Click to enlarge:
At -12 degrees celcius 17th Army is still managing to slowly advance on Kharkov
Beta testing is well under way and one on my big tasks is to get the artificial intelligence (AI) in to tip-top shape. I thought it could be nice if to take the readers along for the ride in some regular AI dev logs.
Current results from the beta group playing versus the Soviet AI were positive, but some more experienced players had a bit more mixed results. Some of them managed to crush the Soviet AI just a bit to easily.
Let me show you a video of an AI-to-AI game which mimicks an experienced human German player versus a regular AI:
The way I code and improve the artificial intelligence is by making analysis of its current behaviour and then designing a plan to improve its behaviour.
Analysis of current behaviour:
-The Soviet AI in the North is losing to much troops before the Germans reach the defensible swamps and forests around Leningrad. Because of this the AI does not manage to keep the line later on.
-The Soviet AI in the Center almost manages to stop the Germans, but it might have made its stance just 2 or 3 turns to early. Furthermore it seems to hold the southern part of the center front (Bryansk) quite well, while giving to much terrain on the key highway Smolensk-Moscow. Eventually this leads to an early fall of Moscow.
-The Soviet AI in the South gets a lot of armies in this playthrough but it doesn’t manage to hold the Dnjepr-line as well as it should.
Plan for improving the AI:
Considering everything the Soviet AI needs to:
1. On a few exceptions (Riga, Odessa, Pripjet) retreat as many troops intact to a defensible line. Which is roughly the Leningrad forests – Smolensk – Dnjepr line.
2. Better understand (like in the center) where the enemies main drive is and move the brunt of it forces there. Especially if it concerns a direct attack on Moscow.
3. Hold the Dnjepr line at all costs. This means holding it to the hex and making aggressive counter attacks against bridgeheads while they are still small.
Cannot make this log to long, since I have to get back to coding :)
But I hope you join me again in my next AI log to see if I got the Soviet AI to toughened up as intended.
Best wishes,
Vic
Click to enlarge:
It might be a good moment to release a Tsarist general to take-over the Southern Front
The new TOE feature added to ATG just went gold: Matrix Games ATG news page
Last week a new public beta for Advanced Tactics Gold has been released. It brings a big new feature to the game. The ‘New Dawn’ random games and custom scenarios can now use so called Tables of Organisation (TOE). A concept well known the more Grognardian of players. This allows the players to design the ideal contents of a unit. After assigning a unit to a TOE model the game will automaticly use logistical resources (trains,trucks,cargoships) to send the appropriate troops to it. This new feature can be used by scenario designers to create historical TOEs, but in random games the imagination is the only limit to the kind of TOEs the player wants to add.
The feature comes with a lot of detail and when designing TOE models you can also choose the NATO counter graphics, the way the units are named and much more. So far as I know it is unique for a wargame to have the option to create your own TOEs while actually playing a game.
This has been, after the officers and the custom tank models, another new addition to the the ‘New Dawn’ random games in ATG, which functions as a running laboratory for features for an eventual new Advanced Tactics 2 game. Feedback so far has been positive and the new feature has the ability to seriously change the feel and mouse-click load of the game.
Best wishes,
Vic
The first part of the title of this post is the topic of a discussion question for my publishers Home of the Wargamers 2015 event.
And in fact it is a very good question and one that should in my opinion be reflected upon by any wargame designer before starting any new project.
My instinctive first reply to the question is to say that there is no such thing as “the” wargame genre or “the” wargamer.
The ideal amount of complexity depends certainly on the personal tastes of the player. Some players are more casual or beer and pretzel lovers, some players are more hardcore wargamers or even grognards.
Reflecting on the complexity of wargames I can distinguish (at least) two important factors that determine the perceived complexity.
The amount of game pieces you have to move each turn is the first important factor. On one side of the spectrum here we find for example chess, while on the other side of the spectrum you would find monster hex-and-counter games like some HPS games or War in the East.
And the detail for the game pieces you control, affect you or that you affect is the second important factor. Does each unit have 2 or 3 variables like in Empire Deluxe, maybe 10-20 variables like in Panzer Corps, or maybe 100s of variables like in War in the East?
Disclaimer: I really put these titles rather quickly on these 2 axis; please allow for an error of a few centimeters ;)
The amount of game pieces you have at your disposal should in general create more strategic and/or tactical options for the player. More permutations of game states. High permutation games are complex because they make it impossible to really calculate what is going to be the outcome of your moves, especially when trying to think a few turns into the future, you have to develop a “feel” or “intuition” to become a good player.
The detail of the stuff you have at your disposal can make each iteration of a piece of the game unique (12th Infantry division versus 45th Infantry division for example). These detailed games add a lot of complexity to the game and time-investment for the player, since everything should ideally be inspected before being utilized to achieve best results. On the other hand they add a lot of immersion, special strategies, management challenges and feel of “realism”.
My analysis here is that the [ level of simulation/detail * the ammount of stuff you control ] in a game results in that games complexity score. On the illustration I put for example Panzer Corps in the more casual wargame quadrant and Grigsby in the grognard quadrant. Panzer Corps has relatively low unit count and low detail, while Grigsby has defenitely high unit count and high detail.
So answering the question “does complexity define wargames?” I would really say yes, but the bar where a game becomes a “real” wargame differs from player to player depending on their preferred level of complexity.
In a way the term “casual” and “grognard” is actually not objective and betrays a bit my own sympathies. The term “casual” or “beer and pretzel” is definitely a term coined by players who prefer games to the high complexity side of the spectrum. My apologies if I offended any-one and feel free to replace “casual” with “strategy” and “grognard” with “I like looking at spreadsheets”. It really depends on your personal tastes and who you compare yourself too.
I think the interesting thing about putting turn based wargames on the two dimensions I chose is that I realized there are two design voids. There are no wargames I know of with very low detail per game piece but very large counts of them, nor are there any (non-tactical) wargames with very low game piece counts, but with immense details to each piece.
I know of other genres who have exploited these voids though… RPG’s for example excel in low unit count but with immense detail per unit (characters are of course the name for units there). And for example some RTS and Total War games field thousands of little soldiers on the battlefields but they often resemble a clone of their neighbor.
Personally I think these relative voids might hold the key to create some cross-genre and entry level games.
Thats it for my brainstorm on the subject for today. Correct me if I am wrong please.
Best wishes,
Vic
