Some AoD balance consideration

[Emmanuel_M]

Hi

Here are a few considerations I made after
- conquering the world with Germany
- ending with 950 IC and tons of puppets
- keeping peace with SU till 1951
- ...

Combat
- Micromanaging your army into stack of 1 divisions with marshals stacking 9 "stacks of 1 divisions" is (too) efficient for training generals. Officer babysitting should be handled by time, military academies or an offmap mechanic. Not doing it wasn't much of a hindrance, though, even if AI excels at it
- On the contrary, AI sometimes gets stuck. Italian AI, especially
- IMHO artillery is too good. You starts with lots of it. You can produce more. It's versatile, cost efficient and packs tons of power. Due to the time cost of reasearch, it makes all other brigades but attached tanks obsolete as an attachment for infantry.
- nukes are immensely powerful. Nuking Washington, New York, London and Detroit was such a pleasure that the whole stuff balances out.
- CAS suck. To use them you have to pursue a new treeline while most nations start with a few Tacs that will get nothing out of it. Having each level of Tac giving one blueprint for equivalent CAS and CAS excelling a little more (say 2 points of ground attack more) at close air support would help quite much. Same for useless naval bombers who are obsoleteted by CAGs.
- I use only 5 types of national stacks :
** garrisons, with 1 shitty commander and 1 garrison
** Korpses of 3 inf with artillery brigades
** Waves 8 int with art brigades + 1 HQ with art brigade (for offense support)
** Panzer Gruppes of 3 armor with armor brigades (for encirclement)
** Spearheads of 9 panzers (for combat and encirclement) with the biggest armor brigade I can find
Did I miss a point ?

Offscreen management
- skipping some brigade types is too easy. Especially AT (more panzers are simpler to muster for AT duty), selfpropelled artillery (huge research cost for little gain), rockets (artillery does the same thing for less headaches), useless non combat brigades (cost you too much in concentrated firepower versus artillery or armor brigades)
- ministers are too hierachized. The ones giving you bonus IC, bonus manpower or bonus land speed obsolete everyone else
- annexing France is too much of a PITA. IMHO French Guyana (Cayenne) should carry no VP, so that conquering Africa allows annexion of France.
- naval warfare is about building Carriers, CVs, CAGs and more carriers. Reseraching a few aircombt doctrines helps. Just make sure you have some screens to avoid maluses. Realistic, but boring. BTW a 10 hour games is decided in the 10 seconds where your major fleet collides. No reason ever to put any research in BBs, BCs, or anything but carriers and destroyers. With some CLs for BU if you have unused spare research.
- the carrier strike on port mission means dire consequences for the home fleet.
- Big puppets (Hungary, Romania, nat spain, ...) are insanely good. At least for providing infantry reserves. I had 15 div of infantry at every province bordering SU (including south borders without a single german soldier inside it. Courtesy of Hungary, bulgaria, romania and the ottoman empire. This is not a problem, but players must remind that liberating nations is a key element of victory (far more than air superiority). On a related note, puppets building garrison divs are a godsend : an italian garrison is as good as a german one and saves so much german MP.
- Production AI doesn't understandsimple tick boxes like "prioritize reinforcements" or "prioritize upgrades". Not to mention the lacking "prioritize repairs" that would avoid needing micromanagement to counter the strategic bombing campaign of allies

 

[Simon1397]

Within the confines of the game these are truism, what you have done is to make the ‘best’ possible choices using your knowledge of the mechanics of the game and your understanding of history. It is not therefore surprising that you have won.

These are exploits, by and large, that the AI does not use, as examples, the AI script makes most majors and minors research artillery & anti-tank & anti-air; the USA researches all BB and CA techs as well as CV tech’s and builds BB all the way to model X; Germany researches, builds and then losses all it’s CAS aircraft in 1940 over the English Channel, then does it again in 1941 over Russia; the UK does not research Turbo-jets (!) so by 1945 any Western air war is already over; and I’ve rarely seen the AI use artillery bombardment nor nuclear attack.

I’d suggest, although I am happy to concede that it is not what players often wish to consider, that you play the game trying to make it a bit harder for yourself. Try not releasing puppets (as Germany SCA, UKR are the obvious ones that provide huge infantry and resource benefits); don’t have military controlled multiple allies (ITA, HUN, ROM, BUL, TUR, SPN) but choose one, I’d suggest Italy because, strategically it’s in a weak position and may be more of a liability than an asset; research pointless tech’s and then build them, do that and you’d have a lot less troops on the Eastern Front and the Bear would not be so supplicant.

• 
  
  In general with most players I want the developers to try and refine the actions of the AI (and to limit the exploits that players can have against the AI), in this respect the most obvious comments I can agree with are:
  Artillery should be toned down a bit;
  CAS needs a visibility/speed/defence modifier or an increase in surface_defence to save them from land based air attack values (to reflect small size, steep dive, armoured nature of CAS) but not from air interception;
  Under-used brigades (such as AT) should be a pre-requisite for armour and infantry technologies (as an example: want to research ’43 infantry then you need to have researched ‘42 logistics, ‘43 anti-tank guns, et cetera), I do accept that this could be another brake on the progress of minors so a balance perhaps needs to be struck and in addition it may cause problems for the AI research/build scheme;
  Revisions to the AI file for some Nations are overdue; changing the priorities for the UK so that it builds (historical) turbojet fighters makes a considerable difference to a late game attempt at Sealion;
  An alternative to the CV + CAG dominance would be welcome, the most obvious candidate is the development of naval surface to surface missiles and the deployment of cheap, numerous, long range guided missile cruisers from the start of the 1950’s;
  The AI has not got the hang of the production options and is also poor a rebuilding infrastructure (it should perhaps have a free modifier above a small default player-only modifier);
  A more conservative approach to tying up all MP in a production queue that will never be built and avoiding attacks on well defended stacks, both the French in Freiburg (sp) and the Soviets in Suwalki (sp) can expend all there reserve MP in fruitless attacks on superior forces;

Overall, in single player mode, I believe you need to consider the skill level of the AI in the choices you make but I am still waiting and working towards that ‘perfect’ game.