why does ai never attack?

[Goblin Slayer]

like they just stand on the front lines and let you push them. (besides naval invasions)

[Yaldabaoth]

Because the AI uses battleplans, waits for all units being in place, fully prepared and then starts an attack. This can take months. And every time YOU do something (like take a province), it tries to move all units into new positions. And then prepares again. Which takes months. Meanwhile you attack again and so on and so on.
Yes, it's THAT ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[Goblin Slayer]

wow what the hell were the devs thinking

[Sir Harlz]

Because planning in this game takes ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ FOREVER!

I have watched Germany invade a country, stare at them... Do nothing (THis usally happens with russia when time is of the essence BEFORE they use all that industy/manpower to **** you up.) and than out of nowhere they start attacking in mass and make a ton of progress. But once the front lines get messed up or the battle plan is over, they stall for months again.

They need to fix this. Making planning faster and let the AI attack without max planning. If their plan has the advantage than they should go, max planning or not.

Planning is more of a thing for pre-invasion anyways. You plan your attacks BEFORE you declare war if you are smart. By the time you are down justifying your war, they are done planning.

The main issue though is that human beings are CHEATERS! We don't wait for them to finish planning and attack them! Than they have to rearrange all their units because GOD HELP US if the ai does something not at 100% planning.

[exosolar]

Planning itself will be a week once the units are in position. Line changing, as stated above, bumps this process, since units have to move. Those two factors can be modded to lower the overall wait time, which improves this some.
The AI has a couple of other flaws that don't seem to have parameters to control, at least that I found so far.
When a unit takes losses and drops below a certain organizational level it will retreat, which is good, but it goes way, way too far away effectively taking it out of battle. Belgium units on the border with Germany were retreating to England (wasting convoys as well) or Normandy. If they would only drop back a couple provinces that would be far better, recovery is fast anyway.
The other major issue is the AI moves units around way too much. A unit will be on the line, then retreated to city, then to different point on the line, then down the line, then back up the line, then retreated to different city, and if it has a port it might be moved to a different Country. All of this and nothing is changing on the line, all pointless and is continues always. Modding the entrenchment factor helps a little but nowhere near enough. They also move too quickly reacting to the line change. A good example of this, move a heavy attacking force up to the line and begin to plan, AI moves some units to reinforce (maybe), then move a few divisions to a different location on the line, AI seems to forget the first set and reinforces for the second set, now you can attack.
Paratroopers are great for this, just make sure they far enough away, AI will rush units occupy every province around them, even to the point of leaving holes in a line, you just walk through. Make the paratroopers very defensive and let them sit to begin with, shortly the AI will outnumber you and attack. After a while it will lose interest and move most of the units somewhere else, then you can attack.
While the AI can begin a plan it lacks a final objective which may be multiple plans away. I have watched Japan attacking China, it starts fairly well with large numbers on the Northern border. It then hits 2 or 3 places along the coast, since China has rushed almost everything to the north these can be very successful. After executing two or three attack plans from those regions it, against almost nothing, it will decide to deploy those units somewhere else. It normally appears to pull them completely out and make a different coast attack or pile them into the log jam in the north. It can have China almost finished and if the date is too late, it will completely quit China to focus on Malaya / Indonesia. The AI really needs an overall goal through which these battle plans are executed. So it sees through the overall goal, or decides it will not be able to complete it. The other problem is the AI commits an initial invasion but seems to rarely reinforce it with enough to make it really effective. I have seen this many times with the UK attacking southern France of Italy. Good initial plan, good initial force, gets some results, pulls enemy units, then it just muddles around.
Playing Italy the first time, this had me really worried when the UK hit just north of Rome in 1940. I have since learned just put some units around the invasion and wait. Bad AI attack choices normally reduce them to point where it is fairly easy to destroy the divisions.
The AI is also easily confused with paper divisions. Create a new division template with 1 infantry brigade. Cheap to crank out, so you can have a ton of them. Just populate everything with them, the area behind your line should be completely filled.
Overall I have a problem with the rate of combat, I don't think you can recreate the actual historical time line because combat takes too long. The movement rate feels about right, so the ground can be covered, but the combat can grind into days and days, making it impossible to achieve the same historical objectives. I think this is evident in Japan abandoning China even though it was not complete but mostly defeated. It was not able to complete it within the historical timeframe and the defensive of China was strategically worse than historical.

[Swisky]

Bruh my man wrote an essay

[PBC JaiSiks]

Originally posted by exosolar:

