Recent Changes have made the game less fun, lets discuss

[BlazeKnight_]

Well the AI always cheats. They know where you are in the fog of war for example if you need proof. They have to cheat, it's the way it is, but this is about the degree. I don't know any other way to explain their ability to develop all of their province 20 or more higher than base and keep up on tech, afford large armies and many redundant forts. Maybe all they are doing is investing their mana, but it's too universal across different countries for me to believe the weren't given extra mana or ducats. I'd love to be proven wrong.

The AI does not "cheat" by genning resources. If you seriously cannot keep up with AI developing all provinces to 20+ and staying on tech, building buildings, then I don't know what to say other than "skill issue," as blunt as that is.

The AI is notoriously bad at the game vs any decent human player. AI "cheats" Fog of War? The AI can "remember" where troops are by seeing slightly into FoW after a unit enters it. That's "cheating" as much as it is cheating when the AI sends a successful diplomatic action, or chooses to send an army to a fort. There is no learning AI in this game, its just a set of weighted numbers and a dice roll. And again if you seriously have a problem with AI temporarily seeing into Fog of War to simulate a player having basic object permanence, then that's simply a "skill issue."

Last time I checked, AI isn't willing to (or even capable of building an economy that can) go massively over Force Limit and hard commit to wars, the same way a player can. It can't even differentiate between death wars and when it should lightly help an ally. PDX had to dumb down the entire combat system to aid the AI because it cannot understand reinforcing or building proper army compositions and positioning its armies correctly.

 

[MachopPower69]

Interestingly enough, during, i think it was the 2016 fangathering in their offices in Stockholm, Johan said that it's basically what they did for EUIV... or worst.... they took CKII, removed the CK aspects, slapped EUIII on it, and then hammered out bugs for a couple of months.

Starting with before Imperator, they created their Jomini version of the Clausewitz engine, that they are keeping clean, and use that as basis for their new strategy games since.

I miss Imperator Rome. I mean, I miss it getting updated like the other games but now it feels like it was abandoned for the other games. Was it because there were too many games in the catalogue for updating it or wasn't it worth it?

 

[Zaddy]

I do not endorse most of OP's points, but I specifically agree that the game's performance is abysmal for what it is, and that it and many changes made over the past 4-5 years make it a real chore to play usually. I can no longer dump thousands of hours into this game like I did in 2015-2017. I more and more frequently find myself sighing in frustration or just outright quitting. I know many feel the game is better than ever but I have not much nice to say about EU4 the past few years.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You lost me at "AI cheats."

It does. Not in the way described, but it's objectively true that the AI does cheat.

I'm a firm backer of the idea that now that AI builds forts (like they should)

It would be a help, length of battles and sieges are both unrealistic and cancerous to gameplay right now.

I'm also still not convinced the AI "should" build forts to the extent that it does, because it is sacrificing a non-trivial amount of its ability to make units in doing so. Slower wars with less units per opponent seems like the worst of both worlds to me. AI is less able to snowball, less able to put up a fight...but simply takes longer. I'm not convinced this is healthy for the game. But maybe if siege times were reasonable, this would be less of an issue (though it would also imply that fort spam is even weaker).

The AI does not "cheat" by genning resources.

This is true, unless you increase difficulty (in which case you should expect it/would be strange to complain). Excepting "lucky nations", I guess those get freebies.

AI "cheats" Fog of War? The AI can "remember" where troops are by seeing slightly into FoW after a unit enters it.

No, it truly cheats wrt fog of war. I've seen it react in an instant to direction changes by armies chasing it in the fog when running around in player territory. I've used the movement of troops in my territory to intentionally scare it into lifting siege (before it was modified to be a bit more sticky with sieges), repeatedly, to move-cycle it out of ever sieging the fort using troops it couldn't see. This is not mere "remember where the unit was/is", it knows precise location and move orders given with only a chance to forget it per unit time.

The AI is stupid, so this is not enough to defeat experienced players. But there is no question about the difference in FoW rules for player vs AI.

There are a few others that creep into gameplay time to time, such as NA/SA colonial nations sustaining a blockade on Crete or Indonesia. But FoW is the most obvious one because it's so blatant/consistent that player can use its cheat vision against it fairly reliably.

 

[gigau]

I miss Imperator Rome. I mean, I miss it getting updated like the other games but now it feels like it was abandoned for the other games. Was it because there were too many games in the catalogue for updating it or wasn't it worth it?

