Screen taken from the CSA AI side. Since the IA care about Richmond has been tweaked and NM balance reworked.
Missouri yet under CSA control
Defense of Tennessee: both Nashville and forts are yet under CSA AI control and guarded
Eastern Theater: Even if Richmond was lost, the CSA AI has tried to defend the Capital and the global repartition of its Armies is rather consistent
On the CSA AI front, the general behaviour of military AI is WAD. Some minor tweaking will be certainly needed here and there, but nothing important has surfaced for the 1861/1862 period. I begin to enter into the scrutiny of AI use of options where some work will be needed, as I’ve left for now things unchanged from the official AI.
Thansk to the betatest detailed reports, many minor bugs and glitches have been fixed, letting me more time to begin to cope with the 3 main fields:
– naval affairs
– USA AI
– 1863-1865 events.
1 and 3 will need about 1 full day work. The USA AI is estimated to 2 full days work. SO SVF 2.0 is very close of public release.
In one game, a player defeated CSA by July 62. He has taken Richmond. However, Southern AI is yet owning Nashville, New Orleans, large part of Missouri, Ft Donelson, etc. the CSA AI has much more VPs than USA.
The very low NM of Southern side has 2 causes:
– penalties to conscription was a bit high. It has been lowered in the last beta version.
– Richmond capture has caused a huge loss of NM . But the strategical situation is closer to the VP situation. even if Richmond capture must create a heavy blow on CSA morale, such an event in the current game situation would have not caused surrender. The Capital would have been moved.
The point stresses a missing linking between VPs and NM in AACW. sudden death by NM isn’t linked to overall strategic situation. if the Northern player chooses to concentrate heavily on Richmond, he will fire consequences way beyond any reality, by shattering CSA NM to the point CSA is doomed, even if Sudden death conditions aren’t met. When Richmond has fallen in 1865, war continued for a few more days, not much as the overall situation was desperate, but the point to be stresses is Confederates didn’t sued for peace at once, trying to the reverse to renew the fight elsewhere. If McClellan would have captured Richmond in 1862, would Confederates cease to fight?
What are the solutions? Imposing penalties to USA for not having captured key cities before the real dates, like New Orleans, would script Union strategy, a very poor decision as player would not be free to decide to follow an alternate path.
reducing Richmond value would be partially satisfying, but would create distortion as other key objectives would become as important than Richmond,that must be preserved in its first place by a large margin to respect history.
So, from now, the faction having higher VP count will get one NM by turn, as long as NM is under 120. It will force each side to chase after VPs, on all fronts and will attenuate in the long run effects of crippling defeats and capture of key objectives.
last, the CSA AI will get better fortification at Richmond. The current official AI doesn’t know to build depots and forts so only events may help. It’s the first cheat for AI in SVF 2.0.
Modder Corner 