Oh for goodness sake...

[Rexor]

I don't want to start a conversation about the benefits of PBEM vs AI, but Athena has sent PGT Beauregard with half of the CSA's assets into the middle of PA in 1861 and winter is setting in. I don't want a perfect AI opponent, because I know how impossible that is, but is it still too much to ask for an AI that doesn't do this?

AI aggressiveness is on LOWEST setting.

Just sayin. Convince me that suicide couldn't be programmed out of the AI.

[Longshanks]

Yeh, Athena can be one crazee ladee. There's a thread about ways to avoid this stuff somewhere in the not too distant past. One simple way is to open the other side and move the offending stack somewhere that makes more sense to you.

[Rexor]

Yeh, Athena can be one crazee ladee. There's a thread about ways to avoid this stuff somewhere in the not too distant past. One simple way is to open the other side and move the offending stack somewhere that makes more sense to you.

Hmmm, that's an interesting idea. I might try that, thanks.

[soloswolf]

Two things typically make Athena's moves look awful:

1) The tendency of many players to wait until everything is just so, and they have 'perfect' stacks before they move from their entrenchments.

2) Not giving her a fog of war bonus.

I don't know how you play, so I can't entirely speak to the first, but if Beauregard is in PA, you are either not in VA very deeply, or you have a wall of blue from Harper's Ferry to Alexandria/D.C. Try mixing it up.

To the second point, the best games I have played against the AI had a big bonus to her FoW vision. Give it a shot. You may even be able to change it in your current game so you don't lose all of your current progress.

Good luck finding what feels best for you, Rexor.

[Rexor]

Two things typically make Athena's moves look awful:

1) The tendency of many players to wait until everything is just so, and they have 'perfect' stacks before they move from their entrenchments.

2) Not giving her a fog of war bonus.

I don't know how you play, so I can't entirely speak to the first, but if Beauregard is in PA, you are either not in VA very deeply, or you have a wall of blue from Harper's Ferry to Alexandria/D.C. Try mixing it up.

To the second point, the best games I have played against the AI had a big bonus to her FoW vision. Give it a shot. You may even be able to change it in your current game so you don't lose all of your current progress.

Good luck finding what feels best for you, Rexor.

Right on both counts.

You pegged me spot on--I'm one of those players who likes all his ducks in a row before sending them out of the nest, and err on the side of caution. It's partly because, despite a long familiarity with the game, I'm still really a newbie for whom vast stretches of the game are still mysterious. But that's part of the fun.

I'll jack Athena's FoW bonus up a notch to medium and get scrappy in VA.

I'm Cormac, btw...