A Question about how the AI "thinks"

[SiliconMagician]

I had a pretty strange thing happen to me. I was playing a corps size Hunt them down and I was playing a single division out of that corps.

Anyway, I was in the lead of the march column when then the Yankees came over the hill and ran smack into my point element. So I deployed the point brigade and began a sharp fight as the regiments on both sides began deploying off the road into the surrounding fields.

Luckily my AI Brigade commanders for the other two were on top of the situation and deployed smoothly onto the flanks of my point brigade straddling the turnpike.

Well a nasty divisional fight breaks out between me and the yankee point division and I'm getting the better of the Yanks and thinking hey, this isn't so bad. I suffer some heavy casualties to my two foremost regiments and they are kinda chewed up but still effective so I begin to move a couple relief regiments from my reserve into the line.

Suddenly out of nowhere over the hill yonder comes a 2nd yankee division and he throws a brigade right into the center of the line and deploys another brigade on the far right flank I see the regiments moving into line.

Now I'm sweating a bit as I deploy my reserves to stem the tide in the center, and the last elements of the reserve brigade on the far right wing to counter that threat.

Well now my reserves are deployed, yanks are pouring in on the center and right and I"m like "where's my support?" I look back and the AI general controlling the corps had deployed his other two divisions in a battle line about a half mile behind me and then just sat there hitting the yanks with some artillery and sat there the entire time as my division began to get chewed up in a serious way.

I pulled back what forces I could to try and fall in behind the 2 allied divisions but the 1st brigade got trapped and I couldn't extricate them. They were pretty much wiped out. After that I was disgusted and ended the battle as my division was in tatters and I had no interest in seeing the AI Corps commander(Old Stonewall himself) mop up what was left of the yankees.

Kinda depressing but I'm just wondering a little on the thinking processes that gets the AI to perform certain actions? Did it intentionally decide the battle would be best won by allowing the yanks to exhaust themselves on my division or was it something else. Just a bit curious if there are no "trade secrets" involved or anything.

Just wondering some of the broad "stimuli" the AI uses to make certain choices.

[RDBoles]

I have been in the same situation and it is frustrating at times. That being said IMHO never take point always hang back and or take a flank. This way you will get help or you are the help. About a third of the time when I ask for help it will come. It depends on the CO and his efficiency.

[RDBoles]

Also remember you are with a team when you are a divisional comander. Stay close and not stray to far in advance. Watch where the other allied divisions are going and adjust your path to be between the others or close by.

[SiliconMagician]

Hmm.. I never thought about it that way. Thanks for pointing this out. The computer didn't screw up, I did. I let myself get too far away to be properly supported. Now if were humans the situation may have been different, but this is still a valuable lesson to be learned for when I move onto MP. This is why I was playing Division inside a computer controlled Corps, to learn the basics of working with a corps.

I guess it was lucky that I had 30 minutes of divisional skirmishing before the Yankee reinforcements arrived. If they had arrived as a group they would've swamped my lines in 10 or 15 minutes at most.

[Damned Black Hat]

If you write your request for help properly, the corps commander will send you help every time.

[norb]

We haven't messed with the AI in a while, but I'll try to give some insight.

Some of my major design decisions were that I didn't want it to be predictable. So it's coded with a tendency towards certain actions, but no guarantee that it will follow those actions. That makes it a bear to debug and test, but that's how we wanted it.

For example, the div comm usually decides the initial plan of attack. He looks at his first engaged brig or brig with a sighting of the enemy. Then based on his personality traits, he will choose a way to attack the enemy. This is mixed in with some randomness so that even though he is a very cautious person, he may once in a while decide to be a little more aggressive.

The brigs are where most of the fighting AI happens. They try to support their men, trying to bring unengaged reg's in to support or line up with who ever is fighting.

The reg's don't really move much on their own, asking their officer for major movement orders.

That's a very high level concept of what's going on.

Corp and Army and Side really only make major strategic decisions.

[SiliconMagician]

Well Norb I have to say that at least at Brigade and Division level, it's as flawless a battle AI as I've seen! When the Yanks came up over the lip of the ridge line the battle drill was certainly impressive to watch. As fast I could click and bring my regiments into line the AI was matching me move for move. I was quite busy for the first 5 minutes or so as I brought my division into line and the AI was putting the pressure on fast and the battle developed quick.

It was a very interesting meeting engagement that's for sure!

You've got a fan with me that's for sure!

Also, if you say have a fast machine and don't mind the performance hit, is there a way in the config files to increase the number of cycles dedicated to AI thinking?

[Jack ONeill]

SM,

Dude, sounds to me like you had a good game. Violent, bloody, shit going wrong everywhere. No support, too focused on getting your men stuck in to notice no-one else is around to help, your troops streaming back in confusion. Welcome to Gettysburg!

Jack

Yes, This is the finest AI on the market. Sic Semper Fidelis!

[norb]

Also, if you say have a fast machine and don't mind the performance hit, is there a way in the config files to increase the number of cycles dedicated to AI thinking?

in your sowgb.ini file
[Debug]
aicount=40

raising this will make more think per frame, but that's not always a good thing, sometimes they can react too much