The AI and the ship designer

[Xerberous]

Although I think that this issue was already addresses once or twice it should be appropriate to open up a new thread since constant dripping wears away the stone.

Why is the AI not capable to design adequate ships? In my last game it’s 1945 and all the US-Navy has, are a bunch of tier I BBs – each with less firepower than a reasonably designed tier III CA. I fully understand that it’s not worth the effort to teach the AI how to use the ship designer, bit it should be possible to include some pre-made designs for each tier. Even for me as a non-competitive player naval warfare is easy on a level where it is not enjoyable anymore.

 

[vermicious knid]

The last game I played was Road to 56...and by the time I quit (around 1950) because something had broken the AI was producing a few upgraded Destroyers and Carriers...but mostly just 1936 Destroyers.

The AI seems to be utterly inept at designing ships, planning a naval buildup, or figuring out how to deal with mines and subs. The actual AI use of fleets is not terrible, so that is actually a high point.

I honestly think the AI should only have access to pre-builds. The old tiered ships are still in the equipment files...we just need the AI to use them. I'm decently certain that from there the AI can decide to build the latest ships available in some ratio preset by country.

The design philosophy here seems to be that the AI should always be playing the same game as the player...but that doesn't work for everything. Trying to get the AI to design and build ships for anticipated needs is like asking my dog to read a menu.

 

[vermicious knid]

Another thought...naval xp tend to be scarce, and I have no idea how the AI is using them. What if whenever a new hull is researched you get one or more of the prebuilds as a free variant? Perhaps the AI would happily build a clearly superior ship, but just never get around to designing them on their own?

Not that much different than handing out free division templates when a new unit becomes available.

 

[Paul.Ketcham]

Three separate reasons:

1.) With some exceptions, the AI focuses 90% on destroyers and light cruisers, and 10% on capital ships. Unless you're carrier doctrine (Japan/US) or France, those capital ships are all heavy cruisers (on rare occasion, I've seen battleships out of Germany, but mostly its just the French for some reason). The US and Japanese also will build carriers, but that's all. Germany and other raiding doctrine factions will build submarines, but few other nations build remotely enough of them.
2.) Most AI don't really research naval tech, other than Britain (who doesn't build capital ships).
3.) The AI focuses chiefly on quantity over quality, which means less-advanced equipment is cheaper to build. In particular, navies with large supply lines need huge numbers of destroyers and cruisers to meet their escort quota, which basically precludes them building almost any capital ships.

You can fix the first two reasons by going into the strategy files, but I can't make heads or tails of it myself because there are too many variables (when you subtract 100 from battleship production value, I'm not sure where that resets it to). The third issue is a whole different problem, although some mods just force the AI towards certain types of ships to sidestep the issue (aka setting up a specific arrangement for "standard" designs that it seeks to build).

 

[KingStance]

There is also bug that the AI would replace any ships that is in production regardless of progress whenever the AI creates a new variant of that ship class. Meaning there is two outcome, the AI would produce outdated ships and finish the production while the other is that the AI would try to create the most modern ship available (EAI do this) but due to the bug would end up wasting the dockyard production because AI can't finish a ship due to its nature of creating multiple variants of an equipment thus replacing the ship in production with the new one and starting it all over again.

 

[Crispin]

Introduce a cool and immersive naval dlc, but make the ai unable to take advantage or use it. Absolutely astonishing when you understand what's going on below the surface of ther dlc. Also subs...

 

[Louella]

The AI seems to be utterly inept at designing ships, planning a naval buildup, or figuring out how to deal with mines and subs.

The AI will design & build minesweepers, I've seen it happen. It just doesn't happen a lot, because I think other things take priority.

The third issue is a whole different problem, although some mods just force the AI towards certain types of ships to sidestep the issue

The AI has a strong preference for cheap units, which means that in the common/ai_equipment templates for ships, it will tend to use the cheapest hulls of each archetype, unless specified elsewhere.


I've seen the AI have better results, but only when I've given the AI countries some rather extreme amounts of dockyards, on the order of 60 dockyards for the major countries.

 

[Xerberous]

Just tag-switched to the US and made the following observations (September 1945):

• Naval doctrine research is locking good (perhaps to good) the base strike tree is 100 % green in all 3 branches
• Naval research is quite OK, with the exception of the DDs all ships are at tier 3 (1940)
• 20 dockyards are empty
• 11 dockyards on capitals, all of them on 3 tier 3 CVs
• 61 dockyards on screens, tier 2 CLs, tier 1 DDs
• deficit of 351 units of steel with free trade and 180 PP
• No military staff at all
• Only one political advisor and only 1 research and production designer/company
• From the 24 generals 17 are not effective because of recent re-assignment

Let’s phrase it carefully: There is some room for improvement.

 

[Louella]

• No military staff at all
• Only one political advisor and only 1 research and production designer/company

I've noticed this. I think the democratic_ai tends to favour spending PP on improving relations with other countries, rather than saving it for political advisors etc.
Even when I've made political advisors and staff cost 15 rather than 150 PP, the democratic countries somehow don't bother.

The communist and fascist ai seem better at filling out the appointments.

