AI being agressive and a potential solution

[Vin55]

I think many people can agree, that EUIVs ai atm is pretty agressive in conquering land and that leaves just some blobs in some areas of the game like africa, or asia.
My solution for at least asia and africa, would be to make the ai of those nations less agressive than the Europeans. With some expceptions lilke Japan, Mughals or Manchu ofc. But places like Western Africa, the Congo area or India remainend to large parts composed of small nations.
This game is Europa Universalis and not World Universalis, Europeans should have it pretty easy to conquer places in Indonesia or Southern India to be honest.
What do you thing of this idea, would it be possible to implement?

 

[bokorthedust]

The game is Sandbox Universalis. Just because history happened in one particular way, it doesn't mean it should always exclusively happen in that particular way. Eurocentrism like this would only serve to kill the sandbox aspect and greatly lower replayability.

 

[alexo22]

No man, the game has gone in a different direction years ago.
Just think about current institution system, where there's practically no tech difference between Europe and other parts or the World any more.
I'm glad this game can be modded to make it what you think it should be.

 

[fireandplague]

The game is Sandbox Universalis. Just because history happened in one particular way, it doesn't mean it should always exclusively happen in that particular way. Eurocentrism like this would only serve to kill the sandbox aspect and greatly lower replayability.

I agree and disagree. I want the game to be a sandbox, but that in a framework of "historical realism," where game mechanics more closely model the probabilities of the real world. That said, I cringe every time events are added to the game to force something "historical" to happen outside of game context. This would include things like the Burgundian Inheritance, Iberian Wedding, and that one volcano eruption (although that last can perhaps be allowed since humans probably didn't contribute in any way to it). Even worse, to the extent of laughability, are the "historical characters" like Oliver Cromwell, Maria Theresa, and others.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

No fake/magic mechanics falsely attributed to history please.

 

[Vin55]

Not mechanics, just toning down the ai in those areas, I mean they are now more or less on point in tech and in army size because of how "competent" the ai has gotten. It also takes the fun out in the mid to late game of growing your colonial empire as european.

 

[Hermerico]

The only reasonable solution to this is the addition of realistic/historical game mechanics that portray the advantages and limitations that historically sucesful nations had that historically unsucessful nations did not.

Starting with fixing the current mechanics, such as technological difference, which does not exist.

 

[Kapi96]

Git gud!

I don't usually like that phrase, but it's fitting here. The AI isn't too aggressive, quite the opposite! It's not good enough to keep up with players as is. Nerfing the AI would just make the game stupidly easy, no thanks. I'd much rather see better AI rather than worse.

 

[FrogCrusher]

Git gud!

I don't usually like that phrase, but it's fitting here. The AI isn't too aggressive, quite the opposite! It's not good enough to keep up with players as is. Nerfing the AI would just make the game stupidly easy, no thanks. I'd much rather see better AI rather than worse.

Trust me, he doesn't need git gud. You must be young to the game. This thread follows long previous discussions on how new AI ruined the fun and the game for some of us on the minority side (unfortunately for us).

As example: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/mission-trees-are-getting-out-of-hand.1568899/

Ai blobbing

Now we do have an ai that is agressive, that takes land and it does so fast by 1700s all land in the world is normally colonised (apart from Siberia if Russia is not there), the Trade and Income of the ai is also fine. The only Problem I see is...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

Am I the only one who doesn't like how aggressive the AI is after getting Empire rank?

While I feel like making the AI more aggressive was necessary, I also think that they overdid it with Empires. Now everything I see is even bigger blobs that are impossible to destroy. Ottomans always conquer everything from Austria to Pakistan...

forum.paradoxplaza.com

The game was harder at blobbing in the past, with less big AI blobs. I'm afraid the core mechanics have been too modified. It is easier than ever to play horde (it was another story when westernisation was still a thing) and it is now somehow not too difficult to obtain the capacity to raze provinces with almost any nation (with some culture shift of course).
The thing is that total development of provinces skyroqueted. In my first WC, it was something like 15K dev. My last one in the current patch, it was 30k. So devs needed to put new tools to deal with that. And as a side effect, blobbing is easier. So AI need to blob as well. End of the story

 

[Pellucid]

EU4 abandoned being historical long ago. It's a map painter now, and if the AI isn't painting the map it's not playing right.

