1.8 Why is it random if a vassal's armies move to objectives?

[kitemasaki]

Has anyone else noticed that the vassal's you give objectives to will tend to ignore those directions? I thought the point of buying Art of War was being able to have a cool new feature that meant something tangible. I have also noticed that vassal army's will randomly decide to not doing anything during a war. It isn't tied to distance either since I can have a war at another date with a nation further away and they will happily join.

Am I missing something such as unreleased patch notes on AI behaviors? I had more reactionary vassals in 1.7.

 

[BionkeSmalls]

did you go into you vassal overview screen and change their objective in war? or are you just clicking on a province and setting the objective from there?
in order for them to seize land you need to go into the overview and set them to aggressive rather than choose their own or supportive.

that being said...the AI still does what it want for the most part.

 

[Morik]

A couple additional questions:
- Where do I set specific goals for a particular province? (I looked around but didn't see anything, looking at the province screen of an enemy province during war.)
- Is there a way to tell a vassal "hey, join this army right now cause I wanna go fight that rebel stack"? (I send my army in, and then theirs starts walking to the fight but doesn't get there in time usually... checking "attach to this unit" doesn't work from what I can tell.)

 

[kitemasaki]

Yeppers. It does seem to be random. Literally have troops that will just sit at home no matter the objective or tactics. It can't be WAD otherwise its a wasted DLC feature.

 

[kitemasaki]

A couple additional questions:
- Where do I set specific goals for a particular province? (I looked around but didn't see anything, looking at the province screen of an enemy province during war.)
- Is there a way to tell a vassal "hey, join this army right now cause I wanna go fight that rebel stack"? (I send my army in, and then theirs starts walking to the fight but doesn't get there in time usually... checking "attach to this unit" doesn't work from what I can tell.)

Goals are set by clicking an enemy province and clicking the button under the garrison value. You can select which ally/vassal 'should' go there. Issue is that it is random if they will do it (more often it is no).
The check box in the army that says 'attach to this unit' is the only way to get units to join it that I am aware of. You can't choose which army or which vassal will attach, so its a random element again. Not much strategy depth.

 

[VampireBoot]

Yeah, I haven't really noticed them going after the objectives much. Same for supportive/aggressive. I also wish there was a vassal directive for "completely passive" so they don't bother attacking at all. I had a very frustrating trade war with Norway in which I wanted to just blockade them until I win, but my vassal Flanders kept suiciding small stacks at the Norwegian mainland, even though it was set to supportive.

 

[kitemasaki]

Yeah, I haven't really noticed them going after the objectives much. Same for supportive/aggressive. I also wish there was a vassal directive for "completely passive" so they don't bother attacking at all. I had a very frustrating trade war with Norway in which I wanted to just blockade them until I win, but my vassal Flanders kept suiciding small stacks at the Norwegian mainland, even though it was set to supportive.

Thats a good point. Sometimes you don't want a vassal to join, especially if they have something going on in their lands like a rebellion. Also, can be frustrating in certain CBs such as religious CBs since those require winning battles...something the AI can utterly mess up

 

[Mztr44]

I haven't had any luck either with setting ally objectives or changing vassal strategy, they both appear to work as always. The only saving grace is that allies will give you control of provinces they siege unless they have a claim on it. No more worries about allies screwing up an attempt at a massive land grab.

 

[finkellll]

I notice that my vassals will behave correctly when I set them to either aggressive or supportive.

The only time I used the province priority was on a core of my vassal, just to make sure that they would actually siege down their cores (I wasn't the warleader and wasn't interested in separate-peacing).

I found that supportive works best when I check the box for "Attach to this army" on all neaby stacks.

Overall I'm happy with it, mostly because I don't try to micro my vassals stacks.