Sometimes the commander will pass up isolated enemy bases (usually Hospital or Hotel) in favor of connected bases on the other side of the map. In my still ongoing game, I believe my team was in possession of West Farm and all three trenches, plus the airport (I don't remember if that was ordered by the commander or if I took personal initiative), meaning the hotel was completely cut off from the rest of the enemy's bases. The commander's attack choice was West Town. The enemy soldiers weren't attacking from the hotel, but it made a really long boundary that my soldiers would try to cover. In my opinion, our commander should have ordered an attack on the hotel to shorten our borders and thus free up those soldiers, and the enemy's commander should have ordered an attack on the airport to try to connect to the hotel and also shorten their borders. So I took a few soldiers and took the relatively unguarded hotel.

After our team captured the West Town (and maybe the East Town as well; that one changed hands a lot), there was a similar situation with the Hospital, which had a really long border to defend. The commander wanted us to move eastward though. Once again I took the initiative, and I led my team to capture the Hospital. The Hospital might have technically been connected to the rest of the enemy's bases thanks to its huge border, but leaving this one alone was a bit more foolish on the commander's part because the whole Town was currently in contention, and the Hospital was able to attack the West Town pretty hard. So I think our commander should have ordered us to attack it, both to protect the town and to shorten our border.



Now my present situation. As you can see, our commander wants us to attack the Warehouse from the East Town. Sometimes we do capture it for a little while, but then we lose it, and more often we lose the East Town. That's because the Suburbs are in the perfect place to launch an attack on the East Town, and they can also go south and hit the Warehouse whenever we manage to capture that. And the commander's choice after we get the Warehouse is the East Farm. Maybe the commander's goal by attacking the Warehouse is to divide the enemy's territory, but it isn't working too well. If that is the commander's plan, then I think the smarter followup would be to attack the suburbs, which would then be isolated. If we succeeded in taking the Suburbs, then even if we later lost the Warehouse, we'd be in a much better situation. But I think we should probably be attacking the Suburbs anyways; I've tried taking matters into my own hands, but even with eight soldiers following me the Suburbs are just too well defended for my skill level. The Suburbs present a great danger to the East Town, because the enemy can attack from the north and the east (and they did right after I took that picture, and we've lost the East Town). The suburbs also have a large border that takes up a decent number of troops, whereas taking the Warehouse just lengthens our borders even more and leaves the Warehouse vulnerable from the north and the south.

I guess to summarize, I think the AI commander should try harder to shorten its borders (in proportion to the amount of territory it controls, probably) when it picks an attack target. This would get the commander to take out isolated enemy bases and reconnect its own isolated bases, as well as simply freeing up more soldiers and avoiding bases which would be vulnerable from several sides. The decision about which base to attack should probably also have a bit of a random factor, to keep things from repeating in case it's just not working out.

Another example: in my next game I started with three territories, both sides of the Town and the Center Trench. So we were completely surrounded. The commander's orders were to attack the East Trench which would still leave us surrounded, whereas we could theoretically attack either the Hospital or the Suburbs which would give us an anchor territory on the boundary. Not that it would have mattered much, because we got slaughtered pretty quickly

Thanks, good suggestions there, I will keep these in mind when developing the commander further.