A thought...

[unmerged(29181)]

I was re-reading a book on WWI and it came to me.

In Victoria, when you declare war (or war is declared on you) against a nation which shares a large border with you (Russia vs. Austria for example) the nation will put small groups in each provence.

This is ok. You would want to protect your frontier. But, in WWI- Russia and Austria concentrated the majority of their forces at the Polish frontier. I have never seen an AI opponent concentrate his forces. Sometimes, in a fluke, they might group more than 5 divisions together, but it never seems to be intentional.

This makes invading Russia (or another big country) over a large front far too easy.

If you send large forces into Poland, Russia should concentrate and invade southern Austria- forcing you to stop your advances into Poland shift forces to meet the Russian invasion...

Just a thought.

 

[Memnon]

And it's a good thought. It'd never occured to me that the AI didn't mass it's forces the way I did. Hmmm....

Could it be modded into the AI military profile in the next patch, or the one after perhaps? I think it really is a good observation.

Keep reading Dhampir, and keep thinking.

 

[Kriegsspieler]

There's a larger issue here, and that is the military side of the game hasn't received a great deal of attention in the patches thus far. That's ok, because the majority of players have clearly been interested in getting the economic engine to work correctly. But now the time has come to improve the performance of the military a.i. It doesn't lack a great deal, IMO (and certainly the game is difficult enough already! ), but it could use some help.

 

[unmerged(25454)]

Germany tends to do that in WWI, although they screw themselves over by not following the Schlieffen plan after making peace with Belgium too early. I found that the German-French border was being built up, and though I spread my forces out, Germany covered the border AND put 43 (!) divisions in one provinces, sent them out, and stomped me, causing a massive uber breakthrough.

 

[Rya]

When my Germany landed 210.000 man (pioneers and artillery) in Washington and dug-in, while 30 Battleships (for coastal bombardement) patrolled Chesapeake Bay, the USA sure did concentrate on that. They lost 100 divisions before I had to retreat

 

[unmerged(25454)]

Well, I think that's because it was the ONLY place you deployed to.

100 divisions?!?!

And as an aside, yay, I'm a sergeant. Vive le France! Even though I'm not remotely French!

 

[Darkrenown]

There's a larger issue here, and that is the military side of the game hasn't received a great deal of attention in the patches thus far. That's ok, because the majority of players have clearly been interested in getting the economic engine to work correctly. But now the time has come to improve the performance of the military a.i. It doesn't lack a great deal, IMO (and certainly the game is difficult enough already! ), but it could use some help.

Get VIP 0.3 when it comes out. Pimparel's new AIs perform wonderfully.

 

[Kriegsspieler]

That's most encouraging! But will they defend all those colonial claims?

 

[unmerged(4253)]

in my opinion the AI does concentrate.

 

[Henry v. Keiper]

I think this is one of the only problems I have with Vicky, which is that it seems like the war system is too much province for province based, like WWI but perhaps for all of history. You can't just have a grand army launching a major campaign in one area of the war because the AI will have lots of little units eating away at your provinces and filling in any empty hole they see.

 

[Darkrenown]

That's most encouraging! But will they defend all those colonial claims?

The issue of the AI not "seeing" claims is hard coded, so VIP can't help there, but the colonial nations should garison around the world better, and the AI will go after your troops stealing its claims even if it doesn't know to stop and reclaim them.

 

[unmerged(28310)]

Could they make stealing claims cost one badboy? I guess there is no chance of claims being included in warscore and only gotten in peace deals?

 

[OriginalRafiki]

That's way too harsh; getting a full-fledged province in a peace-deal costs 1 BB, claims are proto-provinces and should incur much less of a BB cost, if they choose to include that. You'll also need to handle the fact that claims can go back and forth between controllers during a war.

Rafiki

 

[Heretic]

i think that claims are best left out of it.
i know they are a blind spot for the AI, but in MP this is no problem..
also, if you have a big problem about claims grabbing, just don;t do it.

People have suggested that the AI doesn;t mass it's forces, but what, may I ask, is a 100,000 strong chinese army, apart from a mass of force? they could have put divisions in every province, but they don't, they mass them.

Mmm?

Heretic

 

[Lamprey]

When I fighting Russia as Austria once, boy did they concentrate. They left the southern border lightly garrisoned (much like my own forces there) and let the front stalemate while they sent 3 15+ division stacks into Poland. They broke through right between Silesia and Galizien, near Cracow. It ouched badly

 

[Darkrenown]

People have suggested that the AI doesn;t mass it's forces, but what, may I ask, is a 100,000 strong chinese army, apart from a mass of force? they could have put divisions in every province, but they don't, they mass them.

The AI certainly should mass it's forces. In every ai file I've looked in the border ai is set to "reactive" which means it tries to counter buildups with it's own troops. If anyone's interested, the other settings are "even" which deploys troops evenly along borders, and "defensive", which places more troops in valuable provinces rather than watching the enemy troops.

 

[unmerged(28537)]

thats a shame then because theirs then no AI imperative to concentrate forces in an area where theirs only a light build up of your forces to start an offensive like human players do......