They're not really that competitive, even when playing with AI Focuses and Ironman mode. Even when I'm playing as France its not that hard to capitulate them and they barley push back.
1.3.3 (2dd2) Is AI Germany competitive in your games?
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yes dont use it. we kept finding issues where it would mess up AI. Use human_ai in console and tag around if you are going to check stuff out
Playing as Japan, it's late spring 41. German launched Barbarossa about 2 months ago and is stuck on Belarus/Polish border. Italy has probably 50 divisions wandering around in sub Sahara Africa, along with a bunch of FF, Raj, UK, SAF, and BEL troops. USA still neutral. UK started making suicidal invasions (they're back!) in 1939 and hasn't stopped since, but couldn't manage to defend the Suez. Latest one is on the Italian Adriatic coast, not on a port, dead meat on arrival. At least Italy defends itself now.
The African wars are just plain ridiculous at this point.
The African wars are just plain ridiculous at this point.
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I've noticed that AI VERY OFTEN puts 70% of it's divisions in just one province. I had Italy throw 40 divisions at me in Sicily, I saw Japanese throw 55 divisions at Chinese 34 (while the rest of the front is empty and barely sees any divisions and combat on both sides!). Madness.
I've played 2 games with 1.3.3 now. Germany is doing worse than in previous Version so far. 1 time didn't even manage to take netherlands and France. Japan also got pushed back into the ocean by China.
In three games so far, Germany manages to take on Poland, France and Denmark fine, but then gets stomped by the Soviets and naval invasions from Great Britain within a year. (With everyone buffed to the max). If you want a strong axis don't buff the Soviets, otherwise the war will be over in 1942 or even 1941.
It might be worth adding a big old disclaimer to observer mode ingame - it seems like loads of people have tried to use it to test the AI.
Republican Spain dies by July 1936, gets surrounded too easy. Axis get stuck in narvik, but do well in North Africa. Then Germany gets rolled by the ussr by 1942.
Japan lands troops all over but never consolidates territory. Italy still doesnt protect rome from naval invasion.
Japan lands troops all over but never consolidates territory. Italy still doesnt protect rome from naval invasion.
I wonder what the reason for Republican Spain getting swiftly destroyed is. Do they just have less infantry equipment than the Nationalists? Is it that they only get volunteers from the USSR, while Nationalist Spain gets them from Italy, Japan and Germany? Or is there some AI mess-up that only affects the Republican side and not the Nationalist side? Ideally we want the USSR, Germany and Italy to send volunteers (so no Japanese volunteers in Spain) and we want the war to continue until early 1939.
It kinda feels like there should be more limits on sending volunteers - the USSR shouldn't be able to send tank divisions to Ethiopia, and Japan should not be able to send volunteers to Spain. Just cutting out the Japanese volunteers might tilt the field a bit towards Republican Spain and lengthen the war.
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Short version: Add a national spirit to Japan that prevents them sending volunteers.
@SteelVolt @Havebeard @AnyForumAdmin
Please make a sticky in the general forum and bug reporting forum about potential and known issues for people who are testing and trying to help diagnose problems so they are not wasting your time as well as their own. Please include suggestions on how one might try to test issues effectively. It's win win for everyone involved. Testers can provide good data, making your jobs easier / less time consuming in reproducing and resolving potential issues. I would write up the post myself, but I just learned of the issue and I'm not the best person to talk about what console commands are safe to use.
But if nobody else will do it, I'll give it the good ole college try and send you guys a draft that you can edit and paste in to a new post.
Thanks Bitmode, I try to be thorough and accurate in my reports so I'm not wasting the Dev's time, while also providing solid evidence. So I appreciate the feedback and support.
So far with my first game (as Finland) Germany were defeated by the Soviet Union by 42 or 43 (can't remember which) and China were able to push Japan off the mainland.
It seems like barbarossa was going well but then the allies invaded France and Italy in 42 and things fell apart for them after that.
Nobody has declared war on my so I spent this whole game sitting back building my forts up.
It seems like barbarossa was going well but then the allies invaded France and Italy in 42 and things fell apart for them after that.
Nobody has declared war on my so I spent this whole game sitting back building my forts up.
Regarding the Spanish Civil War - the main reason is that the Nationalists are overwhelmingly more powerful than the Republicans. It takes some very aggressive, very tactical war fighting to defeat the Nationalists when playing as Republicans (you have to essentially pull the army apart by the seams, encircling and destroying at least a third of their divisions before they can group up enough to counter attack you).
To put it into perspective though, even without the vast quantities of volunteers, Nationalist Spain has more divisions and more equipment than Republican Spain, along with a stronger strategic position. Madrid isn't industrially powerful enough to warrant sacrificing troops to hold, Catalonia doesn't possess enough military production to hold it long enough to fully equip your armies. The AI simply isn't wired to fight aggressive encirclement warfare and as such, has limited potential to win as the Republicans.
Beyond their capacity to fight, they need more divisions, more guns and a better industrial production in Catalonia in order to prolong the war. Human intervention does however still make the civil war fairly easy - and it can be amusing to wipe out dozens of Axis troops as a Comintern nation by constantly encircling and destroying them with volunteers.
It varies depending on what divisions you have at the start of the war (as I believe all divisions and equipment get split evenly between the two sides, plus the event spawned divisions.)
I tried to track down the number of event spawned divisions in the files but... I can't find them. it's substantially onesided though, not least because the Nationalist divisions are better templates from what I recall.
I think I might have found 3 major reasons why Germany is struggling in Russia. This game is me playing Japan, unmodded except for No Man's Land and a single define line change to stop the naval production of obsolete ships.