Not really the right forum for that... not that i have any information... i suspect they were a little overextended, decided to re-consolidate their teams. Imperator being the game with the smallest community, it was set aside.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

The past few years for EU4 have been extremely rocky balance wise. It feels like many balance changes have been big swings back and forth, breaking the game. Lets discuss the current issues:

1. Performance is awful (again). This is in part due to the AI development problem I'll go into, but the code needs to be optimized. There's now lag mid game for pop-ups, along with the usual lag. I have way over what is required to run this with a 2080ti, Core i7 @ 3.7 ghz, and 48 gb of DDR4 3000 mhz ram. Not the best ever, but I can imagine others struggling to run this.

I also get pauses but always have chrome open and bad WiFi, think it might be the new building units all the time that does it

2. To make the AI "manage their money" better, it was decided to give them God mode. They cheat. Hard. The have money to build multiple forts always fully upgraded (next to each other ),

Ai has multiple ways of getting money, loans, selling Crown land, gifts from majors, cash for favours. Forts make occupation take longer meaning more chance of allies helping out, as well as funelling

tier 3 trade centers,

If you have 25 dev you can afford 1k loans, or they start with tier 3 in case of genoa and venice

full army and navys (With more heavys than a player richer than the AI could afford), and with go above the force limit with mercs.

So check how many loans they have. Otto ai would always go over force limit with galleys to protect the straits. Good strat as player as your navy fl will increase year on year so good to be ahead

They also can develop their provinces to a crazy degree (many cities bigger than the "envy of the world" Constantinople),

Coal probs issue, also diet missions to dev

while having no issues keeping up on tech.

You're meant to have left over mana, that's how you fill idea groups, neighbour bonus and passive innovation really help reduce tech cost

Please tone down the cheats for the AI.

3. The game's pacing is a slog. TONs of forts. AI always up to date in tech, even in remote areas.

Better than fort level 2 in 1600

AI buys lots of merc armies with loans (i think, they never have money troubles for long).

It saves manpower and can give free generals

Do institutions even matter anymore for the AI? No.

Cardinal spread institutions makes it faster yeh

Also, all of the highly developed provinces makes coring take a ton of admin points and take for ever to complete;

Give to vassals or concentrate dev

don't even mention the aggressive expansion.

Improve relations from day 1 of war

Please tone down the cheats or go back to how it was. Oh, and the AI ALWAYS bombards your forts and it just serves to lengthen the war because the problem with too many forts (forts come back to full force with walls repaired way too fast imho).

Bombard or theyre just getting breaches more often due to more cannons per stack than you?

4. Certain game aspects are broken. For example, even though every member of a war is not defeated, you still start to get huge war exhaustion penalties because sometimes the game thinks the war is over, despite a strong member remaining with high enthusiasm.

Can be an issue but it means you need to be faster, presumably due to the forts you complain so much about

The war AI is still bad. Why is the AI leaving trails of men to get ambushed? Why is the AI moving and then canceling over and over?

Every day danger checks which is bad

Why is the AI afraid to take on rebels they can easily beat? Why does the AI sometime sit there and allow you to kill them for no good reason? The list goes on, but taken as a whole, it hurts the fun factor.

Yeah I do want to know why ai does this

5. Colonization is broken. Native tribes are too big, too powerful, and too developed. There are too many of them in Australia and North America.

Agreed

Please go back to the old way.

They just need to go back to 1.32 where tribes wouldn't settle until 1550 or so

Please make the wasteland in Africa colonizable.

Wait what, circum Mediterranean highway gets worse then

Please make European powers go for the Far East/India. Oh wait they can't because the Far East is more powerful than them now .

Yeh institutions still need rework for them to not easen off late game

Looks the game doesn't even play the time period as advertised anymore. It's some kind of fantasy game where everyone lives in Constantinople.

I thought you said theres multiple provinces more devved than Constantinople now

It's not any harder, it's just more annoying and even less realistic to play. Thanks for trying Paradox Tinto, but it's time to go back to the drawing board. Anyone else have feedback to add?

The new siege meta is realistic for 80 years war on

 

[BlazeKnight_]

It does. Not in the way described, but it's objectively true that the AI does cheat.

It would be a help, length of battles and sieges are both unrealistic and cancerous to gameplay right now.

