The great official AI thread

[Dalwin]

Thank you for lifting this. If you have a solid repro, please make a bug report. Clearly not working as intended.

Unfortunately it happened in my weekly MP game. During those I only capture one save at the end of the session. Since pausing to fix this was not something that I wanted to do, I was scrambling to fix what the AI had done as quickly as I could and do not have a save.

The scenario should be very easy to reproduce, however. Set a garrison army to be covering only ports (there was no unrest to suppress). Have just enough units in that army so that each port gets one. Manually move one of the divisions.

 

[lihp]

@SteelVolt

1. LAND: There are loads of improvements in land battles with the AI. And it does feel you are on the right track - with templates still being imho the most important part.
   
2. AIR: Air battles still feel "poor". The AI suicides planes like crazy only to produce more wrecking its IC. This plain kills the AI everywhere else. I strongly believe that air battles need an overhaul esspecially by applying a malus for a "crowded sky". Going a similar path like in HOI3 would help alot.
3. NAVAL: Sorry, but naval always sucks in PDX games. Remember HOI3, when Admirals were not leveled by the AI, leading to the 6 boat limit for AI naval forces? Its similar in HOI4, where a 70+ player-lead naval force including 4 CVs fully loaded with naval bombers wreck AI naval fleets. In HOI this is an issue in WW2, since naval dominance is the deciding factor to keep UK, USA and Japan safe from naval invasions. The AI lacking in naval battles hurt HOI3 a lot and it hurts HOI4 even more.

Suggestion:

• Cap the amount of planes in air corridors, where additional planes incur increasing penalities. Additionally the AI should analyze air battle outcome and decide on the results if these air battles are futile or not.
• Please for once: get naval battles right and make the major naval powers as powerfull as they should be by the AI, by reating full viable fleets for the AI and having some win/losses checks to adapt f needed (at least a lil bit).

 

[bitmode]

The scenario should be very easy to reproduce, however. Set a garrison army to be covering only ports (there was no unrest to suppress). Have just enough units in that army so that each port gets one. Manually move one of the divisions.

I tried and it's not reproducible like that in SP

 

[Dalwin]

I tried and it's not reproducible like that in SP

Were ports the only item selected in the garrison command? That is all I had marked, not even victory point centers.

 

[bitmode]

@Dalwin yes. Lag in multiplayer could play a role in the bug though

 

[Dalwin]

That is possibly true.

 

[Agiknight]

Version 1.3.3

Scenario: playing as Japan after the fall of China. I have an army of 14 divisions using a garrison order to cover ports only.

I made the mistake of trying to move one of these units one province to cover Hong Kong without first either removing it from the army or deleting the garrison order. I had thought it would just move back to the province it had come from, but what actually happened was much worse.

Once that division began its walk to Hong Kong, every single one of the 13 other divisions in that army started moving to the port he had vacated. This left all 13 of the other ports empty. This highlights just how bad unit shuffling logic is in all forms of battle plans.

WHAT THE AI IS DOING: making many new gaps in its coverage to fill one.

WHAT IT SHOULD BE DOING: the AI needs to realize that making one hole to cover another only makes things worse, it is not helpful. Making many holes to fill one is a disaster. The space it will be vacating has to be taken into account when decisions to shuffle units are being made.

I know it doesn't help fix the AI, but as a workaround I have learned to never use garrison commands (or any battleplan) for island defenses. For one, it's tedious to set up, and more importantly things like this tend to happen. It's more or less the same amount of effort to individually park a division or two on each island and the AI won't screw with this.

 

[Dalwin]

I know it doesn't help fix the AI, but as a workaround I have learned to never use garrison commands (or any battleplan) for island defenses. For one, it's tedious to set up, and more importantly things like this tend to happen. It's more or less the same amount of effort to individually park a division or two on each island and the AI won't screw with this.

This had nothing to do with islands. It also is not about workarounds. I already acknowledged at the beginning that I had made the mistake of not either removing the division in question from its army or cancelling the garrison command. The information was not seeking a way for me to cope with similar situations. It was intended as a clue as to what is going on with the AI in the hopes that it might help improve game in general.

 

[Celdur]

I really don't think anything can be done for the AI beyond coding to fix the super stupid mistakes until we have Quantum computers

Pdx should expand on the geopolitical (industry-economy-diplo) part of the game to take some weight off micro. Micro will win every war, every time right now.

