In defence of the AI....

[Axe99]

Started a new game today as France - France is a great country to play, plenty of challenge, and a genuine risk of failure. That said, my first two games as France, way back when (1.2 or earlier, most likely), I won both (the second without too much trouble). Today, when I was theoretically older and wiser.....

Of course, it's not all over yet, but Germany never got this far last time around. It's also not perfect - they're still throwing a metric ton of troops at the Maginot (although this may not be a vanilla game issue - there are some 'light' tweaks to some of the land defines, although in theory these should have made the AI less likely to attack a heavily fortified position, not more). Although they are winning the Maginot attack (so while it's expensive, it's not futile), it's pretty clear the tens of divisions there would be better served making my life even more painful going through Belgium.

The AI doesn't have air superiority (but I don't either - it's contested - so the French air force performing better than historical at least) - and it would have been far worse, far sooner if I hadn't have been giving my troops help with the defence (ie, if I'd just relied on the battleplan to position troops in defence, Germany would have been through sooner and worse). While the game is modded, the vast majority of the mod changes relate to naval warfare - all of the division templates except mine are vanilla. Germany doesn't have any buffs to it either.

Anyways, it'd been a little while since I'd played a 'continental' power, and it was good to see the AI come at me hard, and break through - I've lost (or at least, I'm pretty sure I will - if for some reason the AI can't convert on this breakthrough I will report back appropriately!) working harder than either of my two previous wins. I'm not in any way saying there aren't issues with the AI, but if people are looking for a single-player challenge, they could do worse than playing France.

 

[fabius]

Interesting. Let us know how it ends for your or Germany

 

[Meglok]

@Axe99 interesting, I have never tried France all the way thru. I do know it is vital to micro manage your focus choices and pp in the right sequence.

I did not see any UK forces or exp units in your screen shot. What happened to them?

 

[Aodhan_]

Like your self Axe it's been awhile form I played France might put my German campaign on hold (till the new update comes out, also Italy is annoying me with there need to march troops to Hanover to sail back again ) and give France another whirl. Your campaign is looking interesting, make good use of them rivers .

 

[Dalwin]

One interesting thing about being France is that you will have decided the game one way or the other before Germany commits seppuku at Russia's feet. You know that all you have to do is last for another year and then the NF driven AI will declare on Russia regardless of the situation in France.

This looks interesting enough that I might give it a try. What settings did you use? I'd be tempted to go with Germany +4 and Italy +2, though it is especially hard to play France on veteran due to the NF which is already lowering their PP production.

 

[safe-keeper]

Thanks for giving me hope.

The day the AI is actually challenging and the battle planner works as advertised will be a beautiful day. I picture myself spending years building up my forces, for then to carefully draw up plans and have to really think them through because getting them wrong can cost me dearly. Then as each operation ends, I have to form good defensive lines, consolidate, and draw up another set of battle plans. Will be a much better WWII feel than the "fight whereever you can" approach of HOI3.

Well, I still have a high chance of BPs costing me dearly, but right now it's because they don't work .

 

[Art1985]

Started a new game today as France - France is a great country to play, plenty of challenge, and a genuine risk of failure. That said, my first two games as France, way back when (1.2 or earlier, most likely), I won both (the second without too much trouble). Today, when I was theoretically older and wiser.....

View attachment 261794

Of course, it's not all over yet, but Germany never got this far last time around. It's also not perfect - they're still throwing a metric ton of troops at the Maginot (although this may not be a vanilla game issue - there are some 'light' tweaks to some of the land defines, although in theory these should have made the AI less likely to attack a heavily fortified position, not more). Although they are winning the Maginot attack (so while it's expensive, it's not futile), it's pretty clear the tens of divisions there would be better served making my life even more painful going through Belgium.

The AI doesn't have air superiority (but I don't either - it's contested - so the French air force performing better than historical at least) - and it would have been far worse, far sooner if I hadn't have been giving my troops help with the defence (ie, if I'd just relied on the battleplan to position troops in defence, Germany would have been through sooner and worse). While the game is modded, the vast majority of the mod changes relate to naval warfare - all of the division templates except mine are vanilla. Germany doesn't have any buffs to it either.

