AI Testing on Theater/AG/Army level

[Rguz]

I've been playing HOI for years starting with the first HOI and I think the game is absolutely magnificent. I've never found this kind of historical entertainment in an other game. Well accepted for the EU series With the introduction of HOI3 I had some reservations because of the theaters and the AI stuff. That's all gone. I like the micromanaging, I've been doing it for years but the AI has got my attention.

I'm not a mathematical genius or some kind of computergenius so I'm not able to mod or even grasp the idea of modding, I've troubles understanding the width discussions discussed in multiple threads. But...I do read almost every interesting thread about the strategies en take the outcome of discussions for my benefit.

A year ago I read a thread written by Gladiator about the AI and giving certain tasks to theater or an AG. I've been using his wisdom en learned how I could use the AI for partisan fighting and garrison. It wasn't perfect, It had is flaws but it was done with 1.3! His findings are still worth reading!!! http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?455355-Generals-1.3-a-military-AI-test

Last week I thought what would happen in SF 2.4. Perhaps the AI has been upgraded! Last night I started a game as USA on difficulty hard. Before I got in a war there was a problem with my great plan in which the AI would handle garrison duties and some other stuff.

So what I did was dividing the US in four theaters (mainly for my own need for structure). Eastcoast, Westcoast, Pacific and Homeland. I could do with only three. Homeland is just al large chunk of land in the middle of the US.....

All four have only a few troops in case of an invasion + the control over most of the navy and airforce. This is the setup which I wanted to use when I acquire new lands. The forces that could stop or slow down an invasion can also knock down any uprising.

For the garrison duties I created three Garrison Armies. The first Garrison Army is automated and has objectives on the eastcoast it must defend. As soon as I gave the order the divisions and corps go to the objectives. Everything works perfectly. On the westcoast I see the same result. All goes as planned.

In the Pacific though my plan goes to hell. Again I put the army on automated. All the pacific islands are designated as objectives to defend. The army has 3 corps which al have 4 divisions. The army has a naval taskforce consisting of a few capital ships, a few screens and transports. The idea was that in case of a war with Japan, the army would see it's numbers increased to 5 corps and new objectives so that it would automatically occupy newly gained islands. This works fine when fighting a landbattle so I hoped (thought) this would work when taking the islands form the japanese. Wrong!

When I set objectives for the pacific garrison army it transports all the divisions to the first objective and ignores all the other objectives. So there it is. Midway has loads of troops, more then the island could possibly need and the others get nothing. This is very disturbing.

I'm going to give it another try tomorrow. I wonder if it has anything to do with radio-range??? I thought that was just a bonus thing!

Perhaps there are more people doing some testing with the AI. Does anybody have any idea?

 

[shepherd352]

I am a keen user of the AI at Army level but I have tried all the posibilities. I think the AI is a good thing to use in a land campaign. Most people agree the aI is hopeless at managing the Navy and porr to adequate at managing the Air Force. There are some reports of the AI conducting complex operations but I think they are beyond it at this time. Similarly, the most basic task (defending your ports and partisan management) is easier done without AI interference.

For the Pacific I see no option but to manage it yourself. I doubt the AI is capable of conducting any decent activity in the Pacific (although, hands-off, I have seen the USA invade the Japanese Islands). It seems the AI performs differently if it is under Human direction or operating a hands-off country.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

The AI can handle naval invasions quite well I you give it the right OOB and mission setup.
I tried it as Japan last week and after several weeks my Pacific HQ had conquered Singapore, the Philipines, the Dutch East Indies, Guam and parts of Australia.

What I did was:

(1) Added all units directly to the theatre HQ. No corps, army and army corps HQs were involved, since I suspected the AI will try to stay in radio range and this might cause the mess you describe above. Since you have only one commander, put your best men in charge of the theatre HQ.

(2) Added several small units for garrison duty. The AI ALWAYS wants to leave a defending force in ports, so without enough small divisons (GAR/GAR is enough), it will start to asign your regular combat divisions to garrison duty - and, really, your marines have better things to do... I would recommend 20 to 40 garrison divisions for the pacific theatre (you may start with 10-20 and add addional units over time).

(3) Added a decent air force the AI can use. As with land units, it looks like you should add a few smaller air wings to boost overall AI performance.

(4) Added several small naval task forces. Make sure your fleet setup is good enough to clash with enemy fleets. I used 2 battleship fleets with 3x BB 3x DD, a BC fleet with 2x BC + 2x CL, a few cruiser fleets with 6x CA + 6x CL, several small submarine flotillas with 2x SS and several small transport fleets with 4x TP plus some escorts, including some CVL. My main combat fleet of 10 CV + 10 DD was under manual control.

(5) Set up the theatre AI targets. I usually try to keep the number of targets low to prevent the AI from spreading it's initial forces too much. My targets where: Manila (Philipines), Guam, Singapor, Syndey and a single port province on each of the islands from the Dutch East Indies.

