Why I want to yeet the AI into the sun(with lots of screenshots)

[Magnificent Genius]

Well, I finished getting Bevrijding just now, and I have lots of thoughts bout the AI. Aside from the Soviet's first PP purchase being Service by Requirement instead of literally anything else, lets start in media res.

Everything went perfectly according to plan until I actually had to take back the Netherlands, then I start seeing things like this:

Spoiler: Boating Accidents

So many Allied Divisions on boats, no where near the frontlines. Ok. Still, the Germans are on All Adults Serve, so eventually they'll run out of equipment.

They did, btw, but meanwhile, in the United Kingdom...

Spoiler: The Desolation of England

Well, what do you know, the United Kingdom has failed to defend both the Suez *and* its homeland. Well, that is fine, the Axis Navy is practically non-existent so they would need massive air supremacy to naval invade, and there is no way they would be able to beat the combined airpower of the US and UK, right?

Thankfully, no, but why don't take a peek at the RAF's OOB:

Spoiler: Lots of planes without pilots

That is a lot of planes doing nothing. Except taking up space on airfields, but look, the Allies have landed everywhere, so the end must be near, correct?

Alas, no. Because of two things, frontline shuffling led to the Allies putting units on boats to go between one beachhead and another, having them completely lose all progress one one front to make progress on another, and of course...

Spoiler: Poor Starving Men

Hundreds of divisions completely incapable of doing anything because they have no supplies.

I love this game. It's my favorite Paradox game. Seriously though, something needs to be done about this, it can't continue.

Also, as a bonus, look at how well/badly the Soviets are doing with Germany on the ropes.

Spoiler: Are we Winning?

It's entirely possible that they my have ended up losing to the Germans before the Axis lost to the Allies just based on their awful performance in the south

 

[Jays298]

It drives me crazy at how immersive the game's programming can be until there comes the simple matter of use of troops.

Which boils down to, let's stack massive amounts of troops on front lines but never attack, just let them sit there and die of attrition, and prevent an actual offensive from taking place because the spearhead can't get full supply. Meanwhile their home states are not garrisonsed properly

It's even worse for the German player IMO because the Axis minors will crowd the lines to the point of attrition and supply failures. To the point where I'd have to pull my own infantry back to German soil somewhat. And then make garrisons for any coastal territory of any AI ally.

And don't even get me started on faction members joining wars when they are more of a liability. Finland is the only AI that seems hesitant to join. Everybody else jumps right in, especially Italy.

Unfortunately I feel like when the AI works it is by accident rather than grand strategy or tactics.

I think someone else said that everything looks right until you realize it's two badly played AIs against each other.

I think the template system is at fault too because it's too expensive to fix a bad template whether for creating a one or two batallion division for garrisons, or making improved offensive divisions or simply using new equipment.

Human players basically game the system with templates and experience points. And the AI will never get the points it needs to have the right templates before the war.

Also at least in my experience giving orders, AI doesn't like to move troops via ship. It took 40 days to move Germans from China to Poland. The entire "chinese-German war" (due to Japan being a German puppet) was a case of massive numbers of troops flowing back and forth over middle of no where in Russia.

 

[sekelsenmat]

To be fair, the massive front-shuffling happens sometimes, I think it is some specific case misshandled in programming. I've seen it reproduce 100% when I did a naval invasion in France, but it didn't reshuffle immediately, after some time, and the reshuffling was so bad to the point that the AI completely abandoned Romania and I had to revert to a previous save and move my own troops there to hold the entire Romanian front alone to prevent it from capitulating and ruining my game....

Lack of defense of the homeland is inexcusable, but it also happens sometimes, not sure why sometimes the ports are garrisoned and sometimes not ......

The out of supplies is also a big issue, but I wonder if the simplest alternative wouldn't be even worse: The AI refuses to move units to the front and can't defend becoming an easy push? This looks hard to solve, although a button to ban AI from entering my states would partially fix the issue.

I think that they have a backup mechanism to reshuffle all troops in some corner cases, which ideally wouldn't happen. The AI needs to set some flags to troops, like: These 24 inf are homeland defense, don't put them elsewhere .... if you need more troops for example in Egypt, move 8 from homeland defense, but keep the remaining 16 there. It shouldn't just assign the troops in Egypt for home-defense and the troops in the UK for Egypt like it seems to do now...

Maybe it is already like that, but if you have a huge front like in Russia, then a new front opens in Iran, then the Soviets will move 30% of troops to the new front, so all is fine, right? No, because instead of choosing units from the European front to move to the new front evenly spaced, like 4 from Finland, 4 from Baltics, 4 from Belarus, 8 from Ukraine part of the front, it simply takes 20 from Ukraine, so a huge hole appears in Ukraine, where there are zero troops defending, while in the Baltics it is completely staffed, and some troops will move from Finland to Ukraine to defend eventually? Maybe that's what happens?

 

[Orlunu]

I think someone else said that everything looks right until you realize it's two badly played AIs against each other.

This seems to be one of the major issues with Paradox not quite grasping how bad some of the issues are - they've indicated that they do a lot of evaluation by watching AI vs AI observer games and judging the state of things by how they go. The issue here, of course, is that a match can be close because it's between two masters, or it can be close because it's between two complete incompetents.

To be fair, the massive front-shuffling happens sometimes, I think it is some specific case misshandled in programming.

If so, it's a specific case that has been mishandled back as far as I can remember in the game's history. Which isn't impossible, I'm just saying that by this point it's little cause for hope.

 

[Jays298]

The AI cannot defend its coasts or home territory. Yet minor powers will spam invasions that just cause temporary reshuffling!

I really wish invasions were more special, or more requirements. Even a focus tree requirement to eliminate minor powers from making them. In my USA game I saw Russia and Italy both make landings. The Russians made a landing in Danzig and held it probably six months.

And how did the Brits allow Italy to make a landing in the Netherlands? I don't understand how they managed it.

But the Germans? They left the port and the nearby territory in Normandy un garrisoned. And I liberated Paris in 1941 with like one and a half armies, not optimized armies, default template mostly armies.

Of course a lot of this could be due to running the 39 scenario but to try the US I didn't really want to do nothing for years.