I think industrial production should be buffed for all, specially for simple infantry (there were millions of rifles produced, not just hundreds of thousands) we need to be able to field far larger armies (all countries) so that the AI can help defend itself against simple encirclements, so its not so punishing unless they commit massively to a push. Else they can continuously be "bitten off" by a few tank divisions.

Having the game enable the option to set up secondary and even tertiary lines to hold breakthroughs would also be very good. At least make it unlocable through doctrine or something. Microing that is hell right now.

 

[Alex_brunius]

I think industrial production should be buffed for all, specially for simple infantry (there were millions of rifles produced, not just hundreds of thousands)

If you look at the numbers you'll notice that 1000 infantrymen only require 100 units of rifles in HoI4, so each equipment unit is probably enough stuff to equip a squad of 10 people.

This means that millions of rifles are produced in HoI4 as well.

 

[Urza1986]

Frontline AI:

I like to make Armys of 24 divisions and set a frontline for each army. If a province get conquered where 2 frontlines meet they both get bonkers. Most of the times one of them get expanded over the whole front. Shortly after the AI trys to handle that new frontline and start to move troops and my whole offensive get stuck.

f.e. as Germany i make a frontline in east prussia if i conquer the 2 provinces on the west (Danzig and the one left of it) the frontline get expanded, most times down to the slovakia border.


There is a problem for factions. Normally this happens in india. Each members of the Allies has like 10 divisions on the japanese border. Each nation with its own frontline. Then they are sitting there f.e. 6 divisions per province against 2 japanese and they are not attacking.


AI building units:

The AI is building units like stupid. Normally 1 or 2 months into a war their division strength is below 75%. I had a game with Germany, 5 months into war with SU their divisions were below 20% strength. Maybe the AI should calculate a reserve for each existing division and only if there are more goods they should build additional units.


AI Naval Invasion:

After conquering france with germany, each port get 1 division for defending and an army on paris to react for naval invasions. GB did some naval invasions to provinces next to a port but after the landing they cant conquer the port. In one game GB lost 1 million soldiers that way.
They do one naval invasion, not 2 or 3 simultaneously so its to easy to react. They send all their troops to one province, f.e. maybe they should send half of the troops to the port and the other half next to the port and then support the port attack, so in worst case they only loose 1/2 of the troops not all.

 

[stjern]

Frontline AI:

The AI is building units like stupid. Normally 1 or 2 months into a war their division strength is below 75%. I had a game with Germany, 5 months into war with SU their divisions were below 20% strength. Maybe the AI should calculate a reserve for each existing division and only if there are more goods they should build additional units.

The tools that handles this were disabled in patch 1.33. The tools were never used in the vanilla game at all though.

 

[macegee]

I gave another look at Pacific war and Japan AI, as a follow up to my previous 1.3.2 post.

HOI4 [1.3.3][2dd2] w/ TfV

Trivia:

I play SP, as the US, 1939 start. Normal difficulty, historical focuses on. I buff Japan, Germany, Italy to maximum. Things that go wrong:

- Japan joins axis and auto-joins the WW2 in January 1940. I, as the US, do not join the war, did not even embargo them or anything. Reported here.
- Japan barely builds dockyards (22 in 1940, 27 in mid 1942). Tho the situation is a bit better than it was in 1.3.2.
- Japan barely builds planes, can't fully maintain CV air fleet. CV airwings are under-strength. At the same time, it spend too much factories on building... mechanized half-tracks.
- Japan barely builds screens. CLs: 1.87/year, DDs: 1.33/year in 1942.
- Japan occupies lots of land and spends all civilian factories on repairs.
- Japan creates lots of smaller fleets that get destroyed very easily. It fails to mass carriers to defeat my main pacific 4 CV task force. At maximum, I saw fleets with 2 carriers, and even then they had like 3/4 of their planes. Considering that my CVs were lvl 3, and Jap CVs were lvl 1-2, the end result was devastating for IJN.
- Even tho Japan captured Oz and India, it did not try to attack US soil whatsoever. Not a single invasion/port strike happened to me. Guam, Wake, Midway, etc, none were attacked.
- They did not have any planes operating from islands. So no opposition for me when trying to invade Iwo Jima etc.

