My view on the Stonry Road

[hristo]

Nation: Germany
Diff: VH/Fur

Its june 1941...Vichy France is there and i was supposed to launch Op. Barbarossa in May but the english made a landing in France with 15divs...so I must wait a while....

Some thought that comes to mind:

* If I play on normal/normal will the AI research a bit more historical....in 1941 the english can research Super-heavy tanks.......

* Belgium fielding over 40 divs....

* Attacking Norway seems impossible now...landed two mountan divs with art brigades and they had a eff of 1% against one Norwegian divs with 216%! hm....

This Mod is GREAT, but I still want the game to be quite historical especially when it comes to techs...can I change the dev. rate for the aI? or will it decrease if I lower the diff im playing at?

 

[hristo]

and it seems that the AI is cheating regarding bonus and such when attacking cross a river.... :-(

 

[unmerged(15146)]

Hi there Hristo.

From what I've seen as a Stony player (not a tester) the extra tech given to the allies is one of the major ways of increasing the challenge of HoI.

Even with the Stony improvments the player's "intelligence" is still way ahead of the AI in terms of strategic planning. For example you rarely if ever see the AI field true armoured spearhead stacks, and the AI doesn't play the game of attaching Engineers to all your non-AT or artillery armour, mech and motor divisions.

Norway is a tough nut to crack, but bear in mind those 2 Mtn-A divisions are fighting a fully dug-in defender whom they only outnumber 2-1. Even Mtn troops get an attack penalty although it's nowhere near as bad as normal units. Try using tactical bombing to break the org of the defender first.

I have found that the Stony Road UK don't build much armour anyway - they seem to churn out huge amouts of mech infantry instead. And remember that the AI doesn't use Armoured Spearhead thinking, it lumps it's armour in with infantry groups giving you a decisive advantage.

The river attack thing is something you can also use to your advantage......just research the bridge building type techs and the amphibious tank techs as the come up and use armoured/mech engineer units to cross rivers. Again the AI will use combined groups in river attacks with heavy losses for them.

The great thing about Stony is that it's level of challenge forces you to improve your gameplay and strategic thinking. And when you do make that major campaign-deciding breakthrough (like cutting off the Maginot line in France and driving a line all the way across from Nancy/Besancon to La Rochelle thus creating 3 pockets which you can starve out and smash at your leisure) you get a massive sense of achievement.

Thanks to Stony Road I have had countless hours of quality play from HoI - play I would not have had from the horrendously easy un-modified basic game.

Good luck !