Can I play the Beta in Single Player?

[CzaD]

Frankly speaking, skirmish is not that bad when you look at it closely. However, I understand it might not be everyone’s cup of tea, coz skirmish is all about using strategy in the heat of battle. Crete mission actually resembles Skirmish very much and I would prefer Skirmish to be just like that with no flags, but with more varied fortifications.

Call it whatever you like: kamikaze or mass heroism, it doesn’t change the fact that AI charges actually resemble those of WW2, esp on Eastern front. When I watch Saving Private Ryan, The Thin Red Line or Enemy at the Gates, I actually see very similar scenes as in the game.

I can see an improvement in AI. They don’t just run from A to B. AI soldiers constantly move from cover to cover, they even retreat. In AS the AI tanks are tweaked quite well too. They don’t just drive in a straight line nor do they swarm together like it was in the missions. They frequently use roads, and stay back and patiently look for targets rather than rush to your base and get destroyed by AT nades.


Of course AI will never be perfect but when you actually turn on the fog of war and play on normal, it might surprise you a bit and you will have more fun exploring the map in search of AI units.

What’s more I don’t think you will find better AI in RTS. I would never be able to force myself play games like CoH. I used to be a huge Total War fan, but not anymore. All TW titles before Empire are brilliant, and Stainless Steel mod for Kingdoms is just awesome: it is actually capable of winning. But to my horror, in Empire they introduced a new FOW for your units and your units now can only see and react to enemy units who are right in front of them but they will absolutely disregard enemy units who shoot at them from flanks or rear. I hate this completely unrealistic feature so bad and I won’t even bother to check out the new Shogun 2 game. I’d rather play Skirmish. To see how atrocious AI path finding is in TW, you need to play a game in town. In Skirmish, this is where AI shines coz AI soldiers have lots of places to hide, but in TW I was able to defeat 2 full stack armies with just a handful of units with minimal losses and I could do it with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Last more thing, I just love Skirmish maps. They really look nice. They alone invite you to play on them. And I think they are well designed too , esp with tanks in mind. I was happy to see that AI tanks don’t get stuck somewhere on the map but can roam freely.

All in all, the skirmish is not that bad and if they will introduce scripted events and vary the AI attacks more to break the monotony of AI attacks, it could be quite enjoybale.