Issues with AI Germany is why Germany loses the war in 1941.

[Gwydion5]

My original thread was locked because people can't follow the rules when posting screenshots. So I want to give you all an update on my observations on why Germany is failing to be challenging in 1.3.3. I encourage you all to do your own testing to confirm my results, or theories of your own so we can help PDS fix this.

All my points below are backed up by screenshots and a save game that can be found in this bug report : https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/1-3-3-2dd2-issues-bugs.1001190/

1. Production Issues : With 1.3.3 we see an increase in production of Tanks and Navy, which in 1936 creates a demand to spend CIC's on trade rather than economy. In addition the AI seems to be much more sensitive and reactive to the conditional needs of production, where it will do major MIC adjustments to production lines as the needs change (IE Tanks to Artillery in 1936). To make the matter worse is that it does not make changes to production lines based on production efficiency. Often times the AI is removing MIC's from the most productive lines. In the case of artillery it would pull MIC's from the most productive artillery line, and assign the MIC to the least efficient artillery line.
   
   
2. Research Issues : With 1.3.3 AI Germany is finding itself a bit conflicted on which Industry Technology Line to go down. In 4 games (2 of which were observe mode) I've observed the AI starting down an Industry Tech line, up to 2 or 3 levels deep only to change to the other tech. Sometimes it switches from Dispersed Industry to Concentrated, other times it switches from Concentrated to Industry.
   
   
3. Army / Command Issues : The AI is schizophrenic when it comes to theater, army, commander and division changes. Unfortunately you are probably going to have to read my bug report where I go over it more in depth. But below is a solid example of the chaotic nature of the AI.

On December 12th Russia declared war on Finland, and Finland joined the Axis. Here is what the front looks like. European theater has 150 divisions, Africa has 38.

On December 16th Finland accepts Germany's request to join the war. The Garrison Army for Europe has been reduced from 34 to 2, and the eastern front army reduced from 116 to 107. Most of these divisions have been assigned to the African theater, as you can see numerous troops in Romania that are on the Eastern Front with African Army colors in the screenshot below.

On December 17th, in response to the changes for the Garrison Army the AI is now pulling divisions off the Eastern Front Army to fill the void it created. In addition with the various reassignments of divisions of the Eastern Front army, existing eastern front units are now moving to fill in the gaps in the line.

On December 26th, the AI decides to create a 2nd African theater and assign 104 divisions to it, reducing the European theater from 110 down to 60, and the first African theater from 80 down to 26. In addition we can see units in Eastern Europe having standard move orders through Russia. They are trying to go to Asia.

Thoughts? I would like to see more data added to this for a better picture. I believe there are many levels to the issues we are seeing with game balance that have Germany currently gimped/nerfed. But based on my observations it is a lot worse than 1.3.2. If you take the time to watch the production screen, the way it handles Infantry Equipment is disheartening in that it is only meeting the immediate needs, and not the long term needs to fight effectively.

@podcat @SteelVolt

 

[Uniform764]

On December 26th, the AI decides to create a 2nd African theater and assign 104 divisions to it

Which is amusingly the exact number of infantry divisions the Germans committed to Barbarossa.

 

[MadDjinn]

yeah, I've watched a solid German run (France and lowlands wiped, even got Spain in faction) disappear the moment the Soviets decided to attack in 1.3.3. The Germans didn't need to fight locally and hadn't moved too many units to Africa, but for some reason folded instantly.

 

[Meglok]

4 additional items I had noted in the original thread on this subject.
Game was 1.3.3, no man's land.

1) AI Axis minors not participating. In my game none of them had left their home countries to fight in Russia. And yes, they had joined the war.

2) Germany had no expeditionary divisions from any allies. It was like expeditionary forces were turned off. Playing as Japan I had to manually request Chinese puppet forces above what I trained.

3) Germany had no fighter airforce, nor was it producing any planes. There were only 2 wings of 150 fighters each and they were in the Channel. Germany did have a few small wings of CAS and TAC flying, but Russia had complete air superiority.

4) France was in complete revolt, there was little to no suppression and most of the French infrastructure was in ruins. Wasn't this supposed to be fixed in 1.3.3?

 

[Dalwin]

4 additional items I had noted in the original thread on this subject.
Game was 1.3.3, no man's land.

1) AI Axis minors not participating. In my game none of them had left their home countries to fight in Russia. And yes, they had joined the war.

2) Germany had no expeditionary divisions from any allies. It was like expeditionary forces were turned off. Playing as Japan I had to manually request Chinese puppet forces above what I trained.

