Dollar auction and total war: AI overcommits to minor wars

[kviiri]

In game theory there's this thing called Dollar auction where two players, competing over a single dollar, pit insane amounts of resources against each other in a futile effort to cut their losses. CK2 AI doesn't get it.

I started a small test game as King Krasimir IV of Croatia. Before unpausing, I granted myself a claim on the Holy Roman Empire using the console, and the lousy single-holding tribal county of Kola to the Kaiser of HRE.

Spoiler: Pic

I declared war to see how HRE would respond. As expected, they take claimants to their throne seriously - by the end of the year they have well over ten thousand troops marching against fair Croatia (I had only about four thousand or so troops available, so that's a bit of an overreaction, but I digress). Fair enough, eh?

Spoiler: Pic

But what happens if I repeat the experiment, but claim the near worthless county of Kola instead?

Spoiler: Pic

The AI clearly goes in for a total war again, despite the two titles fought over being of clearly unequal value. In the first war it's reasonable to commit a lot of troops since a lot is hanging on it - in the latter war the Kaiser is lucky to ever get the money spent on maintaining that levy back from his little Kolan exclave, one that he can't even defend against raiders.

Granted, this is an extreme example, but resembles a very common situation in-game - trying to usurp a single barony from a large enemy. Because the AI commits irrationally large armies to wars over small parcels of land, the player must commit such forces too, making wars against large targets unappealing because of wrong reasons. It's a dollar auction - one where the AI makes a stupid choice to spend lots of resources to defend something of limited value, forcing the player to play even more stupidly (=use an even more excessive army) to gain the prize - or accept the status quo.

 

[Dracko81]

Doesn't matter. You declared war on them, obviously they will respond in kind.

Could you imagine if say the English only committed part of their resources to winning any war in history, based purely on the size of their opponent. If you have superior forces, you use them.

Additionally your comparison to the dollar auction game theory isn't accurate, since there isn't a third party pocketing the proceeds. You are aggressively trying to take something from the other contestant.

 

[klopkr]

Although it tottaly agree with you how would one even go about fixing this?

A distance to the capital modifier? Type of cb? Land connection? Strength of the oponnent?

I'm not sure how you could program this into the game in a way that wouldn't be easy to take advantage of as the player.

All i can think of is the ai only using a certain amount of troops more than the total troop count of the enemy and their allies. You could still game it by raising mercenaries strategically.

 

[Olrox]

A peace deal system similar to EU4 would help here. Wanna usurp the HRE? You need 100% warscore. You just want a measly barony? AI will give up after the first lost battle.

 

[kviiri]

Doesn't matter. You declared war on them, obviously they will respond in kind.

Didn't you read any of my post? They are making a huge mistake paying for that many troops to defend a practically worthless piece of clay way up North. If you disagree with that, you're pretty much objectively wrong. Not every small territorial clash was fought on a Hundred Years' War scale.

Could you imagine if say the English only committed part of their resources to winning any war in history, based purely on the size of their opponent. If you have superior forces, you use them.

No you don't, because it's expensive, inefficient, wasteful and stupid. You only use what you need to win a worthwhile victory. Take the Falklands war, for example. The British had less than ten ships take part in the conflict because they didn't need more. No one in their right minds would spend all their resources just because they can, even today - and mind you, the Middle-Ages were a time of very limited warfare because your troops didn't fight for national pride, they were peasants borrowed to the crown by the lesser nobles who probably would've minded them being used to protect something worthless very much.

Although it tottaly agree with you how would one even go about fixing this?

AI making estimates about ideal force commitment based on the enemy's strength, the target's value and its own security would be a good start.

 

[Dracko81]

Didn't you read any of my post? They are making a huge mistake paying for that many troops to defend a practically worthless piece of clay way up North. If you disagree with that, you're pretty much objectively wrong. Not every small territorial clash was fought on a Hundred Years' War scale.

No you don't, because it's expensive, inefficient, wasteful and stupid. You only use what you need to win a worthwhile victory. Take the Falklands war, for example. The British had less than ten ships take part in the conflict because they didn't need more. No one in their right minds would spend all their resources just because they can, even today - and mind you, the Middle-Ages were a time of very limited warfare because your troops didn't fight for national pride, they were peasants borrowed to the crown by the lesser nobles who probably would've minded them being used to protect something worthless very much.

AI making estimates about ideal force commitment based on the enemy's strength, the target's value and its own security would be a good start.

