EU IV annoyances I experienced in my last game (1.15)

[BarrosRodrigues]

@Johan @DDRJake @Chaingun

I recently played a game where I tried to unlock the "Ideas Guy", "For Odin" and "First Come, First Serve" achievements that required me to start as a western custom nation in the New World. During this game I experienced some annoyances some old, some new. The thing is that they annoyed me so much that I decided to do a short video showing them in an effort (FYI I hate editing...) to maybe see them fixed. Besides typical and apparently unfixable AI falling asleep and overseas exiled armies unable to go home these were the most annoying:


1. AI strategic priorities reversed. The AI (France) decided to invade a strategically worthless location (India) while its country is burning and it does not care about it. This did not happen in 1.14 where the AI while not being a genius was much better than this thanks to a very strict set of priorities (face enemy stack sieging if strong enough>un-siege home province>invade enemy) that were always being checked and applied. Now the priorities are all mixed up (in order to make the AI less predictable?) but it also makes its strategic weaknesses way more apparent and makes it perform very poorly. If you can´t fix it bring back the 1.14 set of rules because, like I said before, the AI performs better and they make much more sense from a strategic perspective.

2. Poor pathing. It is common to see pathing mistakes/problems especially when forts are involved but this is about the AI taking an insanely huge route to avoid non-colonized provinces; this is even more sillier due to the fact that the "native co-existence" policy was selected so no native attacks when pathing trough non-colonized provinces.

3. Broken links. If the capital is in the New World the "go to" links provided by pop ups sometimes only direct you to the right spot when clicked a 2nd time (provided that they are still open ofc which is seldom the case).

4. The "Government" tabs (etc.) sharing the same hot key with units on the map; unless I am missing something it is impossible to open them with the keyboard whenever an army or navy has the same hotkey. Selecting an army or navy is also problematic or impossible whenever those tabs are open or were recently opened.

Edit: btw the commentary is live (from the Let´s Play) with the exception of the hot key issue.

 

[Fulmen]

Very valid points.

Personally I experience the pathing and especially the hotkey issue all the time.

 

[Kagemin]

In my previous campaign I experienced the 3rd issue a lot, even when selecting units or navies, or provinces I searched for. Always zoomed me to the most northwestern point of the new world. I was playing with RNW though, so maybe that made things worse in that regard.

 

[Chaingun]

1. The AI has never followed "a strict set of priorities" w.r.t. to army AI as it's more complex than that, and it's quite impossible to tell why it chooses to do what it does in your case without a save. Upload please.

2. IDD, I've experienced the uncolonized territory issue myself but I've forgot to save on those occasions. Again, you can probably see what I'm implying here - need save or repro.

 

[Florryworry__]

IIRC pathing YOU do will never automatically let you walk through uncolonized, I've seen AI's walk through uncolonized all the time if it's the faster route. Much improvement there since before (many patches ago) natives would just kinda sit in there province whilst you killed em 1 by 1.
Sometimes at the very start of the game Brunei will be silly and walk across the south coast of borneo resulting in lots of casualties but enfin, I've mostly seen AI's walk through uncolonized provinces.
However; would be nice if you could auto-path your own guys through uncolonized lands. Conquering africa and having to constantly shift-click whenever you want an army moving from east to west is a bit silly.

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

In my previous campaign I experienced the 3rd issue a lot, even when selecting units or navies, or provinces I searched for. Always zoomed me to the most northwestern point of the new world. I was playing with RNW though, so maybe that made things worse in that regard.

True, I remember I also had that issue when I looked for provinces but it only happened a few times.

1. The AI has never followed "a strict set of priorities" w.r.t. to army AI as it's more complex than that, and it's quite impossible to tell why it chooses to do what it does in your case without a save. Upload please.

2. IDD, I've experienced the uncolonized territory issue myself but I've forgot to save on those occasions. Again, you can probably see what I'm implying here - need save or repro.