3) Germany had no fighter airforce, nor was it producing any planes. There were only 2 wings of 150 fighters each and they were in the Channel. Germany did have a few small wings of CAS and TAC flying, but Russia had complete air superiority.

4) France was in complete revolt, there was little to no suppression and most of the French infrastructure was in ruins. Wasn't this supposed to be fixed in 1.3.3?

Regarding suppression what was fixed is that the AI no longer completely ignores it. That is different from saying that it has any sort of competence at controlling it.

I think the heart of the problem (other than the glaring expeditionary issue) is the change to having less garrison on "neutral" borders. This has strengthened the Soviets substantially since they have a lot of such borders in central Asia. Further, the AI was always bad about recognizing a coastline as a hostile border. This seems to have gotten worse, at least for Germany. In my Japan game, Germany was dead before the end of '42 but it was the Allies that killed them and reached Berlin. They landed successfully all along the Atlantic and North Sea coasts and Germany did not have the forces to drive these landings back into the sea. They had liberated Benelux, northern France and the Ruhr before the Soviets had pushed significantly past their starting line.

 

[Meglok]

Regarding suppression what was fixed is that the AI no longer completely ignores it. That is different from saying that it has any sort of competence at controlling it.

I think the heart of the problem (other than the glaring expeditionary issue) is the change to having less garrison on "neutral" borders. This has strengthened the Soviets substantially since they have a lot of such borders in central Asia. Further, the AI was always bad about recognizing a coastline as a hostile border. This seems to have gotten worse, at least for Germany. In my Japan game, Germany was dead before the end of '42 but it was the Allies that killed them and reached Berlin. They landed successfully all along the Atlantic and North Sea coasts and Germany did not have the forces to drive these landings back into the sea. They had liberated Benelux, northern France and the Ruhr before the Soviets had pushed significantly past their starting line.

Yes, that was another "new" issue I noticed, the constant micro invasions are back. UK and France Bertin invading Wilhelmshaven in 1939 and the UK never stop probing in occupied France and Italy. While that might be interesting for a player run Italy and Germany, the AI doesn't appear able to deal with it. I am very confused as to how the UK has the manpower, even if most divisions can retreat back to sea. The divisions appear to be mostly UK, not Commonwealth.

 

[jamesd]

My first game with 1.3.3 vanilla was as Haiti to watch what happened in Europe. Germany declared war on USSR in January 1941, lost Berlin in August 1941 and capitulated in December 1941. For some reason Bulgaria and Hungary joined the war after Berlin was lost and it was obvious the Axis were toast. There is still so much that needs to be done to make this a good game.

 

[Rider_of_Doom]

If you draw a battle plan sometimes the theater AI isn't following this plan (as example: place the units properly along the front) and "freezes" in their position, doing nothing, until you delete the plan, move the army and draw a new one. Then the army proceeds as it should and create a line along the front.

I saw this with my own theaters (ruined my campaign with Turkey) and with AI theaters (Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania). In one game Germany got stomped by the Soviets, because their theater doesn't placed troops in the north on the eastern front. The troops were freezed in the south, doing nothing.

 

[Vortavorius]

I'm glad to see i'm not the only one to have this issue. Indeed the german AI is broken. 3 games i've played since 1.3.3 patch and 3 time germany capitulated to the soviets in about 1942.

As far as i noticed, german troops tends also to push toward Stalingrad and for some reason they totally don't move on the other side and exposing themself on the other side allowing the soviets completly roll over the Baltic shore and destroy their army. 2 out of 3 times Finland joined the axis and it leads to war in 1940 already.
Playing as the Allies especially USA make no sense now, until i can make any significant move the Axis are already dead.

 

[sturnado]

It seems like this game will never improve. Every patch is one step forward, two steps back.

 

[stjern]

It seems like this game will never improve. Every patch is one step forward, two steps back.

Agree. At least in 1.2 patch and before it was possible to change ai defines in a mod to improve this. But the last patches have just gradually made every define unresponsive, this is clearly heading in the wrong direction! I'm pretty sure many of the defines are just not used anymore or don't work at all as intended. For example, you can set weights to a theatre/front switch which should in theory keep the ai from constantly shuffling units. But no, that define no longer changes anything!

It's just so sad that the land ai could be tuned to work sort of good in previous patches but instead of using those defines paradox decides to reinvent the wheel and remove modability in the process. Same thing that's happening to ai production. RIP

 

[Secret Master]

3) Germany had no fighter airforce, nor was it producing any planes. There were only 2 wings of 150 fighters each and they were in the Channel. Germany did have a few small wings of CAS and TAC flying, but Russia had complete air superiority.

