AW thread

Great game otherwise, what should I expect with the sequel?

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strategywiki.org/wiki/Advance_Wars:_Days_of_Ruin/Regional_Differences
archive.is/OwpGr
warsworldnews.com/wp/hacks/andys-adventure-aw2-by-mark999/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

More of the same but better.

Better but way easier as far as I remember.

The sequel improves on the original in most ways, although the hard campaign isn't as difficult as the original was, which is a bit of a disappointment. AC Rivals and AC Kanbei's error can still go eat a dick, however. I don't miss them in the slightest.

ill just leave this here

Nice. Anyone got that chart that says what person you are depending on what CO you used?

I don't wanna remember that. I used the map design glitch to get out of it. I was on it for a week and just wanted to move on. Kanbei's Error wasn't that hard for me.

>Cowboy hat removed in localization

the ones on the right look better

Not trying to justify it or anything, but I can't help but feel pretty apathetic with regards to these changes. Compared to what we have now for "localizations", these feel tame and moderate in comparison. I may just be jaded. I definitely would've preferred the cowboy hat, though.

You also forgot to mention that Orange Star originally used to be Red Star in the japanese version, but was changed to Orange Star for US audiences due to communism.

I don't understand. The rest you could at least make a paper thin excuse for "cultural differences", but why remove what is already western or at least translates fine?

They do honestly. They make more sense in a modern military setting, as fun as the Santa Hat is. Cowboy hat should have stayed though.

Bueno

Friendly reminder this was made by an Adder-fag

Waifufaggotry should be enough reason for you not to bother playing this game but

Awakening and Fates are shit. Echoes is only good because its really good as a remake, respecting the old game.

Oh I can

More of the same but the AI doesn't have an APC-murdering fetish

It's been awhile since I last played it so I can't go full autismo, but the issues I remember distinctly were:
That was a lot longer than I intended, and didn't even cover everything, but that's the gist of it.

These as well. but
In it's defense, FE has always had anime-ish characters. They just weren't as intrusive, and you only notice here because of the inflated amount of supports.

Who is this Adder-fag?

I guess you meant they're the cheapest in the game but okay, there's always Hachi
I don't want Nu-tendo and Unintelligent Systems to develop another one. Unless it's completely different and made by another company, I'm glad the series is dead. Customized fanmakes are utter cancer filled with original the characters anyhow.

I guess whoever was working at NoA told the developers that the American audience was more into nitty gritty action and had the designs changed to fit the military themes better. Honestly though? I think that the more "standard" versions of the characters feel much more iconic than "lol arr Im a pirate". The only ones I don't really understand are Sonya's palette swap and loss of glasses and Nell's changed uniform, but the latter could be interpreted as IS trying to make it less lewd.

I believe their reasoning was that Grit is commanding Blue Moon, a Not Russians faction. Each of their units don a Soviet Pilotka hat, so even if he was still from Not America it'd make little sense for him to wear an outfit not commissioned by the Not USSR. Funny thing is that Olaf still has a white beard in the Jap version of all games.

So glad someone saved my OC.
The thing is that, today, localizing means "putting unnecessary political discourse and memes and flat out removing features" rather than "changing a Romance of the Three Kingdoms reference to a Tolkien one". Plus you got to keep in mind that back then the Western audiences were at least much more indifferent towards these changes because of how insular the Eastern market was. Nowadays people actually do give a shit about keeping the games intact AND have the ability to immediately double check if things were changed for the worst.
See, they had a good idea in AWDS with the alternate costumes and palettes, but they squandered it when it would have been best used.

Don't tempt the fucking Monkey's Paw you monster

I actually used to main Sensei.

Nice
Special thanks go to the drawfag who made this for me, you're the real MVP

But I agreed with this, I was talking about Black Hole Rising.
Yeah I guess it makes more sense, I just like it more for style.

The weird part about this is that the altered versions actually released first because AW1 was pushed back in Japan for nearly 3 years. Sources say it was 9/11 that did it but I don't believe that.

Has anyone here tried the older titles? (Famicom, game boy wars, etc.)

They all suck. The most playable one of the bunch is Super, but you're really not missing anything besides a handful of cutesy aesthetic things.

That's a shame, I might still check them out out of curiosity though.
Was Battalion Wars good at least?

Battalion Wars is an entirely different genre of game and it sucks to boot.

