What is needed to get an ally to attach to you?

[bbqftw]

@Chaingun @Gnivom (i don't remember new AI guy)

This comes up very often in classic player + Mamluk vs Ottoman war

Ottomans due to compact land will behave relatively competently, meanwhile Mamluks will go full retard.

I can spam all the objectives and attachabilities I want. No success - the critical stacks needed to win the war do not attach. Meanwhile they do things like straight up feed warscore due to sieging isolated forts that are impossible to reinforce while leaderless, etc.

I get you don't want allies acting as purely controlled by the player, but things like 20k exiled because they don't realize all their transports died / sending 23k to desiege two unforted provinces in libya is just silly.

I'll be honest, if you just tell us the objective system does nothing I'd be more happy than the current situation.

 

[FleetingRain]

All the saves wasted by trying to defeat Ottomans with AI help make me interested in this thread.

 

[bbqftw]

I've never gotten a headache playing eu4 but dealing with the horrors of the mamluk AI is brain-meltingly terrible


I suspect it must be something with the AI not being able to understand quality differentials so you end up with awful things consistently happening

 

[Sfan]

Same here. I managed to lose a war as Karaman+Mamluks against Ottomans with 50k vs 30k. That's insane. Mamluks literally never grouped their stacks. They had one sieging Izmir and one sieging Ankara at best, and every time a battle started they abandoned the siege, despite me having split my army in 1k unit with attached in provinces near Ankara. The Izmir army would just not move despite all my efforts, and when it did to reinforce a battle it never was there in time, and simply went back to Izmir after battle. That of course, is before they decided to send one of their armies home for no reason and it only came back a year later. I don't understand how Mamluks sometimes win AI vs AI, the relative size of countries makes it that there is a chokepoint in Ankara which the Ottomans can exploit.

 

[atwix]

@Chaingun @Gnivom (i don't remember new AI guy)

This comes up very often in classic player + Mamluk vs Ottoman war

Ottomans due to compact land will behave relatively competently, meanwhile Mamluks will go full retard.

I can spam all the objectives and attachabilities I want. No success - the critical stacks needed to win the war do not attach. Meanwhile they do things like straight up feed warscore due to sieging isolated forts that are impossible to reinforce while leaderless, etc.

I get you don't want allies acting as purely controlled by the player, but things like 20k exiled because they don't realize all their transports died / sending 23k to desiege two unforted provinces in libya is just silly.

I'll be honest, if you just tell us the objective system does nothing I'd be more happy than the current situation.

basic rule of thumb: allies ONLY attach if following conditions are met.

1. The total unit weight of puppeteering stack (manoeuver on geeral included) and the stack you are tryig to atach cannot exceed province supply limit, or they will NEVER attach.

2. they will only attach on neutral occupied or owned terrain from nations. in enemy terrain its unreliable.

3. you make them attach by ressetting their movement command. you click attach to army, detach, and "atttach to me" button on and off.

4. once they are attached they will only ever detach if their TARGET province doesn't have the supply limit to 'feed' the unit weight. they will flee attrition then on arrival, unless its fort they want to siege with you (still best to lead puppeteered stacks to forts with biggest supply limit)

5. attached stacks can be sent from ming to france, and along the way they will usually never detach due to atrition (unless see point 6)


6. puppeteer stack must be bigger then average enemy stack divided by 10, to avoid stackwipes when leading them (leadig unit arrivés day earlier then attached army)

7. only rebels, occupations or fort besieged in allies will make them detach.


.... but sometimes it goes bonkers and ai just never listens anymore.

there's that.

 

[bbqftw]

That is helpful, thanks.

6. puppeteer stack must be bigger then average eenemy stack times 20, to avoid stackwipes when leading them (leadig unit arrivés day earlier then attached army)

You know what is hilarious is this has happened multiple times on Jake's stream and yet this clearly was not marked as anything necessary to fix. Much like other QoL issues...

 

[Chaingun]

Editing attachment behavior is a possibility. I get QA doesn't like it because it's basically messing around with logic that can break or become worse, but there's probably quite a lot of potential upside compared to downside at the moment. ;-)

First, if you have very specific examples when in your opinion the AI should do something (to you obvious) caught as saves then upload.

