AI is really bad

[Acaios]

I know that it is quite difficult to program a competent AI, but the AI we have on HoI4 is probably the worst AI I've ever seen.
AI is so incompetent it is actually frustrating to play as Allies.
Look at those iconic screens from my last run with france (vanilla, all dlc):

Spoiler: image 1

Spoiler: image 2

the entire front line was like that. Every time i tried to land into enemy territory, the IA decided to completely ignore supply limits and throw in an insane amount of "reinforcements", to the point that it was impossible to advance due to the "lack of supplies" malus. IA does not even consider terrain: I landed in the caucasus and USA decided to send in 3 heavy tanks divisions, each of them consuming just like 3 of my mountaineers divisions.
And this is only half of the problem. AI simply does not cooperate. They do not support your attacks, they do not try to attack an enemy to delay them or to support your defence on another province. They are just here to consume your limited supplies. .This is something the IA could easily do in HoI3.

IA is incompetent not only on a strategic level, but also on a tactical level.
Just look at this:

Spoiler: Image 3

Out of 19 units with max planning, 3 are attacking, while 13 are just moving pointlessly around. Someone should explain to the IA that the goal of an offensive is to move perpendicularly to the front line, possibly in the direction of enemy territories and not up and down the front line. HoI 3, again, was so better at this.

Even deciding when or where to attack, is just painful. I managed to encircle a unit during the offensive, but since offensive line was "too far" and pointing another direction, the IA decided that it was a good idea to encircle it with 5 division and just wait there. I wanted to test if the army IA could decide to attack at some point and the result is that it could not. Enemy division was out of supply, with 0 org and the IA just did nothing.
Talking about HoI3 again, armies could take some decisions on their own. Even in defensive stance, army IA could decide to attack a poorly defended province. It could also easily deal with pockets. And this was beautiful: I used to guide encirclements and other importan offensive maneuvers, while the IA could easily deal with troops in pockets and capture provinces while I could plan the next offensive.
This is not the case in HoI4 since I have to spend all my time making sure that the IA is not assigning 10 divisions to guard a 2 tiles front and 2 divisions on the 10 provinces front.
"AI wise", hoi 4 is definitely a step back from HoI3

So, please, improve the IA. At least the strategic one. It is almost impossible to play as Allied right now due to this insane unit spam.

 

[Simon_9732495]

Just look at this:

Out of 19 units with max planning, 3 are attacking, while 13 are just moving pointlessly around.

The movements are not pointless. You are misjudging the situation.

• 5 of the 13 Divisions are not on the front. They have to move. We are down to 8 Divisions.
• 3 of the 8 Divisions cant't attack over the lake in the north. They have to move. We are down to 5 Divisions.
• 2 of the 5 are moving into undefended enemy territory. We are down to 3 Divisions.
• 2 of the 3 were reserve divisions in the combat that was just won by the 3 attacking divisions. They move elsewhere because 3 Divisions walking into the tile after the combat was won is enough. We are down to 1 Division.

The only division that could attack but is moving instead, is the 4th division from the bottom. It could attack the 3 Divisions next to it, but instead it moves to cover a hole in your front. Reasonbale decision, becuase from the back 4 more Divisions are coming.

 

[Acaios]

The movements are not pointless. You are misjudging the situation.

• 5 of the 13 Divisions are not on the front. They have to move. We are down to 8 Divisions.
• 3 of the 8 Divisions cant't attack over the lake in the north. They have to move. We are down to 5 Divisions.
• 2 of the 5 are moving into undefended enemy territory. We are down to 3 Divisions.
• 2 of the 3 were reserve divisions in the combat that was just won by the 3 attacking divisions. They move elsewhere because 3 Divisions walking into the tile after the combat was won is enough. We are down to 1 Division.

The only division that could attack but is moving instead, is the 4th division from the bottom. It could attack the 3 Divisions next to it, but instead it moves to cover a hole in your front. Reasonbale decision, becuase from the back 4 more Divisions are coming.

the only division not on the front is the one moving from daugavpils that was moving in the newly captured province. The ones behind the lake and the 4 below were on the front line but the IA decided for some reason that northern part of the line needed reinforcements and decided to move them away from the front line to reposition them. the 3 units moving north were in the province you can see without troops in the screen.

Even if there are reasons to move troops around along the front line, movements should be limited in a few province range. In this screenshots, almost half of the army is completely switching side. An this was just the start of the offensive. The IA just lost the momentum and let the enemy army to dig in order to reinforce a province that is not even under attack.

 

[Gritt]

the entire front line was like that. Every time i tried to land into enemy territory, the IA decided to completely ignore supply limits and throw in an insane amount of "reinforcements", to the point that it was impossible to advance due to the "lack of supplies" malus. IA does not even consider terrain: I landed in the caucasus and USA decided to send in 3 heavy tanks divisions, each of them consuming just like 3 of my mountaineers divisions.
And this is only half of the problem. AI simply does not cooperate. They do not support your attacks, they do not try to attack an enemy to delay them or to support your defence on another province. They are just here to consume your limited supplies. .This is something the IA could easily do in HoI3.