Anyways, it'd been a little while since I'd played a 'continental' power, and it was good to see the AI come at me hard, and break through - I've lost (or at least, I'm pretty sure I will - if for some reason the AI can't convert on this breakthrough I will report back appropriately!) working harder than either of my two previous wins. I'm not in any way saying there aren't issues with the AI, but if people are looking for a single-player challenge, they could do worse than playing France.

It would be so much clearer to see situation on the front line with normal hoi3 counters and....

 

[FOARP]

Started a new game today as France - France is a great country to play, plenty of challenge, and a genuine risk of failure. That said, my first two games as France, way back when (1.2 or earlier, most likely), I won both (the second without too much trouble). Today, when I was theoretically older and wiser.....

View attachment 261794

Of course, it's not all over yet, but Germany never got this far last time around. It's also not perfect - they're still throwing a metric ton of troops at the Maginot (although this may not be a vanilla game issue - there are some 'light' tweaks to some of the land defines, although in theory these should have made the AI less likely to attack a heavily fortified position, not more). Although they are winning the Maginot attack (so while it's expensive, it's not futile), it's pretty clear the tens of divisions there would be better served making my life even more painful going through Belgium.

The AI doesn't have air superiority (but I don't either - it's contested - so the French air force performing better than historical at least) - and it would have been far worse, far sooner if I hadn't have been giving my troops help with the defence (ie, if I'd just relied on the battleplan to position troops in defence, Germany would have been through sooner and worse). While the game is modded, the vast majority of the mod changes relate to naval warfare - all of the division templates except mine are vanilla. Germany doesn't have any buffs to it either.

Anyways, it'd been a little while since I'd played a 'continental' power, and it was good to see the AI come at me hard, and break through - I've lost (or at least, I'm pretty sure I will - if for some reason the AI can't convert on this breakthrough I will report back appropriately!) working harder than either of my two previous wins. I'm not in any way saying there aren't issues with the AI, but if people are looking for a single-player challenge, they could do worse than playing France.

Are you using the battle planner or microing?

 

[blusarge27]

One interesting thing about being France is that you will have decided the game one way or the other before Germany commits seppuku at Russia's feet. You know that all you have to do is last for another year and then the NF driven AI will declare on Russia regardless of the situation in France.

I hope this gets looked at at some point. The game will be more challenging and less immersion breaking for it.

@Axe99 It would be interesting if you did this again after 1.4 comes out and post the results as a comparison (if you want to of course). Hopefully you get rolled a whole lot quicker

 

[BurdenedWarrior]

I had a game where I played the Spanish civil war and that had me putting all my micro skills to the test. I'd encircle one of their divisions and somewhere else they'd have encircled one of mine. This wnet on for awhile. It was a great match up although the AI didn't always kill off my surrounded division and I always killed theirs. That's what win it for me. But I was supper impressed with it. Led me to believe that the AI struggles on the macro level and not the micro level.

 

[Axe99]

Interesting. Let us know how it ends for your or Germany

I absolutely will . I play a couple of hours a day, more or less, so it defends whether I can effectively re-form a defensive line that'll hold. Italy pushed hard (really hard - they were within a hair of breaking through in the south) early, which drew off some of my better divisions from the north, so my capacity to hold the Germans isn't great, so

@Axe99 interesting, I have never tried France all the way thru. I do know it is vital to micro manage your focus choices and pp in the right sequence.

I did not see any UK forces or exp units in your screen shot. What happened to them?

There were a handful of UK divisions in Belgium that refused to retreat with the rest of us to a secondary line of defence at the French border. None provided for me though, although fortunately I've got 24 Belgian and Dutch divisions that they gave me control of just before their respective ends.

One interesting thing about being France is that you will have decided the game one way or the other before Germany commits seppuku at Russia's feet. You know that all you have to do is last for another year and then the NF driven AI will declare on Russia regardless of the situation in France.