I'm also still not convinced the AI "should" build forts to the extent that it does, because it is sacrificing a non-trivial amount of its ability to make units in doing so. Slower wars with less units per opponent seems like the worst of both worlds to me. AI is less able to snowball, less able to put up a fight...but simply takes longer. I'm not convinced this is healthy for the game. But maybe if siege times were reasonable, this would be less of an issue (though it would also imply that fort spam is even weaker).

This is true, unless you increase difficulty (in which case you should expect it/would be strange to complain). Excepting "lucky nations", I guess those get freebies.

No, it truly cheats wrt fog of war. I've seen it react in an instant to direction changes by armies chasing it in the fog when running around in player territory. I've used the movement of troops in my territory to intentionally scare it into lifting siege (before it was modified to be a bit more sticky with sieges), repeatedly, to move-cycle it out of ever sieging the fort using troops it couldn't see. This is not mere "remember where the unit was/is", it knows precise location and move orders given with only a chance to forget it per unit time.

The AI is stupid, so this is not enough to defeat experienced players. But there is no question about the difference in FoW rules for player vs AI.

There are a few others that creep into gameplay time to time, such as NA/SA colonial nations sustaining a blockade on Crete or Indonesia. But FoW is the most obvious one because it's so blatant/consistent that player can use its cheat vision against it fairly reliably.

Yes, the AI can see into Fog of War to simulate basic awareness. Is that cheating? That's just how the AI was programmed into the game. Is having an extra diplomat for accepting certain actions instantly cheating? Certainly not in the way the OP puts it, where they believe the AI gets some massive advantage and gens gold and mana to develop. This is just how the old engine was programmed to run AI.

 

[vitek69]

Funny, I read the title of the thread and I thought “I somewhat agree!”, then I read your post and I disagreed with almost everything. Except the point about NA natives - when I don’t colonize and I see a native federation as a great power in the 1600s I cringe hard.

As others have pointed out, the AI doesn’t cheat wrt to cash or mana. Remember that most AI nations don’t expand at the same speed like the player. Try to play a game where you intentionally don’t expand and just pour all your excess mana into dev - you’ll see that you will have your own ‘Constantinople’ in no time.
One thing I would like to get changed, mostly for RP, is that I feel the AI for an unknown reason only devs 1 province (usually capital) instead of spreading dev across the country. I’m just in a Bohemia game where I took over Hungary, every province is 8-12 dev except Kiralyfold is 38…because AI

 

[vitek69]

On topic though - I feel like the last change to the combat AI (better understanding of what’s a winnable engagement, and an obvious lack of FoW), made wars an annoying whack-a-mole game. I feel like the AI is sometimes hell-bent on evading engagement, preferring instead to run to a far corner of the world to siege an insignificant fort. If I move my army in response, it will then lift off without fighting to go on a round trip of the continent just to find another fort to siege.
It feels like an unfinished change - the AI now knows to avoid losing (good!), but doesn’t know yet how to win (bad!). By trying to avoid a tactical loss (battle), it actually falls into a strategic loss (the war).
It kinda reminds me of some Total War games, if some of you play those. AI force marching away from you to attack your minor settlement while you take it’s capital in the meanwhile.
Maybe it’s just too complicated to program with current tech ‍

 

[Sharples88]

1. Performance is awful (again). This is in part due to the AI development problem I'll go into, but the code needs to be optimized. There's now lag mid game for pop-ups, along with the usual lag. I have way over what is required to run this with a 2080ti, Core i7 @ 3.7 ghz, and 48 gb of DDR4 3000 mhz ram. Not the best ever, but I can imagine others struggling to run this.

The game is terribly unoptimized and has been after 1.29. Emperor was not a good debut but they fixed some of it in 1.30.6, then it got destroyed by Leviathan; And now the pieces are starting to get picked slowly. It's still not good though. I don't think the spaghetti code that can't even handle the game quitting to main menu is helpful either.

2. To make the AI "manage their money" better, it was decided to give them God mode. They cheat. Hard. The have money to build multiple forts always fully upgraded (next to each other ), tier 3 trade centers, full army and navys (With more heavys than a player richer than the AI could afford), and with go above the force limit with mercs. They also can develop their provinces to a crazy degree (many cities bigger than the "envy of the world" Constantinople), while having no issues keeping up on tech. Please tone down the cheats for the AI.

