So I had some time on my hands and thought I would run a completely non scientific non peer review test of the HOI3’s military AI, there were some interesting results that I observed…
I ran four tests,
One with Germany doing a pretty conventional 1936 build up, no IC whoring, spreading techs around, not teching anything so advanced as to get a minus.
One with Germany doing a IC whore fest, probably 800 IC before war broke out, but again, building a balanced (albeit pretty huge) force.
One with Germany doing a IC whore fest with jumping to techs like night vision and taking certain land doctrines and equipment into the late 40’s level.
One just silly Germany campaign with save game editing to fulfill the insane requirements HQ’s think they need as well as tech editing to make the AI think it has a major advantage. This had an IC whore tech jump build as well.
One set of constants here, Italy, USA, and Nationalist Spain always made it into the Axis via influence and espionage. I control all the aspects except for the military part which is completely left to the AI. Most of these ran till around 44 except for the first and the last which were a bit shorter where it was obvious at one point that I was going to lose and win respectively.
Here is what I observed…pretty much in a sober state for most of the time
1. Strategic AI giving orders via theater headquarters does work, I beat France, UK, and USSR by 1943 without giving a single tactical military order.
2. The AI is extremely timid in both strategic and tactical choices, we’re talking WW I kind of preparation before they hit a big target.
3. Setting any sort of chain of command for your Air and Navy is useless, the theater AI just detaches them and reattaches them to the theater HQ…don’t ask me why.
4. The AI will ignore your tactical order in favor of it’s perception of the strategic situation. I think this one gets a lot of people because it’s just not how the military chain of command works. In a chain of command if I order you to take your divisions and attack point A and as a subordinate you say, “well, that’s a real nifty idea but seeing as I think we’re vulnerable here, I’m gonna have to get back to you on that one”, you would be taken outside and shot. An example here, I am hammering the UK, they have almost no navy, their air force has been reduced…but they have a huge front opening up in Spain via Gibraltar and NS is about to fold. I order the western theater HQ on a blitzkrieg stance and target only Gibraltar…nothing…move it to attack stance…nothing…(each time I waited a few days to see if their was any movement. So I take a panzer army from the eastern front, attach it to the western HQ, boom…it starts loading transports with divisions and sending panzers via over land…Gibraltar falls quickly…but it wasn’t until the theater HQ felt it had the troops it needed.
5. The AI will do little if anything if it doesn’t think it has a chance to win. On the first test with the pretty tame German setup, the AI performed by far the worse, it took Poland, and took France, but at a very high cost and not utilizing any of the 10+ kph divisions I provided it with. But in second test, when it had a much larger army to work with, it performed extremely well, taking Poland and France with easy, starting in against USSR in spring of 40 while reducing the UK, it got bogged down in the USSR but that’s just because those backstabbing Hungarians tried to catch the cyber fuehrer with his lederhosen down.
6. Those messages about what the HQ thinks it needs are really quite important. Obviously some of them are silly like I need 70 divisions to move this front forward three provinces…but it does indicate that the AI thinks it needs a lot infantry…which it does because,
7. The AI is a terrible military tactician…reminds me of Ulysses Grant, handed an easily winnable situation and nearly F’ed it all to hell because of his incompetence on the field. Basically, when dealt an overwhelming hand, the AI does a decent job of it. I think this is where some people are saying, well, I just control the panzers and the air force and punch all these holes and the AI seems to work great! Well…yeah…anyone could do that, it’s called mopping up. But when the AI gets all these fancy weapons, it still has a very much linear-front state of mind. It doesn’t exploit armor speed at all. In the last test, where I was just joking around I had two armies of 14 kph LARM, MECH, SP RCKT ART and it just spread them out in a thin line and slowly rolled a front back at the same rate the infantry around it moved. Encirclements only happened in USSR and I think that’s more a factor of the width of the front expanding than any AI genius. Oh, and for what its worth it doesn’t seem to understand paratroopers at all, it always detaches them from transport planes and shuttles them around on the ground like infantry.