What should be happening:

- Japan should build up for war. It should not auto-join WW2 upon joining the Axis. It creates additional WT too early, makes Japan vulnerable to Allied attacks while it should focus on China & production, building up reserves.
- Japan should build more dockyards.
- Japan should build much more planes, and less mechanized half-tracks.
- AI should maintain ratio between capital ships and screens when doing naval production.
- AI should give far less priority for repair tasks on occupied territories.
- Upon joining WW2, Japan should mass its fleets, especially KB (Kidō Butai), its carrier fleet, to be able to defeat British and US fleets.
- Japan should be more aggressive towards the US. It should try to hit PH or any other major Pacific base. It should capture US islands.
- Japan should station planes on Pacific Islands.

Spoiler: Screenshots

 

[Dan1109]

JAP fails to remotely be close to historic (even with max sliders), because it fails to acquire enough resources. Resources should be Japan's #1 priority.

1. It never has enough steel to mount both an effective army and navy. IMO, more needs to be added in Japan, Manchuria, and eastern China.
2. Japan never effectively takes over Sumatra, Borneo, and Singapore in a few months. This is key to help Japan and take vital resources away from allies, causing their production to slow down. Solution is to have AI focus on resource rich territories. It's like the AI doesn't take this into any consideration whatsoever. It's so easy for a human to do it, but AI does this so poorly.
3. US navy assets are not even needed in the Atlantic, allowing human or AI to build several level 3 carriers a-historically prior to war breaking out. Solution is improved convoy war.
4. Great Depression national spirit doesn't affect naval yard production or output, allowing USA to have the world's dominant navy prior to even entering the war. USA should have pathetic naval production ability (including yards) prior to 40. Yards can be built in 41, and navy construction can begin enmasse in 42 when at war. The fruits can be seen in 43, not prior.
5. Recent resource production changes hurt axis way more than allies, because allies start with all the resources. Germany doesn't hit SOVs hard enough anymore, and to balance things out, USA needs to be sending A LOT of lend lease to USSR to keep them afloat, but AI vs AI, SOVs don't need it.

Until this, human USA will always be the easiest nation to play, which sucks for me too, it's my fav nation. That being said, yeah, everything else in the game needs to be first balanced before the USA is tweaked. I want to feel useless and on my heels (in regards to USA effort to hurt axis), until mid 43.

 

[macegee]

Addition to my previous message.

Problem: Japan's target infantry division template. It starts with 12 infantry battalion template ("Type B"?), but its target template is set to standard 7+2. In my game Japan still has 4.4M manpower available, after taking over China, India and Australia (Japan is buffed tho).

Japan should continue using bigger infantry divisions (and improve them), not the standard boring 7+2, shouldn't it?

Spoiler

JAP fails to remotely be close to historic (even with max sliders), because it fails to acquire enough resources. Resources should be Japan's #1 priority.

Funny you should say that, in my game, completely buffed Japan took Oz and India and also defeated China. So its resources are OK:

Spoiler

So, at least something is OK... after the buff.

 

[Dan1109]

I'd bet it's navy is severely underpowered, prolly 6 carriers max. Jap doesn't have the oil to build lots of air and naval power and as you can see easy takings in Borneo and Sumatra are still in allies hands (and probably defended minimally). Silly for the AI to have invaded Austrailia before taking these incredibly strategic islands.

Another thing that needs to be changed in vanilla and most mods, is increasing naval and air combat bonuses with the sliders. That's another reason your level 3 carriers easily wipe the jap navy.

 

[macegee]

I'd bet it's navy is severely underpowered, prolly 6 carriers max. Jap doesn't have the oil to build lots of air and naval power and as you can see easy takings in Borneo and Sumatra are still in allies hands (and probably defended minimally). Silly for the AI to have invaded Austrailia before taking these incredibly strategic islands.

Another thing that needs to be changed in vanilla and most mods, is increasing naval and air combat bonuses with the sliders. That's another reason your level 3 carriers easily wipe the jap navy.

Yes, they had 6 flattops total. But that's not the greatest problem here. They were separated into several 1-2 CV fleets each. When I came with my 4 CV task force and started destroying IJN's smaller fleets, they should have massed their carriers in one area. Proper aircraft production and massed carriers should allow Japanese a chance to challenge other big navies. Land based aircraft on the islands should also help.

