My Perspective on the Cornflakes AI

[Jamey]

I ran a couple of human_ai games to see what the AI did as Germany to see if I wanted to spend time playing. The longer game ran until over a year and a half into the invasion of Russia and my screenshots come from it.

Germany had two ticks of custom difficulty, and no other nation did. This is from the July 1 autosave, to be sure it was an arbitrary stop point, not one I selected because it was necessarily good or bad.

The Good

Equipment:

Look at the German AI with a fully stocked larder!

The tank shortage is purely in units it is building, and the AI has been canceling out the least trained as needed to get armor to units in the field. This is a massive improvement in the AI, as the units are staying near full strength.

The AI has also been lend-leasing equipment to the rest of the Axis.

The net result of this is successful warfare by the Axis (these screenshots intentionally left as thumbnails to condense this post):




Italy certainly has been having fun in Africa. Germany has been pushing deep into Russia (holding Leningrad and Moscow as well as approaching Stalingrad) and recently finally made its landings in Norway. Progress there is being made as well.

This is a huge improvement, and I'm happy to see it.



The Bad

Just so it is clear, the bad is impacting the game far less than in previous releases. I'm including this as constructive criticism because these are things I'd like to see the AI improve on, and they seem like at least some of them may be relatively small fixes.

Spoiler

So, transports in the English Channel is still a problem:

Since Italy isn't getting resources through the Channel, I'm presuming that all of its transports lost are from units being transported. There were over 200 sunk Italian transports in the Channel in just 3 large sinkings. Presuming all of those transports were carrying the mainline 7/2 Italian infantry (weight 4.8), an estimate of 40 divisions on the bottom of the channel seems reasonable.

Looking at this, one thing that may factor into the continual sunk convoys is that the Axis has no idea that the channel is dangerous:

The Axis have no intel on the channel due to a minimal air presence, no RADAR, and no ships.

The English perspective shows it to be a dangerous place for transports, filled with naval bombers and ships.

One thing that would help Germany is if it used its research bonus for RADAR and built some in key locations, such as adjacent to the channel.

Another problem is a resource shortage (well, an oil shortage):

I'd suggest that Germany needs to pay more attention to the Synthetics research tree, as one day of research would help the shortage:

I don't want to overdo my critique here, as the German AI is only short of oil in its ship building. Overall, it is doing a solid job of acquiring resources.

It was doing worse when it was transporting Tungsten by ship (which racked up a staggering number of convoys sunk in the channel) instead of by land - I think that was changed by Spain joining the Axis.


The Army Shuffle:

This is Germany's non-garrison theater. If you don't want to watch a lot of twitching UI elements, I'd recommend that you don't watch how the AI manages this part of the game, as it is constantly shuffling around units, creating and disbanding small armies, and reassigning generals.

Three things stand out here:

1. There are 5 commanders in motion here, including all 3 of Germany's Field Marshals.
2. There are no Field Marshals assigned to the Russian front (which is the 5 Generals assigned to one Army Group in the bottom left and the two Generals assigned to the other Army Group in the upper left)
3. Germany only has 3 Field Marshals for nearly 350 Divisions (120 is the max troops for a non-Garrison FM). Roughly two more would help a lot with keeping FMs on all of its active fronts as well as one on its Garrison troops. Given that Germany has a surplus of Generals (5 skill 3 or 4 currently unassigned) and is capped on Command Power, I don't see a good reason for it not to be promoting someone.

Again, I don't want to over-criticize here, as the AI seems to be concentrating its forces under its better Generals in a couple of Army Groups. It just needs to get better at handling its Field Marshals.

The shuffle isn't fun to watch, but it probably is key to the AI adapting to changing circumstances. I'm glad that I don't have to watch that when actually playing the game.

In Conclusion

@podcat:
Thank you and your team for moving the AI forward as much as it has. The AI looks greatly improved in its ability to play the production side of the game. I hope that the AI keeps moving forward on other fronts.

I ran these tests in the background and wrote this up quickly. I hope to have time to actually play HOI4 some time next week, but we'll see if my schedule stays free.

 

[a_sophist]

As a preface, this is obviously a small sample size in 1.5, but the following confirms my experience in 1.4.

On the issue of the Axis doing better in terms of conquering, I'm convinced that this is almost entirely because the UK AI is garbage.

1. Play as India, spamming 10INF+eng divisions and only building inf+support equipment
2. Garrison El Alamein and the ports in Egpyt, the Middle East, Cyprus, and Malta before Italy joins the war (if Spain joins Gibraltar is probably screwed so maybe not worth defending).
3. Set up defensive lines in the mountains of Burma and the Singapore/Siam border, and cover all the ports in Malaya and Dutch East Indies before Japan joins
4. Send all your surplus equipment to the Soviets, and buy all your steel from them.

The fascists will utterly fail if you do this, every time, though if you don't directly intervene it will take several years. Is this pretty "unhistorical" play for "historical" mode? Sure, but if the AI garrison commands made any kind of sense most of my efforts would be unnecessary.

 

[BulgarianFocusTree]

I can confirm from my own experiences that Germany and Italy actually recall the importance of the Suez, and do divert armor down there in small amounts once France is captured. I've actually altered my British Africa strategy to involve making Nigeria a small fortress in addition to the Suez.

I agree Gibraltar is a waste, because the 'only one province' factor means that your defenders will die to Germany's dozens of divisions just maintaining the attack and not allowing them time to breathe. If you can't corrupt Spain into becoming a Democracy (or keep it from becoming Fascist through the civil war), just give up on Gibraltar and save yourself the heartache.

 

[Jamey]

On the issue of the Axis doing better in terms of conquering, I'm convinced that this is almost entirely because the UK AI is garbage.

I think that the UK is perhaps the hardest country to write AI for in the game (Japan would be the other contender, and I think it is harder to write a good defensive strategic AI than an offensive one). It has territory literally all over the world and needs to be strong in both navy and air force as well as land units to defend itself effectively.

 

[Admiral Piett]

The Chinese United Front AI is putting up significantly more fight than it did pre-WtT. I'm getting dangerously close to getting bogged down as Japan, which has literally never happened to me in a HoI game. Even if I do manage to catch a break and finish China off quickly (unlikely), this is the first time I have ever felt even slightly nervous during my invasion.

 

[a_sophist]

I think that the UK is perhaps the hardest country to write AI for in the game (Japan would be the other contender, and I think it is harder to write a good defensive strategic AI than an offensive one). It has territory literally all over the world and needs to be strong in both navy and air force as well as land units to defend itself effectively.

I know nothing of coding and have only tinkered with defines files, and obviously the UK has a lot on its plate and is consequently difficult to write for. That being said, I struggle to understand why the number one priority for all AI isn't making sure opposition can't walk into it's most important territories uncontested, when meanwhile half its army is meandering in the water or taking up overburdened supply zones on fronts.

 

[SeekTruthFromFx]

This is helpful constructive criticism and I really hope the devs find this encouraging.

 

[Marcus]

Many thanks, Jamey! We're getting there!

 

[Jamey]

This is helpful constructive criticism and I really hope the devs find this encouraging.

Me, too. I'm encourage by how far the game has come, so I hope the Devs are as well.