serious issues with combat AI

[Stablebrew]

Okay, after few hundred hours of gameplay, I know the combat AI is pretty weak.
But what I´ve experienced recently topped even the AI of Pacman in stupdity².

I´m King of Sweden under liege of Skandainavian Emperor.
The Emperor declared a Holy WAr to Germany to claim Saxxon. Cards had been shuffled, both side take their actions. While Germany had political struggles with Lollards, even their Allies, I took the chance and cap target provinces. During that time some skirmishes had been made. Anyway...

Skandinavian Emperor, with ALiies, gathered his forces (twice a 15k stack) and marched from Lituana into german territory. Now here comes the deal where the AI is dumber than Pacman ghosts.
The AI turned on the border to germany, walked the Baltic coast to Finnland, made a sightseeing tour around Scandianias coastel regions only to cap a city in Schleswig.

Lots of time had been wasted for my AI ally and he didnt even fiished to cap the town.

PAthfinding needs to rework seriously.
I´ve experienced questionable pathfindings even for my armies, set automaticaly. Instead crossing two provinces to reach their destination, the AI suggest a path around those provinces. These provinces were own territory and didnt had any penalities (winter, mountain).


Enough of a rant about the AI losing a war bcs of stupidity

 

[szmik]

Pathfinding avoids enemy stacks when travelling, so chokepoints like Denmark are nightimare for it. I remember wondering where Danes have their armies once, only to find them in Finland.

There's simply no check whether the army is big enough to beat enemies on shortest path, unless it's 10-1.

 

[Stablebrew]

There are other issues:

In a another war, I had an outnumbered stack against the enemy even with crossing dis/advantages I wouldnt win this skirmish. Lucky, I had an AI ally next to me. With his aid I could easily defeat the enemy but AI chose to walk somewhere else instead winning wars.

Anyway I´m changed battle tactis in this Holy War and made it an War of Attrition. Those are damn boring and cost too much gold :/

 

[szmik]

You can hire 2-3 mercenary companies, combine them, go on assaulting spree, which: gives you land, cuts the cost of their maintenance due to casualties.

 

[old_hans]

jumping between my 2.4.5 ck2+ game and the newest patch version, one of the first things I noticed was how erratic the AI armies were behaving. It was just so awful I had to go back to 2.4.5.

 

[Lorekeeper88]

Hope this does not count as necromancy, as the topic was opened less than a month ago, but I think its better to write my story here, rather than open a new topic.
So, I'm the new emperor of Navarra, I'm hunting achievements and that is why I have constant wars with the Fatimids.

Later on they call a jihad and it is a big one, lots of people joining on both sides, rulers change, and I decide to hold on to the war for that sweet +40 opinion for my kid emperor. I'm sweeping up their stragglers and finally their stack appears, but I have nothing to worry about because I have my allies, right?
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=660642831
So, they came from the south, Aswan. For some reason my holy order allies are still going into that province, even though they have been fighting me in that northern province for 10 days, meanwhile a smaller holy order and Pisan army decides to go to Cairo instead of helping me, and you can see up on Sinai a huge army just killing themselves with attrition.
Now, if we all know that their pathfinding is so horrible, why is the AIs primary command not to attach to my armies and I'll drag them around where they should be. Aztecs are successful in this game because of this as well. They appeared and every Catholic jumped to the defense of the French, only to run in circles and not do anything productive.