Defensive War: AI Always on the Offensive

[Tom013]

I've watched quite a few wars go this way:
1) AI declares war on AI ally. AI ally calls me in. Our forces are clearly superior in number and peer or near-peer tech.
2) Ally immediately goes on the offensive, deploying troops forward, attacking across rivers and into hills, and suffering attrition while sieging a mere one province away from a critical battle.

I imagine this happens with wars I'm not called into as well, though I can't watch them as easily. I watched Burgundy lose a 3:1 troops ratio war against France (with higher miltech!) this way. They had lost 10 battles on French soil before France moved the first man into Burgundy.

Is this what most people are seeing? It seems that the AI should be more reluctant to immediately push an offensive in a DEFENSIVE war. That they make frustrating tactical decisions (i.e. attack into mountains) is one thing, but that they're doing it on enemy soil on the opening movements of the war seems more unfortunate...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

AI will rush into enemy territory in defensive wars consistently, yes. The only time it doesn't is if the opposing AI does it first, and even then sometimes they both just siege the other's land even when a base race is impractical ^_^.

 

[Oyubi]

If you put a small force in burgundy with the "attach to unit" thing ticked then a lot of your allies will rally there instead of running in. This doesn't work well when your ally has massive enough stacks that it feels no need to group up.

I agree they should avoid big strikes into enemy territory but then again if I was burgundy I'd send a small force to Paris to loot it and reduce the enemies tax. Maybe the AI values the economic impact of war too much so it does the same but on a massive scale?

Currently the AI only has doomstack (hunter-killer) and carpet siege. That's the only way it knows how to group its men. Having a "bait" stack would be good. This would be a smallish force that stands on terrain with rivers or mountains with a bigger stack nearby. When it gets attacked by the enemy hunter-killer the allied hunter-killer stack would move to join the battle. This also replicates a common human tactic and is a decent defensive style but I have no idea if it could be coded.