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EU4 - Development Diary - 24th of October 2017

Good day all. As we reach ever closer to the release for Cradle of Civilization which, as you know will be released on...wait, we haven't announced the date yet? Well keep your ears to the ground and you may hear something about that very soon™. In any case, running up to that we have a military mixed-bag of features coming with Cradle that we want to talk about today, as well as a guest appearance from our AI Maestro @Gnivom .

Firstly in Cradle of Civilization we are bringing the ability to Name Generals. Does what it says on the tin: when recruiting a general, you will be able to give them a custom name or roll the die to generate a random name for them. This courtesy is, of course, extended to Conquistadors, Admirals and Explorers.

Name Generals.jpg


As an additional free quality of life change in 1.23, the number of pips your leader may receive is detailed in the tooltip, showing the random spread they will get as well as any bonuses you may get from Ideas and other such modifiers.

Staying on the Military Tab, we can also show the interaction to Slacken Recruitment Standards which will let a nation gain manpower in exchange for allowing somewhat less qualified men into the army. 2 years' worth of manpower can immediately be made available at a cost of 5 professionalism. Naturally, a nation needs to have at least some standards of Professionalism in able to slacken them.

slacken.jpg


Another small addition we have in Cradle is the ability to have compact battle results. This has been requested by the community in the past so we decided to add it into the expansion for those who don't need more than the bare minimum information punctuating the slaughter of war. This can be toggled on and off in the options menu

compact.jpg


Finally, sticking with the military theme, let's talk Templates. They are pretty awesome and remove a lot of micromanagement of recruiting armies. In Cradle of Civilization this is taken a step further with the ability to Conform to Template. In the Unit View, an army can conform to a template that you have specified earlier. Upon selecting a valid template, all superfluous units will detached from the army while required units are built and march directly to merge with the unit.

conform template.jpg


As this feature requires the ability to make templates (an Art of War Expansion feature) to be of any use we are unlocking that feature for owners of Cradle of Civilization too.

Now I'm handing the mic over to the Maestro of AI @Gnivom , to talk about himself and the changes to the AI in v1.23 Persia Update.

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Black News Indeed

I have worked on EU4 since February 2016. For the last year or so, I have had the great honour of being the master of its AI. But all things must come to an end, and I have decided to move on to other adventures, outside of Paradox. It is therefore my equally great honour to present to you my successor, @mikesc . These last months, I have taught him what he needs to know, as I was taught last fall. This will be my last week, so today is a good time to talk some about the AI.

AI Improvements
There has been much AI work put into 1.23. I will mention a few improvements here, and for the rest you are referred to the upcoming changelog.

Building AI
This may well be the most notable change, at least for those of you who often play into the late game.

The AI has always been horribly bad at deciding where to build buildings, which means an experienced player could easily be many times richer and stronger than the AI after only 100 years, with the same development. This has now turned around completely. Instead of deciding buildings based on scripted rules, it now calculates precisely how much it will gain from building each building, convert all values to ducats, and consider how big a treasury they need for the return on investment to be worth it. The reaction from QA after their first handsoff game with the new building AI was “You have created a monster”. Indeed, late-game AI is extremely rich.

It probably undervalues manpower and forcelimit at the moment, but that may be for the best.

This doesn’t only make the game harder however, as an expanding player will get a lot of free buildings.

Power Balance Threat
One feature in the AI that I believe was added by Chaingun, is called Power Balance Threat (PBT). It means that each AI determines another country, if applicable, that it considers a long-term strategic threat/rival. It will then try to weaken this country in subtle ways, such as sending gifts to or guaranteeing their neighbors. Allies can also be picked as PBT. The algorithm for determining PBT focuses on large and/or quickly expanding nations. Since this very often targets the player’s nation, the algorithm has been explicitly prohibited from selecting the player’s country, except on Hard and Very Hard. My understanding is that this was to avoid the perception of the AI targeting the player because of it being the player. This block has now been removed on Normal difficulty as well.

You may now see even your allies act to slow down your growth, and some countries getting worse attitudes towards you, but don’t expect a huge difference.

Other Changes/Improvements
Many people have complained about the AI’s use of Edicts, and correctly so. From 1.23, it will spend a lot less money on Edicts.

AI aggressiveness has been slightly tuned down, especially when in debt.

