AI sends troops everywhere!

[caranorn]

I've been wondering about where the French and British armies disapeared (I lost contact with most of their front at the start of winter, except along the original French/German boder) to in my current game. Will take a look at the ai side tommorrow to see whether it's similar to your Breslau case.

[DrPostman]

I've been wondering about where the French and British armies disapeared (I lost contact with most of their front at the start of winter, except along the original French/German boder) to in my current game. Will take a look at the ai side tommorrow to see whether it's similar to your Breslau case.

Make sure to buy one of the two spies when they become unlocked.

[HerrDan]

Make sure to buy one of the two spies when they become unlocked.

Obwohl they should be both CP IMHO as they were historically.

[HerrDan]

BTW Mata Hari is so hot that I think it's an absurd to see her in the french side (I get really mad when that happens)! apy:

[H Gilmer3]

Well, I feel like an idiot since I'm not steam rolling the CP.

The Grand Fleet isn't bad at that big of a stack - that's how big my Grand Fleet is and it isn't even close to using up all of its command points. Being in the Africa theater is inexplicable.

[HerrDan]

Well, I feel like an idiot since I'm not steam rolling the CP.

The Grand Fleet isn't bad at that big of a stack - that's how big my Grand Fleet is and it isn't even close to using up all of its command points. Being in the Africa theater is inexplicable.

Don't feel like one, Athena isn't that easy to defeat, and the difficult settings are very important when we play this game. So it can change anything and btw you're a very cool guy and should never feel like an idiot!

[H Gilmer3]

Thanks HerrDan. I'm having a good game, so maybe Athena is playing against me in a very smart fashion.

[Owl]

I'm curious, what AI settings are you using, H Gilmer3?

[Bismarck1940]

Something is very very wrong with the AI here. Try having the CP attack in the West (play W Entente) at any setting combinations and you will see the problem.

[H Gilmer3]

I'm curious, what AI settings are you using, H Gilmer3?

Default and easy supply.

[HerrDan]

Thanks HerrDan. I'm having a good game, so maybe Athena is playing against me in a very smart fashion.

You're welcome my friend!

[Kensai]

Kensai, I do not really understand why you argue so heavily that the AI is so good. I am not trying to bash the game here, I love all AGEOD games! They are in fact more or less my favourite PC games in general. That does not change the fact that the AI is horrible though.

Sure I have a save game that proves otherwise, the one I am posting about here! If you really need more "proof", here's some more screens:

You know what, especially this last thing has convinced me that in fact there has to be something wrong with the AI in this specific game. In other AGEOD games, it was never THAT retarded.

I argue because WE DO NOT KNOW how you reached that situation. This is not the way we troubleshoot the AI. Screenshots are snapshots of a situation that is indeed puzzling, but as long as I don't have a relatively early save game WITH the complete settings when you started the game, how on earth am I supposed to know what went wrong and help correct it?

Modern game AI usually works by steady states. The AI tries to keep some balances according to its initial instructions (biases) and scripts. I don't know why the German AI retreated in Breslau, but Breslau if I recall correctly is an important strategic city for the CP, so the AI tries to defend it. So this is nothing wrong. Before certain changes to the AGE engine we had even bigger stacks. However a big stack is not bad when the AI had got some beating and tries to regroup. Remember the AI has less penalty in CP, especially with higher difficulties, so it is good for it to combine units.

On the other hand, players usually misunderstand probabilities: the "strange retreat" issue is something I've been seeing in these forums being asked the last 3 years more than once. It is NOT strange, it is rare, but players only notice it when they see this curious thing happening. It's a bad roll, but abstracts a bad field decision or operative situation. Probabilities is hard to grasp sometimes: It's like when you're thinking of a person and the phone rings and it's that person and you say... "hey I've been thinking about you", forgetting all the GAZILLION times the phone never rung while you were thinking other persons.

My advice is, if you find the game easy, play with a higher difficulty level: Colonel, better activation for the enemy, AI detection at Medium, attrition for you, etc. The AI cannot match the strategic depth of a human player, but it is more than enough in keeping a front, which is what this game needs and does. Regarding fleet actions, I have seen as well strange movements that make sometimes no sense: this can be easily fixed when we implement better patrol biases for certain fleets.

