What's going on with the AI lately?

[0yvind]

They make nonsensical peace deals with much weaker countries, and send their armies back and forth forever or to wait around in completely unrelated places.

In my current game as Norway, my ally Sweden went to war to conquer Riga. They took out one of their two allies, Verden, and then, instead of going south to take out the last ally Rothenburg, they, for whatever reason, went north. To Trøndelag. With 21k troops. And stayed there, leaving me to siege Riga alone:



I predicted the next outcome correctly: after I successfully occupied Riga and before I could get Rothenburg (again, alone) Sweden would peace out for monetary repairs and not go for full annexation. And they did:



Earlier in the same game I witnessed Scotland losing to Mann, because all they did was stand on their own shores and not invade with their 12k troops. Mann had 4k. I'm at the point where I try to help the AI by using the console to play as them, so they make sensical peace-deals and actually move during wars. But as soon as I go back to the country I'm supposed to play as as they revert back to idiocy. In the case of Scotland vs Mann, I made their boats stop blockading Mann for a short while to transport their armies - but that left Scotland at -25% warscore for a few days (since it had built up over the years), and Scotland immediately surrendered and gave away Inner Hebrides to Mann:



I had to micromanage their war so much, that I had to tag back and forth every day (because if I played as Scotland for more than a day, Norway's AI would delete troops, turn down all their maintenance and debase their currency even if it wasn't necessary). In the end I managed to make them win against Mann though, but it required a lot of work.

When me and Sweden declared independence from Denmark, Sweden sent their whole army north to occupy Kola, leaving me alone to defend their borders against 20k danes & their allies in south Sweden with my 17k troops:



At some point they came back south, but not to help me (or themselves), no. They went to occupy one of Denmark's Baltic provinces before talking a stroll into Poland. I figured they planned to walk all the way around to the south of Denmark, but no. Frustrated, I took over their controls to see what their plan was: it appears they wanted to take a holiday in Ostróda, Poland:



I tried to order their armies to move back to Sweden to assist me, but as soon as I stopped playing as Sweden they went back to hang around in Poland.

Lastly, here's from a previous game, where nobody was really doing any expanding, and even Byzantium still existed in 1484:



It was kind of refreshing, but also felt like a bug.

Now, some of these things, like the peace-deals have been reported as a bug, but I don't know about the AI army movement. This is mostly me just venting my frustrations really and wondering if anyone else as struggling with the same things. It's kinda terrible that I have to micromanage every country to make them do logical things. I don't know, I just feel like they were smarter before.

 

[adin85]

In my case AI of PU or Vassals have problems what to do. I give them Siege missions and they dont do nothing. France attacked Burgundy and I helped. Burgundy army is somewhere in Circasia. My Vassals are defending my provinces. I will come back to play my Ottomans campaign. I dont need any vassal swarm.

 

[grandadmiralbob]

One thing I've noticed, and have noticed for a while is AI ally cohesion. As soon as my units are locked into attacking the AI, they all join in. This is a good thing most of the time. What I don't like, is vassals and AI allies running away when I get attacked. I can understand if I'm going to lose, but they do it EVERY time.

 

[0yvind]

One thing I've noticed, and have noticed for a while is AI ally cohesion. As soon as my units are locked into attacking the AI, they all join in. This is a good thing most of the time. What I don't like, is vassals and AI allies running away when I get attacked. I can understand if I'm going to lose, but they do it EVERY time.

I've noticed this too. It almost seems like AI intelligence is higher for enemies than allies.

 

[Ziul]

Hello there playing a Portugal game atm and i feel the same often.

France IA 143k doomstack on an ennemy mountain fort taking 5% attrition

France sending 70k troops in their one and only africa province to kill 5k rebels then stay locked there during war against Spain

France IA 50k stack locked to the "i go i don't go" move for months because of a 6k rebel stack on a province on their march to Prussia

France IA 60k vs Spain IA 50k doing the "i go i don't go" dance for months

Spain IA sending 40k troops in south africa during a war against me and lock them there

Colonies are not smarts, can"t defend themself against other minor colonies (i tend to not tell them to declare war since i saw that), can't siege properly, can't play together (got 4 huges colonies who got money, power, armies ...)



The IA is really pushy on this patch ...