The only thing that I can say is that in 1.14 the AI behaved the way I say it behaved either due to a strict set of rules or modifiers strongly biased towards the behavior I described. I played hundreds of hours in 1.14 where I did several one tag WCs and the AI behavior was 100% consistent with what I described. I remember thinking that despite that behavior being very predictable I was pleased because for the 1st time in the EU IV life I saw it always prioritizing defending its territory (like it should) over doing some dumb invasion. If I had a save I am fairly certain the French troops would come back home all the way from India if I loaded it with 1.14 but unfortunately I don´t have it. Next time I see something like this I will remember to save the game and upload it to you. Thanks for taking the time to reply.

IIRC pathing YOU do will never automatically let you walk through uncolonized, I've seen AI's walk through uncolonized all the time if it's the faster route. Much improvement there since before (many patches ago) natives would just kinda sit in there province whilst you killed em 1 by 1.
Sometimes at the very start of the game Brunei will be silly and walk across the south coast of borneo resulting in lots of casualties but enfin, I've mostly seen AI's walk through uncolonized provinces.
However; would be nice if you could auto-path your own guys through uncolonized lands. Conquering africa and having to constantly shift-click whenever you want an army moving from east to west is a bit silly.

The reason why I said "AI" was because the AI did the same; that AI 10 stack also took the scenic route to go there and then to go lift the siege of its capital where I killed it. I realized that so my armies never actually went through the non-colonized provinces (I cancelled the movement and sent them to the vicinity of their capital).

 

[Florryworry__]

The reason why I said "AI" was because the AI did the same; that AI 10 stack also took the scenic route to go there and then to go lift the siege of its capital where I killed it. I realized that so my armies never actually went through the non-colonized provinces (I cancelled the movement and sent them to the vicinity of their capital).

hmpf thats kinda odd indeed, maybe it's because there's a direct line of enemy provinces? Might be a fun Idea to do a custom nation setup and try and see what happens if you zig-zag provinces like a maze snakey path and see if they follow it

 

[BarrosRodrigues]

hmpf thats kinda odd indeed, maybe it's because there's a direct line of enemy provinces? Might be a fun Idea to do a custom nation setup and try and see what happens if you zig-zag provinces like a maze snakey path and see if they follow it

Yep, I thought about that too. It is on my todo list.

 

[durbal]

2. Poor pathing. It is common to see pathing mistakes/problems especially when forts are involved but this is about the AI taking an insanely huge route to avoid non-colonized provinces; this is even more sillier due to the fact that the "native co-existence" policy was selected so no native attacks when pathing trough non-colonized provinces.

This is especially stupid in North America where the AI will form federations and then non-adjacent allies will just stand in their home provinces during a war because they are totally unwilling to move over non-colonized provinces.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1. The AI has never followed "a strict set of priorities" w.r.t. to army AI as it's more complex than that, and it's quite impossible to tell why it chooses to do what it does in your case without a save. Upload please.

2. IDD, I've experienced the uncolonized territory issue myself but I've forgot to save on those occasions. Again, you can probably see what I'm implying here - need save or repro.

You can reproduce the pathing issue through natives by ordering your own units. Pick any late era where Tuat is colonized, console integrate West + North Africa, and then path from where Air starts to Alexandria. You'll not go through the natives by right-click ordering your army (even if you've killed the uncolonized province natives). You will always path through Tuat unless you shift-queue orders into the uncolonized province first...and if you only shift-queue the first province, the queue will take you backwards and around through Tuat after that anyway unless you queue 2nd province too.

As far as I can tell the AI usually doesn't like to path through natives at all, though this is probably a good thing in Africa. I'm sure some of us remember how THAT used to go .

 

[Florryworry__]

Honestly I really really feel like we should let the AI cheat here and just not have natives attack them whilst walking through uncolonized.
Otherwise youd have to teach them not to when theyre too weak or whatever and to walk through them when it saves time etc etc.
It wont make THAT big of a difference letting them cheat this in terms of balance but it would make them act alot smarter.
Also perhaps we can add a modifier to provinces if they are empty or if the natives have been killed so both player and AI pathing will automatically use that province?
If its faster ofcourse. Or rather remove whatever it is that prevents autopathing.

 

[DanubianCossak]

Every time you have a genuine concern about AI logic remember to upload the save game. Its crucial for devs to fix stuff.