The problem is Faction's need to have a Supreme Commander. The AI certainly has a Supreme Commander and if a player has joined the Allies (for example) there should be a mechanism for them to become Supreme Commander.

So many simple problems would be solved, supply, Air Bases & Ports being improved when they are vital, over stacking, to name a few. And the most important being able to develop a coherent plan that would add FUN and immersion for the player.

I don't understand how Paradox has gotten away with it so long.

 

[DukofDeth]

There are several areas that need to get fixed. The AI needs to have a way of ignoring certain fronts, either as it lacks the resources to commit there, or maybe the terrain is just bad for an offensive, or maybe its an area that just isn't all that critical. Why should AI Britain grind away in the mountains of Norway, or even up around Murmansk, fighting Germany, just because some ally managed to land there for some reason?! After all, would the AI not do much better landing in Holland and driving straight into the heart of the Reich? That could even be done to draw off the Germans from another invasion aimed at liberating France. But the AI doesn't know how to use diversions.

The AI doesn't have any real goals - all it does is aim for victory points. It will declare war on claims, or if it was given a wargoal by way of focus, even though the real historical reason for that attack [for example, the German invasion of the Benelux nations] are probably a lot more situational than the focus lets on. The attack into the Benelux was meant to bypass the Maginot line, but France was already at way with Germany. Germany had no claims on any of the states of the Benelux. By this, I mean that the "Bypass the Maginot" focus should require that France already be at war with Germany, and not be a prelude to a declaration. The focus is there and the AI can do it quickly once at war with Poland. It was probably meant to let AI-run Germany behave a bit historically, but the focus should have more conditions put upon it. The AI should not be reaching for such a focus when clearly the AI goals are supposed to be directed east. The AI doesn't have any goals - it just follows a path without any real plan.

The fronts become a mess in large alliances because every nation is drawing a front line everywhere - it seems to be automatic - and then is compelled by its logic to fill every province along the front. This is the main reason why the AI spams out divisions - the other being that it also is trying to achieve superiority along those fronts, in order to win. But that means the AI is sinking its manpower into land units, and will probably not have enough air or naval assets to support the land battles. I've seen an AI-run USA with 20k fighters, but nothing in the air because it spammed out divisions to line its borders with Mexico [and this was before MtG, when Mexico was never belligerent toward the US unless it somehow joined an enemy faction] and I've seen an AI-run UK with 500+ divisions, but no ships to escort its convoys, as the navy had long since been sunk.

The AI needs a way to set strategic goals, as well as secondary goals that can be achieved along the way. Units swarm around pocketed enemies - the AI could quickly use those every units to crush the pocket, but doesn't. It shifts units to cover a hole that won't be there for much longer because the front line is moving forward, but by shifting the whole front starts to shift to compensate and try to maintain the balance of strength. The narrow front order tends to fail [unless ample infantry are assigned, I suppose] because the penetration "lengthens" the front, and the AI feels obliged to fill all the gaps.

I don't know how to solve most of the issues, but there is a mod that does help with keeping AI allies out of a player's way - "Border Avoidance Tool". I've used it and it does work. Somehow it convinces the AI to not draw borders against certain nations. I used it to not just protect my logistical system, but also to hog the glory. Its not a perfect way to do things, but if there were a theater system added - whereby states could be added to a theater, that would act as a sort of "nation atop a nation" allowing for better management of armies.

By this, Imagine having France split into four theaters or regions, and while its all still France, each region could be treated like a country with boundaries. In such a situation, Germany's AI could focus on the NE, while Italy focuses on the SE, and whichever breaks out takes on the next region or theater in line. The boundaries of the region would work to keep armies and their front-lines within it until ordered beyond that region. This would allow very long fronts such as those that occur in the Soviet Union and the USA to be broken into sectors that the battle-manager AI can work with - each sector would have one marshal commanding all forces within. No other nations - anyone joining the fight in that sector would be required to loan their units out as expieditionaries in order to not clog the roads. Perhaps some of you have noticed, if you were invading the SU with three marshals representing Army Groups North, Center and South, than once some gains are made, the whole front becomes a mess and each of those three marshals has a battle line running the entire front - well, if there was a theater/region/sector boundary that they had to respect as if it were a national border, their fronts would not overlap one another.

I believe such a system would greatly help the AI with managing forces, and would also help players, too. It would allow for large armies to focus on several goals without units spending all their time running up and down the ever-changing front-line. It would need to be adjustable - like in HoI3, where states could be added to a theater or removed as needed for organization. It probably wouldn't do the AI well to be doing such changes, but it would help players. I don't believe it would be all that difficult to put in - tedious to set up, but once done its done - as we already have air regions. The trick would be getting front-lines to treat land-region borders the same as a national border.