First off: The combat calculation has nothing to do with AI. There are random factors and also you need to calculate in def vs off, reduced damages when low on HP, terrain bonuses, entrenchment bonuses and potential support you don't see if not online, eg. air support. We are already working on giving players better info on this.

Attacking an armored vehicle with injured infantry not equipped for the job and an air superiority fighter, the worst you could find next to a paper plane for ground pounding, attacking a probably entrenched armored unit, maybe in forest or such, made to kill exactly the type of unit thrown at it... sorry, but...

About the AI: Glad to hear you are experiencing some opposition out there. We always had AI in the game and for a reason. Just not sure why it didn't move the first days...

I HAVE A SUGGESTION, But I dont know where to post it, so as the supporters or game makers can read it. Sometimes i AM PLAYING WITH OR AGAINST PLAYERS WHO DO NOT SPEAK ENGLISH LIKE MYSELF. i THINK THAT IS THE BEAUTY OF THE GAME, AS A cANADIAN i CAN PLAY AGAINST AN iTALIAN, mEXICAN, AND SOMEONE IN PHILLIPINES. wHEN COMMUNICATING WITH THESE INDIVIDUALS IT IS SOMETIMES VERY DIFFICULT, THEY WILL SENT A MESSAGE TO ME IN A LANGUAGE i CANNOT UNDERSTAND, NOR DO i HAVE THE INCLINATION TO LEARN MORE LANGUAGES. So what I try to do is to "COPY" their text from their message then paste it on a seperate window with google translator; and conversely, I should be able to write some sentence to them, run it through Google translator to their language then copy and paste it as a message back to them. It sounds complicated, but when your speaking differant languages , it is better then not understanding each other at all. The problem, I would love the programers to fix is this, currently you cannot either COPY or PASTE to and from the message page or on a message thread within a game. If they could fix it so as you could COPY and PASTE, it would be an awesome improvement in my, ant I'm sure others, ability to communicate. Hey, if you guys are as good as I heard you are, why not just build a translator into the individual games message board so we can all communicate better.. THANK YOU SO MUCH... LUV THIS GAME

Hi Bubba,

thanks for the idea. will discuss it with the coders.

Yeah i found out that the AI is playing hardball the hardway. I sent 4 infantry (lvl 1 full health) and a lvl 1 full health CRV to attack greenland's nuuk from Canada. Nuuk had two lvl1 infantry. I lost all four, he was merely injured.

I recently attacked iceland from norway, conquered the city, was taking provinces, and had one last one to take, when all of a sudden iceland retook the city, and then retook 2 more provinces. 1 lone infantry (that i can tell) had been hiding in that province i hadn't entered yet, killed the infantry and crv i left in the city, and then went on a rampage through the countryside. My 3 remaining infantry managed to subdue them and i finally took the country but I have learned an important lesson.

I am not even going to mention how I tried to take malta with marines.. those poor soldiers.. it was like aliens 2.

Leave the AI countries alone.

Much better to attack player countries where you have a shot. The AI is never afk. The AI is bada$$. I don't get as many resources from AI cities.

My fervent hope now is my rookie allies in a coalition all go absent and the AI takes over for them. I am just waiting for the game when a player hasn't taken Israel and Israel ends up winning the round.

Reading this thread, i have been cracking up like no tomorrow, especially that rampaging icelandic soldier

interesting reports. I believe what you are actually experiencing is twofold:

1) the changes we made a few updates back to the overkill system from x3 to x7 - meaning you need a highly superior force to simply walk all over the defence, or you experience war the dirty and gritty way (its modified off vs modified def that is compared)

2) The AI finally doing some stuff - and no, it isn't nonstop on... it has a randomized activity schedule, following our presets (meaning for instance only X military sessions/day)

The AI is not new and definitely not Georgy Zhukov - but it will defend the Rodina

As Cyclone46 stated, I will see how it plays out, it IS a very different game now though. Fighting AI is like having a pitbull hump your leg. All you can really do is let him finish.

As for the overkill, highly superior force (HSF), as it goes... I totally get the reasoning, not challenging you on anything, BUT I just wanted to offer the POV that it can be a little hard to mount a HIGHLY superior force with stacking limits as they are. If the AI has 4 infantry for example, a stack of 10 units isn't going to be HIGHLY superior if 4 motor and 1 crv wasn't high enough to take out 2 motor (2 to 5: 4:10 ratio). IN GREENLAND! (double points for princess bride reference! ) as such, maybe a little tweaking might be needed? no? ok then.