(6) Set your attack stance to "blitz" if you have numerical superiority or can catch your enemy off guard and switch to "offensie" or even "defensive" when your first wave loses momentum or things start to get though. On blitz the AI will assault everywhere, regardless of your combat odds. This is very useful to push deep into enemy territory against an inferior foe, but it is absolutely deadly against any serious opposition.
I tried Blitzing as SOV against Germany and lost a lot of manpower (and even some units) - even worse, the AI did not allow my units to properly regain org, but instead moved in reserves to continue the futile attacks. My frontline virtually collapsed and the germans were not only able to retake all territory I had conquered, but also gained a foothold several provinces deep on soviet soil.
Set naval to offensive to launch several invasions at once and set your air force aggressiveness in regards to enemy airpower (offensive for Japan, at least during the first few months).

(7) As the AI made progress, I removed old targets that were now under my control and added new ones to start island hopping. After sinking most of the US fleet with my carriers I added Wake and Hawaii, but unofortunatly my game crashed (and I had deactivated autosave since it was only a test run...).


Overall, with the above in mind you can see some pretty good results from automated theatres.

I think (2) and (6) are the most important factor for a continued AI sucess. The AI uses a lot of garrison units - as long as you can provide these, it will happily attack and conquer land for you, if not it stops in it's tracks and starts shifting units around A LOT. After I added more garrisons to my inital OOB, the AI peformed much better overall. And by changing the AI stances I managed to adjust the AI aggressivenes accoriding to the current situation.

 

[Rguz]

Hi

Thanks for the replies. I think that there is more to it than shepard352 says. Certain structures in command have different outcomes then others. I for one are not done testing this AI.

I know that the AI is capable of doing invasions. I tried it and it worked. I just don't wont it done by the theatercommander. He is to much of a liability when it comes to the right people at the right spot. What I want is:

1. Theatercommander has a navy and a airforce + some troops in case of a invasion. The few troops it has can be used to commence fighting as soon as the intruders are spotted. I can then give a Corps/Army/AG the task of reconquering that part of my realm.

2. AG/ Army/ Corps for defence of conquered land and the homeland. These troops consist of merely garrisons. It set the stance defence and give it al the objectives it needs. I can even give it objectives still in hands of the enemy. The garrisons stand idle until the lands are conquered and then move themselves to occupy.

3. AG/ Army/ Corps with sufficient troops, small airforce and navy for designated tasks such as an invasion.


I reloaded the USA game and gave disconnected al the divisions from the AG/Army/Corps and attached them to the theater as suggested by Gaga extrem. The garrisons go of and protect all the harbors in it's theater. It ignores the objectives I gave it and just protects what the theater thinks is important. I then gave an AG 5 garrisons and 3 objectives + some transports. It worked fine. So I tried to give it 4 objectives and it failed. The first 3 were protected. The 4th wasn't. I gave the AG 2 corps with each 3 divisions. I gave it 4 objectives, but the AG moved everything to the first objective and then stopped!

Very annoying. I have to go to work and have a look tomorrow.

 

[Warlordtheft]

Check out Uriah's AAR called rank and file. He is using the AI at the army group or army level to some sucess. It is long, but well written.

This might help in evaluating the AI.

 

[Rguz]

Thanks!!!

Thanks.. I will do that. I just got home from a long shift. I will probably do some testing tomorrow evening or on friday!

 

[jju_57]

Probably the reason for what happened to you is that on land the AI can create a front. On this front the AI knows it has to put units and defend the objectives. This generally works pretty well unless you have too many objectives. In the Pacific there is no front so to speak. Each island has a front that is that specific island. I'm guessing here but Midway might have been the base closest to the enemy.

I've been playing as Japan recently and noticed that the AI has issues when it thinks it has too few troops. I've noticed that it will reinforce some objectives and leave others undefended. the reason for this is what the AI expects to happen. See, the AI at objective A thinks it need 4 divisions to defend it. You have 4 divisions total and 2 objectives. As a human you would split the forces and defend both. But the AI thinks that 2 divisions would lose both fights so it defneds one and sacrifices the other. I'm not saying this is what happened to you. I'm saying that the AI acts this way in other situations.

Another possible explanation is supply and being in HQ range. In the Pacific its easy for units to get out of range. So maybe the AI placed them in one spot to consolidate supplies. After all you are not at war yet so maybe the AI doesn't see a threat to some of the objectives.

You can see that I used maybe all over the place. Unfortunately, that is all we got in regard to the AI since none of us know the programming. I'm just listing some guesses based on my experience. As a last piece of advice. Don't use the AI if you lack troops. It WILL mess up. The AI is only good if it has close to the required number of troops. The more divisions for a task the better it does.

 

[Rguz]

I started a game as Italy today to do some testing on land, with just a few islands. Maybe it will not confuse the AI to much. I must say that the AI doesn't seem to think clearly on the island part. It doesn't pick the island closest to the enemy. It just takes the first objective it has and then stacks troops. That is, when I give the task to a Army. The AG does a slightly better job, but still not enough. That said. I'm going to check out how the AI does handling partisans and other threats!

@warlordtheft...Uriah does play with automated Theaters and lower HQ's but doesn't give details on the setup, so there is not much to learn from the thread. But nevertheless thanks for helping!

And now it's of to war again.

 

[Rguz]

I keep getting the same problems as Gladiator had. AI has it's limitations and is not thinking logical (probably because it doesn't think!)

End of an experiment