If the territory you were trying to take was so worthless, why try to take it? If you are willing to invest the amount of troops into the fight, why shouldn't the AI produce more than enough to crush you?

You are upset that you can't take holdings from large realms, that's fine. But you comparison to the dollar auction are not accurate. Nor is your assessment of the situation. You want to take it off them, why should they give up easily when they have the numbers to crush you like a bug.

 

[kmh42]

We talking about a very limited AI. The problem you brought up is very hard to manage for the it. Just look at the other problems the AI has.
That doesn't mean is not worth mentioning.

 

[mursolini]

Didn't you read any of my post? They are making a huge mistake paying for that many troops to defend a practically worthless piece of clay way up North. If you disagree with that, you're pretty much objectively wrong. Not every small territorial clash was fought on a Hundred Years' War scale.

Don`t you also make the same mistake mobilising all your troops to capture a worthless piece of land, putting your entire realm at risk?

If the player uses all available forces to do stupid thing, isn`t AI forced to respond in kind?

Your argument is irrational. You have less troops than AI, so in any case by starting a war over worthless piece of land, you want to win, and thus you have to send much larger fraction your forces to get any kind of chance to win. So, you take the irrational decision to put far more on the line than AI does. AI, at least, will probably win, and thus not only keep the land, it will get rid of a threat you pose for a while, maybe even collapse your realm into pieces.

Basically what you call for is for creation of an easy AI exploit
, that would allow player to almost always easily win by taking far higher risk.

No you don't, because it's expensive, inefficient, wasteful and stupid. You only use what you need to win a worthwhile victory. Take the Falklands war, for example. The British had less than ten ships take part in the conflict because they didn't need more. No one in their right minds would spend all their resources just because they can, even today - and mind you, the Middle-Ages were a time of very limited warfare because your troops didn't fight for national pride, they were peasants borrowed to the crown by the lesser nobles who probably would've minded them being used to protect something worthless very much.

AI making estimates about ideal force commitment based on the enemy's strength, the target's value and its own security would be a good start.

AI that understands that Human is not "rational" and will try to exploit any predictable thinking pattern would be an even better start
Player risks nothing, because player can just restart, hence real life models don`t work well in games, not played for RL money.

 

[Edopardo]

Perhaps a limiter on the number of raised troops would be good. Maybe levy 2-3 times as many troops as your enemy's maximum, or something like that.

 

[mursolini]

Perhaps a limiter on the number of raised troops would be good. Maybe levy 2-3 times as many troops as your enemy's maximum, or something like that.

2-3 times may not be enough, and is hugely likely to fall into some sort of fast mercenary buy trap

 

[alanschu]

2-3 times may not be enough, and is hugely likely to fall into some sort of fast mercenary buy trap

I think this is probably a serious concern.

That said, I know that I as the player wouldn't give up even a tiny barony after losing the first battle, even if it isn't "worth it" to do so.

 

[mursolini]

That said, I know that I as the player wouldn't give up even a tiny barony after losing the first battle, even if it isn't "worth it" to do so.

Yes, because we know that such loses are subject to compound effect, after all, you`re losing your base, from which you draw money and soldiers, the less base you have, the less you`re able to defend what little remains there. Hence overcommitment makes total sense.

If you start as 30 province realm and start losing a province every decade in wars where you could have won, if you actually committed all of your troops, in 150 years your "base" would be 50%, instead of spending overwhelming amount of troops and money in short term once, but deal with threat once and for all, and preventing degradation of your power base as a whole.

That, is why a lot of wars actually lasted till near complete elimination of one side, and if it takes 20-50 years, so be it

 

[kviiri]

If the territory you were trying to take was so worthless, why try to take it? If you are willing to invest the amount of troops into the fight, why shouldn't the AI produce more than enough to crush you?

That's both faulty logic and not relevant. First of all, the territory could be of more value to me than it was for the AI realm - these things aren't absolutes. Also, you're assuming I'm like the AI - that I would gladly pay hundreds of gold in levy maintenance and risk my realm's security for a single worthless holding. I'm not.

As for your question "why shouldn't the AI produce more than enough to crush you", well, because "enough" is enough. Every soldier I deploy to fight costs me money and is away from potential other conflicts. Having a substantial advantage is good because it reduces casualties, but "overkilling" is inefficient.

