Development Diary #35 - 1st of July 2009

[commiekiller18]

looks sweet cant wait to fight the pacific war.

[Amob_m_s]

Looks good, looks good, but here's a question:

What about strategic bombers?

On an operational scale, strategic bombardment does not advance a theatre AI towards it's objective. For instance, if as the Allies post-Overlord, you tell your Theatre commander to take Paris, that AI gains no immediate ground toward that goal by strategically bombing the German industrial regions. Will theatres be smart enough to work towards long-term, non-province-specific goals (like bombing the Fatherland to dust) with assigned strategic forces, while at the same time advancing toward a short-term, set-location goal with it's other air forces (TACs and CAS, etc?)

I just keep having visions of the AI using my extremely expensive B-29s for tactical bombing/interdiction purposes, getting them all shot up in the process and leaving the enemy industry untouched. In which case, I'd have to either manually control the startegic bombers or somehow put them under control of a seperate AI.

[Clausewitzz]

Great DD... once again.

But this one surely takes a load of questions out of my mind.

Last months i still played some HoI2 for fun...
But when i started as a nation in the pacific (like Japan or the US) my mind started to hurt when i thaught how am i gonna do all this in HoI3 with so much more regions, islands and preperations...?
Thankfully this DD gives an answer to allot of that.

We allready knew about frontlines can be put under control of the AI but not if it could make "good" invasions from sea and the islandshopping that you need in the pacific.

Planning the pacific conquest in HoI2 as lets say... Japan surely needed some preperation if you wanted to do it with enough effect, so i started to consider that with the great increasement of regions in HoI3 this would become so much that it would no longer be fun, but with this option thats once again solved.
And the best is once again ofcourse that whenever you like you can still do it yourself.



Now my hope will lay if the enemy AI's will also be able to make such acts that can surprize you...
For example in HoI2 i never saw the USA conquer all pacific regions step by step, instead they often went straight for Iwo Jima as one of the first targets or even Japan itself... wich didnt really improved the whole gameplay feeling.
Hopefully those kind of strange acts will be mostly gone with this new AI system.

[Alexander Seil]

I just keep having visions of the AI using my extremely expensive B-29s for tactical bombing/interdiction purposes, getting them all shot up in the process and leaving the enemy industry untouched. In which case, I'd have to either manually control the startegic bombers or somehow put them under control of a seperate AI.

Air missions are sufficiently customizable to cover that I think. It's essentially identical to putting them under AI control.

[Alexander Seil]

Our first design decision, which you all know about, is the theatre. A theatre is a singular AI entity, and the highest level in the on the map AI for the control of units. A theatre holds not just land units, but air and naval as well.

No one asked about this, I think.

Does this mean that the Theater AI has control of all units in its area? So even if I put a fleet in its region, that isn't attached to any Theater, it would still control it?

[RCBricker]

This is awesome.

Even if nothing else new was in HOI III but only this new AI and theaters, it will be worth to call this as new and much better game than HOI II.

I am happy becouse of this AI features presented here, which are obviously more than a scale above HOI II AI.

If I may say my prediction,future developement of HOI lies in the first place in even further developement of AI which will assist player to control such complex game,as well as to be more serious oponent to player.

The assistance of AI that is conducting our stategical plans takes nothing from the gameplay of this magnificent game,and gives us real feeling of being true strategians .

Good work!

I agree about future development.

I would like to see help in planning "future invasions or defenses"

ie

I am playing Germany and it is 1937. I tell the Chief of staff to draft plans for the invasion of Poland. the AI looks at the intelligence of what we know of Poland and gives me resource requirments and planned routes of the Theatres.

For Defense the example would be

Poland 1937 and I ask the AI to draft plans to defend Poland from attack from the west (Germany) and North (east Prussia).

This works even better if you add in Strategic, Economic or Political Invasions.

Strategic would be a war to gain the Sudentland from the Czech, Economic would be to capture all of the Ruhr from Germany and Political would be the complete conquering of the country. depending on the reason for the war would determine the objectives of the plans.

Just spit balling.

[joeenochs]

No one asked about this, I think.


Does this mean that the Theater AI has control of all units in its area? So even if I put a fleet in its region, that isn't attached to any Theater, it would still control it?

It has been answered.
A theatre controls anything below its chain of commands. You can always put something into a manually controlled chain of commands or no one at all.
This unit can do whatever it likes wherever it likes when you command it.

[Alexander Seil]

It has been answered.
A theatre controls anything below its chain of commands. You can always put something into a manually controlled chain of commands or no one at all.
This unit can do whatever it likes wherever it likes when you command it.

I know that. But it doesn't make the Theater AI qualitatively different from any other formation AI, yet Theater AIs have defined territories. The question is, why?

[joeenochs]

Looks good, looks good, but here's a question:

What about strategic bombers?

On an operational scale, strategic bombardment does not advance a theatre AI towards it's objective. For instance, if as the Allies post-Overlord, you tell your Theatre commander to take Paris, that AI gains no immediate ground toward that goal by strategically bombing the German industrial regions. Will theatres be smart enough to work towards long-term, non-province-specific goals (like bombing the Fatherland to dust) with assigned strategic forces, while at the same time advancing toward a short-term, set-location goal with it's other air forces (TACs and CAS, etc?)

