first game: is the CSA AI being over-aggressive?

[GillinghamFC]

I have just finished my first campaign in AACW. Congratulations to AGEOD on an excellent product with a lot of historical feel.

I played as the USA against the CSA AI. I found that the AI had a tendency to make extremely large and deep incursions into my territory, and would often hang in there when I thought a better strategy would be to withdraw. They lost several large forces trapped in sieges in upstate NY, in York PA, elsewhere in mountains in PA, near lake Erie, and (if the game hadn't ended) they would also have lost large forces also in Cincinatti and Salem, IL.

These are not small cavalry raids but fully equipped armies/corps with supply wagons etc.

Do other players notice this happening in their games?

This may have happened at first because my recruitment levels were rather low due to beginner's errors and I found myself heavily outnumbered and easily outflanked in 1861/2. At one stage the AI seemed to have me on the ropes. They outflanked me on the Eastern Front and got into positions threatening Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia. However, instead of taking one or more of these cities, which were practically defenceless they just kept going north, and tried to cross the Hudson, where I stopped them with ships. All their forces which took part in these operations ended up either dead or PoW. I then easily won in the East as they had nothing substantial left to defend with.

Then in 1863 they burst through in the West, also with very large forces, and also allowing themselves to be trapped in sieges.

I would characterise the AI in this campaign as over-aggressive to the point of foolhardiness. Yet I was playing with AI aggressiveness normal!

Other AI options were

Difficulty level: normal
AI Activation Bonus: +1
AI Detect Bonus: low bonus
Aggressiveness: normal
Extra AI CPU time: yes

Game version is 1.15

I am interested in knowing whether other USA players experience this kind of AI suicide. For my next game I will probably give them bigger detect and activation bonuses. But should I turn AI aggressiveness down as well?

[rattler01]

Basicly every game I have played has this happen, playing the other side isn't much better. To fully experience this amazing game you really need to play a human player.

Athena just doesn't seem to realize Armies > then cities and doesn't properly guard supply lines. Having said that it still is a amazing AI.

Having the amazing in depth and vastness of a game like this will almost always mean human > AI for the foreseeable future IMHO.

[Pat "Stonewall" Cleburne]

Make sure to turn the AI agresiveness option to passive. It doesn't end these problems, but it helps alot.

[Chaplain Lovejoy]

Yep--a well-documented issue.

[GillinghamFC]

Thanks guys, I will go with AI passive in next game.

[caranorn]

I think the major issue is that the ai won't withraw after a sucessful raid of this sort. The raids themselves make for a challenging game as the ai repeatedly caught me off guard. But once I manage to corner one such raiding force it's easy to destroy (and gain a lot of experience for my generals and troops, as well as seniority for the generals). All of that will eventually lead to a shorter war (automatic victory as the Union by fall 1862 with almost identical settings to Gillingham's)...

[ImperatorMJ]

Happened to me, too. I raised grand armies in the East and the West, took Richmond without a fight and captured A.S. Johnston's entire 76,000-man army in Nashville. Bloody game didn't know it was beaten. I got nickel-and-dimed to death by a thousand raiders attacking Chicago and Buffalo. I never lost, I just stayed hovering at around 150 NM couldn't close it out, even after I marched to New Orleans.

[Pocus]

The upcoming new beta patch will have some AI tweaks regarding this aggressiveness. It should be lower by default, although I guess you'll find it still too bold at time (make for a less boring game somehow ).

[caranorn]

Just to illustrate how this is not just a Confederate-ai issue. I concluded my recent game as the Confederates with an auto victory right at the start of the 1863 campaign season.

The Union-ai had gotten in trouble with a New Orleans landing (sound strategy, but you have to reinforce or withdraw, not try to hold on with a single division). Also bypassing Fort Donelson down the Tenessee river (iirc) eventually taking Chatanooga and Atlanta. Both these strong and deep raids were eventually defeated with the loss of at least three Union-ai divisions.

At least three more Union-ai divisions were destroyed in the Nashville area (again sound strategy as I almost lost my Army in Kentucky as I could no longer resupply, but in Luxembourgish we have the saying "baal ass keng Maus an der Faal" (rough translation, 'almost doesn't catch the mouse'))...

And six destroyed divisions plus the capture of Saint Louis (I had control of all of Missouri-Kansas-IT-Texas south of the Missouri river plus Cairo but lost all of northern Kentucky (though by the time of the automatic victory my Army of Tennessee had started moving back north)) which ammounts to a lot of NM gained by me and lost by the ai...

Oh and for an entire year the Union-ai sat tight in Virginia with a nominally superior force ) (in the end I had two corps (senior commander Longstreet) at Manassas with a power rating of roughly 4500 (dug in to level 6, so it was sound not to frontally assault) while the Union had 6000+ Power at Alexandria and Washington (though possibly in three distinct armies). While the Union-ai thus sat tight I let Jackson (~2000 power, his Union-ai opponents in that area roughly the same strength) raid into West Virginia and Pennsylvania and in the last turn to the outskirts of Washington. All the ai did on the seaboard in that time was minor raids against Norfolk and North Carolina (all defeated) and reinforce Fort Monroe (which thus withstood a one year siege (first just Magruder with a division, eventually reinforced to three divisions the under Joe Johnson)...

So the ai tends to raid and not withdraw, at the same time it does not engage the main enemy armies. Another strange thing I noticed was that I found many of the best Union commanders in the Trans Mississipi (Grant, Sherman, Rosecrans, Davis and a number of others (Curtis at least made sense as he appears there)), usually just commanding single brigades or small divisions...

[Pat "Stonewall" Cleburne]

The biggest thing that would help the AI is figuring out a way to keep them close to a supply base. Almost every game I play involves a deep raid by 20000+ troops into NC where they eventually starve to death. They have massive problems maintaining armies outside of Virginia as there are less supply depots and it's easier to deny supply to the enemy. Keep the AI closer to supplies and make them withdraw in low supply situations would help I think. Game is legacy though. Hopefully mods or AACW2 can fix it.