AI Difficulty make no sense

[GrimReaperHUN]

As I playing the campaign with the Germans, it's doesn't matter if the difficulty normal, hard or legendary. Just after 5-6 months war broke out, and the enemy always have (especially the British) 2-3x more BB than meg... or CA.
Also, I see no difference between historyal AI or random... bit of a chaos. After 1 year in the 1930, I completely lost because had no economy, no budget and fraction of ships... British Empire kicked my ass...

Now I'm gonna start in 1920, prepare for war with building a fleet and set a task force to the irish sea to prepare blocking the british economy...

I hope there will be an easy difficulty later on. I know, I might looks like a p**sy, but I don't want to have mindf**k just after a while in the game...

[GrimReaperHUN]

Ok, that's it, this is a joke, I give up... just TWO round after, the British Empire threaten me, the French Empire threaten me, tried to evade by paying them, made my country almost bankrupted then they again accused me doing smth... the system not working well, that's for sure... I just pressed alt+f4.

[Sinjen Blackstar]

Campaign still needs work. Maybe someone who has played the German's successfully will post some tips. Some things are not very intuitive at this point in development. Campaign polish and balancing is no doubt on their list before release.

[david26]

AI difficulty currently only changes their income. They get an income boost at higher difficulties. The events are random and still need a lot of work. Just never pick an option where you have to pay.

Playing as Aus-Hun i never struggled. It´s in my opinion the hardest nation to play. Low GDP, only 3 Ports and even the brits get pissed by palcing a fleet in my own waters.

Just build a few BC´s or BB´swith 12"-14" guns with long barrels. Make them the smallest displacement and fast. Also fit a radar if possible. Cheap and very effective.

[hashishmaria]

I would advise starting at 1890s as a first campaign. Seems easier, as there's less diverse technology and ship hulls, so there's less space to mess something up. Also AI doesn't work exactly well with the older ships, so the battles are a bit easier too. (Distance management, overwhelming one part of AI formation, while being relative safe from most powerful ships...)

[Boulderdash]

I only played the 1890 German campaign on normal difficulty. This was my setup

1. Build 18 BBs in the startup navy. 9 inch single mains and 4 inch secondaries. Speed about 23 knots.
2. Place them in the western ports. No need to cover the Baltic
3. Go as fast as possible for Mk II 9 inch
4. Go as fast as possible for Mk II 4 inch
5. Refit your original BBs
6. Go for the next Battleship hull as fast as possible.
7. Build 16 new BBs to replace. Again relative high speed is important since that will give you the choice of engagement or not.
8. I usually split them up in 4 task forces.
9. I usually then focus only on fire control tech for the accuracy bonuses and when that is on the advanced list I switch to gun mechanism for extra accuracy and reload time
10. When you notice a higher caliber gun goes to Mk II. Go for a new hull upgrade tech and build 16 news BBs.
11. Always upgrade your ports.
12. Add CLs / DDs much later to support Torpedo detection and fleet detection

As a side note: I go for a full crew training and transport ships setup. I then micro manage the technology budget, when I set it to a value where I earn about 1 million per month. In peacetime you usually can increase the technology by one percent per month and keep the 1 million per month surplus. It is possible to have 100% tech before the war starts but usually it will be just before 100%.

[GrimReaperHUN]

Originally posted by Boulderdash:

I only played the 1890 German campaign on normal difficulty.

Thanks, and for everyone as well. I will try this set-up, I just started in 1920 because the curiosity, but playing the Germans is one of the hardest nation. I have the British nearby with MUCH better economy and larger fleets in that era. Not to speak about the french when they sending smaller task forces to harrass my convoys.

[Lakel]

Originally posted by GrimReaperHUN:

Originally posted by Boulderdash:

I only played the 1890 German campaign on normal difficulty.

Thanks, and for everyone as well. I will try this set-up, I just started in 1920 because the curiosity, but playing the Germans is one of the hardest nation. I have the British nearby with MUCH better economy and larger fleets in that era. Not to speak about the french when they sending smaller task forces to harrass my convoys.

Ideally the RN will be stretched far thinner when the Pacific and rest of the world ma p are added in.

[hashishmaria]

Originally posted by Lakel:

Ideally the RN will be stretched far thinner when the Pacific and rest of the world ma p are added in.

Yeah. GB has fleet size to cover the entire map, because they have ports (and therefore transports) everywhere, but in the Baltic. So naturally they keep the whole fleet in North See and the Channel, battling Germans and not giving a f*ck about the rest of the map 90% of the time.

