AI divisions cap

[Suor]

Its ridiculous! Major country AI usually have in late game 2k-3k (2000-3000) divisions combined (his own and expeditionary forces)! This is insane! Thats make late game laggy mess

Please consider adding cap on number of divisions that AI country can have in one time. 100-200 for Allies. 200-300 for Axis. 300-400 for USSR. And even that seem like overkill. And for god sake, please tweak Aircraft cap also.

 

[bdodig]

What part of the roughly speaking 400.000 combat aircraft produced in 1938-45 you don't appreciate seeing ingame?

The AI does build too many and too small divisions for my taste, though, that should get fixed. It builds too much, runs out of equipment and you just walk all over it. Plus, too small divisions with inadequate support gimp it. It should be fixed and more beefy divisions should be built. You can't limit the USSR to 400 divisions, however, that's ludicrous. That would be ahistorically small.

 

[ringhloth]

Crippling the AI with arbitrary limits isn't what we need.

 

[theJ]

Well, a "division cap" would be the simplest solution, and somewhat surprisingly, not overly a-historical; while most of the nations were able to churn out silly quantities of soldiers, recruiting competent officers, medics, and other support personel was typically a fair bit trickier. I'm reasonably sure this is why earlier HoI games included separate manpower for those; perhaps reintroducing something similiar wouldn't go amiss? Give each nation a number for "educated manpower" in addition to "riffraff manpower", which every new division requires a small quantity of in order to function; could even be used to give mass assault a much needed buff, by lowering the EM cost of divisions, allowing more of them to be fielded.

Would probably also be used in small quantities for support brigades, and would slowly but surely increase over time, although nowhere near as quickly as the AI is currently churning them out.

 

[ringhloth]

Well, a "division cap" would be the simplest solution, and somewhat surprisingly, not overly a-historical; while most of the nations were able to churn out silly quantities of soldiers, recruiting competent officers, medics, and other support personel was typically a fair bit trickier. I'm reasonably sure this is why earlier HoI games included separate manpower for those; perhaps reintroducing something similiar wouldn't go amiss? Give each nation a number for "educated manpower" in addition to "riffraff manpower", which every new division requires a small quantity of in order to function; could even be used to give mass assault a much needed buff, by lowering the EM cost of divisions, allowing more of them to be fielded.

Would probably also be used in small quantities for support brigades, and would slowly but surely increase over time, although nowhere near as quickly as the AI is currently churning them out.

Silly me. I forgot the reason why Germany lost WW2 was because they hit the arbitrary headcount limit

 

[Sir Pellew]

There should be some limiting factor like supply costs in IC, maybe with one of the next updates.

I also find the amount of Divisions in the late game insane and unhistorical + it produces lag even on decent rigs.

 

[bdodig]

No lag here, but I tend to resolve most of the big wars by 1943/44.

The AI should just be persuaded to build larger divisions of, let's say, 20 size minimum, as soon as it can, and to keep 20%-25% of equipment total in reserve. That'd solve three issues at the same time:
- too big number of "divisions" and consequent lag playing on poor/decent machines
- AI divisions too uselessly weak
- AI running out of equipment after a short period and getting steamrolled as a result, since it doesn't plan to have spare equipment for fighting a war

Alternatively, the game could give a nod to history and move to 30 width base. Then the standard division would be of a size much more similar to historical size and the number of divisions could be cut by a further 50% while keeping armies just as big.

 

[DogEggz]

Not only it makes game laggy, it also make late game become too easy. AI trained too much division that they can't fully supply, so every one of them is at 10% HP, make it really easy to breakthrough.

 

[hansnoetig]

There are 3 things that not just improve performance but gameplay overall:
- Give the AI good templates
- Remove its options to mess around with them (this is buggy anyway); You might want to tagswitch to the Majors in '39 to add more support etc
- Stop it from overproducing and make it pay more attention to supply limits

This can be done in about 1h by yourselves, including a test run to Summer '42, if you have played around with Paradox games before (edit unit files and 4 values in defines). Or just browse the mod forum if you don't want to reinvent the wheel a second time

 

[safe-keeper]

The AI needs to think more in general, and ask itself questions like "for how long can I sustain these 200 divisions I'm building? How much supply will they need? Can I produce this much equipment?". Not just a problem with division templates, in other words.

