AI is silly. Much more that i think.

[Milan99]

Well. Maybe that's obvious. But i think AI can play "biggest country ever + dominant possition" to WC. But no... I converted my gameplay from CK2 (90% of WC, can't do more because of crashes of game; with something about 90-95% slavic religious unity, cultural unity etc.). Then i started game with spectator mode to watch what AI do. AI convert to Poland without picking their traditions and ideas (their was silly as ...) try to peacefully play (picking diplomatic idea with no friend/vassal/enemy/rival in world, other countries like Ming or smaller can do nothing, so it can easilly explore and expand). AND : Then AI try to conquer some east provinces. That's the moment to meme writting:

>have more than 90% rel unity
>conquer Vajrayana group provinces
>Vajrayana become secondary religion
>still have more than 90% rel unity
>convert to Vajrayana
>have less than 1% of religious unity
>watch the world burn
>mass revolts, losing a lot of provinces (new countries appear)
>NO PROFIT

And - AI always have less than 50% of manpower (after every war, fighting with revolts it was 0).
Maybe it's time to think about improvement for AI? To not make obvious silly decision.

Offensive language removed

 

[Chaingun]

I'll add "make it not silly/r-word" to my list of AI tasks.

 

[Szer]

In fact AI in EU4 is MUCH more smarter than in almost every other strategical game I ever played (I played a lot).

EU4 is so complicated that I literally shocked how Paradox is able to make AI do sane moves.
I'm working as a programmer myself (back-end mostly) and going nuts every day so much I want to peek at their AI source code.

 

[beckermt]

I, for one, am glad to hear the OP's story.

If an AI covering 90% of the globe was able to remain stable and in power, it would certainly lead to very disappointing stable blobbing by the AI. It's critical that countries suddenly implode, lest the game stalement.

Additionally, the situation present above is well beyond the average scope of the AI. Its failure here doesn't undermine its competence at smaller, more realistic situations that are likely to be in-game.

 

[Aries666]

So you're annoyed that the AI couldn't work with a converted game with a religion that doesn't even exist in vanilla EU4? Please explain how this incredibly niche example is an AI problem.

 

[hashinshin]

I, for one, am glad to hear the OP's story.

If an AI covering 90% of the globe was able to remain stable and in power, it would certainly lead to very disappointing stable blobbing by the AI. It's critical that countries suddenly implode, lest the game stalement.

Additionally, the situation present above is well beyond the average scope of the AI. Its failure here doesn't undermine its competence at smaller, more realistic situations that are likely to be in-game.

So can we get player implosions added too?

 

[Aries666]

So can we get player implosions added too?

Sure just decrease LA on all of your provinces at the same time having just converted to a heretic religion.

 

[birincikalite]

Maybe the AI was just baiting you into concluding that he was silly

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Maybe the AI was just baiting you into concluding that he was silly

That's some masterful baiting.

So you're annoyed that the AI couldn't work with a converted game with a religion that doesn't even exist in vanilla EU4? Please explain how this incredibly niche example is an AI problem.

To be fair, what happened probably should be "fixed", in the sense that AIs that are enormous in a pagan faith probably shouldn't just up and Buddhist-ify without a means to survive doing so. This can impact those randomly generated maps or even the occasional giant Tengri Oirat similarly. You don't see Castile randomly deciding it's a good idea to go Protestant when it's 90% Catholic or more, so why should an AI with high unity flop into Buddhism just because it happens to be pagan?

I'll add "make it not silly/r-word" to my list of AI tasks.

No way. Pants on head mode is only mode. I want to see HRE minors declaring imperialism on random Central Asian countries, more overseas expansion by colonial nations against India (take and core the land too! Peruvian India FTW!), and definitely more invasions of Castile and Low Countries by Malacca. If we're lucky maybe Kilwa can even aggressively colonize Australia as top priority then release/vassal --> march it and have it invade Asia.

 

[Milan99]

@TheMeInTeam
Well, someone who know what is "best way" for EU4. Give us more new experimental "things" instead of fixing and it make that game better in 10000%. Sailors are better than anything! Sailors FTW! xD

 

[deckhand]

You don't see Castile randomly deciding it's a good idea to go Protestant when it's 90% Catholic or more, ...

Well, I did that as a large Spain. It wasn't random though as it was required to become Emperor.

 

[brandogoku]

I had this happen in one of my converted games as well, I converted all of Europe, North Africa, and all the way to the Mongol khanate as Norse reformed. Oddly enough, mid game Aragon converts randomly to Inti religion, and all of eastern Europe starts mass converting to Buddhist.

 

[Helperman123]

The ai prioritizes on the player even if that means giving up a easy war with another ai nation. The Ai is ok, there have been topics about how bad the Ai is before.