[198xAD]

The issue I have is that the AI never scraps its old ships. I can devastate them as Germany pretty easily in 1890. But if I keep playing it into the 1900's, they end up with 300 ships. The battles end up so asymmetrical I just restart the campaign to avoid the lag and hour long battles comp stomping trash mobs.

This time around I'm just going to warhawk like crazy to keep the AI's fleets at a reasonable size.

[Lazar]

I have no issue what so ever as Germany?
I am steamrolling in 1918 atm.

I killed of the Britts by blockading the seas around the British Isles. So the Northern part of the map is mine. I Took Gibraltar, Tunisia, Corsica and Cyprus so I have ports in the Mediterranean.

My fleets are compsed of 2-4 BB's(5-8 pre 1900), 5-10 CA, 5-15, CL 10-15 DD/TB. And now also some BC in their own fleet.

I focus on fire power and speed. So I can hit hard with my BB but able to get out if need to (or chase down). The CA and CL are the screen of my fleet. I use them to divert fire away from my BB's and to spray the enemy ships with small caliber guns to start fires. In 1890 I make my ships as bulky as can be cause most engagements are close. Post 1910 I fo us more on long range for the big caliber ships and bulky CL and DDs with torps to swarm Capital ships.

At this time England is dead, France has few ships left. After that I will fight with Italy and Aus which have the same size fleet as me.

[hashishmaria]

Originally posted by 198xAD:

The issue I have is that the AI never scraps its old ships. I can devastate them as Germany pretty easily in 1890. But if I keep playing it into the 1900's, they end up with 300 ships. The battles end up so asymmetrical I just restart the campaign to avoid the lag and hour long battles comp stomping trash mobs.

I just encountered similar issue- Playing as AUS-HU (1890 start), I first went to fight UK in 1908. Since they only had one short war with Germany throughout the campaign, they had ~250 ships stockpiled. And of course the first battle was 2/3 of their navy against my small task force (Outnumbered 3:1 in BBs, 6:1 in CAs and 15:1 in smaller ships). Lagfest AF above 3x time compression. But the AI wasn't even able to attack my ships waiting for it! (And even if they did, I could outrun everything but TBs and DDs, which would get eaten alive in eventual stern-chase)

The next month the UK invaded Mediterranean with almost all their forces, but divided into 4 groups. And I easily killed them all in approx. 10 vs 50 battles. ("modern" dreads are absolute monsters)
2 months into the war GB reduced to 40 ships, pleaded for peace...

[GrimReaperHUN]

How to avoid to being behind in technology?:S

[Kraznova]

Originally posted by GrimReaperHUN:

How to avoid to being behind in technology?:S

Max out research button, don't focus your research on any 3 technologies, keep it broad.

[Agathos Deimon]

Originally posted by GrimReaperHUN:

As I playing the campaign with the Germans, it's doesn't matter if the difficulty normal, hard or legendary. Just after 5-6 months war broke out, and the enemy always have (especially the British) 2-3x more BB than meg... or CA.
Also, I see no difference between historyal AI or random... bit of a chaos. After 1 year in the 1930, I completely lost because had no economy, no budget and fraction of ships... British Empire kicked my ass...

Now I'm gonna start in 1920, prepare for war with building a fleet and set a task force to the irish sea to prepare blocking the british economy...

I hope there will be an easy difficulty later on. I know, I might looks like a p**sy, but I don't want to have mindf**k just after a while in the game...

Actually the AI is no match at all no matter the difficulty setting. I usually play on hard and just steamroll through any wars with a low number count high quality fleet.

I avoid legendary, cause this only seems to end in the other nations building ridicolous amounts of starting fleets around 150 ships.

For AI random, you might need to start several campaigns to see a difference, lots of times the games even when on randon non historical setting will just copy and paste the historical one.

What currently seems to be rather broken is how fleets affect tension. For some reason i.e. as Italy it was really hard to threaten GB, just because i always got tension reduction with the UK through east and west medditeranean...no idea why or how i just got good relations via those to areas. And that was a constant in 4 different campaigns.

For the cost sliders. Training can usually be maxed out, cause it the smallest budget anyway. In peace 65-70% research should not cripple your budget. Ones a war starts usually budget increases and you can set research to 100%. Trading fleet i can also usually put at slight plus, so overtime it increasing trading fleet to more than 100% which leads to GDP increase therefor more naval budget, kinda of an upward spiral.

Winning the naval battles with high kill count vs. few losses will put AI in a downward spiral it cant recover from.