Observations on bad AI strategies and possible ways to fix them (focus on early game)

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manager2525

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In the hopes of Paradox going back to Imperator some day I would like to share some suboptimal AI strategies and some possible fixes on them. Please feel free to add or correct the below.
1) AI being too eager to accept very unfavourable peace terms.
Description: AI is especially bad at calculating his and the player's strength. The AI tends to accept peace deals mostly based on current war score rather the power of each side. It is quite east to occupy the war target plus some additional territories and peace out before the AI has time to modilize his full strength against the player. This is especially handy for the player if starting as a minor early on in his campaign.
Possible fix: Tweak the modifier value for warscore and belligerent strength when calculating if the AI should accept a peace deal or not.
Also full annexation should usually not be an accepted option if warscore is not close to 100%. Possible fix, add an additional modifier full annexation requested.
2) AI taking a very long time to fortify its borders early game.
Description: This point is self-explanatory and it is also tied to the aforementioned point giving the player the easy option of rushing the AI even with a minor.
Possible fix: Add some additional fortresses especially in border provinces and checkpoints of major nations. In any case this would also require a little bit more balancing so as to not bring the aforementioned majors economies to the ground due to the new fortresses (as early on the economies tend to be a lot weaker).
3) AI taking too long to make early alliances.
Description: Again a self-explanatory point. Also tied to the rushing strategy.
Possible fix: I could not think of an easy solution for this one. Maybe there could be more day one alliances (as in already there) but that would make the game a bit more railroaded and the alliances should be there if there was at least some historical evidence pointing out to cooperation between the too tags. Another option would be to expand the initial period of not being able to declare war from one month to several months or even a year (one year could be considered as too much though).

I would be interested to read about your thoughts on the topic. A helpful moder could also help in fixing some of these issues.
 
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Napoleon1971

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In the hopes of Paradox going back to Imperator some day I would like to share some suboptimal AI strategies and some possible fixes on them. Please feel free to add or correct the below.
1) AI being too eager to accept very unfavourable peace terms.
Description: AI is especially bad at calculating his and the player's strength. The AI tends to accept peace deals mostly based on current war score rather the power of each side. It is quite east to occupy the war target plus some additional territories and peace out before the AI has time to modilize his full strength against the player. This is especially handy for the player if starting as a minor early on in his campaign.
Possible fix: Tweak the modifier value for warscore and belligerent strength when calculating if the AI should accept a peace deal or not.
Also full annexation should usually not be an accepted option if warscore is not close to 100%. Possible fix, add an additional modifier full annexation requested.
2) AI taking a very long time to fortify its borders early game.
Description: This point is self-explanatory and it is also tied to the aforementioned point giving the player the easy option of rushing the AI even with a minor.
Possible fix: Add some additional fortresses especially in border provinces and checkpoints of major nations. In any case this would also require a little bit more balancing so as to not bring the aforementioned majors economies to the ground due to the new fortresses (as early on the economies tend to be a lot weaker).
3) AI taking too long to make early alliances.
Description: Again a self-explanatory point. Also tied to the rushing strategy.
Possible fix: I could not think of an easy solution for this one. Maybe there could be more day one alliances (as in already there) but that would make the game a bit more railroaded and the alliances should be there if there was at least some historical evidence pointing out to cooperation between the too tags. Another option would be to expand the initial period of not being able to declare war from one month to several months or even a year (one year could be considered as too much though).

I would be interested to read about your thoughts on the topic. A helpful moder could also help in fixing some of these issues.
Sometimes it seems the AI just is fabulously wrong on surrenders.

A few games ago I was Heraclea Pontica. I DOWed the Antigonids early just to see how it played out. I expected a short game. Antigonids came for me early but didn't quite break me. Then Thrace killed their army on my capital. Next thing I knew, without me occupying a single province of the Antigonids they offered peace giving me 3 entire regions (approximately 28 "city/territories". I have no idea what that was about but I accepted. Sadly the game got boring from there as I was strong enough to rush Pontus, Cappadocia, and Armenia in quick order and then I basically was the Antigonids....but with Persian aristocracy and no Greek minors. So, after winning a war with the Seleukids I stopped. I already had the badge for Heraclea Persica so no sense keep going there if it wasn't fun.

There is something fundamentally broken with the surrender mechanic as I've seen this a few times with AI on AI wars too that made no sense how they ended.
 
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manager2525

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Sometimes it seems the AI just is fabulously wrong on surrenders.

A few games ago I was Heraclea Pontica. I DOWed the Antigonids early just to see how it played out. I expected a short game. Antigonids came for me early but didn't quite break me. Then Thrace killed their army on my capital. Next thing I knew, without me occupying a single province of the Antigonids they offered peace giving me 3 entire regions (approximately 28 "city/territories". I have no idea what that was about but I accepted. Sadly the game got boring from there as I was strong enough to rush Pontus, Cappadocia, and Armenia in quick order and then I basically was the Antigonids....but with Persian aristocracy and no Greek minors. So, after winning a war with the Seleukids I stopped. I already had the badge for Heraclea Persica so no sense keep going there if it wasn't fun.

There is something fundamentally broken with the surrender mechanic as I've seen this a few times with AI on AI wars too that made no sense how they ended.

I have a simular experience with Dodekaschinos vs the Ptolemies. As someone mentioned previously a general strategy that works in almost all cases is to rush the AI. With this strategy working even better against Rome itself. Honestly as it stands now one needs to use some very restrictive house rules in order to get the most out of the game.

Ai can't use ships correctly. using 200 ships for 10k troops (20 cohorts)...

@olivenkranz
Could a solution like the one mentioned in point 1 of the OP be modded in?

Thanks in advance!
 
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Napoleon1971

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I have a simular experience with Dodekaschinos vs the Ptolemies. As someone mentioned previously a general strategy that works in almost all cases is to rush the AI. With this strategy working even better against Rome itself. Honestly as it stands now one needs to use some very restrictive house rules in order to get the most out of the game.
Whats funny is I didn't really "rush" the Antigonids. I was cleanly losing the war. I didn't grab objectives or anything like that. I was barely surviving. My army was hiding in Pontus because it'd fled there and Antigonids didn't have access. Like I said, Thrace liberated my capital and then Antigonids offered to surrender. Since they couldn't annex me they decided to gift me 28 territories. It was REALLY weird. My war score was like -8 when they yielded.
Why do I think this happened? My guess is its related to Antigonids being desperate in 3+ other wars. But, why they chose to surrender to me still makes no sense. Maybe they thought they could beat me later?

And yeah, weird formatting issues.....it thinks half my comment is from the post I'm replying to....not sure how to fix.
 
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Jiben

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Another thing i would add is ai being bad at concentrating force. In my current saxonia migratory campaign i beat carthage even when they on papper should have more men. The ai just sends in smaller parts at a time and essentially suicides instead of grouping up a larger force and crushing me.
 
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