2 front AI problem

[unmerged(52751)]

I noticed in the recent Yugoslav AAR that Italy displayed the classic 2 front bug, where the AI can't handle multiple fronts and ends of leaving a front poorly defended. In the AAR, Italy only left a few divisions in N Italy against the human Yugo player to focus on N Africa, which made it a cakewalk for the human player to mass divisions and take the Italian mainland.

I would think it would be a simple AI issue to have it match human troop buildup levels along a front (or even via events?). Or even just lock units in place via events? I hope the UK AI no longer leaves its beaches undefended?

cheers,

kilolima

 

[Lennartos]

I noticed in the recent Yugoslav AAR that Italy displayed the classic 2 front bug, where the AI can't handle multiple fronts and ends of leaving a front poorly defended. In the AAR, Italy only left a few divisions in N Italy against the human Yugo player to focus on N Africa, which made it a cakewalk for the human player to mass divisions and take the Italian mainland.

I would think it would be a simple AI issue to have it match human troop buildup levels along a front (or even via events?). Or even just lock units in place via events? I hope the UK AI no longer leaves its beaches undefended?

cheers,

kilolima

Actually you can control the AI through the AI files and events.
The current italy AI profiles has been programmed to prioritoize north africa to give england a good fight, while just keeping enough troops to hold the beaches.

So this is a tricky subject - either you let the AI roam freely - this will result in a very versatile AI, but will end up with rather ahistorical performance (it plays the game - not history).
Or you give it predefined scripts to determine its interest areas (HOI2) - this works well as long as history plays out as it should, but then the AI is not ready(actually its handicapped) for ahistorical attacks on its softer parts.

 

[Talar]

The best of both worlds would of course be that the AI drops it's preprogrammed behaviour and start "playing the game" after the game has already gone ahistorical for some reason.

 

[bosman]

This problem could be solved if AI were programmed to garrison specific border only at war. I suppose it might be achieved by giving proper priority for that border at war, but not sure if there are such options ?

 

[Lennartos]

This problem could be solved if AI were programmed to garrison specific border only at war. I suppose it might be achieved by giving proper priority for that border at war, but not sure if there are such options ?

Yes its possible - just make events that switch to the correct AI preferences.
However this might be a lot of work (you have to take all kinds of unhistorical situations into account)

(basically this is what lothos did with his improved AI)

This is propably also why HOI3 just is running on a more or less generic AI. (you try to improve the AI to react to its environment instead of using scripted preferences to force a specific behavior..)
But making a AI a little too smart will propably make the AI passive or choose paths that are totally ahistorical but make more sense in a game perspective.

 

[DesertSnow]

Just a question:

if someone had removed those lines from the italian files, would Jugoslavia's ahistorical conquest of Italy have been easier or harder?

 

[deadmeat1471]

Ai needs some threat estimation from its bordering nations.

For example, bad relations = more garrisons on your border, good relation = possibility for enemy sneak attack.

 

[x260bm]

I noticed in the recent Yugoslav AAR that Italy displayed the classic 2 front bug, where the AI can't handle multiple fronts and ends of leaving a front poorly defended. In the AAR, Italy only left a few divisions in N Italy against the human Yugo player to focus on N Africa, which made it a cakewalk for the human player to mass divisions and take the Italian mainland.

I would think it would be a simple AI issue to have it match human troop buildup levels along a front (or even via events?). Or even just lock units in place via events? I hope the UK AI no longer leaves its beaches undefended?

cheers,

kilolima

The problem is that the AI minors always station most of their troops on the border of the most threatening neighbor. So you are essentially handicapping Italy's historical progress on the chance that a minor near it is human controlled. Doesn't sound like a good tradeoff to me.

 

[Mjarr]

The problem is that the AI minors always station most of their troops on the border of the most threatening neighbor. So you are essentially handicapping Italy's historical progress on the chance that a minor near it is human controlled. Doesn't sound like a good tradeoff to me.

Which would probably result in complains how Italy does badly against UK (presuming the game plays that far without any real success on the player or AI) and going to the "but historically bla bla bla bla"- argument.

After all, since human players can do almost whatever they want with almost any nation they want, they can exploit and go as historical as possible as they know how the AI reacts, while making AI that does react and attempts to be bit more human-like would result probably into similiar issues HoI3 has where Canada is considered a major threat to USA because they built few new ships or have one brigade garrisoned at the border.

If you ever play scenarios like the abyss or armageddon you can easily see AI being far more reactive and diffrent with its moves compared to any other scenario, but I guess since they are purely fictional people really don't play them or complain about some weird stuff, like Prussia landing in Confederate in few years and making it their own colony (seen this happening few times).

 

[unmerged(652)]

I know my thoughts on this will be very much against the general sentiment on PIs forums, but here goes:

The design decision to have all countries playable, and with their own active ai and ambitions, is what creates these situations. From my perspective, the interesting thing about WWII games is the major players of that conflict. Small countries simply do not interest me. The choice to go sandbox, or simply to go the way that all countries can be played and have an active ai that is basically the same, is to me the rot in the center that is the cause for so much of what I see as the problem with many PI games. It´s just a fact that at the moment one tries to please everyone by having any country playable, that is not only adding more possibilities for the players, it also works negatively against how the game plays out when playing any of the major powers. Right now there are, what, 100+ AIs that fight it out? I for one would have found a game that focuses on making the AI of the handful major powers work really well a lot more interesting. Any minor country should really only act by event or by the influence of a major power.

But, I am well aware this is not what most people want, but maybe it doesn´t hurt to say it occasionally any way.

Still, from what I´ve seen of the DD AoD looks very promising and I look forward to the 23rd!

 

[unmerged(52751)]

For example, bad relations = more garrisons on your border, good relation = possibility for enemy sneak attack.

Even though the Yugoslav AAR is an unhistorical campaign (and I agree with the other poster that unhistorical minor games are not the focus in HoI and make the game more wonky for those who would prefer a straight-up Germany-only WWII game), I would think the AI could at least match province border deployments with a human AI during a cease-fire or based upon influence or belligerence values.

If you ever play scenarios like the abyss or armageddon you can easily see AI being far more reactive and diffrent with its moves compared to any other scenario, but I guess since they are purely fictional people really don't play them or complain about some weird stuff, like Prussia landing in Confederate in few years and making it their own colony (seen this happening few times).

I've seen great AI in these scenarios, but they are still a disappointment for me because PI never bothered to give each nation flavour with unique ship/unit names, which ruins the immersive feel.

 

[unmerged(45611)]

No matter what you try to do with the AI, a good human player will work around it.

Build up on the border to match division strengths? A good human player will hide his divisions a province away until they all arrive together at H-hour to launch the surprise attack.

Generically just defend all borders with a unit or two? Ditto above, but with blitzkrieg tactics so that the majority of the surprise force punches a hole through the line.

I think the way they are handling it is fine. Don't like it? Mod your own AI.