The AI should seriously reconsider it's army doctrines.

[agibaer]

Do you ever see foreign armies? Very rarely, I suppose. This makes the game far too easy, 3-5 province countries don't have the slightest chance of withstanding an attack from human player, even if he has only a one province country.

Just buy out all the mercs available and you can run over the enemy country without the slightest bit of resistance (maybe 2 armies will pop up somewhere but that's it).

Not talking about attacking one-province countries, they disband their militaries right after startup and then seem to wonder why they get attacked from all sides...

As well, financing revolts with spies is hardly of any use since there are no bloody regiments to revolt anywhere.

I think there's a need for the 1.2 patch to make the AI sustain a defensive army all the time.

 

[unmerged(31020)]

Do you ever see foreign armies? Very rarely, I suppose.

Can't really complain.

In my current game as a pretty big Mecklenburg I actually got highly nervous when looking over the boarder to Austria. So I loaded up as them and did a count: 78 regiments in 64 armies. That was around 1530, and they had about 35 provinces at that time.

Apparently they realized later that this was a bit much and disbanded some.

 

[unmerged(37697)]

Yeah, absolutely. I have no qualms with the AI whatsoever at this point.

In EU2, I could usually kick arse regardless, but in EU3 if I intend to take on someone like France, Spain or Austria, I have to seriously plan ahead. As for Prussia, they churn out some pretty good leaders.

I think it's fantastic; I find it a far more emersive game than EU2 because there you (generally speaking) knew what'd happen next. In EU3, there's a surprise round every corner.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

In EUII minors often had some fairly serious armies.Youre average German 1 province minor had between 20.000 to 40.000 troops and getting in war with 5 German minors often ment getting quite a lot of men on youre doorstep.

Given the blobbin, and since the op argue's that single minors or even somwhat bigger armies don't maintain standing armies, i would say maybe some AI files or something must be altered to let these minors keep a large millitary comparebly to size EUII style.It would be logical for these minors to not take much risk anyway by not having a large standing army, they can go over their normal support limit as long as the total costs don't exceed their budget.That means their budget won't go to tech, but that is not much of an issue for minors with fair moarch's and advisors.Maybe it will help the blobbing issue.

 

[obliviongate]

I agree that smaller countries can be steamrolled pretty easily, but wasn't this the case historically. France could have walked over many German provinces if it wanted, but it was the larger countries that kept them in check.

As England, I left Scotland alone for about 50 years because of their alliance with France. I decided to take them on in 1500 after I felt comfortable about defending against France, and having an alliance with Austria. When I met their armies the AI knew that I would lose many troops attacking their mountainous provinces, and I did.

Hiring mercs was my answer to deplenished troops, and it seemed a little too cheap and easy to do this. Perhaps this is a problem area.

 

[unmerged(49083)]

Perhaps mercs should cost 50D each, and then 75D for cavalry. I know this is extreme, but the nation recruiting them needs to be wealthy then. Also, they should have a special effect. The lower the morale of the unit, the larger chance in battle that men deser, for example :

Ottoman Empire has

WON

The battle. Hungary has

LOST the battle. Ottoman empire lost 2395 men out of 10000 men, and Hungary lost 1294 men. However, 0 men deserted Ottoman Empire and 122 men deserted Hungary.

This would mean that 122 men would be PERMANENTLY subtracted from a mercenary regiment. Also, they shouldn't be able to get replacements. Otherwise, that's pointless.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

I agree that smaller countries can be steamrolled pretty easily, but wasn't this the case historically. France could have walked over many German provinces if it wanted, but it was the larger countries that kept them in check.

Well it's not because a 1 province minor maintains 5k troops that it will be able to stop France, unless with maybe some really really good leader.Those 20-40k troops they had in EUII often couldn't prevent annexation neither, but it would probably lenghten the gamespan a bit of most minors, and they could defend themself from a medium sized country in the neighbourhood, like the minors around Brandeburg, Saxony or Bohemia, preventing Germany to turn into 3 medium sized country's wich are easily defeated by Austria that has a lot less hassle like that to take lots of province, as dowing all those minors and annexing them would be more troublesome.Its deffinatly better than having the minors not have an army at all, like that they will be gobbled up in no time.

 

[unmerged(49083)]

Perhaps there could be something like this :

provinces = 5  *or more, obviously*
          country = ai
                          yes

AND = {

         other_country_provinces = 1 *up to four*
         other_country_war_major = yes*
         major_conquest_percentage = 20%
         minor_country_continent = europe* *where the blobbing is annoying*
                                                      yes 

}

        name = "help minor"
        command = { declare_war = nation_aggressor_major_conquest }
        command = { alliance which = minor_country_continent = europe* }
        command = { trigger = {
                                        { major_power_eu_no_war 1 = help_war }
                                        { major_power_eu_no_war 2 = help_war }
                                        { major_power_eu_no_war 3 = help_war }


}

I dunno something like that. The ones that have asteriks without text indicates that this is a RANDOM modifier.

 

[Nimic]

You try recruiting all the mercenaries you can, so that other nations can't. Within a hundred years, or before, mercenaries will cost huge amounts of gold.

 

[unmerged(68955)]

The AI in this game has some serious flaws. And they are most visible with it comes to their armies.

I have been playing with Bihar on Very Hard lately, and the computer is a joke even when he is 5 times bigger than me. The AI will keep it's largest armies to defend itsselves (even though the armies are large enough to crush me like a bug). Then it will send its "attack armies" against me. Sometimes it attacks even though it will be loose without doing any damage, but most often it attacks a poorly protected province. However, when I send ALL my units to defend the province, and my units will arrive first, the AI still does not retreat. It rather sends its armies into suicide.

At the end Dehli retreated ALL it's armies into one province and I could easily take over all other provinces even though Delhi har 3 times stronger army than I. When it came to won matches I had won 20 and Dehli had won 0.

 

[Chaingun]

I wrote a longer post but managed to lose it with a wrongful keypress.

The AI needs two huge improvements in the tactical department:

1. Stop making suicide attacks!!! There's no reason to why it couldn't check if conditions in the target province didn't significantly change right before reaching it. Checking my invasion armies' targets is one of the things I constantly do in wars...

2. Retreat if battle is unwinnable and standing and fighting serves no purpose (sometimes one may want to sacrifice some manpower to delay the enemy's main army). Fighting an unwinnable battle to the end just reeks of unnecessary casualties. Hoping for a favourable dice condition is another matter, but that needs to be weighed against the cost of fulfilling a fire/shock round with poor dice. Also there are lots of instances were dice cannot save the battle.

 

[alpreb]

There does exist an attrion limit to take in too. A place that supports two regiment shouldn't have an 20.000 man army in it. With that said it should focus more on destroying enemy armies than siegeing