AI is to have an end game score above 400. I haven't bothered to figure out the maximum possible though I'm guessing it is above 500.

I played a test game against the worst AI (myself via face to face) today to see how many points I could get as the Germans. I broke 1000, which resulted in the VP counter freaking out since it cannot display 4 digits.

uh oh -- guess we'll have to whip our QA dept

It's kinda fun to push games to the limit! We are considering a feature that lets you bid VP -- might give you some interesting challenges against the AIs.

nkarp wrote:uh oh -- guess we'll have to whip our QA dept

It's kinda fun to push games to the limit! We are considering a feature that lets you bid VP -- might give you some interesting challenges against the AIs.

I think QA can let this one slide. The counter rotated to 0 with dashes which means someone considered that the score could go over 1000.

Bidding could be good for games against human opponents too. I remember it being a useful component for balance in other games, specifically Axis and Allies. But I would be concerned that players new to the genre might find it intimidating, or at least confusing.

Weird, the score does display 1026 for me. It just doesn't quite fit in the display. And I managed to get a low score of -114 by isolating all the Axis at the end of the game. I wouldn't be surprised if someone could beat 1026 though, as I didn't use any breakthrough to speed things along or kill many Allied units.

I guess I added up the number of Axis unit points incorrectly. I went back and indeed there are 114 points including the 3 reserves. And regarding the counter, I wonder if I hit 1000 exactly. I'm going to try your 1026 point challenge and post a screenshot if I surpass that score. Out of curiosity, were you playing the Allied AI? I think I could isolate all the units, but doubt I could avoid any losses of units or VP locations.

As you can see I was able to hit 1053 but there is still some room for improvement. Longer days, having lower strength units out of supply on the last turn, and suiciding a couple of more Allied units might put it over 1100. But I'm going to see if someone can beat this score before I give it another go. Also the counter rotated to the weird dashed zeros again, but then when the turn ended displayed the correct score. Not that it matters.

Wow! Never seen anything like that!

Both of mine were Face to Face games. It would be very unlikely for the Allies to hold St. Vith against either Axis AI without losing at least one of the defenders.

Peter_TSS wrote:Both of mine were Face to Face games. It would be very unlikely for the Allies to hold St. Vith against either Axis AI without losing at least one of the defenders.

That's what I figured. The Allied AI challenge is to get above the mid 80s! Unlike the German score challenge there is none in face-to-face since you can guarantee a perfect score.