They seem to have a weird obsession with making arbitrary regional changes to AW games.
strategywiki.org/wiki/Advance_Wars:_Days_of_Ruin/Regional_Differences

archive.is/OwpGr
You guys hear about this shit?

O-okay

Different continent from AW1, pal.

Nell's sleeves look more "professional". Still no idea why Sonya lost her glasses.

The more they change
The more they charge

It is a love it or hate it kind of game. I couldn't stand it personally.

I like the changes for once. These actually make sense. Only ones I take issue with were the removal of the cowboy hat and the removal of glasses. Not sure why those bits in particular had to go.

I don't understand, it seems to take place in the same place as the first one.

Nope. I don't remember exactly but AW1 took place in Macroland meanwhile AW2 takes place in a different continent a couple years later. Same with AW:DS, they just look a bit similar. I think you can get the name for it in the intro if you actually read the newspapers and the flashing text.

An issue with the Japanese Advance Wars version was supposed to come out either on the same day for NA (Sep 10th 2001) or October 10th but 9/11 happened so they Japanese release didn't happen until 2004. So could NA be the original version or the Japanese version?

The biggest difference with the changes is the NA version characters look more serious in design even though AW is basically a light-hearted take on war. The NA Nell looks like a serious instructor while the JP version uniform just looks off, like is she going to an causal office party after the battle is over or something?
Grit's cowboy hat removal is strange because with the outfit and revolver he looks like a cowboy but his skill set is long range weapons. Seems surprising they didn't give a rifle with a big scope.

They made the characters more fun and less warlike because everyone was feeling a little down on war at the time? I can see it.

Nope but from what I saw, Super Famicom Wars has one of the weirdest, most boring ideas in all of Nintendo Wars' history, namely the fact that you can't build troops outside of your starting bases and all the captured ones are just for refilling your health. Also you have simultaneous counters, so attacking is pretty much useless and it's all about either overpowering the enemy or simply positioning your troops in a way that the CPU can't get around without attacking.

And Hetler, of course. Can't forget about the Not Fuhrer.

Some people adore it because it's babby's first RTS with no RTS features but still really good at what it does, but some other hate it because it's got nothing to do with AW and characters talk constantly throughout it.

lol
Also to be honest I've done worse things in this game and other ones that would have totally warranted at least 87 stabs or more, like abusing Sensei's COP to swarm the field with infantry while my opponent grew paranoid of moving in FoW and getting trapped by a 9hp unit constantly.

Three AW games, three different continents.

...

bump

The man couldn't be stopped.
I still don't really understand why they change continents, but I guess it's better to not think about it.

To clarify, I was talking about AW1 Nell.

They're designed for console so they take long, like hours to complete as opposed to 5-30 minutes like AW.

They're also bareboens in comparison to other Turn Based Tactical Strategy games like Front Mission.

Grit's only counter is characters like Sensei, Colin or Hachi, since they can just field more units than what Grit can possibly destroy in one turn. And trust me, mech spam with the right CO really turns his day sour, I've done it both in local multi and solo. His Rockets are the only ones in the whole game to be any useful, why did IS think that unit was any good in the first place?
And the only reason why they change continents is to make sure that for one you don't have to play on the same maps as in the previous game and on the other hand it's a convenient excuse to make sure not every CO is available from the start. I.E. in AWDS Max is the only Orange Star CO returning in the beginning of the story mode because the other ones are busy rebuilding Macro Land from AW2.
Alright, that's completely different then. To clarify, in AW2 at least (but I suspect AW1 is just the same engine with less dolling up), defense works completely different from offense: offensive bonuses are percentage based, while defensive bonuses are additive. Because of this, a CO like Kanbei is fucking broken in the right scenario, because he simply cannot be damaged if you allow him to sit on highly defendable chokes. Campaign Sturm and Versus Sturm are two completely different characters and the latter would technically win out against the former, but the problem is that his CO power is such a gimped version of his campaign counterpart and his damage is so minimal that it's just not even worth using him for challenge runs, also his defence boost is just 20% instead of matching the 30% offense boost of the campaign version. Nell on the other hand I believe doesn't necessarily get that much higher luck during her CO power in AW1, as much as negate the effects of bad luck.

Oh yeah also the tactic in the vid also works for Lash. Part of why Sonja is so much higher in AWDS' tiers is because she can actually negate these defensive bonuses and she comes in handy especially on 2 v 2 maps.

