While warfare in EUIV is usually very engaging and 99% of the time not micro-intensive enough to merit a HOI level of AI assistance, there are a few situations I run into in many wars that I feel are tedious enough to deserve automation. Here are a few orders I feel could be reduced to a single button or submenu on the UI.
Chase down enemy army
Since most often we don't know the enemy's final destination when their army begins a shattered retreat, the player is often posed a dilemma by victory. Do I let them go, allowing them to recover and potentially come at me again, stronger? Or do I chase them down and go for the stack-wipe? From a strategic point of view, this is barely even a choice. Unless the player believes there could be another death stack in the fog of war, the manpower drain from casualties of another large battle will almost always be more than the attrition of pursuit (Supply system please?). But, to be frank, pursuit is boring. You can't predict the enemy's destination, so you have to drop to speed 2 with frequent pauses and multitask chasing down the enemy with spreading out and dropping sieges. Nothing quite brings down the triumphant feeling of winning a large battle than having to significantly slow the game down in order to chase down the enemy army, giving orders one province at a time. Sometimes you can guess where an enemy is going, but if you're fighting a great power or a large coalition that army could be going to any one of a dozen provinces across the continent.
This automated order would simply pursue a selected enemy army. Presumably, the player would activate it after winning a large battle. Their army would immediately start marching (force march if the player activates it) in the same direction as the enemy army. Upon reaching the next province, the army would continue marching along with its enemy until the enemy reaches its destination and is engaged, or vanishes into the Fog of War. Since Shattered Retreat gives a speed bonus, it's possible for the enemy army to have already entered the next province before the chasing army catches up. In this case, the chasing army should halt and return to manual control. Entering a battle with an army except the chased one should not interrupt the order, unless the battle is long enough for the enemy army to vanish into the FoW.
A more general version of this order would include the ability to chase non-shattered retreating armies.
On the other end of the spectrum, another order could be
Evade attacks
We've all experienced the AIs' infuriating ability to run away from our doomstacks with tiny armies. They can do this because the AI always knows the exact movement time between each province*, whereas the player would have to issue orders to march to every single province to compare times, something few have the patience for. This order, generally, would command a small army to try and avoid entering battle when under pursuit. I can see a few possible implementations:
1) The less useful but easier and less computationally intensive implementation would have the army simply always select the neighboring province with the shortest movement time.
2) The more useful but more difficult and intensive implementation would have the army try to plan paths ahead of time, avoiding the death scenario (where the smaller army has entered by the shortest path out of the province and will therefore be caught before it can escape this province) for the longest possible time.
3) The even more useful but even more difficult and even more computationally intensive would include the concept of Safe Paths to Safe Havens. A safe path is any path through a set of provinces where travel times between provinces are strictly decreasing. A safe haven is a location with any of the following: a friendly army to which to attach, a friendly navy that can pull a Dunkirk, a mountain range to hide in, a straight crossing that an ally has blocked, etc. In this implementation, an the army will, instead of trying to escape forever, try to permanently escape destruction by finding a safe path to a safe haven. The player could be prompted for a desired destination with a list of places that can be reached by a safe path and include one of the above factors of safety.
*As an aside, a mapmode with this information would be extremely useful as well, whether or not any of these automation features is ever implemented.
Auto-Loot
This order would cause a stack to move into enemy territory, avoid enemy's stacks (using the simplest implementation of the above evasion command if it is chased) and try to loot as much money from the enemy's provinces per unit of time that it can.
Carpet
Giving this order would split the army up into individual regiments named [Old Army's Name]'s Xth Regiment and issue movement orders such that the enemy as covered as possible (useful after a stackwipe as placing even a single regiment on an enemy province will prevent recruitment). If the enemy has fewer provinces than this army has regiments, some of the split armies created will be given the excess regiments such that as many sieges progress as possible.
Carpet Siege
Giving this order would split an army up into sub armies named [Old Army's Name]'s Xth Siege Stack and issue movement orders such that as many enemy provinces are under progressing sieges as possible.