This looks interesting enough that I might give it a try. What settings did you use? I'd be tempted to go with Germany +4 and Italy +2, though it is especially hard to play France on veteran due to the NF which is already lowering their PP production.

Aye, I was keen to give my current mod a play, and didn't want to play Germany (nothing against Germany, but they've already had a few runs this year), and any other nation is a bit wobbly because of the Germany/Russian match-up. If you win as France, you've also got the potential for a broo-ha-ha with the Comintern as well, but I fear I won't be able to report on that this game.

Are you using the battle planner or microing?

A battle plan 'core' to shunt units to roughly where I want them with heavy microing. Absolutely necessary to micro a lot of units to stop Italy breaking through, and a lot of microing in the north, although I've less to show for it. Also necessary to micro the defence of the Maginot to better concentrate defenders in Strasbourg (but I'm still going to run out of divisions without leaving holes in the line). Micro-ing heavily in the north as well, but it's all gone to the dogs there - I don't see a way back at this point, although I won't stop fighting.

My infantry divisions are support art, engineering and recon, with 9 INF, 1 AT and 1 AA (they were planned to have 1 ART as well, but didn't have the IC and XP to make it happen before the screenshot above). However, most of the divisions in the north-east are just what I could scrabble together (all my mobile forces, 6 'proper INF', the Dutch/Belgians and at this point even my cavalry), as I'd needed too many core infantry divs in the south and on the Maginot to prevent that falling. The south has stabilised now, but when I pull a few divs away (what have I got to lose at this point), I suspect it'll mean the Italians will crash through.

The things I did 'weakly' that could be improved were:
- 8 IC on aircraft, because I'm not min-maxing, so France kept building TACs and a few Potez 630s as well (it's 25 IC on land stuff, 2 on tanks, 8 on planes).
- Not going the whole-hog on forts. I completed the NF forts in the south and north, but didn't go further than that until war broke out (unexpectedly in the South - last go-round Italy gave me far less trouble). A strategy involving
- Building up to 12 NIC
- A couple of IC on AA.
- 1 IC on heavy tanks (again, historical playthrough - next go-round I'll be tighter here).
- building a bit more CIC than was necessary.

These were partly because the last game I won pretty easily with France, including these sub-optimal plays to a similar or greater degree, and partly because when I'm playing single-player in historical mode I play at least semi-historically. I will play another game after this where I'm a bit more focussed on holding off the Germans (so no new NIC, no 'flavour' tanks or planes, and a bit less CIC). I won't spam forts though, as that feels a bit gamey to me (my 'rule of thumb' is NF forts only until war breaks out - I want to see whether if this rule, and this rule alone, gives for a competitive game without Germany being buffed next time).

I hope this gets looked at at some point. The game will be more challenging and less immersion breaking for it.

@Axe99 It would be interesting if you did this again after 1.4 comes out and post the results as a comparison (if you want to of course). Hopefully you get rolled a whole lot quicker

I quite enjoy playing France - a good, tough start, and the potential for an interesting fight against the Soviets later (and all sorts of crazy potential in non-historical mode to boot). I'll try to remember to give it a go-round in 1.4, but my memory is notoriously patchy, so if I forget and you still want that to happen, feel free to give me a nudge .

 

[Axe99]

I had a game where I played the Spanish civil war and that had me putting all my micro skills to the test. I'd encircle one of their divisions and somewhere else they'd have encircled one of mine. This wnet on for awhile. It was a great match up although the AI didn't always kill off my surrounded division and I always killed theirs. That's what win it for me. But I was supper impressed with it. Led me to believe that the AI struggles on the macro level and not the micro level.

This (gets a double-post partly because I'm dopey, but partly because I think this is the key issue) is my impression as well. In my hands-off games looking at Germany and the Soviets, the single biggest issue seems to be Germany having enough troops facing the Soviets in the first place. The other big problem tends to be when the front-line shifts substantially (for example, when Germany declares war on Belgium and the Netherlands, France will redeploy it's troops facing Germany across the entire front, often leaving holes in the Maginot).