I actually played all the tutorials before realising I only had to play the last one to play the campaign.

Tell me a CO superior to Flak.
Pro tip: you can't.

I guess they made it a way for experienced players to avoid having to redo the tutorial missions and still introduce the Advisor character.
Also a quick suggestion before you lose your temper trying to S rank missions, the game expects you to play extremely conservatively, just like the AI would do, trying to keep your units alive at all costs and taking no unnecessary risk as well as taking your time in finishing the mission by routing the enemy.
Don't.
HQ captures are four out of five times better than hunting down every single enemy unit, you do not need to keep everyone alive, just as many as 3/4s of your units, and use APCs and Landers as bait aggressively as much as possible (the game even flat out tells you the AI is retarded and will go for them).

He's a fucking wild card because no one expects you to pick him up and play seriously. I've had times where his SCOP alone would make 2 v 2 matches one-sided curbstomp battles.

I only played the first AW and Days of ruin, but AFAICT, they just progressively stuffed everything with OP shenanigans until Days of Ruin nerfed the whole concept of COs. I like it better because you have to earn the boosts, and because you can actually fight back against them instead of just hoping you can trigger your power first. to leave you opponent with nothing to use their power on.

FTA (First Turn Advantage for those who're not in the know) is actually a huge issue with all the versions of AW. Getting the powers faster because you just rolled in first was a huge problem that had to be dealt with in the competitive and online scene, yet IS never figured it out and decided to just strip everyone of their shiny toys. Days of Ruin is ironically more accurate to the gameplay style of older Nintendo Wars titles, where keeping an unit alive was actually beneficial and where you had to pick and choose your battles rather than use a grander strategy, but a good chunk of folks (me included) absolutely hate its tone because it destroyed what kept older titles so fresh compared to other war games.
Pros of AWDoR:
Cons:
DoR >>>>>> SFW.

Anyone played any of the Nectaris/Military Madness series? How do they measure up?

It's the other way around: AW1 takes place in Cosmo Land, AW2 takes place in Macro Land. Dual Strike is, I honestly forget, Omega Land?

webming it and saving it as "The jew fear the samurai"

Also I still cant believe stuff like fightcade or online gamecube emulation exists but gba netplay doesnt

Never heard of this gritty looking Days of Ruin before? Is it any good? I've played first game, Black Moon Rising (?) and the first DS game.

...

I don't follow
Well, it's not that they don't matter in DoR but their significance is immensely minor compared to other entries, plus they are not as critical to actually win the game.
In AW2 they really did matter. If you're playing on a map with a lot of chokes, assuming that all the broken COs are banned, you'll pick Lash or Kanbei or Grit 9 out of 10 times. If there's lots of scattered terrain, Sami and Sensei are immediate picks because of their +1 to transports. If there's a lot of open areas, Adder or Max can destroy everything etc.
Her starting unit is Fucking Invincible and things go worse from there onward
Also, the difficulty curve varies a bit between games: in AW1 the game doesn't get hard until you reach Green Earth or alternatively Sonya's missions, the final ones take much more time to complete compared to the earlier ones. In AW2 Yellow Comet has definitely the most trying missions with GE offering a breather once in a while. In DS the moment Ooze is introduced you have to start making critical decisions surrounding which unit gets to live and unless you know the enemy layout you're going to have a rough time. Obviously DS is the easiest in the series because of the god damned dual strike, but they still attempt at making missions progressively harder.

Are you japing me my man? Where to?

Nice.

It's a perfectly good AW game. Not everyone's a fan of the darker style. I think it's fine, though I prefer colourful AW.

Dunno, I know people has been playing melee online for a while now so try that

I just want to play against a person

...

I want to fucking die.

As long as the game does have waifus to subvert I don't see it having much lasting power on tumblr.

The game has a tumblr aesthetic (red noses) that I just can't stand. Also, cities are not terrains, you have to "attack" them and you can't really be on them unless you capture them, at least for what was seen on the tutorial.

*doesn't

...

Still, you should have got them into this gradually. You should begin with small, simple and quick maps, and then get into the bigger stuff later. Bonus points if you can get them into this enough for them to play a tournament.

There's this thing. No idea if it's any good.

oh yeah, that's being made by some AW big name right? Hopefully it's good

I recall there being a workaround for playing Nintendo Wi Fi games but it requires all players to know what they're doing and it worked with dolphin, not sure if it can be done with ds titles as well.

