Is the AI more anti-player now?

[Jiffypop]

I played EU4 a lot a few years ago, and decided to come back. Three games in, it feels like the AI is basically acting completely counter to me, and doing really stupid things they wouldn't do if I were an AI. Back in the day, I'd feel like an AI against the AI. They'd just be normal. But now, randomly, France decides all of Korea (me) is of critical interest? Spain attacks me SIX times with a vastly inferior force and gets ♥♥♥♥ on every time, but still locks me out of doing anything else for a decade? Historic rivals and countries that should ABSOLUTELY be at odds for some reason forming a 200 year hugbox? Countries with 200 relation, no debt and no MP deficit breaking defensive alliances after calling me to a dozen offensive wars? Like wtf is going on with the AI man, this just makes the game feel like a slog.

[Marquoz]

The AI is more competent than it used to be. However, it's not anti-player, and never has been. The AI evaluates all other nations, whether AI controlled or human, on the basis of the same algorithms. It determines whether they are potential friends, threats, targets, or whatever and acts accordingly.

Some of what you said doesn't make sense--aside from scripted events, I haven't heard the "AI declares war" sound in many real life years because the AI doesn't attack target alliances that are stronger than it is--but most of it does. AI allies will routinely betray you if you share borders and the AI desires your land, for example, exactly like a human player does to its AI allies.

[Jiffypop]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

The AI is more competent than it used to be. However, it's not anti-player, and never has been. The AI evaluates all other nations, whether AI controlled or human, on the basis of the same algorithms. It determines whether they are potential friends, threats, targets, or whatever and acts accordingly.

Some of what you said doesn't make sense--aside from scripted events, I haven't heard the "AI declares war" sound in many real life years because the AI doesn't attack target alliances that are stronger than it is--but most of it does. AI allies will routinely betray you if you share borders and the AI desires your land, for example, exactly like a human player does to its AI allies.

There's no way it's evaluating the same for me as an AI. I know for a fact it targets players to a degree. It's always done anti player stuff, like hugboxes and whatnot. Hugboxes that you'd never see if you weren't the country getting shafted by it.

I may not be the strongest right now, but my army is 150% the size of Spain's alliance and that's just me, not including my allies or colonies. Kind of close, but not really especially since they're just attacking mountain forts. They have massive debt, no manpower, and nothing to show. Inferior army quality a lot of the time too. I've had a LOT of instances however where the AI is even more suicidal. Crimea, with like 20k, attacking me as Russia with well over 150k. I've never had this kind of issue until I started playing again this month, and it's really ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ annoying me.

The AI I am allied with doesn't desire my land, has no border with me, and we have excellent relations and high trust. It just feels like they're betraying me for no reason. Tagging over to my enemy to look at the reason they betray me, "Attitude towards enemies" is what it is this time, but they have basically no relations with the attacker, and my relation with them is really high.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

Originally posted by Marquoz:

The AI is more competent than it used to be. However, it's not anti-player, and never has been. The AI evaluates all other nations, whether AI controlled or human, on the basis of the same algorithms. It determines whether they are potential friends, threats, targets, or whatever and acts accordingly.

Some of what you said doesn't make sense--aside from scripted events, I haven't heard the "AI declares war" sound in many real life years because the AI doesn't attack target alliances that are stronger than it is--but most of it does. AI allies will routinely betray you if you share borders and the AI desires your land, for example, exactly like a human player does to its AI allies.

There's no way it's evaluating the same for me as an AI. I know for a fact it targets players to a degree. It's always done anti player stuff, like hugboxes and whatnot. Hugboxes that you'd never see if you weren't the country getting shafted by it.

You won't believe me, but this is all perception bias. If a nation is a threat, the AI forms alliance webs to counter it. And humans are almost always the biggest threat in their neighborhood, so they're "targeted" by an AI that doesn't care at all about who's running the nation.

Like I said, I don't expect you to believe this, but what you "know for a fact" is not true.

[Jiffypop]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

There's no way it's evaluating the same for me as an AI. I know for a fact it targets players to a degree. It's always done anti player stuff, like hugboxes and whatnot. Hugboxes that you'd never see if you weren't the country getting shafted by it.

You won't believe me, but this is all perception bias. If a nation is a threat, the AI forms alliances webs to counter it. And humans are almost always the biggest threat, so they're "targeted" by an AI that doesn't care at all about who's running the nation.

Like I said, I don't expect you to believe this, but what you "know for a fact" is not true.

Bro if you say this isn't overt AI targeting player activities, then I don't know what to tell you. It's been every single time, within a few months or years of the truce being up that they come back in, and now I get locked in a hella long slog war.

https://ibb.co/60zBWCW
https://ibb.co/kqBWZfS
https://ibb.co/pZZv9cb

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

Bro if you say this isn't overt AI targeting player activities, then I don't know what to tell you. It's been every single time, within a few months or years of the truce being up that they come back in, and now I get locked in a hella long slog war.

https://ibb.co/60zBWCW
https://ibb.co/kqBWZfS
https://ibb.co/pZZv9cb

How does this proof that the AI targets the player? Have you tried replaying the same time period multiple times as Korea and as a different country and doing the exact same things as the AI Korea to see if AI Korea gets targeted less?

You seem to have a CN with gold provinces in America. Any country which owns gold provinces becomes a prime target for AI colonizers. The AI does not remember that it lost its previous wars and it can't evaluate that it won't be able to siege your mountain forts or that it can't ship armies to your mainland fast enough to be any threat to you. They do a relatively simple strength evaluation and attack if they think that they can beat you. Your cropped screenshots are missing a lot of context, but I guess that the numbers were more in favor of Spain at the start of the war when considering all other countries with whom you were at war at that time. It could also be that declaring war on your subject made the AI underestimate which countries would join the war on your side.