[vaalen]

Well, I feel like an idiot since I'm not steam rolling the CP.

The Grand Fleet isn't bad at that big of a stack - that's how big my Grand Fleet is and it isn't even close to using up all of its command points. Being in the Africa theater is inexplicable.

Athena had defeated me on a number of occasions, and I have been playing these games since Birth of America came out. Maybe the most humiliating defeat happened in PON, 1880 scenario, where, as Great Britain, I lost the second Afghan war to the Afghans. Athena made good use of the horrible terrain and my supply difficulties to defeat my initial forces, pursue them without mercy, and cause so much was weariness in Britain that I had to make peace. And there was the time, when, as France, she defeated Britain in the French and Indian War, despite the overwhelming advantages in numbers and resources I had.

It is unusual to steamroll Athena, which is why I think something is very wrong with Bobs particular game.

[Kensai]

It is unusual to steamroll Athena, which is why I think something is very wrong with Bobs particular game.

For the Ottomans to arrive to Lemberg as in the first screenshot, it means something was horribly wrong in the Caucasus. In every single game I've seen in beta, the Ottoman troops are occupied there and don't send their stacks in another theater. Especially before Romania and Bulgaria create a shortcut. Unfortunately, only a relatively early (pre-factum) save game with error logging on could throw light in this aspect. If we don't have that, it's only speculation and hard to correct it at the engine-rules level.

[bob.]

I argue because WE DO NOT KNOW how you reached that situation. This is not the way we troubleshoot the AI. Screenshots are snapshots of a situation that is indeed puzzling, but as long as I don't have a relatively early save game WITH the complete settings when you started the game, how on earth am I supposed to know what went wrong and help correct it?

As you can see in my screenshots, there are things that should not occur in the game ever. Such as the French AI sending ending up with troops in Dortmund or forming a huge stack with 50 % of the whole French army in it. Or sending the entirety of the British fleet to French North Africa.
Does not matter what I did, does not matter what happened. This just must not happen in my opinion. It means something is fundamentally wrong with the AI.

Modern game AI usually works by steady states. The AI tries to keep some balances according to its initial instructions (biases) and scripts. I don't know why the German AI retreated in Breslau, but Breslau if I recall correctly is an important strategic city for the CP, so the AI tries to defend it. So this is nothing wrong. Before certain changes to the AGE engine we had even bigger stacks. However a big stack is not bad when the AI had got some beating and tries to regroup. Remember the AI has less penalty in CP, especially with higher difficulties, so it is good for it to combine units.

EVEN IF it was good to combine 50 % of the French army in one huge stack (which it is not, not ever. Also, WW1 should have a front line, and you were the one who argued that the "senseless frontal assaults" were historically correct so I could argue the same here), what is not good is keeping that stack inside a city two provinces behind the front line. Turn it as you want to, that just should not happen.

On the other hand, players usually misunderstand probabilities: the "strange retreat" issue is something I've been seeing in these forums being asked the last 3 years more than once. It is NOT strange, it is rare, but players only notice it when they see this curious thing happening. It's a bad roll, but abstracts a bad field decision or operative situation. Probabilities is hard to grasp sometimes: It's like when you're thinking of a person and the phone rings and it's that person and you say... "hey I've been thinking about you", forgetting all the GAZILLION times the phone never rung while you were thinking other persons.

I am what you could call an "AGEOD veteran", I have played ALL their games and I have noticed the same damn AI problems with every game they have ever released.

My advice is, if you find the game easy, play with a higher difficulty level: Colonel, better activation for the enemy, AI detection at Medium, attrition for you, etc. The AI cannot match the strategic depth of a human player, but it is more than enough in keeping a front, which is what this game needs and does. Regarding fleet actions, I have seen as well strange movements that make sometimes no sense: this can be easily fixed when we implement better patrol biases for certain fleets.