Fangames are cancerous though, so I'm glad we still don't have one. I just wish we could play on something better than fucking Advance Wars By Web, whoever coded that thing used the worst possible way to organize matches.

What are your favorite game modes, lads? I loved playing for captures, since it actually gave you an objective that wasn't routing or hq capture.

I really hope they find a way around mech spam, honestly. Part of me wished there was a "reserves" system, where if you bought more than x of a certain unit, their cost would start going up by x% per every purchase unless they either died or some other criteria was met.

Definitely capture.
Maybe have a set amount of units types that you can buy? Your idea sounds better though, its offer more freedom and give money a use later on in the map.

All right.
DoR and Famicom Wars are about as different as can be. The whole Wars series fits rather neatly on a spectrum where aggressive play becomes less and less viable the further back you go. In the first four games, tanks, helicopters, and other non-soldier directs are so fundamentally inept that you never build them, and the infantry/indirect stalemates forever. AW1 then fixes damage calc to give directs a purpose, but unless Max (who auto-wins against every other CO) is allowed, defensive play usually still wins. AW2 adds supers, which gives every CO at least one turn where they can attempt to make a decisive play, but they're expensive, and the doldrums leading up to one typically last multiple in-game weeks. Dual Strike ramps up the rate powers charge at by 300-400%, and introduces a useful expensive unit in the black bomb, which completely ruins indirect walls if a game lasts long enough for one to appear. It also added dual strikes, which are technically pro-offense even if they completely fucked everything else up.
So then DoR comes out, and instead of feeding into the inflationary spiral of 2 and DS, they re-write the damage formula again so you can make bigger plays with smaller numbers. Bland infantry on cities are no longer invincible. Defense bonuses are no longer twice as powerful as offense bonuses. High cost units like heavy tanks and bombers can pull their weight by more reliably one-shotting smaller units. Instead of waiting for a super power, you can deploy a hero unit and start building advantage with it anytime; at the absolute worst it'll have +30/+30, which is just enough for a tank or chopper to one-shot a +0 defense infantry.
This is true in every game. It's better to have more units than less units. Throwing away your 3HP tank as a suicide/shield means you have one less tank than the player who sent theirs back for repairs.
This is fundamentally wrong unless you cherry pick both sides (Penny and Greyfield vs. Max and Grit, for example). The majority of Wars World CO's handle identically, with army compositions that are 90% infantry and a smattering of small tanks, artillery, copters, and anti-air. The only outliers here are Max (no arty), Grit (no copters/tanks), and the money CO's. Anything lesser isn't really relevant. Drake's nerfed copters, for example, are more than adequate for their primary job of harassing infantry, and they still win against other copters if they attack first. On the flip side, Eagle's boost isn't nearly enough to warrant building more air units than anybody else. There's a lot more variation in how DoR CO's operate, even if you can boil most of them down to X likes more Y.
But Kanbei and Grit are broken. And Sensei. And Sami is number seven, directly behind the broken six. Likewise, Adder is always bad, and Max is only mid-tier when he's in his element.
Ninth of twelve, bottom of fair. 180 defense in DoR is equivalent to about 145 defense in AW2, which is pretty scary on paper, but she struggles regardless because all the rest of her forces are 100/100 garbage.

AWBW is a thing. Or you can point a modded DoR rom to some homebrew WFC servers. Or you can share one instance of an emulator over any screen-sharing program.
FreeWars is a new alternative that's kind of a mish-mash of AWBW and DoR.

Days of Ruin used the promotion feature so spammers would get punished by leveling up enemy units. In order to make the game leds about spamming and more about some tactics, you would need to bring back a unit that many hated, the Blackboat. With it, you can make your units hold on a bit more to those spammers. Healing big stuff is more efficient that small cheap units, so spammers can't use it in their favor. It also makes naval warfare more important in the game.

but why

Actually, the censorship was the other way around. AW came out in US before Japan.

