Alliances are Useless, AI is Stupid

[BigCHrome]

I was once allied to France, who as defender of the faith DoW'd the Ottomans. Me, as Bohemia, suffered the brunt of their forces as they laid siege to my entire country after taking care of my army, while France had a cool 45 stack chilling in north France that didn't even attempt to come help me.

Needless to say I'm not allied with them anymore.

 

[RX2000]

Maybe they are secretly hoping you get your butt kicked so they can backstab you later.

 

[Teije]

My allies have been generally quite useful, sieging other provinces for me and attaching to my armies.

 

[Gzav8]

I try to have allied adjacent to each other. This way, when at war, military acces for everybody on a large scale so they just stack their troops and kick some *****

Current example: as Austria allied with Hungaria, Bohemia, Poland, Bavaria, Saxony and Brandenburg

 

[unmerged(761791)]

To me, there are just some AI loopholes that allow them to only be helpful in certain situations.
Here are some things stupid things I am noticing:
1. AI will almost never stop a siege to help you in combat, even if you would clearly win with their help, they are really close to you(and would make it before the combat ends), and they are nowhere near done seigeing.
2. AI won't follow your troops when it is clearly the best idea to do so. If together you muster up a 35 man army and a 25 man army is just a couple provinces away, they won't stand by you to take them on. CK2 did NOT have this problem, they would always follow your lead. I think there should be a "request attachment" button if you have the larger army in a stack.

Good things I noticed:
1. AI blockades effectively
2. They effectively siege by spreading their stacks out
3. They regroup if they see an enemy stack coming

 

[Andy_Dandy]

I'm playing as Aragon and have an alliance with Savoy, and a personal union with Naples. Castille Attacks, Savoy and Naples enters the war, and their armies do absolutely nothing. I can't play this game when allies don't help, because the AI doesn't have the coding to help.

Do you help the AI when he is at war? Perhaps the AI think the player is stupid too for not helping the way they want. Perhaps it's smart of them to keep some home defence when Castile is the enemy?

 

[unmerged(32416)]

I played poland and I made a PU with lithuania like usual. Then I just left my army stack in my capital and started declaring war on other countries. I'd say it worked out pretty well. Lithuania, mazovia and moldavia beat the Ottoman empire for one.

 

[unmerged(463193)]

never expect the AI to help you in wars. alliances are generally worthless (unless you are allied with world powers like france or austria who can roflstomp your enemies' armies) and coalitions even worse.

 

[HybridRifter]

My problem with the AI is the sneaky stuff it does to conspire against you. You can proclaim Guarantees, send warnings, and form coalitions, however, the AI will just morph and mold alliances around these so they are useless in doing what they were intended to do. It also bugs me to no end when I get 4 - 6 tiny nations doing sabotage reputation/sew discontent on me while the AI neighbor that is growing out of control just as rapidly as I am is not dealing with this problem. Hell, after 1700, allies I have had for centuries just decide to no longer work on their reputation with me and "I break our alliance."

I enjoy this game, but I find it increasingly difficult to enjoy it when the game keeps doing the "me against the entire world" thing. I can still easily win when this occurs, but the game becomes a joke. I no longer have to worry about who is allied to whom and whatnot because now everyone is out to get me. I'd sure like to see an improvement in the AI where every county's highest priority is its survival and not "how can I screw over the player?"

 

[Noctus]

I'd sure like to see an improvement in the AI where every county's highest priority is its survival and not "how can I screw over the player?"

The A.I. doesnt know who "The Player" is / treats all countries the same.

 

[Hakuromatsu]

The only "issue" (which may not even be an issue, depending on your perspective) is that the game encourages brokering 1-2 big brother alliances with your Frances and Castiles rather than 3-4 equal-terms alliances with your middling neighbors. A hundred-regiment AI army has few problems coordinating its troops on multiple fronts, even for its allies' wars (and as a weaker Central European nation, I've seen an allied AI France be more helpful in quashing my rebels than me). But there are only limited mechanisms for coordinating, say, five twenty-regiment armies from different AI nations. To what extent is that reasonable? To what extent is that historical? :shrug:

I do think that allied army attachment is more reliable in CK2, but that may be anecdotal memory.

 

[jrk264]

I have two big issues with allied armies. The first is the military access confusion that others have mentioned. The other is that my allies share the general AI penchant for attacking.

Enemy horde has armies sitting in a home field plains across a river? YOLO, the Mamluks are going to jump on that like a fat kid on cake. Moderate size army sieging a single mountain province behind a river? Let's roll, counter-sieging is for wimps.

I get nervous relying on allies to do anything in a war against an enemy they can't dominate (i.e. I'm ok with those "I'll take on the Ottomans and you deal with their allies" situations, but not so much if I'm relying on them to help with the Ottomans). It's too much of a dice roll which side's attempts at suicidal attacks will stick.

 

[Rambo Panda]

I find actual allies are useless when they actually join your war and rarely join when you actually need them to. Vassals on the other hand I find very reliable. They HAVE to join your war and, it could be just the circumstances, but they always try their damnedest to get military access to participate in the war. I've had vassals on the other side of Europe needing 10+ military access treaties to get to the war front and sure enough they arrive a few weeks later. Meanwhile my actual allies like Denmark or Spain join the war and don't even try.