 

[vermicious knid]

Three separate reasons:

1.) With some exceptions, the AI focuses 90% on destroyers and light cruisers, and 10% on capital ships. Unless you're carrier doctrine (Japan/US) or France, those capital ships are all heavy cruisers (on rare occasion, I've seen battleships out of Germany, but mostly its just the French for some reason). The US and Japanese also will build carriers, but that's all. Germany and other raiding doctrine factions will build submarines, but few other nations build remotely enough of them.
2.) Most AI don't really research naval tech, other than Britain (who doesn't build capital ships).
3.) The AI focuses chiefly on quantity over quality, which means less-advanced equipment is cheaper to build. In particular, navies with large supply lines need huge numbers of destroyers and cruisers to meet their escort quota, which basically precludes them building almost any capital ships.

You can fix the first two reasons by going into the strategy files, but I can't make heads or tails of it myself because there are too many variables (when you subtract 100 from battleship production value, I'm not sure where that resets it to). The third issue is a whole different problem, although some mods just force the AI towards certain types of ships to sidestep the issue (aka setting up a specific arrangement for "standard" designs that it seeks to build).

Thanks for that. Sometimes it is hard to see how the game arrived at a broken end result.

1. Oof. I hate messing with AI files, but at least I know where to look.
2. So giving the AI access to the old tiered pre-MTG designs when they research a hull would help non-navy focused nations build modern ships. A terrible kludge, but I'm hopeful.
3. So...a cheaper escort to fill the quotas. Like you suggest in your very interesting thread about fixing the naval side of the game.

Has anybody tried to mod your ideas into existence? I dabble, but some of the changes are clearly above my pay grade.

 

[Vlad123]

One problem is that AI improves relationships, too bad that this thing, except for non-aggression pacts and perhaps, I repeat perhaps, trade is VERY USELESS! In other Paradox games it makes sense that AI improves relationships, not here!
20 empty shipyards ... am I wrong or every novice guide says NEVER LEAVE INDUSTRIES INACTIVE !? Whether they are civilian, military or dockyard? This is a lack.
The fact that the AI builds obsolete ships even when it has researched (spent time) for new things explains why the AI is literally plowed by a fleet of submarines + other small ships: because you have everything upgraded to 40+ the AI alone the weapons, but the keels etc give HP ...

 

[GeorgieBest]

I don't expect miracles from the AI, but it's so weak that it isn't even fun beating it. The Hoi team could learn a lot from the CK team.

 

[Xerberous]

One addition:

I've tag-switched around a bit in some other savegames and found several examples for countries with free trade as trade law and hundreds of units of self-produced resources (in most of the cases steel) missing. I think this is a central part of the problem – it doesn’t matter what you try to produce, as long as you don’t have sufficient resources, you’ll not produce it.

 

[Vlad123]

One addition:

I've tag-switched around a bit in some other savegames and found several examples for countries with free trade as trade law and hundreds of units of self-produced resources (in most of the cases steel) missing. I think this is a central part of the problem – it doesn’t matter what you try to produce, as long as you don’t have sufficient resources, you’ll not produce it.

The problem is that if you are missing a resource, you often close the market, taking away the other resources from allies.

 

[Emren]

One addition:

I've tag-switched around a bit in some other savegames and found several examples for countries with free trade as trade law and hundreds of units of self-produced resources (in most of the cases steel) missing. I think this is a central part of the problem – it doesn’t matter what you try to produce, as long as you don’t have sufficient resources, you’ll not produce it.

I have seen the same. Has anyone tried modding the trade laws to be less extreme, to see if that fixes the problem? Both free trade and closed economy are really too extreme.

 

[HugsAndSnuggles]

it doesn’t matter what you try to produce, as long as you don’t have sufficient resources, you’ll not produce it.

Mostly applies to ships; penalty on everything else is non-existent by comparison.

 

[vermicious knid]

I have seen the same. Has anyone tried modding the trade laws to be less extreme, to see if that fixes the problem? Both free trade and closed economy are really too extreme.

Seems like a line like "if short of resource X AND extracting resource X AND can lower trade law, then lower trade law" should be possible to write. I suspect the AI will have problems collecting the 150 PP though.

 

[Ketchup & friends]

Seems like a line like "if short of resource X AND extracting resource X AND can lower trade law, then lower trade law" should be possible to write. I suspect the AI will have problems collecting the 150 PP though.

but fixing the AI leaves IC empty problem should be possible.

 

[tract]

Another thought...naval xp tend to be scarce, and I have no idea how the AI is using them. What if whenever a new hull is researched you get one or more of the prebuilds as a free variant? Perhaps the AI would happily build a clearly superior ship, but just never get around to designing them on their own?

I reckon it would be useful for the ship hull researches to just come with a simple +25XP or +40XP bonus to naval XP. It wouldn't help the AI per se, but it would at least give both the AI and player a chance to design a new ship around the new hull.

 

[Emren]

I reckon it would be useful for the ship hull researches to just come with a simple +25XP or +40XP bonus to naval XP. It wouldn't help the AI per se, but it would at least give both the AI and player a chance to design a new ship around the new hull.

Naval xp is so easy to come by. Exercising your fleet gives generous amounts of xp.