Why does the AI do this?

[Anastasius]

I know many of you will "respectfully" disagree,but I just can't shut up about it anymore.

Playing as a minor nation (Asturias) I rely on my alliance with Francia to protect myself from the Umayyad menace. The Saracens are afraid to declare a holy war against my small kingdom due to my scary-large ally,which is otherwise completely useless when it comes to an actual war,a war that I start against the Andalusian Sultanate. Mostly because they divide their armies,do not coordinate them properly at all,and send them into certain death against the Umayyad doom-stack,then suddenly they decide to march from León all the way up to Friesland (suddenly combining all their armies into one huge stack) to fight a band of 400 vikings who can't even siege a castle.... Deciding to return finally, they first spend a year camping in southern France (they were splitting of an army of some 230 men and combining them therefore being stuck in an endless loop of traveling from one province to another,and yet this literally went on for a year) after this small vacation of course the Emperor dies and the alliance is off. His son just decides to play a game where he gives his sister into betrothal and when asking for alliance he breaks it,this went on for a long time... And still even after the 3rd Holy war for León the AI is playing the same destructive game,meanwhile being completely self conscious when it comes to other wars just like allies of the enemy AI are when fighting ME.

Suppose you will say this is just bad luck,no this is not the first and not the last time I see the AI becoming retarded when having to help me.

Suppose you could come up with "roleplay" arguments like "well coordination between allied armies were not that good back in those times" of course but there is no talk about the coordination between me and my ally here,it's completely about HIS armies committing SUICIDE, or you could say "well your ally might not like you,so he is sacrificing good men to undermine you taking two provinces of the infidels" Even if that would make any sense,my relationship with the current emperor is 100 he is my son in law...

So yeah,basically it all comes down to : why does the AI do this?

 

[Silversweeeper]

No idea about the reasons, but I agree that the AI sometimes makes poor strategical decisions and goes off chasing raiders and peasant revolts during major wars (up to and including during crusades and other kingdom-tier wars on both the offensive and the defensive side).

 

[StarSword]

Yeah, I ended up carrying a multinational alliance against an Umayyad land-grab last night because the Frenchies were distracted, kept running up and down France instead of concentrating on Hispania. I ended up having to win TWO wars for the King of Aquitaine simultaneously, and inadvertently won a Catholic revolt for the badshah while I was at it (bloody pan-hostility stupidness, can they not freaking see the green banner over the army?). I feel like I've become the crutch character for all of Western Europe.

 

[FifthMonarchy]

You missed the one time they do bring their full force into the same province as you - when you're in the desert or up a mountain in winter so you can get all that lovely attrition. Then they wander off just as the enemy hoves into view.
Bitter, me?

 

[Anastasius]

Call it a conspiracy theory if you will but I'm starting to think the AI applies a totally different code(?) when it comes to helping the human player compared to what goes down when they are at war with the human player.

 

[Castorem]

'Cuz Paradox's AI programming skills suck. You're not the only one - we all went and are constantly going through this and there is nothing to do, just keep grinding our teeth and hope that one day Paradox will stop adding new features at the expense of fixing what has been messed up from the beginning. Don't, under any condition, rely on an ally in CK2 - otherwise you'll want to rage-quit and throw your PC out of the window. Speaking from personal experience...

 

[Dragatus]

I seriously doubt the AI would have different code for fighting humans and for fighting other AIs. But I do agree it can be awfully incompetent.

 

[Nuklearius]

#

 

[Zsrai]

In 2.5.X the AI during Holy Wars was, somehow, totally broken. Don't count on the AI helping you defend at all until it gets fixed.

 

[Less2]

Call it a conspiracy theory if you will but I'm starting to think the AI applies a totally different code(?) when it comes to helping the human player compared to what goes down when they are at war with the human player.

A less cynical way of thinking about it is that since all AIs operate under the same code they know what the other is doing at all times and can plan accordingly.

 

[Aardvark Bellay]

Reminds me of a crusade on one 2.5x patch where french armies walked down (close) to Jerusalem to fight one battle or siege one time successfully,
only to combine every army into a single doomstack and walk all back to Friesland to fight some vikings in their hundreds plundering.

The problem existed earlier on (big army leaving war area to fght some plunderers somewhere far away), but seemed to be fixed, only to reappear
and now the AI seems to combine every army of a realm first before running away. So much change. Well, what to say..

Clearly the reason must be, that the inn/hostel in Tripoli had no cable TV.

 

[Dakilla TM]

Don't be too reliant on the AI to help you in this game. I've always assumed that the AI allies won't help me fight much, so instead I just do my best to do the bulk of the fighting. For me, surviving as Asturias/Leon is pure luck. You can ally France to postpone the inevitable holy war for you, but the rest is on your own.

For me, I always attack when the enemy has rebellions. It's perfect for the Umayyads since Abd al Rahman already has 4 kids, and then add in more once he gets married and dies, you'll come across a succession crisis soon enough. Attack during these times and you'll slowly regain the peninsula. Be sure to keep an alliance with your neighbor, whether that be France/Aquatine/Middle Franica or whoever has a daughter and has a giant realm next door.

 

[Aries666]

The one that really gets me is when you declare war on a powerful blob so you keep your armies concentrated during sieging at near 100% of available supply limit. Then in rolls your ally straight onto your siege causing 15% attrition for both you and causing your palm to go straight through your face. This is promptly followed up by the enemy engaging your now depleted stack and your ally deciding he no longer wants to join up with you causing you to lose the battle badly.

Edit: hadn't read the whole thread, it appears I'm not the only person this happens to!

 

[Aries666]

Oh, the other good one is that I'm pretty sure the AI prioritises wars against the player. In my last Zun game the Abbasids declared a holy war on my, shortly afterwards they got a decadence revolt and a shia revolt for Mesopotamia. You would think facing a shattering of their empire and the complete loss of one of their strongest kingdoms that they would deal with those threats but no they sent all 30k of their troops (more than enough to win their other wars) to die of attrition in pagan Afghanistan. Needless to say after this they suffered further revolts due to the Caliph now being horribly weak resulting in a complete implosion of the empire, which simply wouldn't have happened if they had focused on their non-player defensive wars.

 

[Rubidium]

Another huge problem the AI has is a maddening inability to understand ticking war score at times. A player fighting a prolonged war would make sure to siege a holding in the target region as appropriate, in order to avoid losing to ticking war score, even if they spent the rest of the war fighting battles (especially since war score for battles is capped at 75%). I've often seen the AI just ignore the target to go chasing random stacks of troops, even as the ticking war score continues to go against them (my "favorite" recent example had me win a war with Byzantium by moving my army into one of their random provinces, waiting for them to break siege of the war goal, have my army move back into my territory so they forgot about it, and then repeating until they eventually lost on ticking war score, despite having amassed a ton of positive war score from earlier battles).