This game is becoming unplayable due to the frontline AI.

[iMajoraGaming]

I am absolutely, so utterly done with this ruining entire runs. I can spend an unreal amount of time preparing a defense, have everything perfect, only for the incompetent AI to leave gaps on level 10 forts, and literally make a war unwinnable. I have yet to figure out how this is STILL an issue and it literally is something that has made me put down HoI4, any time I try to pick it back up, this happens.

I already micro everything. I can't however compensate fast enough when a ravenous enemy just walks right into my defenses because the AI, somehow, was able to convince itself that this is a thing it should do.

I literally am now fighting a losing war as Austria-Hungary because my prepared defenses were defeated by a 3 year old flaw in the AI. Thanks Paradox. Nice to see you're using the money from the overpriced tanks and music to not actually improve the game.

Austria-Hungary is already one of the most unfun games to play due to the fact that it's entire focus tree is RNG. Get a good run? Haha well look at that, all the restarts are now moot because the AI abandoned the Sudetenland's forts to do whatever inane thing it concocted.

I can handle being bad and making dumb decisions when I'm the one doing it. I will fully comp mistakes I make. I am not flawless, I don't even think I'm particularly good at HoI4. I am not good at fighting the Germans. They can have 3 divisions and still beat a level 7 fort with radar, air support, and an absurdly good prepared defense. That's fine, I may not like it, may struggle, but at least I lose an actual fight instead of being seemingly sabotaged by my own AI.

[Senseo1990]

Halja45님이 먼저 게시:

Fix it Paradox!

They won't because people buy the game and its DLC regardless.

[TheOstwind]

I just never use generals. I like to micromanage everything, even if I'm losing some benefits. I don't mind an extra challenge.

[[AUT] Beazerka]

Hmm maybe try Garrison on forts maybe that could help.

[Катя Мяу <3]

I have the same problem. Sometimes I get so cucked by the braindead frontline AI, its makes me wanna uninstall ...
So people mentioned fallback or even grarrison as alternative. How exactly would that work in the offensive?

[captain403]

AUT Beazerka님이 먼저 게시:

Hmm maybe try Garrison on forts maybe that could help.

That will work until a fort is lost. Then, instead of covering the hole in the line, the AI will reinforce the still held forts, leaving a hole for the other side to exploit.

[Ryan]

IronDefender님이 먼저 게시:

I just never use generals. I like to micromanage everything, even if I'm losing some benefits. I don't mind an extra challenge.

That is a mistake. Always use Generals. Just don't draw a Front Line when you are trying to defend. Only use the Front Line to put the troops into position and then delete the order, so you troops don't shuffle around.

When you are ready to advance, then draw the Front Line and Offensive line order. Don't do this until then if you are defending against an aggressive enemy.

Problem solved.

[Ryan]

iMajoraGaming님이 먼저 게시:

Ryan님이 먼저 게시:

Don't use Front Lines for defense. Problem solved.

I don't think you're understanding that the game literally does not care what you're using the order for. It is broken.

"Just pretend it's not a problem!" Nah. I'm good. I'll stick with actually trying to get it fixed.

I understand the game perfectly. Perhaps I didn't communicate it well enough. Let's try this again:

Just don't draw a Front Line when you are trying to defend. Only use the Front Line to put the troops into position and then delete the order, so you troops don't shuffle around. If your troops have no orders they will not move.... ever.

When you are ready to advance, then draw the Front Line and Offensive line order. Don't do this until then if you are defending against an aggressive enemy.

Problem solved. I understand why troops shuffle around. It's not that the AI is dumb. it's that the AI is attempting to fill gaps that previously did not exist. This problem occurs mostly when there are not enough divisions to properly defend a line. If you have enough divisions, then the shuffling will not leave gaps. I find it better to do the shuffling manually if it needs to occur.

Say you have a Front Line with 2 divisions in every square except at the bottom you have 3 divisions. If the enemy pushes you back at the top, you'll have a gap that needs to be filled. That AI will always try to balance the Front Line. So that 3rd division at the bottom will Railroad move up to the top. Additionally, some other divisions will head up too to surround the hole. This is all logical. The real problem is that the defender did not have enough divisions to prevent the enemy from punching a hole in the first place. The defender did not bring in reinforcements to the attacked area. This is not an AI problem, but a player not defending properly and blaming the AI for moving divisions to fill a gap it is programmed to do.

[iMajoraGaming]

Ryan님이 먼저 게시:

iMajoraGaming님이 먼저 게시:

I don't think you're understanding that the game literally does not care what you're using the order for. It is broken.

"Just pretend it's not a problem!" Nah. I'm good. I'll stick with actually trying to get it fixed.

