AI really doesn't like to build transports

[Wizzington]

In his defense, I think probably some of the new features and AI work they put in must have caused some issues with the naval AI. If memory serves t didn't always have these problems to this degree.

The problem with naval AI is that I didn't have time to completely rewrite it before the release of the game, so while I've spent plenty of time on it between release and now, it's always been subject to a lot of bugs and tendencies for fixes to create more problems just by virtue of being very old code. This also leads to it having a lower priority simply because some tweaking here and there isn't ever going to make it great, and I rarely have the kind of consecutive free time on EU4 (I work on several other projects as well) that would be needed for a total rewrite + testing + inevitable bugfixes for the new system.

 

[Wizzington]

Well, I know that players want more features, more shinies.
But customer satisfaction also comes from a stable and well running game, including AI.
After a year of development and DLCs, it's about time you were given a bit of time to polish the naval AI. It's one of the few glaring AI problems and it causes major problems:
1. it ruins player immersion
2. it increases the micromanagement required (weren't CNs supposed to solve this problem?)

To be clear: I have downprioritized naval AI because of other things that I considered higher prio, such as economy AI rewrite, better army AI etc. This is not evil Paradox not giving me time, this is the basic reality of software development where you will never have time for everything you want and it's never as simple as 'throw in more manpower and everything is better'. Naval AI is next on my list for major fixes, you're free to think I should have gotten to it earlier, but it would have meant downprioritizing something else.

 

[Wizzington]

Actually the AI has different money pools for armies, navies and buildings, you can see this in action if you use aiview and hover over their shield in diplo. It has too low prio on using navy money on transports ATM, that will change.

 

[Captain Gars]

It would be so much simpler if transports were taken out as a unit from the game. Back in CK1, troops basically walked on water for a fee. The longer the distance, and the more troops, the more expensive it got. AI handled that just fine. Other strategy games have dispensed with Transport AI as well, because it is not simple (and not critical) I suppose.

It's a lazy solution. Naval invasions are like every other aspect of the AI: hard to do - but far from impossible. What often ruins AI is not the lack of sophisticated systems - but a small, simple mistake hiding in the sophisticated code.

If Wiz is the only one AI programmer at Paradox, what he has done so far is amazing.

He's the only dedicated AI programmer, but there are still other programmers doing some work on the AI, often implementing some of the basics for new features.