Planning itself will be a week once the units are in position. Line changing, as stated above, bumps this process, since units have to move. Those two factors can be modded to lower the overall wait time, which improves this some.
The AI has a couple of other flaws that don't seem to have parameters to control, at least that I found so far.
When a unit takes losses and drops below a certain organizational level it will retreat, which is good, but it goes way, way too far away effectively taking it out of battle. Belgium units on the border with Germany were retreating to England (wasting convoys as well) or Normandy. If they would only drop back a couple provinces that would be far better, recovery is fast anyway.
The other major issue is the AI moves units around way too much. A unit will be on the line, then retreated to city, then to different point on the line, then down the line, then back up the line, then retreated to different city, and if it has a port it might be moved to a different Country. All of this and nothing is changing on the line, all pointless and is continues always. Modding the entrenchment factor helps a little but nowhere near enough. They also move too quickly reacting to the line change. A good example of this, move a heavy attacking force up to the line and begin to plan, AI moves some units to reinforce (maybe), then move a few divisions to a different location on the line, AI seems to forget the first set and reinforces for the second set, now you can attack.
Paratroopers are great for this, just make sure they far enough away, AI will rush units occupy every province around them, even to the point of leaving holes in a line, you just walk through. Make the paratroopers very defensive and let them sit to begin with, shortly the AI will outnumber you and attack. After a while it will lose interest and move most of the units somewhere else, then you can attack.
While the AI can begin a plan it lacks a final objective which may be multiple plans away. I have watched Japan attacking China, it starts fairly well with large numbers on the Northern border. It then hits 2 or 3 places along the coast, since China has rushed almost everything to the north these can be very successful. After executing two or three attack plans from those regions it, against almost nothing, it will decide to deploy those units somewhere else. It normally appears to pull them completely out and make a different coast attack or pile them into the log jam in the north. It can have China almost finished and if the date is too late, it will completely quit China to focus on Malaya / Indonesia. The AI really needs an overall goal through which these battle plans are executed. So it sees through the overall goal, or decides it will not be able to complete it. The other problem is the AI commits an initial invasion but seems to rarely reinforce it with enough to make it really effective. I have seen this many times with the UK attacking southern France of Italy. Good initial plan, good initial force, gets some results, pulls enemy units, then it just muddles around.
Playing Italy the first time, this had me really worried when the UK hit just north of Rome in 1940. I have since learned just put some units around the invasion and wait. Bad AI attack choices normally reduce them to point where it is fairly easy to destroy the divisions.
The AI is also easily confused with paper divisions. Create a new division template with 1 infantry brigade. Cheap to crank out, so you can have a ton of them. Just populate everything with them, the area behind your line should be completely filled.
Overall I have a problem with the rate of combat, I don't think you can recreate the actual historical time line because combat takes too long. The movement rate feels about right, so the ground can be covered, but the combat can grind into days and days, making it impossible to achieve the same historical objectives. I think this is evident in Japan abandoning China even though it was not complete but mostly defeated. It was not able to complete it within the historical timeframe and the defensive of China was strategically worse than historical.

As someone who went to school for English education I approve greatly. I find most things here rather nice. concise, to the point, evidence to reinforce your claims, good organization so it is easy to follow. I diddn't pay too much attention to period and comma placement etc. but i would give this as a 1 or 2 page paper free write a sold A maybe an A+ as you obviously invested thought and effort into it. well done.

[Včelí medvídek]

maybe dont necro 4 old years thread from time soon after game release when things were very different?

[dornfeld]

Originally posted by Včelí medvídek:

maybe dont necro 4 old years thread from time soon after game release when things were very different?

so AI is better now?

[Včelí medvídek]

Originally posted by dornfeld:

Originally posted by Včelí medvídek:

maybe dont necro 4 old years thread from time soon after game release when things were very different?

so AI is better now?

Significantly.

There is no the discussed issue (whole frontline wait for last unit take position)

AI no longer bleed manpower on high level forts, dont randomly shuffle troops between frontlines across the globe (when Germany out of nowhere decided send all troops from soviet border to support Japan in China), it dont declare wars left and right only because it has focus for it, it use very decent templates and tons of other improvements.

It has still certain flaws (ignoring supply if multiple countries is presented - hopefuly this will be fixed with supply system rework - or ignoring terrain penalties and bonuses) which is exploitable by various ways, but it is way better than it used to.

[dornfeld]

thanks!

[Arotished]

Even if the AI sucks, people seems to love this game. There are 15-25k people in-game at any given time. It makes me wonder what they actually do in this game?

However, as long as these numbers are up, the developer will think that "This game is perfect as it is and there is no need to do anything with it" and they will just focus on pushing out more DLC for us to buy.

[Arotished]

Haha, okey this post is 4 years old lol but my experience is that the AI still sucks. They cant manage their army and will just send tons of infantries to strange locations, which makes it easy for you to steamroll the game.

[dornfeld]

Originally posted by Arotished:

Haha, okey this post is 4 years old lol but my experience is that the AI still sucks. They cant manage their army and will just send tons of infantries to strange locations, which makes it easy for you to steamroll the game.

Well I never saw any good AI in a video game. It's probably because they are artificial. Humans can find patterns very easily. I dont even think machine learning will be a solution, as it would feel very odd for the player. The AI would do stuff that works, but not what should work intuitevly for a human.

[dornfeld]

Originally posted by Arotished:

Even if the AI sucks, people seems to love this game. There are 15-25k people in-game at any given time. It makes me wonder what they actually do in this game?

However, as long as these numbers are up, the developer will think that "This game is perfect as it is and there is no need to do anything with it" and they will just focus on pushing out more DLC for us to buy.

Also I dont think that a dev would work on a dead game. I guess the healthiest situation is players who productively critizise the gameplay so that they can evaluate how to increase the fun factor.

[Mijumaru and Tsutarja chillin]

my problem is the AI dont make an army to make frontlines so cant attack
like they have the units but their not making them into an army so battleplans become an option but countries spawned out of a civil war mostly the ones who caused it not the ones being overthrown DO make an army about 50% of the time and if i make the armys manually for the AI via tagging them they dont make any battleplans its mostly for the major nations but almost every time i make an army for a minor nation like romania and then tag back to who i was playing the AI will make battle plans you know front lines and stuff and i cant figure out why and i dont have any of the newer DLCS just these
hearts of iron IV wall paper
rocket launcher unit pack
sabaton soundtrack
poland united and ready
german historical portraits and the
anniversary pack