 

[Word_Smith]

I, for one, am shocked that the AI in a Paradox title would perform so inadequately.

 

[adin85]

I played Extended Mod. Enemy had twice army and attack me. It was white peace, because nobody do nothing.

 

[romothecus]

I, for one, am shocked that the AI in a Paradox title would perform so inadequately.

Jokes aside, 1.33 really broke stuff. The AI is insanely scared of fighting battles now and almost never joins in. Wars, even large wars, become nothing but siege races by both sides. Watching a streamer the other day, Religious League war concluded after decades with 1 major battle so like 30k battle deaths, and literal stack overflow of attrition deaths from sieges (like -50000 attrition deaths on one side and 500k on the other).

1.33 was a pretty bad disaster. Not quite Leviathan bad, but really bad.

 

[vitek69]

Hello there playing a Portugal game atm and i feel the same often.

France IA 143k doomstack on an ennemy mountain fort taking 5% attrition

France sending 70k troops in their one and only africa province to kill 5k rebels then stay locked there during war against Spain

(…)

Spain IA sending 40k troops in south africa during a war against me and lock them there

(…)

I feel like this has been in the game for some time. On 1.32.x I had a ‘fun’ war as Byz against Spain that had 2.5 times bigger army but decided to park 85k troops on Malta.

On the subject of peace deals, I noticed the weird behavior too. In a Bohemia game I saw Poland reduce Teutons to an OPM and then launch 3 conquest wars that always end in reparations instead of taking the dang last province.

 

[Idle America]

One thing I've noticed, and have noticed for a while is AI ally cohesion. As soon as my units are locked into attacking the AI, they all join in. This is a good thing most of the time. What I don't like, is vassals and AI allies running away when I get attacked. I can understand if I'm going to lose, but they do it EVERY time.

I can't tell you how many times a war was lost because my allies didn't want to move one tile over to help me crush the enemy.

 

[CthulhuTactical]

Nonsense peace deals are because of hitting governing capacity. I see that in my game where france blobbed very hard and repeatedly DOW liege, after three wars they still havent annexed them despite having necessary warscore.

 

[Beagá]

I feel like this has been in the game for some time. On 1.32.x I had a ‘fun’ war as Byz against Spain that had 2.5 times bigger army but decided to park 85k troops on Malta.

On the subject of peace deals, I noticed the weird behavior too. In a Bohemia game I saw Poland reduce Teutons to an OPM and then launch 3 conquest wars that always end in reparations instead of taking the dang last province.

Polish are drunk. Good to see more people having this issue so it gets fixed faster

 

[Atomcreator]

Nonsense peace deals are because of hitting governing capacity. I see that in my game where france blobbed very hard and repeatedly DOW liege, after three wars they still havent annexed them despite having necessary warscore.

Yes I've seen this too.

 

[The_Boominator]

I'm noticing the AI doing increasingly peculiar things. In my last game, Landshut (ally) did not move its armies once in 30 years despite being involved in several wars. It just left 4k troops in individual stacks (with two stacks of 1k on its capital) and did not move them at all. The enemy consistently ignored them and they ignored the enemy.

Also, Austria keeps calling me into useless wars in which I have no interest and it requires no assistance. In the past, it seemed like the AI would evaluate whether it needed to call players into wars and it also treated the players' willingness to call the player into the war as though the player were an AI. However, just yesterday Austria called me into a war against Ragusa and Bosnia while I was in my sixth year of a death-struggle against Poland. An AI never would have joined that war given my war exhaustion, distance from enemies, and involvement in my own offensive war, but Austria is an ******** I guess.

Edit: It seems like the AI of allies is way more timid and generally stupid than the AI of enemies. Might make sense for balance, but it's really annoying if that's the case.

 

[0yvind]

Nonsense peace deals are because of hitting governing capacity. I see that in my game where france blobbed very hard and repeatedly DOW liege, after three wars they still havent annexed them despite having necessary warscore.

That might be the case sometimes, but not in my examples. Sweden had barely used 1/4th of their governing capacity (this was their first attempt at expanding after independence). In this case it's got more to do with a bug where AI always accept peace from an OPM if they offer max money and war reps. This always happens if there is still another war ally on the enemy's team, because the AI will not accept annexation before 99% warscore, but will offer that "sweet" money long before that score, which the attacking AI will accept because it cannot think ahead.

