You Don’t Play TripleA for the AI

// May 28th, 2009 // Gaming

futurama_bender

I am a huge fan of the open source knock-off of the great game of Axis & Allies. I’m especially fond of the current “unstable” release that has the new 50th Anniversary rules as well as the ‘41 and ‘42 boards that go with them. I can probably say that I’ve played somewhere north of 50 games between the two AA50 boards and in about 80% of those games, I play all six players. You see, the AI in the game is absolutely absurd.

To the devs credit, the AI is clearly not high on the priority list. The focus of the game is to provide an network capable Axis & Allies experience so that you and your fellow AA geeks can rewrite history. I plan on finally trying the network capabilities this evening, but I’m fairly confident that in this area they have hit one out of the park. To further emphasize (or should I say de-emphasize) the AI issues, the devs even label the digital opponent bundled with the game as “Easy AI”. That being said, I’ve tried playing the game as one player with all of the others as AI opponents/allies and found the following truths to be self-evident.

Russia
Bye Bye Borscht, Hello Sushi

  • Germany – They’ll throw everything they can at you and your allies will watch.
  • Britain – They’ll take France, lose France, take France, lose France … rinse and repeat.
  • Italy – Are they in this game?
  • Japan – Everything you ever wanted to know about Chi-Ha’s from behind but were afraid to ask.
  • America – Lives in the enviable world where it can pretend it doesn’t have a left coast.

Germany
What if Adolf’s opponents were more inept than he was?

  • Russia – They’ll screw up eventually and Moscow will be yours
  • Britain – Parry, parry, parry, parry, parry, parry, THRUST!
  • Italy – Now you know how the Germans must have really felt.
  • Japan – Don’t daly or they’ll be building Playstations instead of Beemers in Moscow.
  • America – Do you hear that buzzing?

Britain
Restoring an empire has never been this easy.

  • Russia – They’ll do their part for a bit, but you’d better do yours.
  • Germany – All Quiet on the Western Front
  • Italy – You can play Nero with them. You decide their fate.
  • Japan – If conquering all of Europe is old hat, then put out the rising sun.
  • America – See, Monty was right. The bloody yanks are incompetent.

Italy
If only those damn Germans didn’t screw things up.

  • Russia – They can’t stop you in the south so long as the Germans keep the heat on.
  • Germany – If you want to relegate yourself to covering their ass, you’ll all win.
  • Britain – They can’t seem to keep Africa and their Asian territories can also be yours.
  • Japan – They do their part.
  • America – Don’t worry all those troops in Gibraltar are there on vacation.

Japan
All Your Base Are Belong to Us

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