Don`t you also make the same mistake mobilising all your troops to capture a worthless piece of land, putting your entire realm at risk?

No I don't - see my pictures, I don't have a single soldier deployed. I would like to capture small foreign holdings in my realm, but the would AI make a stupid choice that forces me to make stupid choice too - so status quo, letting them keep that holding, is the only option that doesn't drive the player insane.

Is it good gameplay, though? Or realistic? Neither. It's both annoying for the player, and unrealistic - real-life warfare is carried out using reasonable investments, because overkills cost money, men and stability.

If the player uses all available forces to do stupid thing, isn`t AI forced to respond in kind?

Circular, faulty logic. As a player I can choose how much troops I spend. The AI always sends it all, see my pictures. I didn't deploy a single troop. You can't justify AI behavior as a fair reaction to a player overcommitting, because I didn't deploy a single soldier.

Your argument is irrational. You have less troops than AI, so in any case by starting a war over worthless piece of land, you want to win, and thus you have to send much larger fraction your forces to get any kind of chance to win. So, you take the irrational decision to put far more on the line than AI does. AI, at least, will probably win, and thus not only keep the land, it will get rid of a threat you pose for a while, maybe even collapse your realm into pieces.

The Croatia thing is just an example. My argument boils down to this: the AI defends a worthless piece of junk county with equal resources it uses to defends its whole Empire title. That means it's overcommitting its resources on the first part.

 

[Dracko81]

but "overkilling" is inefficient.

Actually overkill is more efficient. Here is why.

To win a war you need to defeat your opponents armies, if you incur loses and need to move into their realm the current ability to replenish troops in friendly territory puts the attacker at a disadvantage. Additionally you can only win defensive wars with battles alone, which means you need to siege holdings. Besieging numerous holdings takes a toll on your troops, you need to have sufficient troops to sustain the attrition. Not to mention that more troops means faster and more sieges. So overkill is actually more efficient because you can end a war far faster than trying to limit your troops involvement and dragging the war out.

That's both faulty logic and not relevant.

Not it isn't. You can't say the AI is doing something wrong, when you are doing something wrong. There is no reason for you to try to take the holding, so why take it. You are declaring war, you can't claim the AI is behaving poorly because it is stronger than you and taking advantage of that fact. There is no reason for it give up the holding. If the AI was fighting 3 wars on multiple fronts against much worse wars and it was prioritising that war over a kingdom claim you might have some merit to the argument of the AI not fighting the correct wars.

Your applying faulty logic to the problem, and ignoring the facts staring you in the face. But this still isn't an example of dollar auction.

 

[mursolini]

No I don't - see my pictures, I don't have a single soldier deployed. I would like to capture small foreign holdings in my realm, but the would AI make a stupid choice that forces me to make stupid choice too - so status quo, letting them keep that holding, is the only option that doesn't drive the player insane.

Why should AI give up the holding if it is stronger, and both you and AI know that it is irrational for you to try to capture it?

Is it good gameplay, though? Or realistic? Neither. It's both annoying for the player, and unrealistic - real-life warfare is carried out using reasonable investments, because overkills cost money, men and stability.

Real life warfare was in no way reliable, overkills were rarely "overkills" as you try to imply. In game, you have perfect intelligence, IRL, none was available.

Really, what about all the decade-long inconclusive wars that ended up with a country in debt and rebellions?

Circular, faulty logic. As a player I can choose how much troops I spend. The AI always sends it all, see my pictures. I didn't deploy a single troop. You can't justify AI behavior as a fair reaction to a player overcommitting, because I didn't deploy a single soldier.

You`re grasping a straw here. IF AI should think how much player "deploys", it should think in terms of how much player can potentially deploy, and mercenaries player can hire, to not fall into a trap.

Not to mention there is value in destroying your weak opponents flat out.

The Croatia thing is just an example.

And a wrong one

My argument boils down to this: the AI defends a worthless piece of junk county with equal resources it uses to defends its whole Empire title. That means it's overcommitting its resources on the first part.

If AI gives up all it`s worthless piece of junk counties, will it even have resources to defend it`s not-worthless provinces?

Your argument is wrong. AI should look at opportunity cost of aquring similar junk province, and conclude if it is worth giving it up, if it can use the margin that it get`s for advantage elsewhere.