Many small improvements have been put into the army AI. For example fixing many cases where it pathed through, rather than around, enemy armies (often leading to just cancelling the movement anyway).

Many more improvements will be found in the changelog.

I am currently spending my last week at Paradox trying to make some major improvements to army AI, that will be incorporated after 1.23.

Cheats

My personal opinion has always been that the AI should cheat as little as possible - that the player should play the game at equal terms with the AI. I believe the EU4 AI follows this philosophy more than any other strategy game I have played (at least on normal difficulty).

The cheats that do exist are typically not to make the AI more powerful, but to work as lubricant where the AI is not as precise as the player (which could be to avoid more complicated and bug prone code, or unnecessary computing power). A good example is the extra diplomat, which is only used for one-time actions. The obvious exception is the Lucky Nation bonuses, which are not available to the player.

So, let’s mention some of the cheats that do (and do not) exist:

There are maybe a dozen places in diplomatic AI, where it is nicer towards other AI in specific cases that make sense but could potentially be exploited by the player. It may for example call in allies as if with Promise Land clicked, without then being bound to actually give land. It will however try to give if possible.

The AI does not cheat with dice rolls in battles (or sieges, or anyplace else that I can think of)

The AI no longer cheats with Fort Maintenance, since a few patches back.
EDIT: There is still a bug that they can cheat anyway sometimes. See https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/1-22-2-vassal-not-paying-for-forts.1052067/ .

The AI doesn’t cheat with Fort Zone of Control. Nor was it ever meant to, although there has been at least one bug in the past where it could in rare cases.

Other than the Fort Zone of Control, the AI/Player cheats currently mentioned on the wiki are correct (to my best knowledge).

Additional considerations:

  • The AI may sometimes look up underlying numbers that are not available to the player.
  • The AI sometimes restrains itself to get a more historical outcome.
  • The AI is not allowed to pause the game, and has to play hundreds of nations simultaneously. Nor does it use the extra time it could get when the player pauses, or plays on speeds lower than 5 (so that behaviour isn’t affected by game speed).
/Gnivom

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Thanks a lot for that Gnivom. Next week we will have another guest speaker from the team to talk about a huge project we've undertaken for the game which, so far, we have managed to keep completely secret and will be rolling out with 1.23. See you then!
 
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Thanks a lot to Gnivom, awesome job. The AI has improved massively over the last year and I know you're the one to praise.

The real question remains, however? Who will get his country destroyed every MP now that Gnivom left...
 
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Poor Gnivom :(, with people saying goodbye to DDRJake instead of him.
 
I'm getting a vibe similar to custom nation builder here. Maybe, map/province editor? making our own values and shapes for provinces??

Nah, thats too complex. If it were something like that, I’d say custom government or religion.
 
Building AI

It probably undervalues manpower and forcelimit at the moment, but that may be for the best.

Paradox introduces Army Professionalism which, among others, increases when building military buildings. AI now less likely to build those buildings :confused: Oh well at least it will be richer and can spam mercs more cheaply from low professionalism
 
@DDRJake would it fianlly be possible to save an army/navy template for other campains as well?
Now I have to create them manually every time, and I do use the same army groups in most campains
 
AI aggressiveness has been slightly tuned down, especially when in debt.

But why...? I get them being turned down while in debt, but the improved AI aggression was a very very welcome change in my book.

Sad to see you go, @Gnivom, good luck in your future endeavours.
 
This block has now been removed on Normal difficulty as well.

Oh good, because it's pretty frustrating for the AI to intentionally nerf itself if you're playing on a mode where everyone is supposedly following the same rules.
 
Firstly in Cradle of Civilization we are bringing the ability to Name Generals. Does what it says on the tin: when recruiting a general, you will be able to give them a custom name or roll the die to generate a random name for them. This courtesy is, of course, extended to Conquistadors, Admirals and Explorers.
tYDRQtu.jpg


Finally I can have Dukes/Lords/Princes leading my armies!
 
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I'll never understand why templates are a paid feature. In EUIV templates also double as a rally point....a paid rally point. And rally points are a basic UI feature for strategy games that should've been there since the beginning...and free.

Anyway, I'm very excited for this new DLC, the changes in the military aspect are a welcoming change.
 
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Now that I think of naming generals, could it be possible to do it after recruitment so you can see pips? Dunno about others but I usually give more epic names to heirs who have good stats while the bad ones get names like "sancho the potato"