#1 no allied help
Every single division in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia is sitting at home. No independent operations, no expeditionary forces. Italy is busy fighting in Africa so no help or expeditionary forces from there either. It look like expeditionary forces has been completely turned off.
#2 Only 300 fighters and they are flying over the English Channel. Hard to advance with Russia controlling the sky.
Why only 300 fighters? Look below.
Not a single factory working on plane production. Some are assigned, but resistance has destroyed the factories. And I would hardly call 8 factories adequate fighter production. If the ai is supposed to better at resistance it is doing a very poor job showing improvement in this picture.
What are the factories making?
Everything is assigned trying to make up massive deficits. As you can see the screen shot shows a 30k deficit in inf eq reinforcement. The rest wasn't much better.
It is June 1941, Germany has been at war with Russia less than a year. I would be surprised to see it survive until the summer of 1942.
Observations:
Why are ai Germany's ai Axis minor allies sitting at home?
Why is ai Italy not operating in Russia?
Why are there no expeditionary forces?
Production priorities now seem badly skewed.
Suppression still seems to be lacking.
Edit - Tagging in @podcat and @SteelVolt
#1 no allied help
Every single division in Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia is sitting at home. No independent operations, no expeditionary forces. Italy is busy fighting in Africa so no help or expeditionary forces from there either. It look like expeditionary forces has been completely turned off.
#2 Only 300 fighters and they are flying over the English Channel. Hard to advance with Russia controlling the sky.
Why only 300 fighters? Look below.
Not a single factory working on plane production. Some are assigned, but resistance has destroyed the factories. And I would hardly call 8 factories adequate fighter production. If the ai is supposed to better at resistance it is doing a very poor job showing improvement in this picture.
What are the factories making?
Everything is assigned trying to make up massive deficits. As you can see the screen shot shows a 30k deficit in inf eq reinforcement. The rest wasn't much better.
It is June 1941, Germany has been at war with Russia less than a year. I would be surprised to see it survive until the summer of 1942.
Observations:
Why are ai Germany's ai Axis minor allies sitting at home?
Why is ai Italy not operating in Russia?
Why are there no expeditionary forces?
Production priorities now seem badly skewed.
Suppression still seems to be lacking.
Edit - Tagging in @podcat and @SteelVolt
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I have the same observations as @Meglok on what is happening with Germany.
The lack of exp. forces and of any kind of action from axis minors happens with Germany played by AI or a player. They only send some planes if they have it, to questionnable areas.
The lack of exp. forces and of any kind of action from axis minors happens with Germany played by AI or a player. They only send some planes if they have it, to questionnable areas.
I can confirm this, Germany attacked the USSR but never broke through the line; instead they got pushed back all the way to Netherlands. I think Germany have way too less units because they stop producing them after conquering France.
I played a modded one (only techs), but Germany seems to loose also in Feb. 1942 (playing as USA, but still not in war)
One reason (again) is that GER is completely lacking every equipment (-200.000 Inf.weapons, -30.000 trucks, and so on)
It looks like it can't even build up an airforce.
One reason (again) is that GER is completely lacking every equipment (-200.000 Inf.weapons, -30.000 trucks, and so on)
It looks like it can't even build up an airforce.
I have noticed that sometimes the AI in 1.3.3 is slow or just doesn't call the allies in to the war. I haven't paid close enough attention though to try and draw comparisons of when it does and when it doesn't.
In 1.3.2 the AI was not using aircraft optimally either. Though I think it may have become worse with 1.3.3. But below is a screenshot from the series of screenshots I posted before in this thread. The reason why I think there is a shortage of aircraft is because of the way things have changed with how the AI handles production now. I'm doing a more detailed breakdown and appending my thread in the Bug Reporting forum if you want to take a look at things I've been observing for ideas / areas to look at.
Again this screenshot is from the game I played as Guatemala. So no observe mode, prior to the July 1st 1941 save, and no load/reload this was a straight through hands off test.
I would like to add one detail here - it has been mentioned that Germany usually wins in France.
However that is not all that much thanks to great German AI, because one of following (or all kinds of combinations) tend to happen:
1) French army decides to move away all forces from maginot line to fight in Luxemburg, Belgium, Netherlands. Then the Maginot line falls.
2) Very often, dozens of french units end up being clogged in Luxemburg province because of eternal battle, because ai by default moves through frontline provinces(last time forty, probably many of which were intended for Netherlands/Belgium). Then Netherlands and Belgium are on their own which isn't enough.
3) French AI pulls too many troops from Italian front.
4) Moving units all around means no dig-in bonus(there seriously should be armies statically assigned to fortified areas that ai just won't move as long as frontline is 500km near, unless AI can handle it better).
So it's not so much of great ai passing through Maginot line, as it is two ... well... still not ideal AIs fighting each other and logically the one with more troops(and less fronts one may add) wins.
However that is not all that much thanks to great German AI, because one of following (or all kinds of combinations) tend to happen:
1) French army decides to move away all forces from maginot line to fight in Luxemburg, Belgium, Netherlands. Then the Maginot line falls.
2) Very often, dozens of french units end up being clogged in Luxemburg province because of eternal battle, because ai by default moves through frontline provinces(last time forty, probably many of which were intended for Netherlands/Belgium). Then Netherlands and Belgium are on their own which isn't enough.
3) French AI pulls too many troops from Italian front.
4) Moving units all around means no dig-in bonus(there seriously should be armies statically assigned to fortified areas that ai just won't move as long as frontline is 500km near, unless AI can handle it better).
So it's not so much of great ai passing through Maginot line, as it is two ... well... still not ideal AIs fighting each other and logically the one with more troops(and less fronts one may add) wins.
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