That's a bit odd. It's not like you need to be a specific country to know how to build aircraft.

EDIT: And what I mean is that the AI is doing it fine elsewhere.

Is Germany taking the lack of oil too seriously and just not producing planes at all? (I've done it before myself.)

 

[Meglok]

That's a bit odd. It's not like you need to be a specific country to know how to build aircraft.

EDIT: And what I mean is that the AI is doing it fine elsewhere.

Is Germany taking the lack of oil too seriously and just not producing planes at all? (I've done it before myself.)

Not really sure, but I think it is a combination of production priority and resistance. Germany is short 16 oil, but that doesn't seem to stop production. She has partial lines set up for her aircraft, but no where near what you would think she should be making and they are all at the bottom of the land production queue. And due to lack of suppression the factories assigned were all smoking ruins in France.

I did try a few things to trigger a response by the ai.

Regarding expeditionary forces, I tagged to ROM, HUN, and SLO and manually offered Germany expeditionary forces, then tagged back to JAP and restarted. Germany promptly accepted, intergrated the foreign division into her Eastern Front army, and ordered them to march east. So it is not Germany refusing exp forces, it is the minors are no longer offering them to Germany. Needless to say, this needs to addressed in a hot fix asap @SteelVolt Germany fighting without her allies in Russia is a likely reason everyone is reporting Germany falling in 1941-42.

Regarding the fighter production, not good news. I manually split Germany's two fighter wings until I had 8 wings of 100 size with 37-38 planes each. I then cancelled orders, transferred them east, and gave them orders in East front regions. Wanted to see 1) if they would stick in the East and 2) if the demand would trigger a change in production. No joy. Not only did the ai cancel the orders and put them right back in the Channel, it combined the wings back down to 3 wings of 150 so that demand dropped to 142. And production priority remained at the bottom. So this is both a hard code air issue and a production priority issue. And this production issue is a change since 1.3.2, likely more of an unintended consequence of favoring land production too much perhaps.

 

[Jamey]

Regarding the fighter production, not good news. I manually split Germany's two fighter wings until I had 8 wings of 100 size with 37-38 planes each. I then cancelled orders, transferred them east, and gave them orders in East front regions. Wanted to see 1) if they would stick in the East and 2) if the demand would trigger a change in production. No joy. Not only did the ai cancel the orders and put them right back in the Channel, it combined the wings back down to 3 wings of 150 so that demand dropped to 142. And production priority remained at the bottom. So this is both a hard code air issue and a production priority issue. And this production issue is a change since 1.3.2, likely more of an unintended consequence of favoring land production too much perhaps.

I saw similar air production problems in 1.3.2, so I don't think that this aspect of it is new.

 

[Dalwin]

@Meglok the problem with expeditions must only be when both parties are run by AI. I just played part of a game as Germany and Hungary offered me 22 divisions about the time that Poland was falling. I used them to garrison it.

 

[Riekopo]

I think you mean the AI is bipolar not schizophrenic.

 

[Meglok]

@Meglok the problem with expeditions must only be when both parties are run by AI. I just played part of a game as Germany and Hungary offered me 22 divisions about the time that Poland was falling. I used them to garrison it.

Hmm, could very well be. Still a definite issue when the Axis minors also will not leave their borders to attack the Russians either. Basically means the game is broken unless you are playing Italy or Germany right now, broken being the ai European Axis dies in 1941.

 

[Gwydion5]

Loaded up new regular difficulty historical 1936 game from scratch, boosted Germany to the max on game setup and observed with human_ai. Here are the state of things at the end of 1941.

After a year of fighting against the Soviets, Germany is slowly creeping in to Russia. I'm not sure if Germany will succeed, its been a long slow fight to get that territory, and given the current conditions in terms of supply/equipment and economy, I don't think it's looking good.

One thing worth considering is if Human Germany players are finding Russia too strong in 1.3.3, or significantly boosted with 1.3.3 that it's preventing regular difficulty AI Germany from doing well against them? Just a thought.

 

[Gwydion5]

1) AI Axis minors not participating. In my game none of them had left their home countries to fight in Russia. And yes, they had joined the war.

I'm seeing the same thing sometimes, but usually just 1 nation like Slovakia in the screenshots above.

2) Germany had no expeditionary divisions from any allies. It was like expeditionary forces were turned off. Playing as Japan I had to manually request Chinese puppet forces above what I trained.