I have a hard time understanding the various gameplay decisions for this one. I don't even get what the overall goal is. Also, you're meant to restock at bases pretty much constantly, so it's not really about playing defensively (since you really can't, if the enemy decides to attack then the both of you do so), as much as positioning your troops so they can always resupply.
I don't think that's entirely correct. Max IS one of the best COs in AW1 but the game definitely doesn't let you play defensively all the time. If I may add, the one thing both AW1 and 2 do terribly is naval warfare, since, outside from Landers and Cruisers, everything else is just too expensive for what it can hit. Really, making Cruisers fight each other was probably the smartest decision IS could make.
Finally someone who gets me. None of the three goddamned unlocks make any sense gamepelay wise and actually destroy all semblance of balance. Black Boats are my least favorite because you can just park two of them out at sea and keep repairing each other indefinitely, there's even a mission in the trial modes that requires you to do so. Piperunners are situational, true, but you can always just pop them onto a base (or even worse, using Hachi or Hachi's Spirit Force and build them onto fucking cities) and basically create an impenetrable defense. Black Bombs do way too much damage despite their cost being so high, because they pass through all possible defense bonuses and their range is so high it makes them impossible to counter unless you sacrifice a Fighter. Neotanks had a reason to exist, since they were meant to be better versions of the Md Tank you'd get after not only being good at the game but making enough grand in a map that rolling Md Tanks after Md Tanks would get tiresome.
The only DS unit that I really liked was the Stealth Plane because it actually makes dogfights more strategic in FoW on PvP.
All the CO Powers related things in AWDS can eat a dick, too. Eagle's COP is particularly bad because they just made a less expensive version of his super.
To be honest though there's plenty of occasions in all games where sending in a damaged unit just as a roadblock for a more powerful enemy one is more beneficial than falling back. One thing I wished in older AW titles was for high air units to ignore infantries and ground units barred anti-air and rockets when moving on the map and for naval units being able to damage infantries blocking shores.
Did you make this picture
Also I disagree with this (but not fully, plenty of COs are based on infantry spam), I've found that rolling Recons by sacrificing a turn can yield much better results on smaller maps.
Also, last I remember, the only banned COs were Colin, Hachi and Sturm, with everyone else being flipped on or off depending on who's playing.

Black Boats break the game though. I wish they made some naval unit that was way less expensive. Maybe separating the infantry landing capabilities of the Black Boat and its repairing ones, so that you have to at least prioritize one of the two.

To un-break the Blackboat you just need to make it unable to refuel units. That way they need to get to shore for refueling eventually, or they will sink. Just healing, not refueling.

The western version looks better. It makes you fight generals not goofballs like in the Japanese people.

Then it would require more than 60 fuel to be better suited as a support unit, but it would break the game even further because it could ferry twice as much infantry.

I have an idea. To make it depend more in land, make it so It consumes ammo everyone it heals. That way you can't heal all you want.

Post the green earth checkem picture I need it to live

I have no idea what you meant with that but I have found this.

What game?

...

NA Nell, NA Olaf, JP Kanbei, NA Drake, JP Grit, NA Sonja. Personally I like the NA redesigns.

I think I speak for everyone when I say that the Mayor is the best character in the entire series.

How the FUCK do I S rank Duo Falls in AW1?
I've come just shy of it like three times with Max

I didn't know other people bothered with it

it's an advance wars clone that parodied the 2012 Republican primaries. Each of the potential Republican candidates had different powers - for example Herman Cain could use his pizza empire to get extra money per turn from cities

Pointing in the wrong direction with your character portrait? You're no better than those bandits!

Like I said, the AI is fucking atrocious in War Room, at least in AW1 and 2 (barring two extremely unnerving cases). I recall beating that one with Grit, but video evidence shows that HQ capture is much easier and possible with Sami. Waiting a turn or two without building shit always fucks up with the AI because they expect a much minor threat and they all have a fixed build order, so don't just try and clear the map as much as killing key units. IIRC Kanbei has a hard-on for Infantry.

They extend the game like crazy and I used to play on VS with friends who were less versed in the game on them, to give them an upper hand.

It's pretty easy to play online again - provided you have a flashcart.

Would bootstrap work?

Provided the game functions under bootstrap (compatiblity was terrible last time I checked), it should be fine.

Had I known I just needed to beat all three of Kanbei's missions in a certain amount of time to get him I would have. It probably would have made it take a lot less time compared to having Sami.

Nell is strong in the first game. He's a better Andy. her CO stars are the same if I remember correctly, so her super is objectively better.

something I should do eventually.

Though you need to use Sami on all GE missions to unlock the final one AND Eagle in versus.

Best Super in the game is Campaign Sturm. Best in versus is probably Max's because of the extra movement.

Fucking casual

That's a good point. I probably should have said I beat the campaign of AW1, since there's still tons of shit in the game I've yet to do.

