AI Combat Resolution Question

[nessin]

More like two questions actually.

1) I keep thinking I'd love to play this game PBEM, or AACW even though I absolutely suck at both even against the AI, and while I'm relatively sure I'll never actually do it, I thought I might really give a full campaign game a shot in case I ever actually do (typically I play the 1915 or 1917 scenario whenever I break out WW1).

In light of that, I was looking through the forums just to see if I could find out whether most people play Army-by-Army or WEGO PBEM and I stumbled across a post that implied AI Control was activated for all PBEM games, is that true or was I mis-reading it?

2) Assuming 1 is true, how does setting the Passive/Defensive/Aggressive stances really affect the AI? Is it simply a factor in how quickly they decide to retreat, do they spend or conserve more artillery rounds per stance, so on and so forth...?

[calvinus]

More like two questions actually.

1) I keep thinking I'd love to play this game PBEM, or AACW even though I absolutely suck at both even against the AI, and while I'm relatively sure I'll never actually do it, I thought I might really give a full campaign game a shot in case I ever actually do (typically I play the 1915 or 1917 scenario whenever I break out WW1).

In light of that, I was looking through the forums just to see if I could find out whether most people play Army-by-Army or WEGO PBEM and I stumbled across a post that implied AI Control was activated for all PBEM games, is that true or was I mis-reading it?

In PBEM mode, AI works during all occurrence when the End Turn/Phase procedure is processed. This is because human player can only "watch" and cannot intervene in any manner. That means, for example, battles are resolved 100% by AI.

2) Assuming 1 is true, how does setting the Passive/Defensive/Aggressive stances really affect the AI? Is it simply a factor in how quickly they decide to retreat, do they spend or conserve more artillery rounds per stance, so on and so forth...?

The pdf PBEM manual installed by patch 1.08N teachs something. For battles, the Passive/Defensive/Aggressive attitude influnce the way AI gives a priority/importance to the area where combat takes place, so it affects mainly when to retreat, but most generally in cascade several other aspects, such as the "quality" of troops committed to battle, the amount of artilleries employed, etc. etc. The principle is Defensive -> Passive -> Aggressive, the most you move to Aggressive, the more importance you give to the areas where the stack combats.