Should I even remind that, historically, IJN were the masters of carrier warfare and had more CVs, carrier planes, experienced ship crews and pilots at the beginning of WW2, compared to everyone else?

The whole air-to-surface and naval warfare should be looked at as well, but that's beside the point.

 

[Dan1109]

lets just say this - JAP human vs USA human, JAP doesn't stand a chance in 1942. USA is too op. Only way to challenge USA in SP is to weaken the USA. In large multiplayer, USA will be forced to send large LL to allies and SOV to keep them in the game, which forces USA to not be able to invest and have 4 Essex carriers ready by 1942.

Are you sending LL to the UK and SOVs? 50% of tank and 30% of aircraft production was sent to help the United Nations defeat Germany. Lots of non-capital ships (DDs, frigates, etc) also manufactured and "sold" to the UK. if required to do that, you would not have had the resources to build 4 a-historic carriers by 1942.

It just proves that the sliders are not powerful enough, to give the USA a competitive game atm.

 

[Praetori]

lets just say this - JAP human vs USA human, JAP doesn't stand a chance in 1942. USA is too op. Only way to challenge USA in SP is to weaken the USA. In large multiplayer, USA will be forced to send large LL to allies and SOV to keep them in the game, which forces USA to not be able to invest and have 4 Essex carriers ready by 1942.

Are you sending LL to the UK and SOVs? 50% of tank and 30% of aircraft production was sent to help the United Nations defeat Germany. Lots of non-capital ships (DDs, frigates, etc) also manufactured and "sold" to the UK. if required to do that, you would not have had the resources to build 4 a-historic carriers by 1942.

It just proves that the sliders are not powerful enough, to give the USA a competitive game atm.

There was basically no version of historical events that would've seen Japan come out on-top vs the US without some major spectacular battlefield victories pushing the timeline. The US is already nerfed in HOI4 for balancing reasons and it's hard to see how it could be nerfed further without becoming silly.
Then again there's the problem with hindsight. A player led US knows it will need the CTFs and thus prioritize while historically few even believed there would be a war with the US involved with any certainty and thus the grants for shipbuilding were not as generous.

I personally feel that the allied nations should be less nerfed but the systems for politics should be more put into play. Warmongering (as in building MICs and naval yards rather than CICs) should be more of a political struggle in the democracies than anything else prior to the war. With elections, NU, and party popularity there are already some mechanics that could be employed to make it a challenge but it's underutilized.

 

[Alex_brunius]

There was basically no version of historical events that would've seen Japan come out on-top vs the US without some major spectacular battlefield victories pushing the timeline. The US is already nerfed in HOI4 for balancing reasons and it's hard to see how it could be nerfed further without becoming silly.
Then again there's the problem with hindsight. A player led US knows it will need the CTFs and thus prioritize while historically few even believed there would be a war with the US involved with any certainty and thus the grants for shipbuilding were not as generous.

I personally feel that the allied nations should be less nerfed but the systems for politics should be more put into play. Warmongering (as in building MICs and naval yards rather than CICs) should be more of a political struggle in the democracies than anything else prior to the war. With elections, NU, and party popularity there are already some mechanics that could be employed to make it a challenge but it's underutilized.

I don't think anyone has any issues with USA being able to become strong enough eventually. What people is having issues with is how soon USA can become strong Navy wise.

IMHO there is two main issues for this:

1. USA can build dockyards starting in 1936 without any isolationist penalty, and they don't increase consumer goods either as MIC would, making them an obvious choice. Historically USA did not expand their shipbuilding capacity until 1938 (small +20% increase authorized), and 1940 (massive +70% increase authorized), but in the game USA can start in 1936 and by 1940 they can have 100 Dockyards completed.
2. Short ship build-times, down to 6-9 months for Fleet Carriers and Battleships, unlike the 24-36 months needed historically. Even the previous HoI games had more reasonable balance here putting the buildtimes closer to around 16-22 months.

The 1940 Carrier (Essex class) Should be possible for USA to unlock in mid 1940 and they should not start launching until mid 1942, giving Japan their 6 months to run wild they historically enjoyed.



Another issue when it comes to the Pacific war balance is that USA can unlock unhistorical amounts of manpower too early, and thus afford 50 divisions by 1941. Using just half of these still (in combination with some forts) allow USA to make the Philippines and important Pacific bases into almost impossible to take with amphibious invasions for Japan.