unfair starting positions

unfair starting positions

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Ok, I've RSOTFM, and also searched some of the archives, but it's 4:30
am and I'm tired.  I've played a number of games of standard Xconq the
past 2 days, typically with 11 players.  I haven't finished any games
because I keep getting bored.  Mainly this is due to the Unfair Starting
Positions.  For instance:

- I am plopped down next to lotsa independent cities.  I take 'em over
and make lotsa infantry.  I crush everything around me.  This is pretty
unfair to the AIs, they don't stand a chance when I'm given so many
cities as starting resources.  Boredom sets in when I've got too many
units to push around.

- Some AI gets that same initial benefit and I don't.  I get crushed.

- One time half of my cities were on one island, and half of my cities
on another, with a 1 hex strip of water separating them.  One AI with a
full set of concentrated cities quickly crushed me in the north.  A
second AI with a full set of concentrated cities crushed me a little
less quickly in the south.  I could have linked the two halves with a
transport, but I seriously doubt it would have mattered.

- One time I was on a continent, very far away from 2 enemies on the
same continent, and very far by water from anything else.  The 2 enemies
consolidated into 1 enemy before I could get there.  I got a toehold on
an independent city he hadn't conquered yet, but he showed up with a
gazillion units.

- One time I had a large ocean to the west of my starting locations, and
no coastal cities whatsoever.  I didn't play that game out, but I'm
thinking that an enemy could make unimpeded landings on that flank, I'd
never be able to defend navally against them.  There is of course air
power, but the situation seems really dumb.

I'm realizing this is very unlike the Civ drill, where you actually
build your own empire and can vouch for its quality to some degree.
So... is standard Xconq a representative sample of starting position
problems?  Or has some other game package solved these issues?
Regardless, what are people's thoughts about these issues?


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

Taking risk where others will not.

Re: unfair starting positions

[Stan Shebs]

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

>Ok, I've RSOTFM, and also searched some of the archives, but it's 4:30
>am and I'm tired.  I've played a number of games of standard Xconq the
>past 2 days, typically with 11 players.  I haven't finished any games
>because I keep getting bored.  Mainly this is due to the Unfair Starting
>Positions.  For instance:
>
>- I am plopped down next to lotsa independent cities.  I take 'em over
>and make lotsa infantry.  I crush everything around me.  This is pretty
>unfair to the AIs, they don't stand a chance when I'm given so many
>cities as starting resources.  Boredom sets in when I've got too many
>units to push around.
>
>- Some AI gets that same initial benefit and I don't.  I get crushed.
>
Play with -v, you'll see that everybody gets the same initial cities nearby.
This was motivated by early playtesting, where some players started out
isolated and others started out on a continent with many cities; one could
get a long way into a game before discovering that the starting positions
were so unfair that the isolated person had no chance of winning.

As usual, the number of independent cities in your "country" is a game
parameter; try adjusting it to see what happens.

>
>- One time half of my cities were on one island, and half of my cities
>on another, with a 1 hex strip of water separating them.  One AI with a
>full set of concentrated cities quickly crushed me in the north.  A
>second AI with a full set of concentrated cities crushed me a little
>less quickly in the south.  I could have linked the two halves with a
>transport, but I seriously doubt it would have mattered.
>
So it ain't perfect. :-)

>
>- One time I was on a continent, very far away from 2 enemies on the
>same continent, and very far by water from anything else.  The 2 enemies
>consolidated into 1 enemy before I could get there.  I got a toehold on
>an independent city he hadn't conquered yet, but he showed up with a
>gazillion units.
>
You're losing to an AI!? One that's widely acknowledged to be completely
inferior?? I wouldn't admit that to anybody...

>
>- One time I had a large ocean to the west of my starting locations, and
>no coastal cities whatsoever.  I didn't play that game out, but I'm
>thinking that an enemy could make unimpeded landings on that flank, I'd
>never be able to defend navally against them.  There is of course air
>power, but the situation seems really dumb.
>
A string of bases can be used as a sort of "canal". Not an intentional 
feature
of the original design, but very convenient.