I just keep having visions of the AI using my extremely expensive B-29s for tactical bombing/interdiction purposes, getting them all shot up in the process and leaving the enemy industry untouched. In which case, I'd have to either manually control the startegic bombers or somehow put them under control of a seperate AI.

Good point.

Notice that you can use strategic bombing for fairly short term goals like reducing defense installations of a certain province or bombard the supply lines. So the AI has to make choices.

[RCBricker]

One question after looking at the screenshot.

Does the Theatre AI base its "Estimated Enemy Power" off of your intelligence network, or does the AI always know exactly what it's up against.

And if your Theatre AI only knows what your intelligence network knows, does that work vice versa for the AI-controlled nations?

I agree with the need for clarification here. Does the AI know what it is up against when it makes its suggestion or is it based on your level of intelligence.

Better if it is based on your intelligence.

[Alexander Seil]

I agree with the need for clarification here. Does the AI know what it is up against when it makes its suggestion or is it based on your level of intelligence.

Better if it is based on your intelligence.

If it wasn't based on your own intelligence, then -

a) It would mean that the AI cheats, which Johan claims it doesn't do.
b) It would be a cheat for the player, to supplement his own intelligence by guessing enemy strength from front AI requests.

[NrmK]

You welcome, I think
I can't of course say anything surely but I have always imagined that we can create on Theatre for anything we want to.
As Germany
One for Poland
One for Fall Gelb
One for Seelöwe
One for Mediterranian
One for Africa
Three for Barbarossa and one more to Finland
Et cetera.

[Mimmmo]

When Italy entered the war had 5 groups of armed

Border France (Umberto II)
Border Yugoslavia (Grossi)
Southern Italy and Islands (De Bono)
Northern Africa (Balbo)
Eastern Africa (Duca d'Aosta)


I can do this?

[Lauri]

I'm pretty certain you can't make new theatres
In that case, you could make many theatres, and have lots of bonuses applied to lots of units or, well... decreasing ranges for them, so logistics wouldn't be too much a problem..
However, reading the AI Control DD does make it looks like I might've been wrong...

And as for inteligence for the AI

Well the AI doesn’t cheat but it can do something you can’t. It can consider and evaluate more that its current plan. We don’t consider this a cheat because you will do the same, it just is able to talk directly to its theatre HQs to find out exactly what they need where as you guess these things and then find out when the plan is put into prepare.

[Dzmakvek]

As far as I know, theatres will be created by AI. It does some calculations based some parameters to do this (eg. I know threat level is a factor).

[joeenochs]

I know that. But it doesn't make the Theater AI qualitatively different from any other formation AI, yet Theater AIs have defined territories. The question is, why?

I think it is fairly obvious.

Look at how a theatre is defined:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theater_%28warfare%29

Two theatres are two regions of war, which effect each other only indirectly and not directly. Whatever happens on Germany's Eastern front does not directly influence what happens on its Western front. The only dependency of one theatre to another is that whatever ressources you put into one theatre you do not have available for the other and vice versa. And of course winning or losing on any certain theatre influences what ressources you have available as a country at all.

For that reason it makes sense to separate responsibilities both in real life and also in the game AI. The high command (you as a player or the AI player entity) distributes the valuable ressources accross the theatres and the theatres make best use of it towards their goal without worrying what the other theatre does.

Notice that the same is not true for two army groups. If army groups centre and south do not coordinate, then there is a gap in the front.

So I conclude that the theatre AI works differently as any other AI. While working towards its objectives it will always look at the overall picture in its region and coordinate all forces in it.

If this is right, then if you want to pull of a Sealion, it is much better to assign this goal to a theatre and not to an army group of exactly the same strength. And a theatre which is supposed to pull of Barbarossa and a Sealion at the same time, would be endlessly confused, even if it had the ressources to do it.

I assume that every level of AI has such kind of specialization. For example a corps AI might be especially good to understand what to put into the frontline and what as reserves but it does not understand other things well.

[NrmK]

Interesting.. It is so damn hard to wait for another month to get my hands to complete game... I can't take it anymore...

[Alexander Seil]

I think it is fairly obvious.

Look at how a theatre is defined:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theater_%28warfare%29

Two theatres are two regions of war, which effect each other only indirectly and not directly. Whatever happens on Germany's Eastern front does not directly influence what happens on its Western front. The only dependency of one theatre to another is that whatever ressources you put into one theatre you do not have available for the other and vice versa. And of course or winning on a front influences what ressources you have at all.

For that reason it makes sense to separate responsibilities both in real life and also in the game AI. The high command (you as a player) distributes the valuable ressources accorss the theatres and the theatres make best use of it towards their goal without worrying what the other theatre does.

Notice that the same is not true for two army groups. If army groups centre and south do not coordinate, then there is a gap in the front.

So I conclude that the theatre AI works differently as any other AI. While working towards its objectives it will always look at the overall picture in its region.

That still doesn't answer the question of which units it controls - just those attached to it, or those stationed in the region and not attached to any other regions.

The problem is that a Theater is both an area on the map and a formation like any other. It's unclear what the interaction there is.

[Lauri]

The AI won't take control over anything... You'll have to give it control over things

[Alexander Seil]

The AI won't take control over anything... You'll have to give it control over things

That has nothing to do with my question

Here -

If activated, will the Theater AI control only units assigned to it in the order of battle, or will it control all units within its own area that are not assigned to other Theaters (directly or indirectly)?