AI not using artillery or naval units

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Warnstaff
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AI not using artillery or naval units

Post by Warnstaff »

Hi, first time poster, long time on and off lurker.

Artillery: I'm using he latest version, and I've found, that regardless of scenerio (WW3, China, Europe, European Wars, and Africa) and regardless of country, the AI won't use artillery. It builds them, deploys them, but doesn't move them other then to retreate, or fortify some backwater city thats very far away. I usually let the comp take control (I take the laid back approach), and it, along with AI controled factions, will not use their artillery. They sit there shooting at anything that gets too close. Is this just me? Or was the AI told to use artillery like garrisons?

Naval: Now I know, naval AI isn't really part, but the AI doesn't even move it's ships except to retreate. They are just like artillery, sitting around, doing nothing. I'm not looking to get some supercomputing ultra AI, just one that will utilize it's units as something other then paperweight.

The thread that Atomicbobili posted about aircraft before this thread I've also seen and would like to see addressed :)

P.S. These issues aside, still a wonderful game.
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tkobo
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Post by tkobo »

IF you really piss off a region in the water, they do sometimes react with huge force with their navy.

On a normal basis, they will really only react very small time with their navy to very close losses of water territory.


Your almost 100% correct on artillary though.Its extremely rare that the AI will use its artillary to attack with.It does happen though, especially with those little mech mortar units.BUT no where near enough .
And if you dont count those little mech mortar units ,its so rare that it might as well be never.

http://72.22.88.43/forums/viewtopic.php ... c&start=15

There are two pictures on this page that show an extreme reaction by the AI mexican navy against the AI West US navy.
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Lightbringer
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Post by Lightbringer »

Tkobo-
not to jump topic, and keeping in mind that the date was 2037, did you help the Mexican AI out any? I play against Mexico all the time and have never seen them do much of anything outside garrison their towns. (and that always seemed more like they were police units than defence forces) I noticed in those pics that not only had the second spanish armada set sail, but Mexican forces were at New Orleans! pretty good work for what I'm used to them accomplishing.

On topic: I've had some pretty harsh naval counterattacks against me by AI in the British Isles, no screen shots though. :)
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Post by Warnstaff »

You guys have had naval counterattacks? I played as ireland, declared war on Britain, and took northern ireland in European wars, and sunk nearly their enire navy with 6 submarines (ahh, shopping is good :D ...... ok, I used cheats, but it's happened as germany without them, and Madagascar, Canada, and ireland's navy before first said instance) with them only ever retreating, maybe, and they could have crushed me like an ant if they charged, or even moved a couple hexes!
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tkobo
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Post by tkobo »

Lightbringer- yes, i helped the mexican AI out.BUT i didnt order those units to attack the West US.

The AI has a problem picking out units to send in response to an attack.
It will generally only send units relatively close to the attack(and in limited number,this number and range seems to have increased some this patch),this seems to require even a closer proximity for AI naval units.
BUT,Ive found that if you "wake them up" by moving them yourself to a new position, that anytime after that the AI seems much more willing to send them somewhere else.

In the case above, i took over the mexican AI and ordered most of their navy to attack a South East US force.They did this because i ordered them too.
After they attacked(the SE US) i switched back to my own regions control and returned the control of the mexican units back to the AI.

The result was (and has been in a few cases where i have managed to herd the AIs units without taking manual control of them) that the AI is much more willing to use them itself.

The attack shown in the two pictures was ordered by the mexican regions AI all by itself as its response to a West US's naval push.The West US AI ordered its naval forces to respond to a mexican vs west us ground battle on that penisula(that a mexican naval vessel was sunk in).
The West US AI did that on its own.
The mexican AI than on its own ordered all the mexican navy units i had previously ordered to the east coast, to attack the west coast naval units pushing against it back on the west coast.

Usually the naval AI will respond only in small numbers and than only if they are close to the area in which they are being asked to respond.
I am currently playing a world map as America and fighting in SA.I have had at least 4 small naval battles so far.Which is fairly common in my experience.