That's not to say it doesn't leave holes elsewhere, and the things we saw in last weeks DD are absolutely important (particularly on long fronts - which the AI uses regularly - it'll send troops on long redeployments, which weren't checked until they were finished - the unit controller will checking this mid-deployment, as well as a focus on smaller moves, is likely to lead to substantial improvements here). There also room for the AI to better focus at weak spots in the line, rather than attacking everywhere. It's definitely improving though, and can provide a creditable challenge in the right circumstances .

 

[blusarge27]

I quite enjoy playing France - a good, tough start, and the potential for an interesting fight against the Soviets later (and all sorts of crazy potential in non-historical mode to boot). I'll try to remember to give it a go-round in 1.4, but my memory is notoriously patchy, so if I forget and you still want that to happen, feel free to give me a nudge .

No pressure, just thought it would be an interesting comparison if you were up for it
I actually haven't played France in HOI4, did it in 3 and got crushed, as you should, but might give it a try after 1.4 to see how difficult it is.

 

[Misaka_Complex]

Just get 6 land forts on the Belgian border (build to 4 and get the +2 free from focus), put colonials on the Maginot line and more colonials on the alps and you can hold line provided that you don't use the battle planner so they don't start shifting, losing their entrenchment bonus and unbuffed Axis can never get through. They will have a very hard time getting through even if they have +4 but then you can go communist France to get extensive conscription to defend against the Alps VS +4 Italy.

The battle planner is terrible when you want to defend because it can put 6 divisions in one tile while 1 on another tile on the same front which obviously creates an opening for Germany to break through. This just goes to show that the battle planner AI has problems, because when you micro you can allocate your defenses adjusting accordingly to the terrain. When I say micro i don't mean constantly moving your divisions when the enemy attacks, I mean manually allocating your divisions in the correct positions before they attack.

 

[Axe99]

Just get 6 land forts on the Belgian border (build to 4 and get the +2 free from focus), put colonials on the Maginot line and more colonials on the alps and you can hold line provided that you don't use the battle planner so they don't start shifting, losing their entrenchment bonus and unbuffed Axis can never get through. They will have a very hard time getting through even if they have +4 but then you can go communist France to get extensive conscription to defend against the Alps VS +4 Italy.

The battle planner is terrible when you want to defend because it can put 6 divisions in one tile while 1 on another tile on the same front which obviously creates an opening for Germany to break through. This just goes to show that the battle planner AI has problems, because when you micro you can allocate your defenses adjusting accordingly to the terrain. When I say micro i don't mean constantly moving your divisions when the enemy attacks, I mean manually allocating your divisions in the correct positions before they attack.

Aye, I know it's easy to fort-spam my way to victory (I mention above that I limit fort building deliberately), but there's not a lot of fun in that - just like HoI3, I expect it will always be necessary for experienced players to hold off on a strategy or two that the AI can't cope with as well (although, in this case, the issue is more the cheapness of extending the forts - if France had extended the Maginot along the whole border, Germany would have been in licorice allsorts). I definitely agree the battleplanner had some issues with its troop allocation. I found fallback lines were a little bit better at spreading troops and holding them there.

The point is more that Germany with historical-ish forces against a France that doesn't go the full Maginot can provide a challenging game, and to some degree makes good decisions. It's still got issues, but once it's got the right amount of troops in the right place, it can be very challenging indeed. Given that there are significant improvements with 1.4, hopefully it'll get even better .

No pressure, just thought it would be an interesting comparison if you were up for it
I actually haven't played France in HOI4, did it in 3 and got crushed, as you should, but might give it a try after 1.4 to see how difficult it is.

It's all good - I don't need a whole lot of encouragement to play HoI .

This afternoon's session saw Germany convert on their early gains. Some screenies and AI-related observations follow below.