>
>I'm realizing this is very unlike the Civ drill, where you actually
>build your own empire and can vouch for its quality to some degree.
>So... is standard Xconq a representative sample of starting position
>problems?  Or has some other game package solved these issues?
>Regardless, what are people's thoughts about these issues?
>
The current standard game was arrived at by intensive (read: 
grade-destroying :-) )
playtesting in 1987-88. Xconq was originally a clone of WB's empire adapted
for multiplayer, but human-on-human play quickly showed lamenesses of 
Bright's
rules that weren't obvious if you only played against an AI.  So a lot of
changes were just attempts to fix the weaknesses. There is certainly lots of
room for experimentation, although interestingly there has not been that 
much
tinkering with the standard game; people tend to either play the game 
unmodified
or write totally new game designs.


Stan

RE: unfair starting positions

[Brandon J. Van Every]

> >- One time I was on a continent, very far away from 2 enemies on the
> >same continent, and very far by water from anything else.
> The 2 enemies
> >consolidated into 1 enemy before I could get there.  I got a
> toehold on
> >an independent city he hadn't conquered yet, but he showed up with a
> >gazillion units.
> >
> You're losing to an AI!? One that's widely acknowledged to be
> completely inferior?? I wouldn't admit that to anybody...

I didn't see the entire extent of his empire before I quit, but it
looked like he had probably 3 times as many cities as I did, all very
compacted together.  To bring my forces to him was a very long
logistical train.  It's trivial for him to crush anything local to him.
Seems all I can do is scratch at him and he will inevitably repair
himself.  I suppose I could have tried leading him around by his nose,
offering bait in one place and then attacking somewhere else.  Even then
I am not sure, I think it might last about as long as the 1st few city
takes.  I suppose I will try again when / if the situation occurs, but I
expect this kind of slog to be rather dull.

One limiting factor of standard Xconq is it appears to be a game of
attrition.  There's no way to kill units that doesn't also cause your
own units to get killed in retalliation to some degree.  I suppose I
could build bombers galore, and fighters aplenty to suppress his
fighters.  But fighter-fighter is attrition, and only 1 fighter has to
get through to take out a bomber.  If the AI builds any sane number of
fighters, I don't see that attrition will be escaped.  Possibly it
doesn't; I suppose I'll see.

I think my ability to beat the AI is not nearly so much of an issue as
my ability to stay awake doing it.

Terrain advantages / disadvantages would allow for more tactics.  I see
that there are hooks for that, but they aren't used in standard Xconq.
A very typical Civ strategy, for instance, is to leave your crappy
Warrior unit fortified on a mountain top.  When people try to kill it,
they may die themselves, and if they don't they'll surely suffer
grievous harm.  Thus even a worthless unit can deny enemy movement if in
the right terrain.  I think of Civ as a rather "tactics lite" game;
Xconq is even lighter still.

> A string of bases can be used as a sort of "canal". Not an
> intentional feature
> of the original design, but very convenient.

Oh god.  I would call moving ships from base to base over land a bug.


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

Taking risk where others will not.

Re: unfair starting positions

[Stan Shebs]

Brandon J. Van Every wrote:

> [...]
>
>
>I didn't see the entire extent of his empire before I quit, but it
>looked like he had probably 3 times as many cities as I did, all very
>compacted together.  To bring my forces to him was a very long
>logistical train.  It's trivial for him to crush anything local to him.
>Seems all I can do is scratch at him and he will inevitably repair
>himself.  I suppose I could have tried leading him around by his nose,
>offering bait in one place and then attacking somewhere else.  Even then
>I am not sure, I think it might last about as long as the 1st few city
>takes.  I suppose I will try again when / if the situation occurs, but I
>expect this kind of slog to be rather dull.
>
Quake III it ain't, but it isn't trying to be. :-) You were probably well
on your way to being crushed by the AI, and only quitting saved you from 
total
humiliation! Every player, human and AI, starts out with the same stuff 
(unless
you ask for a handicap), so if you lose to an AI, it's due to lack of skill.
I'm not trying to be insulting; the right strategy is not always obvious. In
your situation, you would have to build up a substantial invasion force, get
it to the enemy without having it be detected, and blitzkrieg the country
before the AI can react and throw you out. Even though Xconq is not a
real-time game, I think other oldtimers here will attest to the nailbiting
involved in getting a half-dozen full troop transports safely into a heavily
patrolled landing site!