The AI doesn't really cheat here. It does it worse in other departments such as fog of war or zero naval attrition when the player has to micromanage navy movement to death. But the economy management is far better.

3. The game's pacing is a slog. TONs of forts. AI always up to date in tech, even in remote areas. AI buys lots of merc armies with loans (i think, they never have money troubles for long). Do institutions even matter anymore for the AI? No. Also, all of the highly developed provinces makes coring take a ton of admin points and take for ever to complete; don't even mention the aggressive expansion. Please tone down the cheats or go back to how it was. Oh, and the AI ALWAYS bombards your forts and it just serves to lengthen the war because the problem with too many forts (forts come back to full force with walls repaired way too fast imho).

There's nothing wrong with fort building as long as the fort locations are in strategic areas; I.E Chokepoints, mountains, capitals, rival borders. Nobody likes level eight forts, so I agree that something has to happen later down the line. Siege ability doesn't level up with fort defense and level very well.

4. Certain game aspects are broken. For example, even though every member of a war is not defeated, you still start to get huge war exhaustion penalties because sometimes the game thinks the war is over, despite a strong member remaining with high enthusiasm. The war AI is still bad. Why is the AI leaving trails of men to get ambushed? Why is the AI moving and then canceling over and over? Why is the AI afraid to take on rebels they can easily beat? Why does the AI sometime sit there and allow you to kill them for no good reason? The list goes on, but taken as a whole, it hurts the fun factor.

The thing that generally matters is that either some nation unconditionally surrendered or the war has been going on for five years or longer. This is to prevent silly scenarios where Great Britian will ally a minor in Germany but doesn't bother in participation.

The AI does make some very stupid decisions however, or just gets stuck dancing between two provinces. Or abandoning sieges when they nearly surrender.. The list here can be virtually endless; It also includes those forts you mentioned. The AI will literally delete every single one if it faces some pretty bad economics.

5. Colonization is broken. Native tribes are too big, too powerful, and too developed. There are too many of them in Australia and North America. Please go back to the old way. Please make the wasteland in Africa colonizable. Please make European powers go for the Far East/India. Oh wait they can't because the Far East is more powerful than them now .

I don't even bother colonizing North America anymore. With all it's shenanigans that make it extremely tedious. They're not hard to defeat, really. The numbers look huge but they're so backward in tech with their heads cut off sieging random provinces. No, what I have a problem with is the sheer amount of bugs, federations forming another federation that cause stupid HRE style bordergore. Them STEALING your land when they form a federation. When I played as a native, all the countries in my federation got deleted and I was left with one province.

Then I have to deal with naval attrition trying to transport my troops over multiple times as efficiently as possible. 60+ day diplomatic times for 50,000 different tribes I want to annex; Oh wait, they formed a federation and now there's land 500 miles away that's not connected. Then when you conquer certain land, some tribes have 100 devestation which makes the land pretty much unworkable for decades or you waste monarch power to buy it down.

There's just so much going wrong here; And it's not based on difficulty but tedium and enduring these stupid bugs every single game.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Yes, the AI can see into Fog of War to simulate basic awareness. Is that cheating?

If we accept the premise that the AI leading the nation is acting as an agent with the same gameplay rules as the player and can possibly "cheat" in any capacity, then yes.

If we don't accept that premise, there is no action the AI could take that would count, even if it deletes your armies randomly or similar.

As others have pointed out, the AI doesn’t cheat wrt to cash or mana.

Again, with exceptions for when you deliberately give it those handicaps (high difficulty) or more typically, lucky nations. Though lucky nations are more of a handicap than cheating per se', they certainly do get extra resources from those bonuses (both cash and mana).

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

If we accept the premise that the AI leading the nation is acting as an agent with the same gameplay rules as the player and can possibly "cheat" in any capacity, then yes.

If we don't accept that premise, there is no action the AI could take that would count, even if it deletes your armies randomly or similar.

Each day it doesn't see your army it has a chance of forgetting where it is. For me this sounds awfully similar to how a player would remember roughly where an army is.

 

[MachopPower69]

Each day it doesn't see your army it has a chance of forgetting where it is. For me this sounds awfully similar to how a player would remember roughly where an army is.

Well the AI can see where you are going. If you pause and move your army into position, the AI does a "nope" and changes direction.

And are AI armies faster than player armies? Like are they given a "ghost pip" to maneuver?

