AI communication to player

[safe-keeper]

I know this is a bit of a big/unrealistic thing to ask, all things considered, but it's a rather major gripe of mine with the PDX games, so I'm bringing it up here for discussion's sake. Would be interesting to hear dev input on this with the game nearing completion. Issue in a nutshell:

Please, make it clearer to me why the AI is doing what it's doing.

Currently playing EU4 as the Ottomans. I'm sieging a Mamluk fort together with an allied army, with another allied army standing in the province next door, when a Mamluk counterattack army materialises. Nothing we can't handle -- we have good troops, we outnumber them, and we'll be defending -- but suddenly the AI forces all decide to withdraw north. I have no idea where they're going all of a sudden, not to mention why, and they appear to be going in different directions, and all the territory to the north is friendly, which adds to my confusion. Either way, I'm forced to abort my siege (which was at 42% and possibly just a single phase away from completion -_-) and flee north so as not to lose my entire army.

Once I'm out of the province and the Mamluk army has taken up residence in the province we just abandoned, the AI forces decide they suddenly want to be in that province after all. We all head back in, and the enemy crushes us with the help of a second army they've bought time to bring in.

I've been told the AI is a bit of a "moment-to-monent" deal rather than a long-term planner, and that's fine. I know it's a complex game and sometimes a lot of things that make sense individually don't seem very logical when applied together. The friendly AI armies also belonged to diferent nations, which might have contributed to the confusion at least a little.

But please, give me some features that make it clearer what the AI is thinking. It can be tiny things like being able to select an allied army and seeing their "movement arrow" so that I at least know where that army is headed, or just let me hit a keyboard key or menu button to see the arrows for all friendly units. Or maybe tag the units with notes like "Reinforcing army", "Evading superior enemy", "Breaking siege", "Withdrawing due to attrition", etc. that will appear in the tooltip when I hover my mouse over the unit.

HOI4 will remedy this a bit if allied battle plans are visible to the player, so that I know that in x days, they will invade province y or being an offensive along line z. Looking forward to that.

I know it's a lot to ask, but sometimes this just really grinds my gears sometimes .

Edit: we managed to make a counter-attack and through a miraculous victory shattered the Mamluk main army into retreat. I'm sieging the province again, and have landed a small force in Egypt which is taking advantage of the Mamluk disorganisation to "ninja" a couple coastal provinces, which should make them split up their army, and will also force their navy out to sea to be sunk en masse. Meanwhile my friends' armies, each with high organisation and numerically superior... are headed away from the action, moving in different directions.

Awesome illustration of situation right now:

 

[Catt--42]

Unpredictability of friendly course of action, while frustrating, is not completely unrealistic...

 

[fabius]

Unpredictability of friendly course of action, while frustrating, is not completely unrealistic...

For Allied faction during WW2, not really. Shame we can't use the Battle Planner to give allies plans to complete.

 

[grandad1982]

I know that we can see our allies plans and act accordingly but can the AI allies see ours and act accordingly or will they just swan off and do their own thing? @podcat

 

[safe-keeper]

Unpredictability of friendly course of action, while frustrating, is not completely unrealistic...

Well, that's true enough .

 

[Wimpola]

Sounds like your AI can't get straight with you.

 

[safe-keeper]

The second I peaced out (in both senses of the word) with the Mamluks, the army that's shown here with its back to me suddenly became super-eager to crush the Mamluk army .

 

[blue_yonder]

For Allied faction during WW2, not really. Shame we can't use the Battle Planner to give allies plans to complete.

View attachment 165923

It's true there was better co-ordination amongst the allies than the axis, but Eisenhower was still herding cats. What about the UK/US rumpus between an early D-Day versus Churchill's soft underbelly via operation Torch.. or Mark Clark taking Rome for personal glory.. the rivalry and hatred between Patton and Montgomery.. De Gaulle's loathing of the British and Americans.. and so on in a long list.

Why some people want total control of a unified mega-army I've no idea; it isn't historical and would be killing to gameplay. Transparency of intentions is fine, and what the OP is asking for, but the AI should always have its own best interests in mind. If we present it with a crap plan it wants no part of, it should tell us so.