>
>One limiting factor of standard Xconq is it appears to be a game of
>attrition.  There's no way to kill units that doesn't also cause your
>own units to get killed in retalliation to some degree.  I suppose I
>could build bombers galore, and fighters aplenty to suppress his
>fighters.  But fighter-fighter is attrition, and only 1 fighter has to
>get through to take out a bomber.  If the AI builds any sane number of
>fighters, I don't see that attrition will be escaped.  Possibly it
>doesn't; I suppose I'll see.
>
I think that's fundamental to the original "empire" game.  Armor speeds 
things up
considerably, and grouping cities into countries means less 
micromanagement of
production lines than in the original WB empire, but if you didn't like 
WB empire
and its descendents, the Xconq standard game isn't going to be much more 
likeable.
BTW, the "old-empire" module is as exact a copy of original empire rules 
as Xconq
can implement; try it to compare how the original design works.

>
>Terrain advantages / disadvantages would allow for more tactics.  I see
>that there are hooks for that, but they aren't used in standard Xconq.
>A very typical Civ strategy, for instance, is to leave your crappy
>Warrior unit fortified on a mountain top.  When people try to kill it,
>they may die themselves, and if they don't they'll surely suffer
>grievous harm.  Thus even a worthless unit can deny enemy movement if in
>the right terrain.  I think of Civ as a rather "tactics lite" game;
>Xconq is even lighter still.
>
You must not have had a game where you're hosed because your armor can't
pass through a forest or mountain barrier, or where the one road through is
closely guarded. Team play on a LAN is amusing then, because everybody can
hear the string of profanities off in the distance, although that's nothing
compared with the blue streak inspired by the sinking of a full troop
transport!

>
>>A string of bases can be used as a sort of "canal". Not an
>>intentional feature
>>of the original design, but very convenient.
>>
>
>Oh god.  I would call moving ships from base to base over land a bug.
>
My reaction too originally, and it's controlled by parameters now. But in
practice it's a slick and simple solution to a set of tough geometry
problems, and the string of bases frequently becomes a much-fought-over
strategic objective, which gives exactly the right "feel" to the game.

Stan

RE: unfair starting positions

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Stan Shebs
>
> Quake III it ain't, but it isn't trying to be. :-) You were
> probably well
> on your way to being crushed by the AI, and only quitting
> saved you from
> total
> humiliation! Every player, human and AI, starts out with the
> same stuff
> (unless
> you ask for a handicap), so if you lose to an AI, it's due to
> lack of skill.
> I'm not trying to be insulting; the right strategy is not
> always obvious.

Last night I played standard Xconq all the way through, just to say I
had done it.  It was a tedious cakewalk.  The 3 hour endgame of bombing
the remnants of the last 2 guys into oblivion was particularly tiresome,
the inevitable outcome was known long before.

In a sense you were right about "lack of skill," I didn't understand the
counterintuitive combat system.  In Xconq units don't really defend,
it's mostly a "first strike" game.  You're better off having your units
*outside* the city you've taken over.  Putting a pile of infantry into a
city doesn't defend it like in other games.  It's just a way to throw
your production away.

I didn't even get a particularly good start this game.  I got an island
with 6 cities on it.  One of the AIs got a rather large continental area
about 20 hexes to the west of me, i.e. out of fighter range.  That AI
had every single city on the continent when I got there.  But,
continuous transport dumps made short work of him.  I'd estimate this
AI's initial resource advantage as 4:1.  But it couldn't defend itself
against local city attacks once I understood the "stay outside" rule.

The Easternmost AI had an island fused to the edge of the board with an
internal lake.  I think it may have been given no ocean-facing ports.
He did have a few ports on a lake.  The other possibility is that the
South AI may have bombed what few ports he had into oblivion, while I
was chewing up that western continent.  It may have been quite a battle,
maybe I was left alone because of their lockhorning.  On the other hand,
the South AI turned out to be an island of only 8 cities, and I wiped it
out easily when I got around to it.

> Even though Xconq is not a
> real-time game, I think other oldtimers here will attest to
> the nailbiting
> involved in getting a half-dozen full troop transports safely
> into a heavily patrolled landing site!

I did lose 1 or 2 transports to an enemy on the Southwest continent who
had good air power when I first encountered him.  I was moving somwhat
brazenly, just trying to get the transports in there and not sneak
around.  I could do that because although he had good air power, I had
far superior air power.  An entire northern continent chucking out
mostly fighters.  I correctly guesed that the AI does not understand
logistics, that it wouldn't know how pointless it is to have an
abundance of ground forces when there's nothing nearby to attack by
ground.  Ergo, that even if we were of comparable size, it wouldn't have
anything remotely resembling the air power that I was fielding, 'cuz it
was wasting its production on targets, er, ground units.

