Hi All,

Can I just say I have lost all faith in being able to complete the Crazy Level. I have more or less spent an entire day trying to beat this level, however I cannot beat this level and seriously believe the AI is massively able to conjure armies out of thin air, divinely know my moves, or my deployments and double my deployments at nearly every turn.

Let me give a few examples.

Leaving a borderguard as continuing was not strategically viable (my forces four times the number of armies of any standing enemy army) to concentrate forces at the other end. After about six turns neither (while my campaign was still going on my other front), sides increasing the I decided to do a small 'probing' attack of 5 into one of the countries until then guarded by two just armies.

Amazingly, in the turn I ordered the attack, it deployed 6 armies there! No activity had been there for SIX turns! But at that moment the 'AI' decided it needed to reinforce just there. Coincedence you say, well maybe, however the next turn I attacked its neighbour with ten armies (four defending for SEVEN turns). Guess what, suddenly it was reinforced with 10 armies, completely breaking my attack.

After that, it must have stepped up its army production, as suddenly it started to pump in tens of armies at nearly every border and all was lost quickly.

OK, maybe it was just me, but in another game I added a significant number of armies in a region, but FORGOT to order the attack (I was distracted). Calling myself an idiot, I ordered the attck the next turn. Low and behold, the region I attaked was 'suddenly' heavily reinforced, thwarting my plans there. Even though that wasn't my demise in that gameand lost in the end, it certainly didn't help.

In other cases, when I surrounded an enemy, I decided to give it a crushing blow. I have found myself now in quite a few of these situations now, where I was unable to eliminate the pocket as it divinely avoided destruction by attacking the one country less well or undefended (due to a limited number of armies to deploy, but enough to have 80% encircalation). Not just once but time after time, as if it knew my orders.

Or, it suddenly was able to deploy 35 to 50 armies, just in the right place for 4 turns in a row after a carefully planned offensive on my part (AI combined that with seemingly brilliantly placed attacks etc.)

Anyway, enough rant, but seriously I know I am not Sun Tzu, but after playing close to about thirty Games of Crazy (with lots of practice) am I just seeing ghosts, been unlucky, just terrible or I have some reason to believe the AI is able to read my orders?

Regards

Check out the guide on youtube, George posted a challenge walkthrough there. Believe me it's not that hard, you just have to expand fast remembering that it likes neutrals more than your territories :)

A lot of issues are important for this level. The easiest one to remember is a good starting spot. I mean, you can start out nicely in the furthest reaches of Canada and try to capture it, but it basically meant you've already lost. Technically, you haven't, but you might as well get this easy factor out of the way. So restart. Starting in a bonus which you can get in 1 or 2 turns is pretty much the way to get a starting advantage. If you want, also restart until you don't see an opponent in the first X turns. You can start well all you want, but if one of the opponents is going to slow you down at the very beginning, you won't last against any of the others. Beyond that, as said, fast expanding. You will want to get the best bonuses as quickly as possible. I'd say those two factors are the most important ones out of your direct control (but controlled by restarting). The rest is up to your skills.

@GoedGeschoten (en toch mis ;) )

Some things to keep in mind:

- ALL the AIs are on the same team; they *are* ganging up on you.
- Because they are on the same team, what any of them can see, all of them can see; once one can see you, all of them know where you are.
- Because they are on the same team, they share card pieces; if all five of them conquer at least one territory that means the team gets five card pieces, or almost *two full cards* per turn.

|> Amazingly, in the turn I ordered the attack, it deployed 6 armies there! No activity had been there for SIX turns! But at that moment the 'AI' decided it needed to reinforce just there. Coincedence you say, well maybe, however the next turn I attacked its neighbour with ten armies (four defending for SEVEN turns). Guess what, suddenly it was reinforced with 10 armies, completely breaking my attack.

The first one was coincidence, the second actually perfectly logical; wouldn't you reinforce after you saw the enemy attack in a previous turn?

|> OK, maybe it was just me, but in another game I added a significant number of armies in a region, but FORGOT to order the attack (I was distracted). Calling myself an idiot, I ordered the attck the next turn. Low and behold, the region I attaked was 'suddenly' heavily reinforced, thwarting my plans there. Even though that wasn't my demise in that gameand lost in the end, it certainly didn't help.

Again, perfectly reasonable; if I have two armies and my enemy has a lot, if I can spare enough reinforcements to make a difference (increase my number to over 60% of the opposing force (in other words, the expected number killed by the imminent attack)), I will do so.

Something to keep in mind is that the AI does not try to guestimate where you'll put your reinforcements. Not at all. So, if you have 2 armies and it has 11 (10 available to attack), you *know* it will attack. So, increase to 7 or 8 to have a fair chance of repelling its attack. Or, increase to 15, wipe out his attacking armies (15 * 0.7 > 10), have about 9 left yourself and, after as many other orders as possible, order an attack. Normally, 14 vs 11 is a near-guaranteed defeat, but since you already know it'll attack, you also know it will in fact be a 8 vs 1 attack, which you should be able to win. ;)

RvW, you are thinking about the impossible level. The crazy level is 1v3v3.

hehe, took me a few tries too..

@Darkruler:
Oops, sorry, my bad!

Ehm well, some of the stuff still applies though; some of the AIs work together, so they share "visibility" and card pieces (three per turn = 1 whole card per turn). Also, the last paragraph about how the AI "thinks" is also still valid.

Crazy makes the 6 turns inactive followed by reinforcements every turn even more valid than Insane..
It likely had it's focus somewhere that was roughly eliminated that turn.. and that team was obviously winning...
best bet in that scenario is to watch the history to see the exact cause

Hi all,

Thanks for taking my rantings in good humour. Beat 'Crazy' today 'relatively' easily. Almost a straight run with only a small period where I was running around after an AI break through. But must say apparently I was lucky, there were about two 'an a half' moments I lucked out as the AI seemed to be unable to capture a territory (just shy of two or three armies to taking it).

If it had been taken, it could have turned out differently, however it never suddenly massively increased armies successively. Though still AI suspicously seemed to second guess some of my less obvious moves.


Darkruler2005 - I had been taking into account starting position, restarting if bonus area wasn't captured by turn 2. However always solid advice, thanks.

RvW - I understand and surmised that too, but can they 'transfer' on deployment? As well to illustrate my frustration on the AI knowing where to deploy to thwart my attack, it wasn't as if I only had only one or two possible targets. And when in a one in three/four/five chance of the IA guessing of my next target for three times in a row or knows which country you leave undefended in an encirclement (due to not having armies to defend all), you get suspicious (or very frustrated).

In my rush to write away my frustration I forgot to add that to my post.

However 'Zand erover', and never play that level again, it's too unbalanced, perhaps it would have been nice if at the start you as a player get a notification of where the AI starts in a general descrition, e.g. AI 2 starts in the northern hemisphere or AI 3 starts in the African Continent or Oceania etc. In that case you can restart immediately if you know you are in a hopeless situation.

'Enniewee'.

To al others whom have responded thank you for your advice and/or commiserations.

On to the next one.

Regards

I don't always beat the Crazy challenge, but when I do, I do it in one turn.