You can see my AI settings. I had the highest difficulty level and low detection bonus and no attrition. I guess I could set historical attrition and give the AI the maximum activation bonus. But that's besides the point because all these AI problems here will not be fixed by making me worse. I have been told now that I should set the AI detection off and now you tell me that I should set the AI detection higher. I will try it with "off" for now with my Western Entente game.

It is unusual to steamroll Athena, which is why I think something is very wrong with Bobs particular game.

It IS unusual to steamroll Athena in many other AGEOD games, I agree with that.
But if we compare for example Wars in America to TEAW then it is clear that WIA is a very simple game. All the things that the AI has so huge problems with in TEAW (detailed supplies, keeping a more or less cohesive front etc etc) do not matter so much there! For example you make a huge stack in WIA with all forces available in the theatre often as a player anyway!

[Kensai]

bob, the game probabilities is a huge dice. A dice can roll and give any result. Some results obviously happen more often that others (say the dice has many sides with the same number), others not. There is a number of freak occurences in your game that need further investigation, cause we did not come up on these things while in beta. The French army ending in Dortmund is not necessarily bad, unless you are telling me it's unsupplied and dying. Otherwise it's behind your lines doing what it is supposed to do: getting your own objectives. Yes, the naval fleet in North Africa is wrong and should be corrected not to leave Europe. In my own games I have seen a similar situation, but that fleet is always on the move. Perhaps in a few turns it returns to Europe.

I don't know why the French line broke down so spectacularly in your case. In my games it never happens like this. If your settings are these you say then I definitely need an early save game of yours, ideally before the French front broke. I will run it with error log on and see why France does what it does.

[caranorn]

Whom to send a massively messed up ai save game to?

Hardly any troops left in France (look where their strongest stack is, at their extreme right flank), I exect due to suicidal attacks on Metz. What I thought to be British troops (in Flanders and at the centre of the French "Front") are actually mostly Belgians under British command.

The Brits and Dominion troops are actually to be found at their starting locations. Ah yes and in Africa! I guess Britain has sent Kitchener to starve in Flanders and now considers this a colonial war to be decided in Africa.

And of course in Asia, the Entente Admirality is gathering in the Eastern Mediterranean while their combined fleets wait in Japan. I expect they are plotting an Invasion of more German Colonies.

Wish I had known about that, then I'd just have pushed on towards Paris in November, sent the High Seas Fleet out off the coast of Britanny to bag me some destroyers and some other fun. Certainly I would not have planned a spring campaign for 1915...

Some of this can be explained away on ai settings I picked, but not all of it. There is something seriously wrong here!

Edit: Took the stack in Africa apart for the screenshot, it was organised in corps but I wanted to see what units were in there.

[Owl]

As for that first screenshot, at least some Japanese ships in the Mediterranean Box seems alright to me - historically, the Imperial Japanese Navy committed to that theater only later, but it is still in the realm of possibility.

[bob.]

bob, the game probabilities is a huge dice. A dice can roll and give any result. Some results obviously happen more often that others (say the dice has many sides with the same number), others not. There is a number of freak occurences in your game that need further investigation, cause we did not come up on these things while in beta.

As I have said, for me while it is usually not THAT bad, the AI always does similarly stupid stuff for me in all games.

The French army ending in Dortmund is not necessarily bad, unless you are telling me it's unsupplied and dying.

Well, what do you think? The front line is AT THE BORDER.

Otherwise it's behind your lines doing what it is supposed to do: getting your own objectives.

Getting objectives is stupid if you can not hold them. Holding Dortmund with zero provinces around Dortmund controlled and the front line, as said, at the border? Useless. Also, they never took it because the Germans kept considerable troops in their back.

Yes, the naval fleet in North Africa is wrong and should be corrected not to leave Europe. In my own games I have seen a similar situation, but that fleet is always on the move. Perhaps in a few turns it returns to Europe.

I was also disappointed it just keeps all in one huge stack. That doesn't really seem necessary considering the superiority Britain has anyway.