Even without saves, we can probably discuss attachment conditions. I don't have access to code until mid-week though.

 

[bradles0]

Best way to force attachment is to vassalize the person who's armies you want, and then make them loyal and set them on supportive. Then they will always attach even with attrition!

edit: two people don't get jokes q.q

 

[bbqftw]

Best way to force attachment is to vassalize the person who's armies you want, and then make them loyal and set them on supportive. Then they will always attach even with attrition!

HAHAHAHAHAH

that's a funny joke

 

[atwix]

You know what is hilarious is this has happened multiple times on Jake's stream and yet this clearly was not marked as anything necessary to fix. Much like other QoL issues...

edited, has to be

6. puppeteer stack must be bigger then average enemy stack divided by 10, to avoid stackwipes when leading them (leadig unit arrivés day earlier then attached army)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Editing attachment behavior is a possibility. I get QA doesn't like it because it's basically messing around with logic that can break or become worse, but there's probably quite a lot of potential upside compared to downside at the moment. ;-)

First, if you have very specific examples when in your opinion the AI should do something (to you obvious) caught as saves then upload.

Even without saves, we can probably discuss attachment conditions. I don't have access to code until mid-week though.

To what extent is stratifying how subjects attach vs allies on the table? I would like to see supportive subjects nearly never disobey this command (assuming they're loyal), but doing that for allies would be pretty iffy.

 

[Chaingun]

To what extent is stratifying how subjects attach vs allies on the table? I would like to see supportive subjects nearly never disobey this command (assuming they're loyal), but doing that for allies would be pretty iffy.

Will look it into.

I did note the massive thread from bbqftw on subjects btw (just wish I had the link again, lost it)

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Will look it into.

I did note the massive thread from bbqftw on subjects btw (just wish I had the link again, lost it)

Yeah I remember that, in this case when it comes to the attach command it's a bit different question though because we're talking altering conditions to what would be good to interact without allowing flagrant ally abuse.

Ideally the way they work will be discernable to new players also (mouse-over description on attach command?). Same for objectives, probably subjects should be sieging any targeted province in order of closest before sieging anything else (attach command given priority over objectives, for control wrt subjects), while allies would only listen to siege objectives all other things being equal.

For me the hardest gameplay question to answer is how allies interact with the attach command. Player can micro them to victory and all the occupations if it's too faithful to it, but losing on random dives into enemy territory by allies is frustrating.

 

[Chaingun]

I've never gotten a headache playing eu4 but dealing with the horrors of the mamluk AI is brain-meltingly terrible


I suspect it must be something with the AI not being able to understand quality differentials so you end up with awful things consistently happening

I don't rule out there's a problem with strength calculations - going to need some hint about which attribute is insufficiently considered, though.

 

[bly08]

basic rule of thumb: allies ONLY attach if following conditions are met.

1. The total unit weight of puppeteering stack (manoeuver on geeral included) and the stack you are tryig to atach cannot exceed province supply limit, or they will NEVER attach.

2. they will only attach on neutral occupied or owned terrain from nations. in enemy terrain its unreliable.

3. you make them attach by ressetting their movement command. you click attach to army, detach, and "atttach to me" button on and off.

4. once they are attached they will only ever detach if their TARGET province doesn't have the supply limit to 'feed' the unit weight. they will flee attrition then on arrival, unless its fort they want to siege with you (still best to lead puppeteered stacks to forts with biggest supply limit)

5. attached stacks can be sent from ming to france, and along the way they will usually never detach due to atrition (unless see point 6)


6. puppeteer stack must be bigger then average enemy stack divided by 10, to avoid stackwipes when leading them (leadig unit arrivés day earlier then attached army)

7. only rebels, occupations or fort besieged in allies will make them detach.


.... but sometimes it goes bonkers and ai just never listens anymore.

there's that.

Thanks, very helpful. I've also found that stronger allies tend to attach less often and detach more often than weak allies, same sized stacks.