Great stuff! That last concept of understanding the Victory conditions, and knowing when to throw everything at it is especially important for global. Though technically it should be the same for all games since Revised, even if a lot of people ignore VC wins and go for unconditional surrender on the basic boards. I think respecting the VC win will be important for the AI games. Basically if the HardAI sneaks in an “Honorable Victory” on you, then you should concede to the machine, respectfully, without flipping over the table ;) Hopefully HardAI can be made to gun a bit harder in such situations, and know when to throw everything at the win. Whether its by VC techinical wins, or just the normal capital capture exchange, something that a human will take a high risk on would be nice to emulate.
I guess also for G40, understanding things like the DoW is pretty critical too.
One other thing, more generally for massing or magnifying unit abilities by grouping them in large numbers. In other threads I’ve called these…
Magnified Builds or grouping units of the same type together: Basically the difference between having a couple bombers scattered here and there, and a dozen bombers all in one spot all focused on one target. It works for any unit type, whether fighters or tanks or artillery or infantry, or at sea with Carriers and the like. The AI actually seems to highlight this already, as they will often stack like that, with their Air, at least on attack.
I suppose the alternative would be appreciating something like…
Mixed Builds or grouping units of a different type together: knowing when its better to have mixed forces, and exploit a different kind of magnifier, when you have less total units in the expeditionary force. Like for example the mech + tank + planes combo, or dd + cv + transport combo and things of that sort. Building basically at different scales… where, if its a smaller force, then the mixed type works better, but as the force gets larger, then the power of having one unit magnified can be more potent. Not sure if I’m phrasing that correctly, but something about it seems somehow on target. Basically the Minimum mix necessary for a unit group to be effective on its own, vs how to take that mininum mix and then Max it out, by adding a stack of a particular unit to it.
I think what both of those ideas come down to is know when you can split forces up, and when its better to keep them together, and how to support either approach through building strategy. Either piecemeal or all at once. Along those lines, another concept related to production might be…
Saving IPCs for the heavy drop Knowing when _no_t to spend every last dime right now, but instead save up for a multi-round purchase. This has been a popular strategy for humans, especially with Nations like UK, or sometimes Germany (sea lion focus, or late game entry into the Naval arena). Usually this is when buying the same units little by little would put your newly purchased force at risk of destruction, so instead you save all your cash for a round, and then “drop them” all at once. Thinking here especially of UK Carriers with US fighters, or German transports etc. Another component of this type of thinking, would be “not showing your hand, until you’re ready.” USA often does this, if they want to keep the opponent guessing about which theater they will go after.
As Shadowhawk notes, its pretty hard to get the AI to appreciate all this stuff, but I still think its helpful to think about and to try and tease out general concepts, from the more map specific strategic stuff. And who knows, maybe someday the AI will be schooling all of us. I mean hell, just look what Google DeepMind is doing with those old Atari games! There are probably “Pong Tunnels”, or Centipede style “Mushroom Blobs” for A&A too, and we just haven’t gone through enough iterations to see them all yet hehe. Even now, looking at the way HardAI transports ground and pushes their stacks can be fascinating to observe.