What meters in the game is resource generating capacity that provinces provide you. If you`re not using the "free" regeneration of manpower, you`re losing resources. If you`re trading a small chunk of resource generation for no gain, you`re losing. Every province is worth defending with full strength if you`re in no position to obtain more by giving it up, or defending it with full force will exhaust you and make you vulnerable to losing even more provinces.

 

[Careful Plum]

mursolini, I think you misunderstand the argument here. It is a fact that the AI will ALWAYS commit the entirety of its ressources to a war. Doesn't matter if it's overkill or "underkill". It will happily march its army against a totally superior army to be slaughtered as well (it will try to avoid the enemy army, granted, but there's no reason to even bother raising those troops, and as I'm sure you know another player at least will eventually be able to catch that useless army anyway). There's also a point in the game where your army will be so much superior to the enemy, that more soldiers will NOT result in less of your own troops being killed.

It's not about whether the AI will defend its worthless provinces or not. The point is that it will commit more than is necessary to defend it, i.e., it will, after the war, have less than it would need to have to achieve the same result.

And, again, similarily, if the AI is attacked by an enemy it has no hope of winning against, it will still happily try to defend it, with the only difference being that it will loose the county AS WELL as its army.

 

[mjohnson85]

The main issue with cbs is that Paradox hasn't added arguments to the aI logic brackets, which leads to all those irrational wars. Since we can't control the way armies are controlled/rationed out, making the ai smarter, which is a surprisingly easy thing to do with cbs, feels like the logical place to start. I've recently done some experiments in this area with modifiers regarding relations, opinions, strength, and population/resource (personal mod) and the ai's use of cbs was immensely improved. And that is just my first attempt. I firmly believe that is a root issue that we as modders and Paradox can easily target with speed and great results.

 

[mursolini]

mursolini, I think you misunderstand the argument here. It is a fact that the AI will ALWAYS commit the entirety of its ressources to a war. Doesn't matter if it's overkill or "underkill". It will happily march its army against a totally superior army to be slaughtered as well (it will try to avoid the enemy army, granted, but there's no reason to even bother raising those troops, and as I'm sure you know another player at least will eventually be able to catch that useless army anyway). There's also a point in the game where your army will be so much superior to the enemy, that more soldiers will NOT result in less of your own troops being killed.

It's not about whether the AI will defend its worthless provinces or not. The point is that it will commit more than is necessary to defend it, i.e., it will, after the war, have less than it would need to have to achieve the same result.

And, again, similarily, if the AI is attacked by an enemy it has no hope of winning against, it will still happily try to defend it, with the only difference being that it will loose the county AS WELL as its army.

I`m sure I understand his argument pretty well, it boils down to two points, I have addressed both in fact. For AI to commit "necessary" amount of forces, would be to commit enough forces to defeat all enemy army, reliably in worst case possible, and any kind of mercenary or alliance shenanigans a player can use. That one was pretty clear, and nobody seemed to mind it. I really wouldn`t mind such calculation done by AI, but it totally should include tricks and exploits in mind and should ensure there is zero chance of war going wrong even in worst case scenario.

His second point was about AI over-committing to defence of a "worthless" province, that player wanted to conquer, but it was impossible, because AI would actually commit way more than player thinks AI "should", and thus player "has" to also commit huge resources to that war, making the war "unreasonably" expensive, and thus, impossible for player to wage with any hope of gain. How for his small realm such province would be of different "value" than for huge HRE realm, and how it shouldn`t be as committed to defending it with it`s full force, and overall, HRE should just commit a tiny amount of it`s forces, and after they are defeated by player`s way larger overcommitment, HRE should just give up and give player the province.

It`s your interpretation of his complains that I find strange and missing the point, quite frankly. You seem to be the only one who found any point about how AI should just stand down and give up if it is weaker.

 

[SchwarzKatze]

You're right next to the HRE yourself and you're the only enemy HRE faces, so the emperor is probably confident that he can steamroll you in either cases as you're much weaker and there're no distractions.

If you use, say, Novgorod to grab Kola and France to contest the throne at the same time, the argument would be stronger.

 

[Woody Man]

Would be interesting to do tests on AI fighting two wars at the same time to see if it can properly assess threat. From what I can see the main issue gameplay wise with AI overkill is that it will send doomstacks against minor threats while it falls apart internally.

The notion that the AI holding back useless troops is purely making the game easier for the player is a little misguided in my opinion.

But then, in terms of medieval warfare CK2 does not do it justice at all so this is putting a plaster on a broken leg so to speak.