> >Terrain advantages / disadvantages would allow for more
> >tactics.
> >
> You must not have had a game where you're hosed because your
> armor can't
> pass through a forest or mountain barrier, or where the one
> road through is closely guarded.

I'm sure it matters more in multiplayer, but in single player against
AIs it's not a significant issue.  Overwhelming air power + a few ground
units can go anywhere + tear up any AI.  I'm surprised that the fighers
perform reasonably well in practice.  Reading the rules, they're not
supposed to be very good against ground units.  Indeed they're a bit
clunky for taking out infantry, but they seem to do ok against armor.


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

Taking risk where others will not.

Re: unfair starting positions

[Peter Garrone]

On Tue, Nov 11, 2003 at 04:46:05PM -0800, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> 
> Last night I played standard Xconq all the way through, just to say I
> had done it.  It was a tedious cakewalk.  The 3 hour endgame of bombing
> the remnants of the last 2 guys into oblivion was particularly tiresome,
> the inevitable outcome was known long before.

There is always the ai command. Turn your side over to the ai, get a
drink, and watch.

> 
> Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
> Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA
> 
> Taking risk where others will not.

And with a sig like that you're whining about the wimpy AI?

Just thought i would share my experience with the coral sea game.
All the Japanese transports attacked Buna instead of Port Moresby,
and I formed a wolf-pack with all my subs and sank them there, thus
winning the game.

The carrier borne dive bombers were totally useless, absolutely refusing
to attack any enemy ships due to the wrong sort of ammo.

A japanese carrier sailed alone into the middle of my fleet, and I just
about had to expend every possible hit-point sinking it.

Its sort of a pity because obviously someones gone to a lot of trouble
to set up a realistic game with the correct initial units and map and
everything,

The carriers in xconq are too invulnerable. They can sink anything on
their own, without aircraft. I reakon that the bigger the ship, the more
vulnerable they should be to subs, forcing the carriers to have
protection. Capital ships should just annihilate unaccompanied carriers. 

Just some rambling thoughts,
 Cheers,
  Peter G.

Re: unfair starting positions

[Jim Kingdon]

> The carriers in xconq are too invulnerable. They can sink anything on
> their own, without aircraft. I reakon that the bigger the ship, the more
> vulnerable they should be to subs, forcing the carriers to have
> protection. Capital ships should just annihilate unaccompanied carriers. 

Hmm.  The comment in ww2-div-pac.g says "submarines are deadly to
surface ships" but the actual tables don't seem to bear it out.
In the standard game, submarines seem more deadly to surface ships.

Try something like the following (if you aren't familiar with "diff",
this is just an instruction to add the two lines with "+" at the
location in the file lib/ww2-div-pac.g indicated by the surrounding
lines and the line numbers which are on the lines with "@@").  If it
works well for you, we should presumably check it in.

Index: ww2-div-pac.g
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/xconq/xconq/lib/ww2-div-pac.g,v
retrieving revision 1.5
diff -u -r1.5 ww2-div-pac.g
--- ww2-div-pac.g	11 Aug 2002 21:47:38 -0000	1.5
+++ ww2-div-pac.g	12 Nov 2003 15:19:10 -0000
@@ -301,6 +301,7 @@
   (carrier-types ground-types 50)
   (carrier-types ship-types 50)		;	This is
redundant with ship-types ship-types 50, but
   (carrier-types place-types 50)	 ;	we spell it out for
clarity.
+  (submarine ship-types 70)
   (place-types ground-types 50)
   (place-types ship-types 50)
   (place-types place-types 50)
@@ -316,6 +317,7 @@
   (carrier-types ground-types 1)
   (carrier-types ship-types 1)		;	This is redundant with
ship-types ship-types 1, but
   (carrier-types place-types 1)		;	we spell it
out for clarity.
+  (submarine ship-types 3)
   (place-types ground-types 1)
   (place-types ship-types 1)
   (place-types place-types 1)

Re: unfair starting positions

[Eric McDonald]

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Jim Kingdon wrote:

> Try something like the following (if you aren't familiar with "diff",
> this is just an instruction to add the two lines with "+" at the
> location in the file lib/ww2-div-pac.g indicated by the surrounding
> lines and the line numbers which are on the lines with "@@").  If it

I think Peter is pretty familar with 'diff'. I have been looking 
at about 68 kilo_, er I mean, kibibytes of his diff output the 
last few days. :-)

And I'm sure he can handle 'patch' too....

