Victory Points
Posted: Mon Dec 19, 2016 2:07 pm
by mcaryf
I have previously raised questions about the impact of awarding VP's to the AI. The final game statistics screen gives the grade of the AI generals including VP's that they have earned but this does not flow through to the final declaration of the player's victory or defeat status and is not included in the game db dump. Has anybody developed an effective method of using the AI's grade in evaluating a scenario's outcome? For example the event system has some options that can be triggered as a result of high or low grade scores has anybody experimented with these? Ideally I would like to subtract the AI's VP score from the player's own grade in my campaign scenarios and it would be rather clunky to suggest that the player would have to do some calculations to eliminate the casualties to see what the AI VP's were.
Regards
Mike
Re: Victory Points
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 12:43 am
by RebBugler
Since the AI doesn't see or recognize objectives then the objective points it does earn are totally by accident. I don't see how randomly earned objective points could be used to evaluate outcome, unless the scenario is scripted specifically with that intent in mind. And then if so scripted, the AI would essentially have to be 'turned off' to cluster on or toward objectives.
Maybe the 'Grades' events can help this effort, but they still rely on specific unit scripting.
Re: Victory Points
Posted: Tue Dec 20, 2016 11:46 am
by mcaryf
Hi Reb
I understand your point about the AI not being effective at holding onto objectives over a long period. I was looking for a way to give players a significant penalty if they let an AI force pass through a particular area. I can do this by activating objectives as way points if the AI reaches particular locations that award high VP totals to the AI for a relatively short duration occupancy but do not retain that potential value if recaptured. For example in my variant of QB my purpose for the French player is that they should prevent the Allied AI player from breaking through to threaten either Charleroi or Ligny. Thus effectively the French could be regarded as defending a line from Thyle to Grand Pierrepont running through Gemioncourt. I can give each of those places VP values for the French player to hold that are only triggered with long duration occupancy e.g. an hour or more interval but I think it would be cleaner from a player's perspective if they knew the AI would get a big score if AI troops effectively passed through those locations so the player would not always be penalized if they temporarily moved forces about the defensive line but would be if that movement when an objective was not held by the required troop number to earn VPs allowed an AI breakthrough. In another situation I might want to effectively give a player a penalty if they have not taken an objective within a particular time limit thus an objective might only become more valuable as a way point if AI troops were still in the vicinity and it would therefore be the AI that got that increased credit rather than the player.
Regards
Mike