Is it good?

It's single-player only and has about six stages. It's fine for what it is.

Any good AW hacks?

warsworldnews.com/wp/hacks/andys-adventure-aw2-by-mark999/
Aside from this absolute beauty there's the War Room Challenge and a couple minor balance hacks.

I've just gotten around to playing this. A lot of its humor is memeshit but, as someone who read Totally Flaked back in the days, it's tickling my nostalgia boner to no end. Dev was also a cheeky bastard with some enemy placement and I love them for it.

Try any of the stuff XenesisXenon has created, really. How the fuck does he do that, I have no idea, but it all works and it's awesome. He recreated systems from all Nintendo Wars games and added others that were huge problems IS never figured out how to make.

abuse the AI apc fetish

That "criticism" doesn't sound remotely credible or intelligible at all.

>"Power of Money can't be that broken, it's boost couldn't really make that much of a difference"
Did no one think this might be too overpowered while playtesting? Holy shit.

Yes, we've been over this. Now post AW shit.

Power of Money is only as good as the enemy's defenses let it be. Colin is pretty much broken though, you can cheese at various War Room maps only using him and that's why playing him is frowned upon by the community, despite the character not being as bad as Hachi or Sturm. Some claim Von Bolt is just as strong because of his extra defense and the fact you miss out a turn with his super, but I haven't found as many applications for that as the other guys.
I remember the AI struggling to fight around pipelines. More specifically, in the War Room maps they would flat out ignore the seams and just faff about around them (though I've seen videos of hacks where this doesn't happen so I'm not sure if it was just my experience). Meanwhile, the DS AI makes sure that the seams MUST die, even if it means losing footing with their Piperunners. The AI also always follows the unit deployment order, so you can trick infantry units to move in places where a tank would have fared better, they always build at the end of the turn (even Eagle, who would benefit from his Lighting Strike, though I've noticed they fixed that in DS with just his units or the Dual Strike ones), they seem incapable of reading weather conditions and will use weather condition changing supers, they will use their COP or SCOP depending on whenever they fill up without going overboard and it can't deal with having less than x of various unit types so you can force a build order even when it's unnecessary. Also, at times, it will simply not move anything because it can't think of any move, despite there being plenty of openings. I've had situations where the AI on the Hard Campaign at that would park tanks or copters next to units that could take them out in one hit, without even attempting an attack.

last shameful bump

Make that two

It was strange to me why the AI seemed to prefer attacking transports over actual combat units.

The AI isn't trying to win, it tries to stop you from getting an S rank on 99% of the maps. I've only played one FE but I think they did something similar there too, rather than fight with reason they just went at the unit they were most likely to kill if they concentrated fire on it.

I think on some of AW2's campaign maps the AI can destroy pipeseams although I could be remembering it wrong.

Nope, that doesn't ever happen in the campaign. The one mission where it would be beneficial to the AI is the next to last one, where the Citadel thing has two conveniently placed areas where I suppose the AI was supposed to rush towards to make it harder for you to win but somehow they just don't.
Also if you didn't believe me that the AI is that bad and that 2v2 is the superior mode, take a gander at this.

Do you mean frowned upon by the War Room players? I never cared about score attacks that much, but in multiplayer he's frowned upon for different reasons entirely.

Multi. War Room challenges range from stupidly easy to unfairly difficult so whoever you choose is gonna be the CO best suited for that map. I.E. lots of island type maps that Sensei and Sami absolutely dominate because of their +1 to transports, even if you were playing as Sturm you'd have a much more difficult time reaching S rank.

In multiplayer, by the time you have enough money for Power of Money to make a significant impact you have probably won anyway. Meanwhile his D2D expenses and Gold Rush are completely bonkers.

Sure, but in War Room maps you're trying to go for score, which includes how fast you can beat the map and how many units you lose in the process. Colin is great for throwing men to their own deaths since they're expendable but you can't always rely on that when you're trying to S rank shit.

When you think about it, for the AI it could be considered "winning" if you have to keep resetting the level again and again to eventually beat it, even though the AI's previous victories against you have been effectively erased.
Alternatively the AI is trying to defeat you as fast as possible and may have programmed to attack the weakest unit (such as a transport that can't fight back) to prevent the human from getting S Rank (or FE all units surviving) if they are a pro, because that situation is what will end the level immediately by causing the human to reset.