 

[safe-keeper]

Why some people want total control of a unified mega-army I've no idea; it isn't historical and would be killing to gameplay. Transparency of intentions is fine, and what the OP is asking for, but the AI should always have its own best interests in mind. If we present it with a crap plan it wants no part of, it should tell us so.

I don't agree that I should have complete control of allies' units, except when they are expeditionary forces, I suppose, but I do understand those who want it. Losing a war due to a stupid AI doing inexplicable things is pretty terrible to gameplay, too .

 

[GhengisKhan]

Sounds like maybe a feature where you could mark a province or area to alert the Allied AI where you need help could be a good idea.

This is one of those problems where if the AI would be smart enough to discern these issues you'd probably never be able to beat the game due to the AI's skill. Won't realistically happen until they flesh out AI and shortly after the humans will be wiped out by Skynet.

 

[phantomrider]

It's true there was better co-ordination amongst the allies than the axis, but Eisenhower was still herding cats. What about the UK/US rumpus between an early D-Day versus Churchill's soft underbelly via operation Torch.. or Mark Clark taking Rome for personal glory.. the rivalry and hatred between Patton and Montgomery.. De Gaulle's loathing of the British and Americans.. and so on in a long list.

Why some people want total control of a unified mega-army I've no idea; it isn't historical and would be killing to gameplay. Transparency of intentions is fine, and what the OP is asking for, but the AI should always have its own best interests in mind. If we present it with a crap plan it wants no part of, it should tell us so.

Actually the axis in North Africa and the axis on the east front (Rumanians, Italians, Hungarians with Germans) all did a very decent job of coordinating command and control and coordinated support of their plans. Lack of something like assume control makes playing the commonwealth forces in an even semi historical mode impossible and similarly the western front in WWII either early (UK+France) or late (US+UK+france) similarly totally unrealistic. If you want to play the US you need to concentrate on the Pacific. Allied coordination started in North Africa with the US and UK armies coming from 2 different directions and after that in the Med they were side by side and mutually supporting each other. In France the situation was the same. You can't do that at all in HOI3 (HOI2 with total control you could). While I agree total control is too strong as in particular German (axis) allies defect and did separate peace deals and some of the commonwealth adjusted their forces when things were not going well close to home (Australia) but the HOI3 system really was bad for single players who wanted to be Churchill or Roosevelt or their military leader. At least their needs to be a button to request military/expeditionary forces so that while you don't get the allies whole army you get a reasonable force based on events in the world and to keep them until situations change drastically or you want to give them back.

 

[fabius]

Elementary really. Say as UK, D Day style invasion against a reasonable German held France. I want the US to land significant troops in sort of the same area, at sort of the same time. Nobody is asking for game killing uber control over a whole other nation. But see your point. But AI allied nations could co-op a little too.

 

[ArcandSpark]

What if you drew up your battle plan and called for assistance from allied AI and you had to set a time and date for the attack to launch as well as an objective. The AI will send its forces in the area and extra forces it has in its territory to form up for the attack and launch it at the time you specified.

One of the most critical parts of a SP campaign with this many allies is communication and coordination. I would even be happy with an overlay showing all allied battle plans with a small explanation as to what they are doing like what was brought up earlier in this topic.

 

[Axe99]

Totally agree, Keeper of Safes. I suspect it's a very hard thing to do, but when they crack the nut of a way of the AI communication sensibly on strategy and tactics it'll make a huge difference. Nothing wrong with them being a bit wishy-washy, particularly pre-HoI4 (hopefully shared battle plans will make this less of an issue in HoI4), but just knowing what's going on would be very handy.

 

[safe-keeper]

I think the problem I was having was that the AI didn't know to coordinate armies? As in, it looked at each army instead of looking at all of them combined, and thought "hmmm, 5000 versus 15 000, no way I'd beat that", and pulled all the armies back? But I'm digressing too much into discussing EU4, I suppose .

Sounds like maybe a feature where you could mark a province or area to alert the Allied AI where you need help could be a good idea.

Both HOI3 and EU4 has that, problem is it's a tad bit too simplistic. Battle plans will probably work much better, if implemented well.

