Barbarossa - analysis of AI at different command levels

[Modo]

Odessa was still an active objective in the south, but the AI might have a preference for closer objectives - another thing I will try to look out with lower level tests.

It tends to move for heavier targets first, (sometimes even if they are not selected). At the theatre level, Leningrad looks close, so that would be my guess. And it is well worth it—a lot of manpower there.

And nope, since I have not build any fighters (didnt even research the tech here) I completely rely on INTs. But on the other hand due to their fairly good techs the TACs are fairly sturdy themself

Adding fighters with your tech advantage should turn them from sturdy to shredding. Note that the AI splits FTR away from CAS, it only leaves one with TAC groups.

By the way, I gave some fighters to an army level AI, and it divided them up into separate squadrons. I don't know why, exactly, but I'll try again in a new game.

 

[CharonJr]

During the weekend I am trying to see if I am actually able to have essentially won by October like I thought it should be possible with micromanaging my units. Due to this expect the next update on Monday.

I will start with the AI at the army group level then and make one small adjustment with the OOB to gain a little bit more flexibilty. 2 pure infantry armies will make up the new Heeresgruppe Mitte whos main task will be to hold the center while the other AGs hopefully will try to break through to their objectives.

CharonJr

 

[CharonJr]

No update today I am afraid.

I have forgotten how long this game can take if you micromanage Barbarossa, I only have played 6 weeks in nearly as many hours yet, Leningrad and Odessa have fallen, but the fight is far from over since there have been no major encirclements yet.

In addition my landings in the Leningrad area have been pushed back, so I only hold Leningrad up there and am surrounded by about 30 divisions Elsewhere the Soviets are trying to break through my encirclement of the marshes and to reopen lines of supply to the Soviet troops in the south.

This is what you get for reckless fast and deep penetrations

CharonJr

 

[CharonJr]

Hi,

since I dont have very much time at the moment I am still stuck with my manual shot at Barbarossa.

Basically I am in the 3rd stage of the invasion at the moment.

The first was deep/rapid/reckless penetrations carried out by panzers.

2nd was stopping the panzers and starting to consolidate the gains, moving up infantry and closing the cauldrons and starting to compress them.

The (current) 3rd phase is trying to crush the defenders of the remaining cauldrons (about 100 Soviet divisions are currently trapped) and restarting the rush inland at selected Schwerpunkts.

Here is the current situation:

I hope to be able to continue my AI runs by Saturday.

CharonJr

edit: BTW, the AI did defend Leningrad, Moscow and Sevastopol, but the other paradrop sites were undefended (Riga and Tallinn were very heavily defended, too).

 

[CharonJr]

Looks like I will be able to make my Saturday deadline, it is 1 month later now and 1 armored korps is racing towards Baku with the 3 big pockets crushed and my remaining forces slowly pushing the remaining Soviets back.

I am fairly confident that this one will be over in about 1 month unless the random gods dislike me, but with me having lowered Soviet national unity I hope they will be with me...

It could have been over sooner by simply airdropping paras at Baku, but this feels a bit to cheap since the AI would not do this and I try to get a benchmark here.

CharonJr

 

[CharonJr]

Hi,

I just completed my manual run and as I thought, it is possible to get the Bitter Peace before October.

Bitter Peace fired right after taking Baku.

And this is the main difference between a human player and the AI, the Soviets lost more than 1100 brigades during this Barbarossa - with the units the SU has produced during those 5 month more like 1200 or 400 full divisions.

Next up is the AI at army group level.

CharonJr

 

[CharonJr]

OK, here is the setup for the analysis of the AIs performance at the army group level:

As already indicated I formed a new army group - Heeresgruppe Mitte - in order to gain a little bit more flexibility. Heeresgruppe Mitte is largely situated across from the marshes and consists of III. Armee and IV. Armee without the Panzerkorps of the IV.

Since my Kaukasusarmee already consists of 5 korps (2 ARM, 3 MTN) I have set up an additional army to integrate III. Panzerkorps into Heeresgruppe Süd - the newly formed I. Panzerarmee will only consist of III. Panzerkorps for now.

As before 3. Sicherungsarmee is assigned to Berlin HQ and will be tasked with securing important provinces in the east.

And since having paras and marines together in 1 army group might be too difficult for the AI to handle I will form a separate army group for my 2 para korps.

All army groups are set to blitzing stance at first.

Heeresgruppe Nord is tasked with attacking the Baltic States at first.