 

[Nostalgium]

And are AI armies faster than player armies? Like are they given a "ghost pip" to maneuver?

Nope - movement is just not equal between provinces, and the AI likes to pick the fastest route. When chasing down their armies, this can get annoying, as you have to chase them into a province where the movement time to all the other ones are longer than the entry point you're going through. Also, average drill gives movement speed, so the armies might just have higher drill than you.

 

[agonistes]

The past few years for EU4 have been extremely rocky balance wise. It feels like many balance changes have been big swings back and forth, breaking the game. Lets discuss the current issues:

1. Performance is awful (again). This is in part due to the AI development problem I'll go into, but the code needs to be optimized. There's now lag mid game for pop-ups, along with the usual lag. I have way over what is required to run this with a 2080ti, Core i7 @ 3.7 ghz, and 48 gb of DDR4 3000 mhz ram. Not the best ever, but I can imagine others struggling to run this.

2. To make the AI "manage their money" better, it was decided to give them God mode. They cheat. Hard. The have money to build multiple forts always fully upgraded (next to each other ), tier 3 trade centers, full army and navys (With more heavys than a player richer than the AI could afford), and with go above the force limit with mercs. They also can develop their provinces to a crazy degree (many cities bigger than the "envy of the world" Constantinople), while having no issues keeping up on tech. Please tone down the cheats for the AI.

3. The game's pacing is a slog. TONs of forts. AI always up to date in tech, even in remote areas. AI buys lots of merc armies with loans (i think, they never have money troubles for long). Do institutions even matter anymore for the AI? No. Also, all of the highly developed provinces makes coring take a ton of admin points and take for ever to complete; don't even mention the aggressive expansion. Please tone down the cheats or go back to how it was. Oh, and the AI ALWAYS bombards your forts and it just serves to lengthen the war because the problem with too many forts (forts come back to full force with walls repaired way too fast imho).

4. Certain game aspects are broken. For example, even though every member of a war is not defeated, you still start to get huge war exhaustion penalties because sometimes the game thinks the war is over, despite a strong member remaining with high enthusiasm. The war AI is still bad. Why is the AI leaving trails of men to get ambushed? Why is the AI moving and then canceling over and over? Why is the AI afraid to take on rebels they can easily beat? Why does the AI sometime sit there and allow you to kill them for no good reason? The list goes on, but taken as a whole, it hurts the fun factor.

5. Colonization is broken. Native tribes are too big, too powerful, and too developed. There are too many of them in Australia and North America. Please go back to the old way. Please make the wasteland in Africa colonizable. Please make European powers go for the Far East/India. Oh wait they can't because the Far East is more powerful than them now .

Looks the game doesn't even play the time period as advertised anymore. It's some kind of fantasy game where everyone lives in Constantinople. It's not any harder, it's just more annoying and even less realistic to play. Thanks for trying Paradox Tinto, but it's time to go back to the drawing board. Anyone else have feedback to add?

I quite enjoy the game, and regard this period as a high point.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

On topic though - I feel like the last change to the combat AI (better understanding of what’s a winnable engagement, and an obvious lack of FoW), made wars an annoying whack-a-mole game. I feel like the AI is sometimes hell-bent on evading engagement, preferring instead to run to a far corner of the world to siege an insignificant fort. If I move my army in response, it will then lift off without fighting to go on a round trip of the continent just to find another fort to siege.
It feels like an unfinished change - the AI now knows to avoid losing (good!), but doesn’t know yet how to win (bad!). By trying to avoid a tactical loss (battle), it actually falls into a strategic loss (the war).
It kinda reminds me of some Total War games, if some of you play those. AI force marching away from you to attack your minor settlement while you take it’s capital in the meanwhile.
Maybe it’s just too complicated to program with current tech ‍

I feel like we dont get siberian sieges as much as before

 

[Zdechlak]

1. Performance is awful (again). This is in part due to the AI development problem I'll go into, but the code needs to be optimized. There's now lag mid game for pop-ups, along with the usual lag. I have way over what is required to run this with a 2080ti, Core i7 @ 3.7 ghz, and 48 gb of DDR4 3000 mhz ram. Not the best ever, but I can imagine others struggling to run this.

I can confirm that. Today I installed EU4 agan and tried to play, but performance was so low, that all the fun from playing it was gone. Last time I playied In November 2021 there was no such an issues. Didn't changed any configuration of game settings or pc configuration/system since then.