 

[hwoosh]

I think if you turn on debug mode in EU4, the army and navy tooltips will give you information on that AI unit's behavior. There's really no reason that that information, or at least some of it, couldn't be displayed by default in all Paradox's titles—it would be especially appropriate for subject nations, whose units' behavior is hard enough to understand and influence with the tools they've given us already.

 

[blue_yonder]

... you had to set a time and date for the attack to launch...

Sorry for going slightly OT to the thread, but I was disappointed we can't even time and date our own battleplans at present, nevermind co-ordinate those timings with allies. There is an adage that the difference between a plan and a daydream is a timetable, and I hope that in some future dlc it becomes possible to specify in advance that the attack should start at dawn or whenever on such-and-such a date. It's crisper and more military-minded than just pressing the Go button.

 

[safe-keeper]

I think if you turn on debug mode in EU4, the army and navy tooltips will give you information on that AI unit's behavior. There's really no reason that that information, or at least some of it, couldn't be displayed by default in all Paradox's titles—it would be especially appropriate for subject nations, whose units' behavior is hard enough to understand and influence with the tools they've given us already.

Thanks, I'll look into that .

Sorry for going slightly OT to the thread, but I was disappointed we can't even time and date our own battleplans at present, nevermind co-ordinate those timings with allies. There is an adage that the difference between a plan and a daydream is a timetable, and I hope that in some future dlc it becomes possible to specify in advance that the attack should start at dawn or whenever on such-and-such a date. It's crisper and more military-minded than just pressing the Go button.

I absolutely agree. Would be really good for immersion.

 

[Mamluke]

It's true there was better co-ordination amongst the allies than the axis, but Eisenhower was still herding cats. What about the UK/US rumpus between an early D-Day versus Churchill's soft underbelly via operation Torch.. or Mark Clark taking Rome for personal glory.. the rivalry and hatred between Patton and Montgomery.. De Gaulle's loathing of the British and Americans.. and so on in a long list.

Why some people want total control of a unified mega-army I've no idea; it isn't historical and would be killing to gameplay. Transparency of intentions is fine, and what the OP is asking for, but the AI should always have its own best interests in mind. If we present it with a crap plan it wants no part of, it should tell us so.

my 1000 likes to this comment, my thoughts exactly.

Actually the axis in North Africa and the axis on the east front (Rumanians, Italians, Hungarians with Germans) all did a very decent job of coordinating command and control and coordinated support of their plans. Lack of something like assume control makes playing the commonwealth forces in an even semi historical mode impossible and similarly the western front in WWII either early (UK+France) or late (US+UK+france) similarly totally unrealistic. If you want to play the US you need to concentrate on the Pacific. Allied coordination started in North Africa with the US and UK armies coming from 2 different directions and after that in the Med they were side by side and mutually supporting each other. In France the situation was the same. You can't do that at all in HOI3 (HOI2 with total control you could). While I agree total control is too strong as in particular German (axis) allies defect and did separate peace deals and some of the commonwealth adjusted their forces when things were not going well close to home (Australia) but the HOI3 system really was bad for single players who wanted to be Churchill or Roosevelt or their military leader. At least their needs to be a button to request military/expeditionary forces so that while you don't get the allies whole army you get a reasonable force based on events in the world and to keep them until situations change drastically or you want to give them back.

HOWEVER, I can agree with him. being able to request expeditionary forces, just seams like a common sense to have in this game.

PERHAPS for the Allied faction, it could be made far more easier between allies!?

 

[blue_yonder]

PERHAPS for the Allied faction, it could be made far easier between allies!?

Well, that’s one option, certainly. Personally though, I’d rather it was up to the player to make the most of other parts of the game if he wants these kinds of results, rather than for anyone to automatically be given history’s silver spoon.

If you build up great relations with your faction members through trade, diplomacy, treasure and blood (aka lend-lease and expeditionary forces) then in return you can expect anything up to the maximum possible co-operation – let’s call it 75% of full control. But if you don’t do any ass-kissing and have never helped them out, you can only expect 25% co-operation or whatever. Something like this is what I’m hoping for a couple of years down the line.