Maybe they can't get access because of bad relations, but come on guy you have boats.

 

[grommile]

The A.I. doesnt know who "The Player" is / treats all countries the same.

Not quite true. Most trivially, an AI country will try to hold one of its relation slots open in case the human wants an alliance or royal marriage.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Do you help the AI when he is at war? Perhaps the AI think the player is stupid too for not helping the way they want. Perhaps it's smart of them to keep some home defence when Castile is the enemy?

Sometimes it's necessary. Jumping into a MP game late, I decided to pick the only nation in India/SEA that didn't have ADM 4 yet: Kachar. They were 3 7 7 and allied only to 3PM Nepal and OPM Koch with a large Bengal (hindu) next to them that was domineering. Using those allies I beat Arakan + ally Malwa, vassaling the latter despite it being larger + more advanced + full annex on Arakan (this caused a coalition lol). I allied Vijay, and a bit before I could westernize I got CTA by Vijay...Bengal + Bahmanis attacking them with more forces than them + me combined.

I was going to westernize soon, and Vijay was my only ally. I could abandon them and risk it, but be defenseless, join the war and do nothing (but risk getting attacked by Bengal anyway), or help. I helped, dragging vassal Malwa units around. The result was a stack wiped Bengal and a shattered + mass nation release Bahmanis. Because it's stupid to count on the AI to reinforce you, I instead ducked around and reinforced the AI, then chased for the stack wipe. What did I get out of that war? Minimal, other than some AT and nobody who could possibly beat me during westernization.

I'll do the same thing for AI allies (with the occasional early separate peace for stuff ) pretty frequently, as you can farm AT + make gains on it and if you want to keep that ally, actually killing enemy troops with ally > letting them siege you or fighting them alone.

The really bad thing about the AI in wars is that the "attach armies" checkbox is filth in terms of consistency, even for vassals. I've had situations like playing as Benin where my vassal Oyo would ignore the "attach unit" check box on both of my stacks and move a 2 stack into the natives, obviously getting stackwiped. WTH is that nonsense. Attach doesn't mean "suicide into natives". It actually means attach. AI allies I can see sometimes choosing to do their own thing if they weight it as higher priority than attaching, but vassals should not ignore attach orders to move into dangerous areas or flagrantly commit suicide.

 

[maidros]

My problem has been the other way round. Crimea is allied with the Ottomans, and I, as Timurids, was allied to Kazan. Kazan kept dragging me into near suicidal wars against the Ottomans, particularly when both of us were down 2-3 Mil Techs, and I was having endless problems with my manpower due to rebellions. Does the AI also look at your theoretical military strength while computing its chances of victory in a war? Maybe, just maybe, it should be weight its own strength more than it weighs its allies' strength in declaring wars against enemies?

Same way, Tripoli dragged me into a war with Mamluk Egypt earlier in the game. I did all the hard fighting, and sieged and took most of the Syro-Judean provinces of the Mamluks, and Tripoli got Libya and some cash from the final settlement.

 

[solidprice]

oh those guys that are always in debt and cordial to me?

i really hate alliances unless its someone really big( BBB,Austria,Russia,ottoderps,Ming), or so i don't get said country against me gamey cheese via preventive alliance webs,preventing collation,ect.
for real help?
lolnope, vassals are almost always the best ally imo, unless its 1 big ass ally said above.
signing your soul to the BBB devil is surprisingly effective. but then France becomes too strong w/half of europa and at any moment they could turn on you....>.>

 

[Charles555nc]

Every one of you who said the AI is "dependable" or "excellent", is either a disgusting liar or playing on easy in derp-ville.

 

[Lundgreen]

I'm playing as Aragon and have an alliance with Savoy, and a personal union with Naples. Castille Attacks, Savoy and Naples enters the war, and their armies do absolutely nothing. I can't play this game when allies don't help, because the AI doesn't have the coding to help.

Even though i get your point, i think this is much more realistic, and historical accurate.
Case: Before the reorganization of the danish navy under Niels Juel (and btw Paradox, you should bring this into the game) The Dutch commanded the Danish navy. That didn't mean that they ran to our rescue in a hurry at every war we got into? They waited and saw how the wars went, what could they gain - what did they risk losing? Even though as soon as Danish ships we attacked, they were technically in the war as well.

When i play a game as Byzantium, i find it really interesting that my ally, Austria runs fullstack against the Ottomans. They suffer terrible losses in Asia - in a war they can gain nothing but a little more prestige from? Normally in the late feudal times allies might send a couple of regiments to join their allies. Rarely the entire army.

And also, sure the AI could use further tweaking - but Paradox doesn't find AI very important (as I understand they have one guy working on it)

But i'm sure this will be improved in some other DLC.

 

[Lehran]

It is way to easy to abuse the AI since they will mostly help you in your wars. I played as Venice and allied France - they won every war for me, while I was just siting on my island. Of course, if a nation needs military access that they don't get or they need to ship troops which they can't do well, the nation won't be a real help. But that's something that you can see before the war. You allied the wrong persons.