As my forces weakened, the AI pushed, and pushed hard. They also converted their contested airspace to air superiority. Note the encirclement of Paris. Things were looking grim:

Spoiler

Here's a second AI encirclement, although unlike Paris I had enough local forces to break those division out before they were destroyed:

Spoiler

While the AI pushes its fronts hard, and much better, it still isn't picky about where it attacks, and so has bled very heavily (tens of divisions attacking the Maginot Line will do that to you). Here's the casualty count, and it'd be a lot better if Germany and Italy weren't smashing themselves against strong defensive positions (although Italy's push in the south did tie down 10 or so divisions, so wasn't entirely wasted - the troops attacking on the Maginot, though, should have just been making me suffer even more heavily in Northern France).

Spoiler

After the armistice, I did some tag switching and had a look around. I've added in a few AI strategies to tone down AI invasions, including one holding ENG back from invading GER and ITA after the battle of France until they have 100 divisions and tank landing craft). The AI did what it was told, but clearly wanted to have a go at Italy, so ìt's decided to advance on Rome through Vichy France! It's impressive that the AI can 'look through' other countries to do this, but it's obviously strategically unsound to send one division on such a mission, and I'm sure we're all hoping for more sensible AI invasion decisions in the future.

Spoiler

Another issue that popped up was Norways enthusiasm for fighting in Africa at the expense of its own defence. This wasn't with No Man's Land (I get an extra 190 error log messages with NML, which makes it harder to spot when I've messed up), but even so, sending 7 divisions to Africa and leaving one for the defence of Southern Norway is something I'm sure we all hope improves over time. On the plus side, Britain had 18 divisions guarding the UK.

Spoiler

 

[Misaka_Complex]

The point is more that Germany with historical-ish forces against a France that doesn't go the full Maginot can provide a challenging game, and to some degree makes good decisions. It's still got issues, but once it's got the right amount of troops in the right place, it can be very challenging indeed. Given that there are significant improvements with 1.4, hopefully it'll get even better .

I think that if Germany pushes France hard across the Belgian border with 20 width Panzers (mostly light and a few medium) it can do just fine provided that France doesn't build more land forts other than the free ones given by the NF. France couldn't really afford to make that many AT guns in 1939 while Germany can definitely afford the tanks. However the AI would also need to start building some synthetic oilfields for this, which is another issue.

 

[Tomnoddy]

I had a look at an old save file from my last France game in Oct 1939 , France had 531k manpower in the field, Germany 1.5m.
In terms of pure infantry, they outnumber France 3:1 and if you somehow totalled up the amount of production cost in their army they'd come even further ahead, having so many mechanised divisions that are about 25% medium armour, 25% light armour, 25% self propelled art and 25% moto.

They actually have more divisions than there is combat width available for them to attack with which hides the shuffling/division allocation problems, and at this point in the war, AI germany only has one front to worry about. In constrast, AI France with much more fronts across the empire and far less divisions can leave provinces unguarded and often reduces the Italian front to just 5 divisons, even when the italians have pushed them back to Toulouse.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dsw4xwof749scqf/FRA_1939_10_30_19.zip?dl=0

 

[Misaka_Complex]

Started a French campaign yesterday , sadly it didn't go like yours Axe . Made Benito pay for Hitler's aggression .View attachment 262088

Man this AI Benito really needs to take courses learning how to defend his coasts .

 

[Axe99]

Started a French campaign yesterday , sadly it didn't go like yours Axe . Made Benito pay for Hitler's aggression .View attachment 262088

Much sympathies! I'm going to have another game tomorrow, and be a bit less historical and a bit more short-term, and see if I can't do better. From the look of German losses, they didn't seem particularly interested in you. If I get the same results as I did in the first game, I'll play a game of France in vanilla, as there are some land defines changed - I wouldn't expect them to have that kind of impact, but I'm not an expert on the land defines (these were ideas from Invader_Canuck, back when he was working on his mod - all of his changes definitely had an impact back then, but I've rolled quite a few of them back because of changed AI behaviour relative to defines in recent patches, and not knowing enough to be confident what's causing what).

 

[fabius]

Have you tried Expert AI 2.0 Axe ?

After Invader started his break from Hoi4, I took to that and have been pleased.