I understand the game perfectly. Perhaps I didn't communicate it well enough. Let's try this again:

Just don't draw a Front Line when you are trying to defend. Only use the Front Line to put the troops into position and then delete the order, so you troops don't shuffle around. If your troops have no orders they will not move.... ever.

When you are ready to advance, then draw the Front Line and Offensive line order. Don't do this until then if you are defending against an aggressive enemy.

Problem solved. I understand why troops shuffle around. It's not that the AI is dumb. it's that the AI is attempting to fill gaps that previously did not exist. This problem occurs mostly when there are not enough divisions to properly defend a line. If you have enough divisions, then the shuffling will not leave gaps. I find it better to do the shuffling manually if it needs to occur.

Say you have a Front Line with 2 divisions in every square except at the bottom you have 3 divisions. If the enemy pushes you back at the top, you'll have a gap that needs to be filled. That AI will always try to balance the Front Line. So that 3rd division at the bottom will Railroad move up to the top. Additionally, some other divisions will head up too to surround the hole. This is all logical. The real problem is that the defender did not have enough divisions to prevent the enemy from punching a hole in the first place. The defender did not bring in reinforcements to the attacked area. This is not an AI problem, but a player not defending properly and blaming the AI for moving divisions to fill a gap it is programmed to do.

Maybe you should actually go back and reread the thread.

"It's not that the AI is dumb." Yes. It is.

Also having to literally delete orders or do workarounds is absurdist. It should just work.

Furthermore if you'd actually bothered to read the thread, or literally anything from people with this issue, this happens when there are an EXCESS of troops, with more than enough to defend an entire front.

It's. Not. Filling. Gaps.

[MyUsersDark]

iMajoraGaming님이 먼저 게시:

Also named Bort님이 먼저 게시:

How long are the fronts you're trying to hold? There's a few things that can be done to make the system work better. If you work within it's logic it is a much less frustrating system.

A good example of this is trying to set front lines that are too long. The AI is forced to have to adapt to the changing priorities of defending a front hundreds of miles long. As such, there is a tendency to have to constantly reshuffle the front.

I'm not trying to defend it, but I think you'll enjoy it more if you are more moderate in your expectation. The fact that you're already trying to micro anything suggests you're fighting against the system, rather than working with it...

I have over a thousand hours in HoI4. I micro manage because it prevents casualties and lets me be more specific with what I want units to do.

Also the length of fronts is irrelevant in this case. There are 3 full sized armies defending a front that a single army can cover all but one province of, and frontlines operate off of cooperative fluidity. That one province is then covered by a different army. Then the line automatically uses excess troops to reinforce battles and, in theory, should literally never leave an opening, since units respond automatically to a tile being left vacant. Even if the unit hasn't left the province yet, a unit will automatically begin moving to that province to prevent even an hour of vacancy.

See the problem? It sounds like a flawless system because it's intended to do half of the work for you. It doesn't, and serially does absurdist things that leave the lines open. It doesn't matter how long the front is, if there is one troop per province then the AI should automatically know how to respond and act according to its own stated purpose as an order.

I don't really get whatsoever how me micro managing resources is "fighting against the system." It's covering for the system being literally conspiratorial in its efforts to find new and creative ways to sabotage the player, and is the only actual option if you don't use frontlines since no other order exists that does *ANYTHING* automatically.

I've got a thousand hours in HoI4. I'm not new, unfamiliar with fronts, the game, its mechanics, or its bugs. This bug was reported as far back as August of 2016, two months after launch. It's still here. It is still just as bad. It can and will happen to a front a single tile in width and length if you allow it.

I'm not an exception. This happens on fronts that are as small as they come. The AI does not care about length of a front, smaller doesn't make it less likely. It just makes it less likely that the enemy will flood through the gap.

If people didn't micro they would literally be allowing those gaps to get wider and wider as the AI panics and self-destructs due to the mess its made for itself.

The literal only benefit frontline has is that unlike a fallback like, it adapts to a front. Fallback lines are static and don't actually respond to changes. This isn't even terribly inconvenient. But that you have to constantly redraw the line and that units remain static no matter what means that it's not actually viable.

That's literally the problem. This isn't player fault. This isn't new. This isn't based off of front size. It will literally happen to anyone, under any circumstance given, with literally every post about this ending with a player scrambling to try fixing the massive flood and failing to most of the time.

Expecting something to not open the gates to the enemy without a shot being fired isn't a matter of expectations. I expect literally nothing from the AI and yet it still finds ways to disappoint me three years after launch.

It's literally the same thing France does, which is literally leave its borders undefended to allow for itself to be capitulated, except it's an army AI and not a national one.

You having a thousand hours on hoi4 doesn't mean you're good at the game, you even admitted it in the original post. You could have even 2000 hours on hoi4, but if you just get recked the entire time and don't learn anything from it, you won't become a better player.

