I don't know if I understand the mechanics

[TMaynard7]

I just had a battle where the ai never stopped firing arty. There was more than 20 minutes of continuous artillery fire (the timer stopped), massive waves of infantry, and at the end I got the usual result of costing them over 2k gold (~16k casualties) to my maybe 700 (~5-6k casualties). I don't understand if I'm missing a key concept of the game, but the ai has massive and elaborate trenches, often seemingly endless supply, and I don't think its unreasonable to say that they're losing a minimum of 4k per turn because they often attack more than once. I'm struggling to go on the offensive, and even when I can with a massive build up and supply depots, I can't sustain more than one good major attack because by the next turn the ai seems to be able to afford losing another 4 or 5k in gold. I know ai are usually given some cheats to make them a little more competitive, but is this intentional? Am I missing something? Is it a bug? Does anyone know? I mean, I'm enjoying the game, and I love that this makes it brutal, but unless I'm missing something this is a little excessive, no?

[HamHamJ]

The 30 unit cap means that you can cram in more divisions, build supply depots, and do various other things that increase your supply, but the amount you spend on troops remains the same. It's really not that hard to reach a point where the timer will run out long before your supply does even with 4 artillery going off on cool down.

[TMaynard7]

Originally posted by HamHamJ:

The 30 unit cap means that you can cram in more divisions, build supply depots, and do various other things that increase your supply, but the amount you spend on troops remains the same. It's really not that hard to reach a point where the timer will run out long before your supply does even with 4 artillery going off on cool down.

Okay, but that's still not really explaining it, right? I have supply depots, relatively centralized attacks, but the enemy is able to sustain +16k casualties multiple times, multiple turns, whereas I'm struggling to reasonably sustain maybe 5-6k in a bad battle. I have research into getting extra gold every turn. The ai obviously does have limits, I've had a glitch a couple times where the game just doesn't end a round, and they're still sending troops/barrages even 30 or 40 minutes in. Granted, there is a point where the trenches are empty (minus the command trench) but what I just don't understand is if gold and supplies are kind of a nonissue for the AI or if theres a key component to the game that I'm fundamentally not getting. I know the game is buggy, I'm just curious if this is an "as intended" ai or if theres some kind of supply/money thing that needs to be patched.

[HamHamJ]

I will say, I have gone into debt a couple of times now and it doesn't seem to actually do anything. I got an event that cost like 10 National Will. I'm not sure if going into multiple negative thousands would do more than just a couple hundred did.

[RainbowPig]

Hmm. The debt stops you buying buildings, but it doesn't stop troop replenishment. At least on elite difficulty this is some small consolation that every little upgrade i can edge in makes some difference. Unless the a.i. ignores debt lol.

[TMaynard7]

Originally posted by HamHamJ:

I will say, I have gone into debt a couple of times now and it doesn't seem to actually do anything. I got an event that cost like 10 National Will. I'm not sure if going into multiple negative thousands would do more than just a couple hundred did.

Yeah, I went into debt at one point I think, and it wasn't the biggest deal. Maybe the ai is just estimating that with high national spirit, its more advantageous to try onslaught attacks? I will say, after a few hours and one solid breakthrough, I'm about 2 tiles away from cutting off Calais from the rest of the map and the ai really doesn't seems to be reacting way more reasonably now that they're just above 500 national spirit.

[TMaynard7]

Originally posted by RainbowPig:

Hmm. The debt stops you buying buildings, but it doesn't stop troop replenishment. At least on elite difficulty this is some small consolation that every little upgrade i can edge in makes some difference. Unless the a.i. ignores debt lol.

So thats what I'm thinking happens. Its not that like they're cheating per se, I think they just don't have a negative modifier when going into debt. So they just max out supply as much as they can and do whatever with the rest. So if they get what I'm going to call the "recovery event" and then additional funds from the start of the turn then it appears like they have far more supply than they should compared to the player, when in reality the player could have the same advantages so long as they're willing to take the national spirit hit. Of course this a bit of speculation on my part, but that does seem to behaviorally make sense.