I'm literally using console commands to play basically every participator in the wars I'm in now so they don't act stupid. Currently I'm in a winning war against a lot of powerful nations, but I'm not the war leader, so I have to constantly send all the other nations diplomats on useless far away missions so they don't peace out over nothing. The war leader should be smart enough to know we're gonna win big, and have a lot to gain from it, but he's not, so he constantly makes a shitty peace deal when we're at 50% warscore.



...oh, and Poland, another ally of me, thought this would be the time to attack one of HRE's provinces, which basically puts him *alone* against half the world due to Austrias many allies. No doubt he'll ask me to commit suicide with him soon enough. He is a calm ruler, which supposedly would make him less likely to do something so erratic, but I think he's actually an insane Joker.



...so now I'm telling his diplomats to take long vacations as well. I hope this is fixed as soon as possible.

 

[Nostalgium]

He is a calm ruler, which supposedly would make him less likely to do something so erratic,

Calm rulers are less likely to declare war in general; they're not less likely to declare insane ones when they do.

 

[Vohen]

Religious League war concluded after decades

I guess you could say it was a lifetime of war.

 

[Quintillus]

I have observed some unusual behavior in 1.33 compared to previous versions. Although the AI making questionable decisions in northern Scandinavia has been the case for a while.

Item A: The Ottomans being scared of the Swiss. Ottomans declare on Switzerland (they'd already moved into Austria and northern Italy/Venezia). But they leave their entire army in eastern Anatolia and North Africa. The Swiss and their French allies march in and take most of Ottoman Europe before the Ottomans move a paltry force in to try to counter them. Ottomans peace out giving the Swiss land without every really trying to counter them, despite 350K+ army and 100K+ manpower.

They did DOW the Mamluks shortly after that so maybe that was why they kept the troops there... but why DOW the Swiss if they weren't even going to fight them?

Item B: Manchu has cores on most of Manchuria. But as often as not, when they peace out someone whose land is entirely Manchu cores, they make them a tributary instead of taking the land like their Reconquest CB would suggest.

----

I've also noticed QQ being very passive with their armies. But in their case, it actually sort of makes sense. I try to lure them into a trap (invading the steppe), they don't fall for it, they have strong defenses and mountains. In their case, it works better than what the AI would have done in the past, and they will eventually round up their armies and take the battle to me.

The Commonwealth has also acted quite normally, invading my lands after declaring war and generally reminding me why they're a Great Power.

Allies, it depends. Ayutthaya has been a great help against Bengal. They preferred to crush my rebels for me instead of fighting the Commonwealth in that war. It's hard to blame them, they'd have had to walk all the way across Asia, and wouldn't have stood much of a chance even if they did so. A human player probably would have done about the same.

 

[Mirochi]

Since the release of 1.33, I always see that NPCs are building up unnecessarily large armies and too many forts. This is why most of them end up economically broken sooner or later. In my lastest play as Ottomans, Russia hated Poland to its guts but refused to join my wars against Poland. Because, it had several thousands of debt. Even if NPCs have a large manpower pool/recovery rate, they just keep raising armies or hiring mercenaries. Even if I play Ottomans (who have good recovery rate), my manpower pool gets drained after 2-3 years of war.

I have also been frequently observing the doomstacking in sieges, similarly mentioned in previous messages. Even if ~30k army is needed for the siege, NPCs just send ~100k troops to forts. Isn't this situation an overkill?

 

[vitek69]

Since the release of 1.33, I always see that NPCs are building up unnecessarily large armies and too many forts. This is why most of them end up economically broken sooner or later. In my lastest play as Ottomans, Russia hated Poland to its guts but refused to join my wars against Poland. Because, it had several thousands of debt. Even if NPCs have a large manpower pool/recovery rate, they just keep raising armies or hiring mercenaries. Even if I play Ottomans (who have good recovery rate), my manpower pool gets drained after 2-3 years of war.

I have also been frequently observing the doomstacking in sieges, similarly mentioned in previous messages. Even if ~30k army is needed for the siege, NPCs just send ~100k troops to forts. Isn't this situation an overkill?

Yeahh the AI loves racking up debt like it’s a present-day government