8. If you fulfill what troop requirements the theater HQ thinks it needs, you will usually get the desired result, if you tell it to try and attack with less than it thinks it needs, you usually won’t get your desired result. Given enough military resources the AI can do major amphibious assaults and takeovers, but it has to think it has a major advantage or it will just sit on its hands.
The problem as I see it is that in order to think tactically, in some ways, you must think strategically. But in the model HOI3 sets up, you’re supposed to be the strategic part with targeting and stances, and they are suppose to be the yes sir general that attacks. But the theater AI is thinking both strategically and tactically, and if your strategic offensive objectives don’t jive with it’s perceived strategic defensive position, then you get the big cyber middle finger from your subordinate until you rectify what it sees as a problem (lack of troops or looming enemy that your purposely ignoring via orders).
Two things would solve this, one, a pop up of some kind saying, “well, that order sounds great but we have a perceived border threat of X with country Y and we need to keep some troops here, gimme some more troops”….or we have a button on the interface that points a gun at the theater HQ’s temple and says, give the damn orders already. I don’t think either will be phased in but they were the only ones I could think of.
Some weird global observances…Italy ran rampant in all four games…just gobbling up the Balkans, south France, the middle east, Africa..it’s insane..it has a lot to do with nationalist Spain making it and usually taking Gibraltar…but Italy’s no joke, I gotta dig out a screenie but they were over in java picking off the Netherlands colonies in one game. The United States seems to be the only country that understands how to really do a good amphibious landing, did it in all four games to pretty amazing effect. Everyone else attempted landings were total trash, the UK tried so many failed landings the channel should have been colored red. Japan rolled in all four games, but they never joined the axis and they never went to war with the USA…they just spent the whole time dicking around in asia and the pacific rim. In all four games Canada joined the Allies and got punched right in the nuts when the fighting broke out…USA was ruthless…but like south park says, their not a real country any way.
I ran four tests,
One with Germany doing a pretty conventional 1936 build up, no IC whoring, spreading techs around, not teching anything so advanced as to get a minus.
One with Germany doing a IC whore fest, probably 800 IC before war broke out, but again, building a balanced (albeit pretty huge) force.
One with Germany doing a IC whore fest with jumping to techs like night vision and taking certain land doctrines and equipment into the late 40’s level.
One just silly Germany campaign with save game editing to fulfill the insane requirements HQ’s think they need as well as tech editing to make the AI think it has a major advantage. This had an IC whore tech jump build as well.
One set of constants here, Italy, USA, and Nationalist Spain always made it into the Axis via influence and espionage. I control all the aspects except for the military part which is completely left to the AI. Most of these ran till around 44 except for the first and the last which were a bit shorter where it was obvious at one point that I was going to lose and win respectively.
Here is what I observed…pretty much in a sober state for most of the time
1. Strategic AI giving orders via theater headquarters does work, I beat France, UK, and USSR by 1943 without giving a single tactical military order.
2. The AI is extremely timid in both strategic and tactical choices, we’re talking WW I kind of preparation before they hit a big target.
3. Setting any sort of chain of command for your Air and Navy is useless, the theater AI just detaches them and reattaches them to the theater HQ…don’t ask me why.
4. The AI will ignore your tactical order in favor of it’s perception of the strategic situation. I think this one gets a lot of people because it’s just not how the military chain of command works. In a chain of command if I order you to take your divisions and attack point A and as a subordinate you say, “well, that’s a real nifty idea but seeing as I think we’re vulnerable here, I’m gonna have to get back to you on that one”, you would be taken outside and shot. An example here, I am hammering the UK, they have almost no navy, their air force has been reduced…but they have a huge front opening up in Spain via Gibraltar and NS is about to fold. I order the western theater HQ on a blitzkrieg stance and target only Gibraltar…nothing…move it to attack stance…nothing…(each time I waited a few days to see if their was any movement. So I take a panzer army from the eastern front, attach it to the western HQ, boom…it starts loading transports with divisions and sending panzers via over land…Gibraltar falls quickly…but it wasn’t until the theater HQ felt it had the troops it needed.