[MyUsersDark]

Btw I Randomly stambled across this post, (Now a warzone i guess,) While i was looking at the "all" section in the hoi4 area where you'd click "Workshop". So I'm very late to this and might not bother at All Revisiting this post. Just so you know, incase i don't answer anything you might've messaged at me.

[iMajoraGaming]

MyUsersDark님이 먼저 게시:

iMajoraGaming님이 먼저 게시:

I have over a thousand hours in HoI4. I micro manage because it prevents casualties and lets me be more specific with what I want units to do.

Also the length of fronts is irrelevant in this case. There are 3 full sized armies defending a front that a single army can cover all but one province of, and frontlines operate off of cooperative fluidity. That one province is then covered by a different army. Then the line automatically uses excess troops to reinforce battles and, in theory, should literally never leave an opening, since units respond automatically to a tile being left vacant. Even if the unit hasn't left the province yet, a unit will automatically begin moving to that province to prevent even an hour of vacancy.

See the problem? It sounds like a flawless system because it's intended to do half of the work for you. It doesn't, and serially does absurdist things that leave the lines open. It doesn't matter how long the front is, if there is one troop per province then the AI should automatically know how to respond and act according to its own stated purpose as an order.

I don't really get whatsoever how me micro managing resources is "fighting against the system." It's covering for the system being literally conspiratorial in its efforts to find new and creative ways to sabotage the player, and is the only actual option if you don't use frontlines since no other order exists that does *ANYTHING* automatically.

I've got a thousand hours in HoI4. I'm not new, unfamiliar with fronts, the game, its mechanics, or its bugs. This bug was reported as far back as August of 2016, two months after launch. It's still here. It is still just as bad. It can and will happen to a front a single tile in width and length if you allow it.

I'm not an exception. This happens on fronts that are as small as they come. The AI does not care about length of a front, smaller doesn't make it less likely. It just makes it less likely that the enemy will flood through the gap.

If people didn't micro they would literally be allowing those gaps to get wider and wider as the AI panics and self-destructs due to the mess its made for itself.

The literal only benefit frontline has is that unlike a fallback like, it adapts to a front. Fallback lines are static and don't actually respond to changes. This isn't even terribly inconvenient. But that you have to constantly redraw the line and that units remain static no matter what means that it's not actually viable.

That's literally the problem. This isn't player fault. This isn't new. This isn't based off of front size. It will literally happen to anyone, under any circumstance given, with literally every post about this ending with a player scrambling to try fixing the massive flood and failing to most of the time.

Expecting something to not open the gates to the enemy without a shot being fired isn't a matter of expectations. I expect literally nothing from the AI and yet it still finds ways to disappoint me three years after launch.

It's literally the same thing France does, which is literally leave its borders undefended to allow for itself to be capitulated, except it's an army AI and not a national one.

You having a thousand hours on hoi4 doesn't mean you're good at the game, you even admitted it in the original post. You could have even 2000 hours on hoi4, but if you just get recked the entire time and don't learn anything from it, you won't become a better player.

probably why i mentioned my own shortcomings

having 1k hours in hoi4 literally means that i'm not stupid and unfamiliar with mechanics lmao

[iMajoraGaming]

iMajoraGaming님이 먼저 게시:

MyUsersDark님이 먼저 게시:

You having a thousand hours on hoi4 doesn't mean you're good at the game, you even admitted it in the original post. You could have even 2000 hours on hoi4, but if you just get recked the entire time and don't learn anything from it, you won't become a better player.

probably why i mentioned my own shortcomings

having 1k hours in hoi4 literally means that i'm not stupid and unfamiliar with mechanics lmao

also given that i have some of the hardest achievements you can get in this and other paradox games means that even though i'm not good, and don't consider myself good, i'm familiar enough to be able to do things without being spoken down to like i'm handicapped or brain damaged.

i recognize that i am not taureor or ddrjake. therefore i am not good. that doesn't mean i'm incapable or unfamiliar. it just means that there are plenty of people vastly superior to my own abilities.

[leocervantes27]

i recommend to rinse and repeat and find a suitable method you can achieve your goal or watch youtube video to find a solution or a get a buddy to coop and help you from that way instead of blaming the game.

yes i can agree there're some flaws but not straight up impossible to over come it

[Electronic_Bunny]

I have never had this issue, I have no idea why you're having so much trouble with having troops sit where they need to. If your having gaps it sounds like your setting your lines wrong.

[iMajoraGaming]

Electronic_Bunny님이 먼저 게시:

I have never had this issue, I have no idea why you're having so much trouble with having troops sit where they need to. If your having gaps it sounds like your setting your lines wrong.

Refer to the entire thread showing this is a problem.

No. I'm not setting them wrong.