 

[AvengedK1ng]

I can confirm that. Today I installed EU4 agan and tried to play, but performance was so low, that all the fun from playing it was gone. Last time I playied In November 2021 there was no such an issues. Didn't changed any configuration of game settings or pc configuration/system since then.

Whats your rig and what else did you have open at the time

 

[CoolSpin]

Well the AI can see where you are going. If you pause and move your army into position, the AI does a "nope" and changes direction.

And are AI armies faster than player armies? Like are they given a "ghost pip" to maneuver?

The first point, they do. It does seem to know the stack size you are moving. Like right clicking a besieged province with a better/larger stack than AI. But... can AI get proper reinforcements if attacked? Morale/Discipline advantage of combined AIs? General pips? Terrain combat modifiers? Are they just "stubborn"? It all seem to go into the math, so its not clear what the conditions for them leaving the siege is, but it definately is a thing.

Point 2, is you chase an army, you dont know their pathing, so you have to pause every province they walk to, tooltip + pause + change your army target province, they might also change province because they know an enemy AI will path to it too, and if you do not micro this to the day, they get that extra day or "speed" (aka you not microing hard enough). Also the AI do utilize the manouver generals pretty well, this "All The Things" combination just seem they are uncatchable.

You can defeat this by preparing. You need 2 stacks, one chaser and one to block. And you need to be able to do this aswell. Obvious what the chaser stack does, but the blocking stack needs to "go around" and not set a path in Area in proximity to the enemy army, yet still move towards the region in question (ie you want to go to Albania region (not the Area), but path into Anatolia side). If they try path into FoW, then you path your blocking army into the FoW, "somewhere", because they know if you path into their zone/target region, they might change their target province again. You also need to keep this in mind during wars, so you can "set up" the chase when the moment is right. Their pathing also has some conditions, usually the least protected flank, it depends. The micro just is.

As you can tell, there is no simple way to do this, its just experience of observing and being aware.

I guess if you *really* want to, you can play non-ironman, and when the conditions are right, make a save, and use 'aiview' console command, disable FoW with 'fow' and remove TI with 'ti', so you can mouse over enemy armies for the aiview modified tooltip on armies. Then try different things and see what the AI does from that save. But ... actually, if someone does this, why? You just want to nerd it out to the max? I mean I get it, but I might have questions..

Um... I swear I havent done that last part, I promise. Only a little....

 

[Lykus Cerebros]

The first point, they do. It does seem to know the stack size you are moving. Like right clicking a besieged province with a better/larger stack than AI. But... can AI get proper reinforcements if attacked? Morale/Discipline advantage of combined AIs? General pips? Terrain combat modifiers? Are they just "stubborn"? It all seem to go into the math, so its not clear what the conditions for them leaving the siege is, but it definately is a thing.

Point 2, is you chase an army, you dont know their pathing, so you have to pause every province they walk to, tooltip + pause + change your army target province, they might also change province because they know an enemy AI will path to it too, and if you do not micro this to the day, they get that extra day or "speed" (aka you not microing hard enough). Also the AI do utilize the manouver generals pretty well, this "All The Things" combination just seem they are uncatchable.

You can defeat this by preparing. You need 2 stacks, one chaser and one to block. And you need to be able to do this aswell. Obvious what the chaser stack does, but the blocking stack needs to "go around" and not set a path in Area in proximity to the enemy army, yet still move towards the region in question (ie you want to go to Albania region (not the Area), but path into Anatolia side). If they try path into FoW, then you path your blocking army into the FoW, "somewhere", because they know if you path into their zone/target region, they might change their target province again. You also need to keep this in mind during wars, so you can "set up" the chase when the moment is right. Their pathing also has some conditions, usually the least protected flank, it depends. The micro just is.

As you can tell, there is no simple way to do this, its just experience of observing and being aware.

I guess if you *really* want to, you can play non-ironman, and when the conditions are right, make a save, and use 'aiview' console command, disable FoW with 'fow' and remove TI with 'ti', so you can mouse over enemy armies for the aiview modified tooltip on armies. Then try different things and see what the AI does from that save. But ... actually, if someone does this, why? You just want to nerd it out to the max? I mean I get it, but I might have questions..

Um... I swear I havent done that last part, I promise. Only a little....

It's worth noting that retreating armies get a speed buff. I think its something between 15-25%.