Heeresgruppe Mitte's objectives are the industrial provinces around the marshes.

Heeresgruppe Süd ist tasked with rushing to Odessa in order to cut off the Soviet troops in the south.

Gruppe der Marine gets orders to attack Leningrad and nothing else. This one will be quite interesting to me since it will show if the AI will use the marines in any meaningfull way now.

Gruppe der Fallschirmjäger gets industrial targets inside airdrop range, this one will be interesting, too, maybe the AI will be able to handle paras in a pure para outfit.

The 5 marine divisions have 5 transports integrated at the korps level and additional 5 transport at the army level, I hope the AI will use them.

The para korps have their 5 transport planes at the korps level and 1 additional transport plane at the army level. And I will start with having the paras already loaded into the planes at first, if this does not work I will try again with the paras unloaded.

CharonJr

 

[GUNNM]

I can say immediatly that the Marines will not do a naval invasion. This is because as far as I (and some others) have noticed, only the Theatre AI is allowed to do naval invasions. I suspect the same thing goes true for Paradrops, but have so far not managed to convince the AI to to it.

And one thing I've noticed is that if the Theatre AI is turned on and then an independent AI is placed in the theatre, the independent ai will not notice that the front is moving and will defend the "front" where it was when it was activated, leading to many resets and setting of new objectives to update the front for the independent AI.

Just my 2 cents before you start the experiment.

Good luck, and I'll definately keep reading.

 

[Modo]

I can say immediatly that the Marines will not do a naval invasion. This is because as far as I (and some others) have noticed, only the Theatre AI is allowed to do naval invasions.

That is incorrect. I've had a German army group trying to pull a naval invasion of Halifax when set to defend France. (I'm not kidding, the AI sent 3 transports with one light cruiser, got clobbered, but managed to return.) I've also seen a special forces army (2 mountain, 2 marine, 1 paratrooper corps, transports attached at the army level) try naval invasions on a regular basis when set to blitz ports. Note that both units were atached to the theatre.

 

[unmerged(71436)]

Can you do a summary of the outcomes of all plans in your first post? It would be a great help!

 

[CharonJr]

I have started to edit in the results and setups in the first post as suggested, thank you for the good idea.

Regarding naval invasions and paradrops I have been unable to get them to work at the army group level, too. One thing that came to my mind is that all my transports are unprotected, maybe this is what prevents the AI from using those transports.

So before kicking off this test for real I will try to keep the paras and marines away from AI control till I have been able to assign protection to my transports.

This means getting some fighters for my transport planes - so I will try to experiment around a bit to turn some of my INT into FTR. This means editing in the multi-purpose fighter tech (should be easy enough) and then find a way to turn some INT into FTR (might be as simple as changing INT to FTR in the savegame).

CharonJr

 

[GUNNM]

That is incorrect. I've had a German army group trying to pull a naval invasion of Halifax when set to defend France. (I'm not kidding, the AI sent 3 transports with one light cruiser, got clobbered, but managed to return.) I've also seen a special forces army (2 mountain, 2 marine, 1 paratrooper corps, transports attached at the army level) try naval invasions on a regular basis when set to blitz ports. Note that both units were atached to the theatre.

That is indeed interesting. I've never noticed anything like that but I dont put units under the Theatre. Could it be that I've misunderstood this aspect of the AI and the Theatre AI is not the only one that is allowed to do naval invasions but the criteria is instead that the unit must be placed under the Theatre HQ? Then it wont matter at which level the AI is activated?

 

[CharonJr]

Well, I managed to edit in fighters instead of INTs, but no change in the behaviour of the paras (either being used as normal infantry or as garrisons). But at least the FTR did fly escort for the TACs.

And nothing I tried (with/without cruiser escorts, AI at theater or army group level, different AI stances) could get the marines to try to invade Leningrad.

Does somebody have another idea what to do with the paras and/or marines under AI control?

CharonJr

 

[Modo]

I don't think you can force a landing specifically in Leningrad. Last time I set a blitzing objective there, the AI tried a landing in Talinin with the front just 3 provinces away. It seems to prefer close naval invasions or even direct land routes if available, so Barbarossa might not be a good place to try those operations. I'd suggest Sealion.

As to paratroopers, they have good defensive stats, and that's why they are left behind. You'd probably have to add dedicated garrison units to have the paras act more aggressively. Which sounds stupid and counter-intuitive for a dedicated offensive unit, I know.