Eric

Re: unfair starting positions

[Eric McDonald]

On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Peter Garrone wrote:

> > the remnants of the last 2 guys into oblivion was particularly tiresome,
> > the inevitable outcome was known long before.
> 
> There is always the ai command. Turn your side over to the ai, get a
> drink, and watch.

Unfortunately, the AI is rather bad at launching coordinated, 
continuous assaults over any significant distance. <knowing smile> 
Perhaps better path-finding will be the first step in remedying 
this. </knowing smile>

Sometimes when I watch the AI's duke things out, the physicist in 
me starts thinking about statistical mechanics and 
thermodynamics....  Think long term diffusive processes between 
two bodies of roughly equal local pressure along their region of 
contact.

But I'm sure if you have enough to drink, things will start to 
seem entertaining. And if you really have enough to drink, you 
might even get to watch the last 100 turns of the endgame when you 
crawl back into your chair the next morning....

  Eric

Re: unfair starting positions

[Emmanuel Fritsch]

"Brandon J. Van Every" wrote :
> 
> I'm realizing this is very unlike the Civ drill, where you actually
> build your own empire and can vouch for its quality to some degree.
> So... is standard Xconq a representative sample of starting position
> problems?  Or has some other game package solved these issues?
> Regardless, what are people's thoughts about these issues?

A game was designed, twelve years ago, in my school, with quite 
good results on starting position. It was very close to standard 
game, but : 

-- capitals were much more powerful than cities, and you had 
several capitals at the beginning. 

-- you started with may other units, particularly troop 
   transport (both sea and air transport) 

-- the presence of ships in your starting unit set, and a reduce 
size for the starting countries leaded the program to place your 
capitals near the sea. 

-- A patch was added to forbidd any capital or independant town 
in contiguity with another capital or town. 

-- some units were added, some modified : 
    -- katalina, an airkraft which transport infantry, with a 
        wide range (30/40 hex).
    -- torpedo which sinks ships. 
    -- bomber were now just able to bomb land units, and with 
        lower efficacity, ships and transport the bomb but not 
        infantry. 
    -- cruiser was splitted into a cruiser and a battleship, 
        Battleships were better against land units (particularly 
        against coastal cities) but easily sunk by subs and very 
        expensive. 

That was a great game. 

Except the patch, all ideas given here are easy to implement 
back to Xconq. The first three points, plus katalina, give 
a much better balance in starting position. 


a+
  manu

Re: unfair starting positions

[Eric McDonald]

Hello Emmanual,

On Wed, 12 Nov 2003, Emmanuel Fritsch wrote:

> A game was designed, twelve years ago, in my school, with quite 
> good results on starting position. It was very close to standard 
> game, but : 

You might wish to try Bellum Aeternum. It has most of the features 
which you discuss below.

> -- capitals were much more powerful than cities, and you had 
> several capitals at the beginning. 

Bellum has Towns, Cities, Grand Citadels, Metropoles, and 
Capitols. Each has a different cost to build or upgrade to (not 
yet implemented), and the last three items on the list are 
quite powerful.

> -- you started with may other units, particularly troop 
>    transport (both sea and air transport) 

Bellum has an assortment of starting units. The composition of 
this assortment depends on what game variants you select.

> -- the presence of ships in your starting unit set, and a reduce 
> size for the starting countries leaded the program to place your 
> capitals near the sea. 

Ships are among the starting units in Bellum.
Each country's capital must be placed near the sea.

> -- A patch was added to forbidd any capital or independant town 
> in contiguity with another capital or town. 

In Bellum, the country radius is sufficiently large so that this 
is avoided.  Towns can still be adjacent to one another, but the 
chance of them belonging to opposing sides is very, very small.

> -- some units were added, some modified : 
>     -- katalina, an airkraft which transport infantry, with a 
>         wide range (30/40 hex).

Cargo Planes, in Bellum. Actually they just transport Paratroopers 
right now. Once I make the necessary modifications to the Xconq 
kernel, they will be able to carry other units, but those units 
will be forced to embark/disembark in facility units (i.e., Armor 
will not be able to jump out of Cargo Planes).

>     -- torpedo which sinks ships.

Submarines, Torpedo Boats, and Torpedo Bombers have a special 
advantage when attacking large ships.
 