 

[Vin55]

Git gud!

I don't usually like that phrase, but it's fitting here. The AI isn't too aggressive, quite the opposite! It's not good enough to keep up with players as is. Nerfing the AI would just make the game stupidly easy, no thanks. I'd much rather see better AI rather than worse.

Dude I have 5000 hours in EU4 and 90% achievment completed, I am able to do what I want in this game, it has just become annyoing to do so, the ai will just have more units, wars become a siege fest even smaller ones or world wars, and the ai just has more stuff. If you want a harder experience go play on very hard, but atm those blobs just take the fun away, for most achievments I was finished by 1650 with them atm, you need to go for 1750 if you play chill. Because of how ai behaves. They break more often then humans alliances and behave completly erradic like a total war alliance.
Playing small nations close to the ottman has also become a pain and is mostly luck based atm no skill of the world can safe you if the ottoman whants your land and kills your dumber ai allies who do not carry out the supreme tactics of a deathstack.

 

[Kurfürstin Adelheid]

Playing small nations close to the ottman has also become a pain and is mostly luck based atm no skill of the world can safe you if the ottoman whants your land and kills your dumber ai allies who do not carry out the supreme tactics of a deathstack.

I do hate it when all my allies just wander around and get their small armies killed by literally walking into the enemy's because all my opponents know how to stack their armies but my brain-dead allies don't. And this happens everywhere every game. AI allies that aren't big nations or direct neighbours are usually only good as distraction/bait for the enemy so they siege their provinces before yours.

I tried to play Trebizond once and it didn't end well. But I assume that the situation down there mirrors real life history quite well... though I do think mountain forts and defensive warfare should have more of an impact.

 

[Kurfürstin Adelheid]

A relevant problem I have is that some AI countries do nothing in response to other aggressive AI countries even when they really should... Austria and Bohemia is the prime example. Bohemia routinely takes huge chunks of Saxony and Brandenburg, refuses demand for unlawful imperial territory, but then Austria still just does nothing (not like Bohemia had good allies, it was Magdeburg and Brunswick if I recall correctly)..but meanwhile God forbid if Württemberg take one province, Austria will summon all her allies to fight ~10K men.

 

[Astalanian]

Almost evrything comes from the devs allowing AI to dev provinces. No more tech difference because AI devpushing hellholes all around the world like crazy, and big nations getting bigger and bigger. And you want a fun fact, that much dev being put in the game during its course makes it unbearable, and laggier and laggier, so unless you have a good machine, you'll have an horrible lag going. Most of the players don't go past 1600, does the lag and increasing difficulty have a thing to do with it ? I wonder. It is exponential, so it works almost fine in the beginning of the game. That's why the devs and a good part of the community seems to let things happen.

 

[sr999]

I think many people can agree, that EUIVs ai atm is pretty agressive in conquering land and that leaves just some blobs in some areas of the game like africa, or asia.
My solution for at least asia and africa, would be to make the ai of those nations less agressive than the Europeans. With some expceptions lilke Japan, Mughals or Manchu ofc. But places like Western Africa, the Congo area or India remainend to large parts composed of small nations.
This game is Europa Universalis and not World Universalis, Europeans should have it pretty easy to conquer places in Indonesia or Southern India to be honest.
What do you thing of this idea, would it be possible to implement?

I think it'll be far better to expand existing components, especially the new experimental Ottoman decadence-collapse mechanics. Once we learn how well the AI "manages" that, with good rulers / bad rulers etc, and it gets tweaked (for instance we'll want it to happen some of the time, but not to happen all of the time), PDS could create a similar mechanic to all blobbing tags in the base game.

 

[zorkman]

Perhaps if there was consequencies for taking land like in the past it would improve things much more, particulalry the three main cheats Muscovy, OE, & France. In virtually all games, all three carve out the same boring empires. France takes English mainland cores no problem, gobbles up Burgundy who cares, Brittany annexed & Savoy, & Austria & co nod their heads & more or less say its only France flexing its muscles.