This is how my AI control is set up: I always have the whole command structure in place. I even keep "unattached" planes and ships in a separate army (Air Force and Navy) to limit their supply draw. I automate at the level I want automated, which means armies most of the time. The special forces army is the only one with manual control over some corps, unless I really have to move in allied territory, where the AI doesn't work.

 

[CharonJr]

I have already thought about keeping the special units under direct command, but since I want to compare the results the different AIs are able to achive this would skew the test.

Due to this I will resume "normal" testing now with the Gruppe der Spezialtruppen under AI command. But it still hurts to see those 11 transport planes and 10 airborne divisons being wasted

CharonJr

 

[Modo]

Due to this I will resume "normal" testing now with the Gruppe der Spezialtruppen under AI command. But it still hurts to see those 11 transport planes and 10 airborne divisons being wasted

I saw the AI bunching my transport groups into 2 TRA + 1 FTR units, so you might need to actually have twice more transports than paratroopers. Taking some of them out of the formation should do. (Yes, this sounds crazy, but I'm really out of ideas regarding paratroopers.)

 

[CharonJr]

I tried it with assigning 10 transport planes to one para korps, but nothing happened.


And here come results of the first month of the AI at army group level:

After about 3 weeks I saw battles like this more and more often.

This shows the "problem" of the Blitz AI quite nicely, after the inital phase of the invasion the units get more drawn out over time resulting in crazy assaults like this one. I will switch back to the Attack AI after this first month.

Otherwise nothing really interesting happened during this first month. In comparrison to the earlier Blitz AI run (theater level) there was less progress, especially at the southern part of the center of the front.

Casualties are 129k (SU) vs. 97k (GER) - 146k/107k in the theater level run.

When I took a closer look at the positions of the different army groups I noticed that while Heeresgruppen Mitte and Süd remained fairly cohesive that there is a gap between those two groups right where they made less progress than the theater level AI.

Heeresgruppe Mitte has actually moved a bit (too much IMO) to the north and is neglecting its southern junction with Heeresgruppe Süd. This is a sign of the problems when operating at lower levels than the theater level - the AI is not really aware that it is starting to create a gap down there.

Depending on how the SU will react to this gap and if the German AI is willing to contain/encircle a potential Soviet exploit of this gap I might even like what is happening

In addition while Heeresgruppe Nord remains fairly compact, too, for some reason it has moved a single armored division to the middle of the front, far away from any objectives of HG Nord.

HG Süd has moved its troops up to the southern parts of the marshes (which is too far to the north IMO), but otherwise the gap between HG Mitte and Süd would be even larger.

The units in that gap are just some Slovakian militias, 1 HQ and 1 para - oh, and the armored division from HG Nord that seems to have lost its way .

The other paras are right at the middle of the front.

The marines are concentrated in the north which fits their new orders to attack Riga, Tallinn and Leningrad.

It will be interesting to see how the situation around this gap will develop.

CharonJr

 

[Kirth Gersen]

I tried it with assigning 10 transport planes to one para korps, but nothing happened.

I'm a bit rusty (saving myself for the 1.4 beta), but I did try out sea and airbourne AI invasions 2 weeks ago, and met with no success (though Gladiator has been successful with sea invasions), I haven't quite worked out the exact criteria where this works.

Regarding airbourne invasions, I can't recall ever seeing an AI generated one - certainly not a Corps level one. My theory there is that you can't get an HQ on a transport - ergo the Corps won't go either. Does that make sense?

 

[loki100]

Regarding airbourne invasions, I can't recall ever seeing an AI generated one - certainly not a Corps level one. My theory there is that you can't get an HQ on a transport - ergo the Corps won't go either. Does that make sense?

Sounds plausible but then the AI-AI doesn't really use sub-theatre structures once it has filled up its initial set of HQs. So most AI paras will be tied to a theatre?

Also I've not seen too many corps HQs when facing a naval invasion by the AI.

I know this is a bit different to trying to think about how to use the AI to trigger this sort of thing, but I do tend to think the AI we can use is closely related to the AI we face.

 

[CharonJr]

I had the AI perform a paradrop during Sealion once (I wrote about this in Gladiator's 1.3 AI test), due to this I know that it does work. Essentially it happened out of the blue and 1 para division landed in the Hills/mountains in Scotland (neither defenders nor any of my troops were really close).

I just wish I know what triggered it But I am pretty sure that I used the same setup as in this test because I think I used this game as the basis for my Barbarossa tests.

And as can be seen the AI was operating at the army group level there and the paras were organised as a corps.

CharonJr