5. The AI will do little if anything if it doesn’t think it has a chance to win. On the first test with the pretty tame German setup, the AI performed by far the worse, it took Poland, and took France, but at a very high cost and not utilizing any of the 10+ kph divisions I provided it with. But in second test, when it had a much larger army to work with, it performed extremely well, taking Poland and France with easy, starting in against USSR in spring of 40 while reducing the UK, it got bogged down in the USSR but that’s just because those backstabbing Hungarians tried to catch the cyber fuehrer with his lederhosen down.
6. Those messages about what the HQ thinks it needs are really quite important. Obviously some of them are silly like I need 70 divisions to move this front forward three provinces…but it does indicate that the AI thinks it needs a lot infantry…which it does because,
7. The AI is a terrible military tactician…reminds me of Ulysses Grant, handed an easily winnable situation and nearly F’ed it all to hell because of his incompetence on the field. Basically, when dealt an overwhelming hand, the AI does a decent job of it. I think this is where some people are saying, well, I just control the panzers and the air force and punch all these holes and the AI seems to work great! Well…yeah…anyone could do that, it’s called mopping up. But when the AI gets all these fancy weapons, it still has a very much linear-front state of mind. It doesn’t exploit armor speed at all. In the last test, where I was just joking around I had two armies of 14 kph LARM, MECH, SP RCKT ART and it just spread them out in a thin line and slowly rolled a front back at the same rate the infantry around it moved. Encirclements only happened in USSR and I think that’s more a factor of the width of the front expanding than any AI genius. Oh, and for what its worth it doesn’t seem to understand paratroopers at all, it always detaches them from transport planes and shuttles them around on the ground like infantry.
8. If you fulfill what troop requirements the theater HQ thinks it needs, you will usually get the desired result, if you tell it to try and attack with less than it thinks it needs, you usually won’t get your desired result. Given enough military resources the AI can do major amphibious assaults and takeovers, but it has to think it has a major advantage or it will just sit on its hands.
The problem as I see it is that in order to think tactically, in some ways, you must think strategically. But in the model HOI3 sets up, you’re supposed to be the strategic part with targeting and stances, and they are suppose to be the yes sir general that attacks. But the theater AI is thinking both strategically and tactically, and if your strategic offensive objectives don’t jive with it’s perceived strategic defensive position, then you get the big cyber middle finger from your subordinate until you rectify what it sees as a problem (lack of troops or looming enemy that your purposely ignoring via orders).
Two things would solve this, one, a pop up of some kind saying, “well, that order sounds great but we have a perceived border threat of X with country Y and we need to keep some troops here, gimme some more troops”….or we have a button on the interface that points a gun at the theater HQ’s temple and says, give the damn orders already. I don’t think either will be phased in but they were the only ones I could think of.
Some weird global observances…Italy ran rampant in all four games…just gobbling up the Balkans, south France, the middle east, Africa..it’s insane..it has a lot to do with nationalist Spain making it and usually taking Gibraltar…but Italy’s no joke, I gotta dig out a screenie but they were over in java picking off the Netherlands colonies in one game. The United States seems to be the only country that understands how to really do a good amphibious landing, did it in all four games to pretty amazing effect. Everyone else attempted landings were total trash, the UK tried so many failed landings the channel should have been colored red. Japan rolled in all four games, but they never joined the axis and they never went to war with the USA…they just spent the whole time dicking around in asia and the pacific rim. In all four games Canada joined the Allies and got punched right in the nuts when the fighting broke out…USA was ruthless…but like south park says, their not a real country any way.