I don't know why the French line broke down so spectacularly in your case. In my games it never happens like this. If your settings are these you say then I definitely need an early save game of yours, ideally before the French front broke. I will run it with error log on and see why France does what it does.

Thing is, as you can see in the screens, the line did not really "break down" because the Germans are doing similarly retarded.

Here's a thought that just occured to me... maybe it is so hilariously bad because it is AI vs AI? Usually in all games it is AI vs human...
EDIT: No, caranorm (thanks for some more screenshots from a different game!) shows that this happens AI vs human as well...

[Owl]

Here's a thought that just occured to me... maybe it is so hilariously bad because it is AI vs AI? Usually in all games it is AI vs human...

If that's the case, some of the AJE scenarios, ROP or RUS with one human playing on of the white factions should also result in equally strange things, right? Maybe somebody can share their experiences.

[caranorn]

As for that first screenshot, at least some Japanese ships in the Mediterranean Box seems alright to me - historically, the Imperial Japanese Navy committed to that theater only later, but it is still in the realm of possibility.

It's more the proportion of admirals to ships that astounds me (the British liaison officer is a nice touch ;-) ...

Edit: Note I just realised I reset the number of save game files stored at some point prior to that game. So just 3 turns stored :-( ...

[bob.]

Well, I think I have reconsidered and will just play only PBEM from now on... the game itself is amazing.
I have wanted to play a WE game and maybe a CP game against the AI so see how it does but honestly... I am not really in the mood for it. Even if it turns out the AI does not do as retarded as here, the WW1 "feel" is just not there at all.
Maybe subsequent patches will make the AI a little better.

[FroBodine]

Wow, a whole two page thread about how horrible and ridiculous the AI is, and not a single response from a developer to explain anything.

Are they going to improve the AI? Will this game only be enjoyable against a human opponent? I sure hope not, because I play almost strictly vs. the AI. I hope to get some head-to-head games in at some point, but mostly single player.

I sure hope the developers are reading all this, and plan to address it. I don't want to have wasted my money on the worst AI in the history of AGEOD games.

[HerrDan]

Wow, a whole two page thread about how horrible and ridiculous the AI is, and not a single response from a developer to explain anything.

Are they going to improve the AI? Will this game only be enjoyable against a human opponent? I sure hope not, because I play almost strictly vs. the AI. I hope to get some head-to-head games in at some point, but mostly single player.

I sure hope the developers are reading all this, and plan to address it. I don't want to have wasted my money on the worst AI in the history of AGEOD games.

They're surely reading and working on it, of this you can be assured, but as Kensai pointed out, I've never seen such behaviors in my games (and BTW I'm a member of the Beta team), I always have a continuous front in the west and in the east things often look less continuous, but still nothing similar to the screenshots our "young fellow" is showing, anyway if this happened even once, it needs to be addressed and I'm quite sure the Developers are going to do it. apy:

Kind regards,
Herr Daniel.

[Taciturn Scot]

I think its far too early to draw any conclusions about this game. The game's only been out for five days. I don't doubt that the developers are working really hard to fix things up with the AI.

Unfortunately, posting a screenshot or two accompanied with a post pointing out how 'retarded' this behavior is doesn't help them to correct anything. If you really want to help them to fix these problems, you need to send them game saves with a more detailed description of what was happening in your game. There's not much to help them here in this thread even though there appears to be something wrong.

FWIW, I don't expect any new game these days to be working more or less perfectly on release anymore. Playable, yes, but there will be some issues that need to be resolved. Game engines have evolved so much that they require far more testing than can be reasonably expected from their small beta team. I prefer to think of the first couple of months of a new game's release as Gamma testing, where the game is played by thousands of people instead of a dozen or two and the engine gets tweaked until it's as good as it can be. The game gets more 'testing' in its first week of release than it does in the full development cycle so give it a bit of time.

[fred zeppelin]

Could some of this be caused by the fact that there are so many independent Corps that aren't tied to an Army? Perhaps AI units would wander less if they had to operate in conjunction with a parent Army. Just a thought.