>     -- bomber were now just able to bomb land units, and with 
>         lower efficacity, ships and transport the bomb but not 
>         infantry.

Bombers are able to hit both cities and land units, however they 
are less accurate against land units. (And Dive Bombers are more 
accurate than Bombers, though less deadly.)
 
>     -- cruiser was splitted into a cruiser and a battleship, 
>         Battleships were better against land units (particularly 
>         against coastal cities) but easily sunk by subs and very 
>         expensive. 

Bellum's family of warships (not including carriers or special 
ships) is Destroyer, Frigate, Cruiser, and Battleship. However, I 
am thinking about removing Cruiser and just making Frigate 
stronger. (Similarly, I am considering the removal of Light 
Carrier, and increasing the capacity of Escort Carrier.)

> That was a great game. 

I would very much appreciate it if you could try Bellum Aeternum 
sometime and give me some feedback, since you apparently have 
experience with a similar game.

> Except the patch, all ideas given here are easy to implement 
> back to Xconq.

Yes.

  Regards,
    Eric

Re: unfair starting positions

[Hans Ronne]

>On Thu, 13 Nov 2003, Peter Garrone wrote:
>
> > the remnants of the last 2 guys into oblivion was particularly tiresome,
> > the inevitable outcome was known long before.
>
> There is always the ai command. Turn your side over to the ai, get a
> drink, and watch.
>
>Unfortunately, the AI is rather bad at launching coordinated,
>continuous assaults over any significant distance. <knowing smile>
>Perhaps better path-finding will be the first step in remedying
>this. </knowing smile>
>
>Sometimes when I watch the AI's duke things out, the physicist in
>me starts thinking about statistical mechanics and
>thermodynamics....  Think long term diffusive processes between
>two bodies of roughly equal local pressure along their region of
>contact.

Interesting point. You know when I wrote the colonizer code, I experimented
with different ways for a side to spread out and grab territory. It turned
out that a simple Brownian motion was what worked best, so that is how the
colonizers move. But if we had a better path-finding, perhaps a better
colonizer strategy could also be found ;-).

Hans

Re: unfair starting positions

[Bruno Boettcher]

On Sun, Nov 09, 2003 at 05:02:50AM -0800, Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> - I am plopped down next to lotsa independent cities.  I take 'em over
> and make lotsa infantry.  I crush everything around me.  This is pretty
> unfair to the AIs, they don't stand a chance when I'm given so many
> cities as starting resources.  Boredom sets in when I've got too many
> units to push around.
2 points to add so late into the discussion:
- indeed the independent cities are distributed the same over the
players, but its the AI's fault for not taking their shares....
- getting bored of pushing units around? never tryed standing orders?

> - Some AI gets that same initial benefit and I don't.  I get crushed.
as pointed Stan out :D heh :D

> - One time half of my cities were on one island, and half of my cities
> on another, with a 1 hex strip of water separating them.  One AI with a
> full set of concentrated cities quickly crushed me in the north.  A
> second AI with a full set of concentrated cities crushed me a little
> less quickly in the south.  I could have linked the two halves with a
> transport, but I seriously doubt it would have mattered.
put some more, and there you go.....

> - One time I was on a continent, very far away from 2 enemies on the
> same continent, and very far by water from anything else.  The 2 enemies
> consolidated into 1 enemy before I could get there.  I got a toehold on
> an independent city he hadn't conquered yet, but he showed up with a
> gazillion units.
 as you noticed in the meantime, its quite easy to overtake an ai even
 in that situation: it can't handle multi-directional attacks, prepare
 the terrain with bombers/fighters/battleships and fall in with say 2-3
 full transports snuck up (and there again use standing orders
     please....) from the back for each group of cities....

> - One time I had a large ocean to the west of my starting locations, and
> no coastal cities whatsoever.  I didn't play that game out, but I'm
> thinking that an enemy could make unimpeded landings on that flank, I'd
> never be able to defend navally against them.  There is of course air
> power, but the situation seems really dumb.
yep please please :D i really want ot be able to build up roads and
extend bases to be cities even in the standard game !!!
(nah don't hit me on the head :O )

nah the ai is really dumb unfortunately, you see this in how the units
are put into formation for attack or defense (means AI has no plan about
    correct placing of units), or even their use.... i often see
carriers coming at me, empty of any aircraft....

-- 
ciao bboett
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bboett@adlp.org
http://inforezo.u-strasbg.fr/~bboett
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