 

[Sun_Wu]

I, for one, am glad to hear the OP's story.

If an AI covering 90% of the globe was able to remain stable and in power, it would certainly lead to very disappointing stable blobbing by the AI. It's critical that countries suddenly implode, lest the game stalement.

Additionally, the situation present above is well beyond the average scope of the AI. Its failure here doesn't undermine its competence at smaller, more realistic situations that are likely to be in-game.

It shouldn't be beyond the scope of the AI to see "Should I convert to Buddhism? Well, less than 25% of my provinces are Buddhist so no"

 

[Chaingun]

It shouldn't be beyond the scope of the AI to see "Should I convert to Buddhism? Well, less than 25% of my provinces are Buddhist so no"

Seems there is exactly such a limit but it's set to 1/6 rather than 1/4. Then of course, there are a bunch of exceptions.

I did not come here to debate that code because it's ancient. Rather, I wanted to point out that it's always easy to come up with a specific instance where the AI is behaving badly, and to formulate a rule that would work in that particular case. There are problems with this, however:

• The rule might not work well in other cases that are probably not apparent to you at the time of conception.
• It might not even make sense for development time to be directed to that area, because of marginal effects on gameplay compared to time spent. While the ideal solution to your problem would be to employ one AI Religion Programmer (or more), it should illustrate the resource allocation issue. The biggest reasons for the game being (too) easy to play for veterans include army and diplomacy AI in my opinion, and I'd rather spend time there to the extent possible.

 

[zdlugasz]

Seems there is exactly such a limit but it's set to 1/6 rather than 1/4. Then of course, there are a bunch of exceptions.

I did not come here to debate that code because it's ancient. Rather, I wanted to point out that it's always easy to come up with a specific instance where the AI is behaving badly, and to formulate a rule that would work in that particular case. There are problems with this, however:

• The rule might not work well in other cases that are probably not apparent to you at the time of conception.
• It might not even make sense for development time to be directed to that area, because of marginal effects on gameplay compared to time spent. While the ideal solution to your problem would be to employ one AI Religion Programmer (or more), it should illustrate the resource allocation issue. The biggest reasons for the game being (too) easy to play for veterans include army and diplomacy AI in my opinion, and I'd rather spend time there to the extent possible.

Can't argue about your priorities and do not want to you to spend a lot of time on this but IMO trigger should include size (or development) as well. It might be fine for TPMs or countries with 5, 7 or even 9 provinces, but it is strange for countries which are huge and would require probably hundred years to convert their provinces, while rebels kill them. E.g. daimyo decision to convert to christianity requires that it is majority religion.

Second issue I have is scripting of events e.g. during westernization where it is enough that a single owned province allows to switch to catholic (in my Carib game where I owned half of continent and I had only single catholic province from an event, during westernization I could change religion to catholic, then I swapped immediately to protestant and in about 8 or 10 month when I converted my single catholic province I have avoided religious war - that was strange experience - although I admit that low unity during westernization is a hurdle).

 

[ThuderLizard2]

I don't see a converted CKII game as a valid test of the EUIV AI. The fact you can even convert a CKII game in the first place is a bit dodgy.

The AI for EUIV makes the game quite enjoyable and challenging to play. It avoids a lot of obvious and stupid moves that ruin over games, like Civ V to name one. The devs are also good at closing human player loop-holes/cheese, like straits blocking and scorched earth blocking, to keep things on the level. The other nice thing is that the multi-player even works and doesn't constantly crash, again unlike Civ V, so you can play human players if you want a real challenge.

 

[rocketman120]

Well. Maybe that's obvious. But i think AI can play "biggest country ever + dominant possition" to WC. But no... I converted my gameplay from CK2 (90% of WC, can't do more because of crashes of game; with something about 90-95% slavic religious unity, cultural unity etc.). Then i started game with spectator mode to watch what AI do. AI convert to Poland without picking their traditions and ideas (their was silly as ...) try to peacefully play (picking diplomatic idea with no friend/vassal/enemy/rival in world, other countries like Ming or smaller can do nothing, so it can easilly explore and expand). AND : Then AI try to conquer some east provinces. That's the moment to meme writting:

>have more than 90% rel unity
>conquer Vajrayana group provinces
>Vajrayana become secondary religion
>still have more than 90% rel unity
>convert to Vajrayana
>have less than 1% of religious unity
>watch the world burn
>mass revolts, losing a lot of provinces (new countries appear)
>NO PROFIT

And - AI always have less than 50% of manpower (after every war, fighting with revolts it was 0).
Maybe it's time to think about improvement for AI? To not make obvious silly decision.

Offensive language removed

EU IV has it set so that pagans in vanilla will always convert to buddhism if it controls one of their provinces, just edit the decisions section to get rid of its weight of 1 when you convert your save.