In previous versions that has never been an issue for me. In that if I was playing Germany I never required them to roll Russia and I don't use cheese divisions or anything. If I was playing against Germany as Russia or France, I never really noticed them as being consequential to my defensive plans. But that is an Human vs AI thing. In the games I've observed/human_ai for 1.3.3. I do see AI accepting expeditionary forces though.

3) Germany had no fighter airforce, nor was it producing any planes. There were only 2 wings of 150 fighters each and they were in the Channel. Germany did have a few small wings of CAS and TAC flying, but Russia had complete air superiority.

Yeah, one of the big changes I've noticed is the AI's prioritization of product lines. It picks one thing and goes way to hard in producing it, only to completely change to something else 3-6 months later. So a lot of things have MIC's removed from them, and aircraft really don't get much priority. I highly recommend people read the 2 production posts near the bottom of my bug report thread as they cover it in much more detail. If you are interested in understanding at least on aspect of how production AI is hurting Germany.

I manually split Germany's two fighter wings until I had 8 wings of 100 size with 37-38 planes each. I then cancelled orders, transferred them east, and gave them orders in East front regions. Wanted to see 1) if they would stick in the East and 2) if the demand would trigger a change in production. No joy. Not only did the ai cancel the orders and put them right back in the Channel, it combined the wings back down to 3 wings of 150 so that demand dropped to 142.

In 1.3.2 my last unposted test dealt with assessing AI Air Power utilization, and what I found was that if I gave the AI say 12k strategic bombers, 10 to 11 thousand would probably sit on an airfield on standby while 150-450 would be used to bomb a single airzone. So for example, as France, only 450 bombers were being allocated to bombing East Germany, 150 in west or northwest and then 300 in the other while 40 or so wings of 150 bombers on various airfields all over France sat on stand by. So it wasn't really that good to begin with. So I think you are right that it's a production issue in being able to produce enough for the AI to fully utilize (in a normal game anywa) like it was in 1.3.2

I think you mean the AI is bipolar not schizophrenic.

I'm using schizophrenic loosely to capture the odd/conflicted behavior of the AI.

 

[Meglok]

Like @gwydion, i decided to start a new game (without No Man's Land), playing as a passive Haiti just to watch how the ai performs.
First data point is 9.22.1937, Japan declares war on China. Let's see where Japan stands.

Deployments - JAP has 73 divisions, of which 31 are deployed in China and about 15 appear to be plotted to invade around Shanghai.
The "china" divisions are (35)8-9inf/2art (24-26 width), (12)mot (24 width), along with (4)2Larm/5inf divs and (1)lone 6Mar division. Beyond the obvious width issues, those familiar with Japan's industrial capacity can guess the next issue.

Military Industry - Jap has 28 MIC. She is resource short 13 Oil and a whopping 62 Steel. 15 Factories are working on InEq and she is running positive there. She is running one factory each in 7 different A/C types, but with no oil they are making 1 plane a week. She has 3 factories working on support with a 515 reinforcement deficit, but no steel so no production. She has 1 factory working on trucks with a 5377 reinf. deficit, but again no steel so no production. She has 1 factory on arty with a 2155 reinf. deficit, but no steel so again no production. And her last factory is on Larm, no again no steel or oil so no production. The eyeball test says JAP division's are probably averaging about 75% strength.

Naval Industry - Japan has 23 NIC. With no oil or steel EVERY production line is halted at zero. Again, Japan is producing no ships at this point in time. The implications down the road are obvious.

"China" has about 115 divisions, most are either 5 or 7 inf types. All are at full strength,

Observation -
1) the template creation and choices don't seem to have any correlation to actual need or the industrial capacity to field the divisions. Japan has not produced a single Marine division, nor has she expanded the template from a 6 battalion build. Japan does not have the industrial capacity to field 2 battalions of arty in infantry divisions, nor does she have the industrial capacity to equip and field 12 battalion motorized divisions.
2) the new resource shortage penalties are devastating to ai Japan, and the ai appears unable to deal with them.
3) Japan does not have a single trading partner to export to so is receiving no outside CIV factories. This is likely due to the new distance to overseas trade penalties.
4) production lines are not shifting in priority due to need. Japan has excess InEq and is in dire need of trucks, support, and arty. Yet 15 MIC are still devoted to InEq and no other shortages are being filled.

Not sure how this will play out, but this looks like a recipe for failure, either in China or down the road against the Allies.

thumbnail screenshots and zipped save attached.