Why is army AI so stupid

[Hayden]

Is my game bugged somehow? I'm playing allied with Sturgia and the armies are just absolute idiots and have been for a few days. They'll often just keep going between castles, towns, and villages, occasionally going to defend a castle, but will rarely bother to go on the offensive or even patrol around the border.

Is there a mod for this? God I hope so

[GreatPalm]

because every time you start new game whole map becomes green in three months. Devs couldn't fix balance and tweaked AI to do nothing when faction reaches some power

[Hayden]

Publicado originalmente por GreatPalm:

because every time you start new game whole map becomes green in three months. Devs couldn't fix balance and tweaked AI to do nothing when faction reaches some power

Tbh so far I've seen Battania getting beat into the dust, borders a lot of empires that want to war with it.

But the AI forced to do nothing thing makes sense, sucks they went for a workaround instead of balance.

[Sentient_Toaster]

Battania's also fiefless in my current (1.6.5, slightly modded but not much -- i.e. nothing that affects diplomacy / unit balance / battle outcomes etc) campaign, but at least some of that was due to my going after them hard as a Vlandian vassal.

Caladog's also being an annoying git, fiefless for years now but still somehow hiring mercenaries and just being a pest raiding villages.

I do see a lot of armies being sent on suicidal offenses, like you don't take an army of ~600 mostly foot and send them past a hostile castle through a narrow choke past another hostile castle near the far end of that choke to siege an Aserai town when they regularly send much larger armies with hundreds of cavalry and horse archers.

Might be interesting if there were a policy decision to make regarding minimum size of armies to form to discourage useless ones being formed and fed to enemies.

[Hasbulat]

Publicado originalmente por HND Hayden:

Is my game bugged somehow? I'm playing allied with Sturgia and the armies are just absolute idiots and have been for a few days. They'll often just keep going between castles, towns, and villages, occasionally going to defend a castle, but will rarely bother to go on the offensive or even patrol around the border.

Is there a mod for this? God I hope so

Twice I played as sturgian vassal and twice there were the same picture - lord or kingf creating an army, travalling to the far east of own realm, then passing whole realm and go to far west part of the kingdm, to Tyal, coming back to Vercheg and disbanding the army.

And repeating this game several times.

[Morkonan]

Publicado originalmente por HND Hayden:

Is my game bugged somehow? I'm playing allied with Sturgia and the armies are just absolute idiots and have been for a few days. They'll often just keep going between castles, towns, and villages, occasionally going to defend a castle, but will rarely bother to go on the offensive or even patrol around the border.

Is there a mod for this? God I hope so

IMO - TW is trying to create a much deeper "simulation" than may be necessary for campaign-map party, faction, army targeting fief/siege, etc... behaviors.

The results appear to often be analyzed by TW using results in only "aggregate" form, only paying specific attention to party behavior when the outcries of players becomes unbearable.

So, in essence, since the analysis tools say that xxfaction wins and the analysis shows that result is either expected or is balanced against other results, "a problem doesn't exist."

It doesn't matter if fifty-eleven Lords are running around with their heads cut-off as long as the aggregate results of that behavior in faction win/loss statistical analysis are... "balanced."

"Game is working as intended."

Early on, TW didn't do anything about Armies running out of food or repeatedly start/stop/restart/disband siege behavior until the screaming got to epic levels and they actually looked at it and said "Oh, yeah, that's not right..." And, when it continued past their "fix?" Well, that was during steamroll-rebalancing efforts, so... that was what was important. A specific fix for the fundamental "moving part" in the entire machine wasn't done until very late. (Not that it always worked, either.)

AI Lords aren't terrible, but they do seem to be a bit more impacted by what may be faction or even clan-oriented additions they have to consider. I don't know how their decision process works, now. Changes were made for siege targeting too, but remember that there were also changes, and continue to be some, surrounding Prosperity and Prosperity is one of the variables involved in target acquisition.

Change one thing, a cascade occurs in highly detailed "simulations."

In effect - There's a lot of variables they tend to make changes to, patch to patch, that effect party behavior and I think the "simulation" maybe deeper than it should be.

PS: Still waiting for 1.7 to hit Standard Patch.

[Nine_Tigers]

My observations are that as soon as war is declared the enemy starts creating armies. It also appears to know the exact defender sizes of all it's target's border towns and castles. So the army will sort of wander until it gets to sufficient size where the AI thinks it can defeat it's chosen target, but if situation arises where there are multiple armies and this one is the smallest, it may never get to that point where it decides to attack and seems aimless or only protects besieged cites, since for whatever reason this is the number one priority for all armies no matter what (they will always break sieges to protect). Usually you can turn an apparent wandering army into an attacker army by joining it, dependent directly on the size of your own force.

[Sentient_Toaster]

It possibly knows garrison sizes, but I've seen quick target switching (e.g. army ostensibly has a goal of sieging one castle, then changes its mind when it gets there and picks another castle, reaches that and decides to besiege a nearby town instead, leaves that and goes back to the castle -- then gets wiped to a man without accomplishing anything because by this time enemy forces have concentrated and it gets dogpiled) that might suggest that it was earlier acting on old info. *shrug*. Also, weak garrison != weak relief force, so sending ~400 to besiege a town w/ 80 militia is still a waste if there's going to be 1000+- armies of similar composition on the enemy side.

At least they're not giant armies of mostly tier 1 recruits anymore.

[Teralitha]

"Why is army AI so stupid?"

Because they are following orders.

But seriously... I wonder what would happen, if the devs suddenly removed all difficulty options and you could only play on realistic mode with highest combat difficulty..........

Alot of these people opinions are skewed because they play on easy.

[Hayden]

Publicado originalmente por Teralitha:

"Why is army AI so stupid?"

Because they are following orders.

But seriously... I wonder what would happen, if the devs suddenly removed all difficulty options and you could only play on realistic mode with highest combat difficulty..........

Alot of these people opinions are skewed because they play on easy.

I AM playing on realistic, so you can't excuse the developers lack of competent AI on people playing on easy.

It's also just generally a really dumb thing to say, easy shouldn't mean braindead AI on your faction lol.

Also thankyou everyone else for the replies, was mainly curious if maybe it was some dumb issue seen before with a simple fix or if it could be modded out so AI does 5brain tactics and pulls out the trenches. Hopefully it'll be improved before launch :')