I have hopes this will be fixed in the near future, along with the other obvious AI problems: borders left unprotected, declaring wars it can't win when it's already overwhelmed, that kind of thing.

 

[lihp]

There was a heated discussion about it: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...h-or-incomplete-and-in-the-worst-case.951437/

A discussion which included suggestions, where at least some of both sides could agree. Bottom line: upkeep costs, like some steady attrition taking 1-10% material of each unit a month. As a result you need to allocate MIC and ressoruces to upkeep.

 

[safe-keeper]

Its ridiculous! Major country AI usually have in late game 2k-3k (2000-3000) divisions combined (his own and expeditionary forces)! This is insane! Thats make late game laggy mess

Please consider adding cap on number of divisions that AI country can have in one time. 100-200 for Allies. 200-300 for Axis. 300-400 for USSR. And even that seem like overkill. And for god sake, please tweak Aircraft cap also.

The game isn't supposed to have caps like this. The "division cap" is the limited number of manpower, resources, supplies, and factories. A nation having enough of these to raise and maintain more divisions, and then not being able to do so because you hit some arbitrary fixed cap, wouldn't be good gameplay, even if it was an AI. Better to tweak templates and AI scripts.

 

[Anaraxes]

An arbitrary hard cap coded into the program isn't a good answer to the problem. The actual problem is that the AI overbuilds, and exhausts its manpower, equipment, and supply capacity. As a result of that, the massive numbers of divisions prove not to be useful, being very brittle in combat. If the AI had a better calculation for making an effective army, as opposed to simply a numerous one, the problem would be alleviated without the blunt instrument of a hardcoded number.

Note that the score screen in 1948 also has a factor that's purely number of divisions. This, too, needs to be corrected, adjusted by strength totals and org, not just a division count. In fact, the AI may even be using much the same logic to decide how big its army should be, and inevitably coming up with the answer is more is better -- just look at the higher score that way!

 

[hagen_hase]

the minor states should have a cap. they build till they have no manpower left...

 

[DogEggz]

the minor states should have a cap. they build till they have no manpower left...

No they don't stop at 0 manpower. They build division til they scratch the barrel and have no manpower left.

This achievement hunting madness should be stop at once.

 

[HerrWolf88]

There really should be a total support limit for each nation, based relative to the size and manpower of a country. It would be a great way of representing the logistical support of each nation and would cap off some countries that just get completely carried away.

 

[DorostheConquer]

Silly me. I forgot the reason why Germany lost WW2 was because they hit the arbitrary headcount limit

No, they lost because, owing to poor Infrastructure and a bug which prevented them from using a ports to bypass raillines, the States they were moving through did not have sufficient Supply Throughput. Had the Germans used a few less divisions (Hitler could have ordered Hungary to stop sending tactically useless AI divisions into Russia?), or maybe had they strat redployed an Army Group one province over into a separate Supply Region until Stalingrad was captured, then they probably would have got Russia below their National Unity score and won the war. However, the German's supply was bad and they put their armies on a Field Marshall instead of a General with Commando and then their Org ran out and that was it.

Poor Germany. Nevar forget.

 

[Alexlazer]

No lag here, but I tend to resolve most of the big wars by 1943/44.

The AI should just be persuaded to build larger divisions of, let's say, 20 size minimum, as soon as it can, and to keep 20%-25% of equipment total in reserve. That'd solve three issues at the same time:
- too big number of "divisions" and consequent lag playing on poor/decent machines
- AI divisions too uselessly weak
- AI running out of equipment after a short period and getting steamrolled as a result, since it doesn't plan to have spare equipment for fighting a war

Alternatively, the game could give a nod to history and move to 30 width base. Then the standard division would be of a size much more similar to historical size and the number of divisions could be cut by a further 50% while keeping armies just as big.

Exactly.

 

[rwds]

I would prefer it if the AI used historical division sizes instead of gravitating towards cookie-cutter 7 inf 2 art. There was another thread where a poster tried to make a historical Japanese division and filled every slot to reach the historical manpower, something you definitely don't see the AI doing. This would help the division spam significantly.

 

[Secret Master]

Folks, this thread had been dead and buried for almost a year. Thread necromancy is generally not allowed.

Thread closed.