For large naval battles you generally have to either come across a large concentration of naval units OR "wake thier units up".

Warnstaff- if you want a large response from the enemy AI naval units, dont attack with subs.The naval AI loses track of them far to fast and doesnt really respond to attacks from them.
You'll get a better naval AI counter attack if you use ships the AI can see.
It will still in most caess be a rather small and disorganized response,but unless you do something special its about what you can expect on a normal basis from the AI.

Europe on the world map is a great place to get some naval battles going.They have a bunch of high concentrations of naval units and if you play cat and mouse with them , you can herd or draw them into some nice battles.

Im coming up on a invasion of europe moment in my current game, ill look for a good AI response and make a movie of it if i get the time this week.

Ive got a really good example of the naval AIs lack of proper response to subs in a movie already on the forum.

http://jusspress.com/day.php?userid=175 ... ime=220036
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Lightbringer
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Post by Lightbringer »

In my case I played England, and in the process of crushing Wales I sent about a stack of various surface and submarine units around that corner to help. Being rather new to the game at the time I sent them up the west coast of the main isle and into a north England hornets nest of ships. The North England fleet followed my hastily retreating survivors and proceeded to engage my reinforcements in a pretty big battle off of the south coast of Wales. So technically I woke them up, but after I did they showed pretty high initiative.
One point that occured to me Tkobo... I wonder if you organised some unit stacks for them and moved them where they might do some good before being split up by the AI, if their ground units might "wake up" like the naval stuff seems to do?
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Post by tkobo »

Yes, ground troops react the same way.The problem with ground troops though, is that alot of the units you "wake up" are put back to sleep by the AI as it sees that the cities dont have units in them.
It than issues move to and entrench orders to the ground units which sends a bunch of them back "to sleep" entrenched in the cities you just moved them out of.

There are some threads around here somewhere with some little tricks to increase the AIs threat in games.

Ill take a quick look and see if i can get one.
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Post by Lightbringer »

You gotta love the Ironies of life... 15-20 years ago I had a pretty good handful of buddies who would have played this with me dang near every night. The only reason we didn't wear my Avalon Hill collection out was the extreme difficulty of keeping large game boards safe in small apartments where drunken revelry was common. Having 18 hours of set-up and play wiped out by a stumbling drunk can ruin your strategic mood for awhile. Now that I have my own LAN(little arsed network), and a game worth playing on it, I have no more "in person" friends to share it with. Well, I'll see how the MPs go. :P


Seems like a fine line between helping the AIs and just playing all the diff regions yourself. Build a couple dozen national guard and station them at every bridge and town? Would only take a few weeks game time to do.
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Post by Warnstaff »

Just tried that naval warfare map, and used only surface ships and missiles, and the AI just sat there, shooting missiles back, and not moving. I only lost units when I can too close to a stationary submarine :( I'll try again later on europe, but still...........
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AtomicBoboli
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Post by AtomicBoboli »

From what I've experienced, the AI will attack with its navy if an enemy nation's terrestrial waters directly border theirs, and they have ships in proximity. They also respond with ships when their waters are being "occupied" (change affiliation), which is also why they never respond to submarine attacks as they cannot occupy hexes. You can set the rest of your naval units to do this, as well, which could be useful in some circumstances. Otherwise, AI ships don't move around much. Apparently, they will not cut through WM waters, no matter how narrow.
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Post by tkobo »

Image

A pic of a decent sea battle starting up.

This one might make a good movie,if i get some extra free time.
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bergsjaeger
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Post by bergsjaeger »

:lol: U moved along way from Israel. Now u blasting the frenchies. And just curious when did Israel finally design battleships. U had to trade for that tech.
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Post by tkobo »

Hey, im playing Israel,they know to "buy american" :P

Its the Kansas class BB in the picks and the San Antonio transport acting as resupply.
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