Reform Army
Giving this order to any of the aforementioned split stacks will essentially undo the previous two orders, commanding the split off siege stacks to move to a single province with sufficient supply limit and merge them together.
Chase down enemy army
Since most often we don't know the enemy's final destination when their army begins a shattered retreat, the player is often posed a dilemma by victory. Do I let them go, allowing them to recover and potentially come at me again, stronger? Or do I chase them down and go for the stack-wipe? From a strategic point of view, this is barely even a choice. Unless the player believes there could be another death stack in the fog of war, the manpower drain from casualties of another large battle will almost always be more than the attrition of pursuit (Supply system please?). But, to be frank, pursuit is boring. You can't predict the enemy's destination, so you have to drop to speed 2 with frequent pauses and multitask chasing down the enemy with spreading out and dropping sieges. Nothing quite brings down the triumphant feeling of winning a large battle than having to significantly slow the game down in order to chase down the enemy army, giving orders one province at a time. Sometimes you can guess where an enemy is going, but if you're fighting a great power or a large coalition that army could be going to any one of a dozen provinces across the continent.
This automated order would simply pursue a selected enemy army. Presumably, the player would activate it after winning a large battle. Their army would immediately start marching (force march if the player activates it) in the same direction as the enemy army. Upon reaching the next province, the army would continue marching along with its enemy until the enemy reaches its destination and is engaged, or vanishes into the Fog of War. Since Shattered Retreat gives a speed bonus, it's possible for the enemy army to have already entered the next province before the chasing army catches up. In this case, the chasing army should halt and return to manual control. Entering a battle with an army except the chased one should not interrupt the order, unless the battle is long enough for the enemy army to vanish into the FoW.
A more general version of this order would include the ability to chase non-shattered retreating armies.
On the other end of the spectrum, another order could be
Evade attacks
We've all experienced the AIs' infuriating ability to run away from our doomstacks with tiny armies. They can do this because the AI always knows the exact movement time between each province*, whereas the player would have to issue orders to march to every single province to compare times, something few have the patience for. This order, generally, would command a small army to try and avoid entering battle when under pursuit. I can see a few possible implementations:
1) The less useful but easier and less computationally intensive implementation would have the army simply always select the neighboring province with the shortest movement time.
2) The more useful but more difficult and intensive implementation would have the army try to plan paths ahead of time, avoiding the death scenario (where the smaller army has entered by the shortest path out of the province and will therefore be caught before it can escape this province) for the longest possible time.
3) The even more useful but even more difficult and even more computationally intensive would include the concept of Safe Paths to Safe Havens. A safe path is any path through a set of provinces where travel times between provinces are strictly decreasing. A safe haven is a location with any of the following: a friendly army to which to attach, a friendly navy that can pull a Dunkirk, a mountain range to hide in, a straight crossing that an ally has blocked, etc. In this implementation, an the army will, instead of trying to escape forever, try to permanently escape destruction by finding a safe path to a safe haven. The player could be prompted for a desired destination with a list of places that can be reached by a safe path and include one of the above factors of safety.
*As an aside, a mapmode with this information would be extremely useful as well, whether or not any of these automation features is ever implemented.
Auto-Loot
This order would cause a stack to move into enemy territory, avoid enemy's stacks (using the simplest implementation of the above evasion command if it is chased) and try to loot as much money from the enemy's provinces per unit of time that it can.
Carpet
Giving this order would split the army up into individual regiments named [Old Army's Name]'s Xth Regiment and issue movement orders such that the enemy as covered as possible (useful after a stackwipe as placing even a single regiment on an enemy province will prevent recruitment). If the enemy has fewer provinces than this army has regiments, some of the split armies created will be given the excess regiments such that as many sieges progress as possible.
Carpet Siege
Giving this order would split an army up into sub armies named [Old Army's Name]'s Xth Siege Stack and issue movement orders such that as many enemy provinces are under progressing sieges as possible.
Reform Army
Giving this order to any of the aforementioned split stacks will essentially undo the previous two orders, commanding the split off siege stacks to move to a single province with sufficient supply limit and merge them together.
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