[caranorn]

Unfortunately, posting a screenshot or two accompanied with a post pointing out how 'retarded' this behavior is doesn't help them to correct anything. If you really want to help them to fix these problems, you need to send them game saves with a more detailed description of what was happening in your game. There's not much to help them here in this thread even though there appears to be something wrong.

That's why I asked whom to send a save game (unfortunatelly just 3 turns :-( ) to. I of course have the two Philippe's emails, but not sure what role they played in the development of EAW, the correct address for ai matters would probably be a beta tester...

[Pocus]

I would have gladly looked at the saved game showing these British leaders in Congo or the Jap fleet in the med. And yes, we are working on the AI.

[Kensai]

As I have said, for me while it is usually not THAT bad, the AI always does similarly stupid stuff for me in all games.

Not in others' game, what can I say. If you think the AI is not up to the task, well we probably play different games, cause this is not happening in MY games. The only thing I can suggest is my own personal difficulty settings.

Anyway, the game is brand new so you easily find a player to do a PBEM, which for me is the real deal after all. If not, just wait a couple of weeks that I am relatively busy in real life and you can have me as a Central Powers opponent. I would love to be more challenging that the AI you have encountered.

Well, what do you think? The front line is AT THE BORDER.

Getting objectives is stupid if you can not hold them. Holding Dortmund with zero provinces around Dortmund controlled and the front line, as said, at the border? Useless. Also, they never took it because the Germans kept considerable troops in their back.

Sorry, but this can happen to a human player as well. I could try to send a well-supplied force behind your lines to get fast to your capital only to find out it is well-defended. You cannot blame the AI for trying.

I was also disappointed it just keeps all in one huge stack. That doesn't really seem necessary considering the superiority Britain has anyway.

If the CP combine their own 3-4 naval divisions, a powerful High Seas Fleet can be the result. You can actually beat a divided Grand Fleet this way.

Thing is, as you can see in the screens, the line did not really "break down" because the Germans are doing similarly retarded.

Here's a thought that just occured to me... maybe it is so hilariously bad because it is AI vs AI? Usually in all games it is AI vs human...
EDIT: No, caranorm (thanks for some more screenshots from a different game!) shows that this happens AI vs human as well...

Every game is unique. The permutations are literally infinite. Nonetheless, to get a messy West Front is possible. The intruding corps incidents inside the rival's heartland could be decreased if we implement AI Agent "disactivation" after the first two months (after the initial assaults). This is already under consideration. But I presume the French got into the German heartland because the Germans somewhere had their front broken.

This is NOT happening all the times. It may happen, but mostly it does not. The AI knows how to hold the front.

Wow, a whole two page thread about how horrible and ridiculous the AI is, and not a single response from a developer to explain anything.

Are they going to improve the AI? Will this game only be enjoyable against a human opponent? I sure hope not, because I play almost strictly vs. the AI. I hope to get some head-to-head games in at some point, but mostly single player.

I sure hope the developers are reading all this, and plan to address it. I don't want to have wasted my money on the worst AI in the history of AGEOD games.

Relax. In front of bob's and a few other players' accounts, we have so many others that play and enjoy the AI. The problem with bob's case is he provided a couple of screenshots, but NO save games. It is almost impossible for the developers or us beta testers to have an educated guess on what went wrong when we cannot reproduce the AI's behavior.

As I said, Pocus already suspects it should be the "AI agents" (introduced to have the very aggressive first two months of the game), but this is v1.0 of the game. A couple of patches later most of this stuff will be fixed. In the meantime, find some experienced player to kick your ass in PBEM. I will be glad to give you a hard time in a few weeks.

And please, when you report a bug or irrational AI behavior, do so with screenshot(s) AND save game(s). If you really really like to help the developers do run the game with the error logs on, there is a setting in the options.

[Bismarck1940]

Kensai - can you instruct us on how to find/send the saved games to the appropriate thread? Thx.

Not sure how to find them, particularly for a game not currently in progress.

As posted elsewhere, I see three key repeated problems:

1. CP not taking forts in Beligum; not advancing into NW France.
2. The Mega stack problem.
3. Passive defense deep behind own lines based on same.