So does the overkill/HSF work JUST for AI or for all battles? I mean if day 1 I attack my player neighbour with 1 CRV and 4 Motor, and he has 1 CRV and 2 motor in the city, am I going to get destroyed while only bruising him? If I need overkill to ensure that I don't lose even 80% of my force but still win, as opposed to just getting destroyed, I will have to say the pace of the game will slow significantly. It will take a month for Russia to take Estonia.

Do I understand it correctly?

It counts for every battle - we do not distinguish between AI or human player in our calculations.

As I wrote prior, it depends on levels, on defensive positions, on terrain, bunkers etc etc

But to make the point: in your example you would also not have had any overkill before the change. Just do the math for each unit and you will see.

I like the new AI, and keep those stacks of 15 Air Superiority Fighters grounded like you do. From the two games I am playing, The AI is crazy with those Trade Embargo's and your first clue to whats coming, one of the AI's is going to attack you. The next is that the AI keeps dragging me into wars eliminating itself as a buffer from another country. Base units from another country that you have MP with, the AI won't like that and attack you. The AI as it is working is perfect, random...yet predictable. I love to see the hyper expansion low game intelligence players try to expand with 1:1 battles, it takes 8-10 days before you can safely expand without getting a shock from the AI in the beginning. The only thing I would like to see is a diversity of insurgent troops now rather than expecting the motorized infantry standard. It would have made cleaning out the 20 province hive in Europe more interesting/challenging. I like how the AI has slowed the game down a bit, but not too much to make the game more strategic again (this isn't Clash Royale).

In the coming update we will be tuning the system a bit more into the range of player expectation vs game systems.
In a nutshell we will be lowering the minimum damage a unit can cause to 25% of base combat value thus allowing opponents to actually create an overkill scenario down the road in an ongoing fight.

Justification for this is that a minimum of unit cohesion and effectiveness is essentially provided until a units HP reaches zero, after which said unit ceases to function as a military unit (soldiers flee, surrender etc).
Eg. if a unit has a modified defensive value of 4 at full HP (100%) this will drop down to approximately 25% or 1.0 Def when reaching defeat (eg. 0.5 HP) any opposing stack of units will thus need to bring a total of at least 7 Attack to bear against this unit to wipe it off the earth in one go. If this overkill ratio cannot be reached the unit will still be clinging on until it's HP pool is totally depleted and it is finally eliminated (which may take longer...).

Hope that explains it...

Also we will be tuning down the AI from acting 3x a day to 2x a day in military matters - so this should reduce the stress caused by AI at least to the level that players can enjoy killing each other again

//G

If you can't add a translate button that does "translate" on the text field you show in messages, please change the properties from an un-editable text box to and editable one. This allows us to cut and paste the text of the message into a translate site. Some of the Russians like to play with us English speaking folk, probably because they have watched too many of the James Bond series. And the Brazilians are on our time zone so they play more too. They don't want to learn English, and I am too old to learn 2 more languages so please give us the cut and paste option ASAP, call of war couldn't handle this problem either.

Leaving the AI in it's "3" mode is better than "2" mode, because this isn't SimWar, it's CONFLICT of Nations. It forces the player base to be more proactive then reactive, and educates the player base. Joe Q Public joins a match sends all his forces to attack a Neighboring country and dies, then gets an email from you guys "hey start another game, remember a good defense helps you stay in longer.", he starts another game and lasts a little longer but is satisfied he played better, then joins another and another and so on. The tightening up of the games has produced longer and stronger games, the AI has eliminated 3 countries in 5 day games, its working. People go inactive in my games because they are down to 3 provinces one is 50% of started at day 17, another 92% at day 8. I think mechanics are fine, but from allies in the game only 1 has spoke that he hated it (out of 9).

Interesting - thanks for the feedback and support!

I love aggressive AI, i had to get kicked in the teeth in order to learn my mistake.

Playing as Germany, I took france before it could become active. The only way to describe it would be akin to describing British soldiers on the Somme Offensive: "they started young and inexperienced- but came out a battle hardened army"

Also, i did take something akin to 10,000 loses in the first day. Horrible figures, only just recovered really. Arty is a must if you're attacking AI: hit from range