Weird German AI, Historical AI On, No Mods

[Demonthese]

I'm posting this in the more general forum since I don't really think this counts as a bug. Has anyone else seen weird AI behavior from Germany lately? I've tried twice in a row now to get a Soviet Union game going but the German AI just completely falls on its face. It will do Danzig or War, not receive Danzig, and then just do Around the Maginot and stall out. It doesn't invade Poland at all, the war goal even goes away, and it gets stopped in the Belgium/Luxembourg/Netherlands. In the first one I let it run into the beginning of 41 and Italy had managed to take maybe half a dozen tiles before stalling out while the German AI just bashed its head against the Maginot. It had declared war against Belgium/Netherlands but wasn't even attempting to take it. I quit the second game earlier but it declared on Luxembourg in August 39 but then didn't declare on Belgium/Netherlands until the end of April/beginning of March 40. At least this time they are attacking Belgium/Netherlands.

Even if I sat on 5 speed without pausing that is still a lot of time wasted which really sucks. Honestly given how important it is for gameplay that tries to be more historical I'm surprised the historical German AI is even capable of choosing not to invade Poland given the chance.

 

[sekelsenmat]

I think it has a hard-coded timer, like 1 month or 2, that it just sits there without invading the Low Countries. I think they did it to simulate the "Phoney War" period. It is ok, just wait more.

But vs Poland it indeed should always suceed quickly.

I also had trouble playing as the Soviets, because Germany is too weak and couldn't challange me, even if I kept 10 tank divisions sitting in Moscow doing nothing, the rest was strong enough to defeat them easily.

Maybe try playing on Veteran? I don't like doing the buffs, but you could add buff levels to Germany. Right now I am trying to always play on Veteran. I prefer my country weaker then the AI getting arbitrary bonuses. But I'm not sure it is enough to make an Allies game challenging.

In a recent Italy game it happened to me that Germany couldn't take Belgium. It was trying, but it's units were too weak. I think Germany's AI problem now is too few Tank divisions. Another issue is that it was falling behind the focuses schedule because it had no enough manpower deployed to do Anschluss.

Try using intel to see how Germany is progressing in Tank div count and also focuses. So you can restart in 38 if it is doing too bad.

 

[Kryndude]

There are many reports of this happening after 1.9.3. Try using EAI since it helps the AI fulfill the deployed manpower requirement for NFs.

 

[sekelsenmat]

There are many reports of this happening after 1.9.3. Try using EAI since it helps the AI fulfill the deployed manpower requirement for NFs.

In my case it happened in 1.9.2

 

[Demonthese]

I think it has a hard-coded timer, like 1 month or 2, that it just sits there without invading the Low Countries. I think they did it to simulate the "Phoney War" period. It is ok, just wait more.

But vs Poland it indeed should always suceed quickly.

I also had trouble playing as the Soviets, because Germany is too weak and couldn't challange me, even if I kept 10 tank divisions sitting in Moscow doing nothing, the rest was strong enough to defeat them easily.

Maybe try playing on Veteran? I don't like doing the buffs, but you could add buff levels to Germany. Right now I am trying to always play on Veteran. I prefer my country weaker then the AI getting arbitrary bonuses. But I'm not sure it is enough to make an Allies game challenging.

In a recent Italy game it happened to me that Germany couldn't take Belgium. It was trying, but it's units were too weak. I think Germany's AI problem now is too few Tank divisions. Another issue is that it was falling behind the focuses schedule because it had no enough manpower deployed to do Anschluss.

Try using intel to see how Germany is progressing in Tank div count and also focuses. So you can restart in 38 if it is doing too bad.

The problem isn't that it couldn't take Poland it's that it didn't even try. Unfortunately I didn't get to see what the German divisions were like because I was doing Ironman.

There are many reports of this happening after 1.9.3. Try using EAI since it helps the AI fulfill the deployed manpower requirement for NFs.

It did all the focuses it just didn't declare war on Poland for some reason.


Even more strange was I then decided to try a quick game as someone other than the Soviets (ended up picking Canada) and the German AI performed perfectly. Took Poland, stomped France, though this was partially because France had no units on the Belgian border, and did well against the Soviets up until mid 43. Though hardly a representative sample maybe the AI changes some of its decisions when the player controls certain countries or weighs Soviet strength when deciding to invade Poland, with a player USSR being stronger leading to a different result.

 

[KubiG37]

You’re certainly not the first person complaining about Germany not attacking Poland.

My theories on this:
1) In patch 1.9 they have changed one seemingly insignifact value in the defines, one that tells the ai required % of equipment to deploy new units during peace (they‘ve raised it from 95 to 100%). It seems fine, but it often leads to a situation where Ai has dozens of divisions trained to 99%, but unable to deploy them, because they lack 10 artillery pieces or something. This can last for months. It’s random, but I’ve seen Germany being unable to take focuses, or having very small army leading it to think it’s too weak and thus not attacking

2) Being stuck in Netherlands... Again in 1.9 the devs tried to force AI to place its tank divisions on Netherlands and Belgium border, instead of Maginot where they would just sit and do nothing. And they avoid Luxembourg. But it’s sometimes causing some weird issue where it breaks the AI frontline management and It fails to assign ANY units to Neth./Belgium. The AI completely stalls and units have no orders or generals assigned, at least for some time. In 1939 start it happens maybe 1 out of 3 times. Perhaps that’s what you’re seeing? It can be fixed by saving and reloading the game however.

BTW you can try my Improved AI Research mod, it fixes these exact 2 issues. EAI fixes it as well, I really believe that the equipment define is involved.

 

[Ringers]

This is happening for me as well. Playing as Italy and Germany can't attack the low lands or France, it basically sits around and does nothing apart from the odd division to Italy when I attack. It makes for a very boring game.