[Marquoz]

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

Bro if you say this isn't overt AI targeting player activities, then I don't know what to tell you.

I do say that, yes, because it hasn't happened to me in at least the last 6000 hours of play time. The AI never declares war on me (with the exception of scripted events). If having the AI declare on you is a problem, grow faster so that it doesn't. The AI only declares wars it thinks it can win. Sometimes it miscalculates and loses to a numerically inferior foe that has great defensive terrain or generals or whatever, but it always engages in that calculation and it does not give extra weighting to the player.

I also have to ask:

--Are you running any mods?
--What were the relative strength ratios at the very start of the war?
--What are the personality traits of the Spanish ruler? Some of them make war more likely than others.
--What were the relative tech levels at the very start of the war?

[Damedius]

The AI targets the player if the player is weak and it thinks it can win.

[Jiffypop]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

Bro if you say this isn't overt AI targeting player activities, then I don't know what to tell you.

I do say that, yes, because it hasn't happened to me in at least the last 6000 hours of play time. The AI never declares war on me (with the exception of scripted events). If having the AI declare on you is a problem, grow faster so that it doesn't. The AI only declares wars it thinks it can win. Sometimes it miscalculates and loses to a numerically inferior foe that has great defensive terrain or generals or whatever, but it always engages in that calculation and it does not give extra weighting to the player.

I also have to ask:

--Are you running any mods?
--What were the relative strength ratios at the very start of the war?
--What are the personality traits of the Spanish ruler? Some of them make war more likely than others.
--What were the relative tech levels at the very start of the war?

No mods.
That is the exact army makeup at the very start of the war.
No warring traits.
Same level.

[Marquoz]

Useful info, thanks. Maybe grotaclas hit on the reason when he said "It could also be that declaring war on your subject made the AI underestimate which countries would join the war on your side." This hasn't been an issue for me, but I can see how it might play a role if a major chunk of your total strength comes from your alliance instead of your own nation.

[Jiffypop]

Originally posted by grotaclas:

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

Bro if you say this isn't overt AI targeting player activities, then I don't know what to tell you. It's been every single time, within a few months or years of the truce being up that they come back in, and now I get locked in a hella long slog war.

https://ibb.co/60zBWCW
https://ibb.co/kqBWZfS
https://ibb.co/pZZv9cb

It could also be that declaring war on your subject made the AI underestimate which countries would join the war on your side.

Is this how it works? Peru only has around 20k sure, but myself and my colonies alone have more than Spain at this point, nearly double and we're at war 9.

What context would you need?

Originally posted by Marquoz:

Useful info, thanks. Maybe grotaclas hit on the reason when he said "It could also be that declaring war on your subject made the AI underestimate which countries would join the war on your side." This hasn't been an issue for me, but I can see how it might play a role if a major chunk of your total strength comes from your alliance instead of your own nation.

On war 8 and 9, I alone had equal to Spain. War 9 saw me and my colonies having near double. Allies never join because they decline for "opinion of enemy", even though we're maxed out and they tend to dislike Spain at best.

And again this is just hyper specific here for this run. But the past three runs I've done all went very similar of just constantly being hugboxed, random and strange war decs, and so on. I've been playing this game for 7 years and I've never had this much annoyance.

[gutuater]

I sense contradictions : you complain that a weaker enemy attacks you (even if that should make the war easily won) AND you complain that your allies leave you when called (but then the enemy isn't that weaker after all).
What is bothering you at the end? It it too hard or too easy?

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

Originally posted by grotaclas:

It could also be that declaring war on your subject made the AI underestimate which countries would join the war on your side.

Is this how it works? Peru only has around 20k sure, but myself and my colonies alone have more than Spain at this point, nearly double and we're at war 9.

It was just speculation that they could underestimate you because of this, because there have been situations in which allies are disregarded when attacking subjects(e.g. vassals of junior partners or subjects of HRE members). But being in other wars or being behind in tech could also be explanations(just one tech can make a huge difference). Or it could be that the war was declared by their CN on your CN and then escalated because you tried to enforce peace(though the war name looks like Spain started the war)

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

What context would you need?

context which you cropped out would be the year to see how long the war has already been going on and the other wars in which you are engaged. Also the size of your empire and the size of your armies would be helpful to see. Maybe you could post a save in which such a war declaration is about to happen

[grotaclas]

Originally posted by Jiffypop:

Allies never join because they decline for "opinion of enemy", even though we're maxed out and they tend to dislike Spain at best.

Your screenshot of war 7 shows Denmark and Jolof at your side

[bri]

Ai nations will never join an offensive war if it will cause them to lose stability to do so. Thus any of the following will stop them: royal marriage, access agreement (either type), +100 opinion, transferring trade agreement, truce, guaranteeing, allied, and probably others I can't recall atm. Note that the war target and any co-belligerent target can trigger the stability loss and will thus be considered.

[Tohtori Leka]

Originally posted by Marquoz:

The AI is more competent than it used to be. However, it's not anti-player, and never has been. The AI evaluates all other nations, whether AI controlled or human, on the basis of the same algorithms. It determines whether they are potential friends, threats, targets, or whatever and acts accordingly.

It is anti-player. The AI automatically considers the player a larger threat than what it would consider the country as AI controlled and acts according to the country being a threat because it's controlled by a human player. I don't know why you people keep denying it when it's so obvious to anyone who has played the game.