Originally posted by Devin:
Excellent AAR, von Curow! You have a flair for narrative, so it doesn't surprise me to hear that you just completed a PhD. In what field, may I ask?
One of the things you highlight is that the AI is good at making alliances but is sometimes very deficient at waging wars. It generally fails to prepare adequately for war and tends to give up too easily (England v. Scotland, France v. Lorraine are typical). In some cases, it will declare war and then mobilize barely any troops at all. Or it mobilizes troops and sends them piecemeal against larger armies instead of consolidating them first (Sweden seems to be a major adherent to this futile military doctrine).
It is a mystery to me how the AI determines how large a standing army to maintain. I have seen a small German state like Saxony keep 100,000 men under arms while Austria and France keep a handful of 10,000-man armies scattered through their realms. When war comes, these major powers are often unprepared and can lose provinces to lesser powers.
These are not persistent problems, but this is one of the things that gives a human player an edge. Maybe some of these inconsistencies will be fixed in future patches.
My PhD is (or will be, if all goes well at the defense) in Political Science, and covers European (and American) forms of populism from 19th century Russia and America to modern day Western and Post-Communist Europe. I couldn't find a suitable war topic, so I took an interesting 'political history' one instead.
About the AI war-fighting capacity. The thing you quickly learn against the AI is that if you are going to take on a major power, you should prepare yourself for a large war, and then be patient and attack your enemy when his back is literally turned (Russia fighting the Khanates, Poland fighting Turkey, France fighting Spain), which makes it almost too easy to lop off 1 or 2 provinces. On the other hand, if you are playing as a lesser power, there really is no other way to expand.
I agree. I often see the AI send its standing army off to seize a province, ignoring that the enemy opponent is sending its main army to seize their capital. Then, when size 4 or 5 armies are built, they get sent into the meat grinder as-is, instead of putting them together. This mainly tends to be a problem for small minors, however. If Spain builds armies and sends them off, they tend to arrive together.
You're right about the small minors. Most of them in Germany build very large armies (perhaps because of the dual threat of Austria and France?) that can, in the short run, over run and capture provinces from larger states which have scattered their troops. The same happens in Italy to some extent, where Naples and the Papal States also build huge numbers of troops. At the same time, Milan never inches above its 10,000 man army until attacked, and then it is usually too late. Switzerland, too, is content with 25,000 men.