Fed up with this I thought I would play a version before the fort nonsense so went back to 1.9, from the beginning of 2015. Game was certainly more basic in map & gameplay, but my it was different & better. I played little Connaught as wanted to go to Americas. France warred with England for years before gaining its mainland cores, then took on Burgundy where it gained 5 provinces, two in the HRE. This was 10 years in game. Somehow managed to ally France to keep England of my back, when around two years after defeating Burgundy Provence declared on France. I thought this strange as France was in no wars, when I realised it was leading a coalition of Western Europe, including Austria, Burgundy, Castille, England & many others. This was not good, & over next few years France was demolished, ceding many provinces to the now powerful Provence & releasing other countries.

This is what it needs now. Where did it go wrong. Paradox over the years have caved in to the map painters, making a bland & boring world where everyone has similar tech & can expand without any consequencies. Personally instead of all the estates, Institutions, fort changes, & equality of nations, I would rather they balanced the game to become an historical strategy game again, & I don't mean like EU2, but more like early EU4

 

[HypnoSkales]

I wholeheartedly agree with this. The problem is not that the AIs are "too strong", but that they become too consolidated. For example India usually ends up divided between 3 or 4 large countries, where in reality there were hundreds of small Indian princedoms way into the 1800s. I think that most AIs (except Ottomans, Mughals, Qing, France, Russia etc.) should almost not expand at all. And that situation in India could be resolved if, for example, Indian nations were allowed to make tributaries and a tributary could be established without a common border in general (but still only with a close-by country anyways). Then, for example, Orissa would turn all the Gondi OPMs into tributaries instead of eating them in like 20 years.

Oh, and also, unreasonable demands should probably have a higher cost - they should generate more AE and unrest in the conquered provinces aside from just costing diplo power. Since most historically important nations have tons of permanent claims in their MTs anyways, it would stop f.ex. Transoxiana from fabricating a single claim on Nogai and then conquering most of it, since "they can anyways, so why not?".

Also there should be a mechanic where if a (large) country gets divided into lots of exclaves with different cultures/religions, then those exclaves would get tons of separatism, so that rebels would enforce and split off that exclave from the country. Also, AI shouldn't be as lenient with its permitting military access to other nations in general.

 

[Pellucid]

I tried to play Trebizond once and it didn't end well. But I assume that the situation down there mirrors real life history quite well...

It actually doesn't. The Ottomans fairly regularly lost battles against Albania, Wallachia, and other minor powers in their region. Far from their depiction in game where they can easily beat armies when at a 1:2 disadvantage, they actually pretty commonly lost battles when at a 2:1 advantage.

 

[Ujin]

The AI is dumb and incapable of doing anything
If the player and the AI win too much too easily, it's more of a problem with the balance and mechanics of the game

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I wholeheartedly agree with this. The problem is not that the AIs are "too strong", but that they become too consolidated. For example India usually ends up divided between 3 or 4 large countries, where in reality there were hundreds of small Indian princedoms way into the 1800s. I think that most AIs (except Ottomans, Mughals, Qing, France, Russia etc.) should almost not expand at all. And that situation in India could be resolved if, for example, Indian nations were allowed to make tributaries and a tributary could be established without a common border in general (but still only with a close-by country anyways). Then, for example, Orissa would turn all the Gondi OPMs into tributaries instead of eating them in like 20 years.

Oh, and also, unreasonable demands should probably have a higher cost - they should generate more AE and unrest in the conquered provinces aside from just costing diplo power. Since most historically important nations have tons of permanent claims in their MTs anyways, it would stop f.ex. Transoxiana from fabricating a single claim on Nogai and then conquering most of it, since "they can anyways, so why not?".

Also there should be a mechanic where if a (large) country gets divided into lots of exclaves with different cultures/religions, then those exclaves would get tons of separatism, so that rebels would enforce and split off that exclave from the country. Also, AI shouldn't be as lenient with its permitting military access to other nations in general.

"I get less AE because my name is X" is exactly the sort of thing that can't be justified using "history".