Slitherine

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ORIGINAL: delatbabel

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ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

Actually the AI will not be forced to surrender until they reach Civil Disorder. This happens when the MP can collect no home nation manpower (All provincial capitals and nation's capital occupied at the the beginning of an eco phase).

Was that a deliberate change at some point in 1.03? I didn't see it in any of the change logs.

It's not a clever idea for any power to wait until it reaches civil disorder status before surrendering, as then it will have no money and no army for far too long. Better to give up early.

Refer to Mantis issues 192 and 190, I think this needs fixing.

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ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

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ORIGINAL: delatbabel

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ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

Actually the AI will not be forced to surrender until they reach Civil Disorder. This happens when the MP can collect no home nation manpower (All provincial capitals and nation's capital occupied at the the beginning of an eco phase).

Was that a deliberate change at some point in 1.03? I didn't see it in any of the change logs.

It's not a clever idea for any power to wait until it reaches civil disorder status before surrendering, as then it will have no money and no army for far too long. Better to give up early.

Refer to Mantis issues 192 and 190, I think this needs fixing.

Del,

I think this was added in 1.01.

I somwhat disagree with this a bit. IMO it is not a good idea for Russia to give up early. She can usually hold out long enough for another MP to press an invader enough so that they have to pull back and give up the deep invasion. Cossack units can constantly make supply lines difficult to maintain. It is very difficult for Russia to move into Civil Disorder for a reason. I think Turkey can be similar simply because of the feudals and the difficulty in assaulting Constantinople.

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ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

One of the things I have added and looking for some feedback on is a focus on supply lines by special units such as Cossack, Freikorps and Guerilla units. These units are now more focused on attacking supply lines. They should be looking for unprotected depots.

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ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

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ORIGINAL: delatbabel

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

Actually the AI will not be forced to surrender until they reach Civil Disorder. This happens when the MP can collect no home nation manpower (All provincial capitals and nation's capital occupied at the the beginning of an eco phase).

Was that a deliberate change at some point in 1.03? I didn't see it in any of the change logs.

It's not a clever idea for any power to wait until it reaches civil disorder status before surrendering, as then it will have no money and no army for far too long. Better to give up early.

Refer to Mantis issues 192 and 190, I think this needs fixing.

Del,

I think this was added in 1.01.

I somwhat disagree with this a bit. IMO it is not a good idea for Russia to give up early. She can usually hold out long enough for another MP to press an invader enough so that they have to pull back and give up the deep invasion. Cossack units can constantly make supply lines difficult to maintain. It is very difficult for Russia to move into Civil Disorder for a reason. I think Turkey can be similar simply because of the feudals and the difficulty in assaulting Constantinople.

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ORIGINAL: NeverMan

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ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

One of the things I have added and looking for some feedback on is a focus on supply lines by special units such as Cossack, Freikorps and Guerilla units. These units are now more focused on attacking supply lines. They should be looking for unprotected depots.

I'm not sure what you mean. Should Cossack, Freikrops and Guerilla need to be supplied? I said no way.

If you mean are they effective against supply lines? ABSOLUTELY!

In the CleverDevils2 PBEM game the Tu is behind held back (or least I think this is why) because of the looming 5 cossacks. Maybe this will change after Dec, I don't know.

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ORIGINAL: ndrose

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ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

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ORIGINAL: delatbabel

quote:

ORIGINAL: Marshall Ellis

Actually the AI will not be forced to surrender until they reach Civil Disorder. This happens when the MP can collect no home nation manpower (All provincial capitals and nation's capital occupied at the the beginning of an eco phase).

Was that a deliberate change at some point in 1.03? I didn't see it in any of the change logs.

It's not a clever idea for any power to wait until it reaches civil disorder status before surrendering, as then it will have no money and no army for far too long. Better to give up early.

Refer to Mantis issues 192 and 190, I think this needs fixing.

Del,

I think this was added in 1.01.

I somwhat disagree with this a bit. IMO it is not a good idea for Russia to give up early. She can usually hold out long enough for another MP to press an invader enough so that they have to pull back and give up the deep invasion. Cossack units can constantly make supply lines difficult to maintain. It is very difficult for Russia to move into Civil Disorder for a reason. I think Turkey can be similar simply because of the feudals and the difficulty in assaulting Constantinople.

I'll buy this in regard to Russia, and maybe Turkey *if* it can still raise feudals. But, to return to the game I played as Austria, I had occupied all feudal-producing capitals, so those corps were gone forever. Turkey had no means of ever raising another army or retaking any capitals. It still had Trabizond and Armenia, but with no money it couldn't build any corps. Meanwhile my supply was not a cost since I had moved my army home (and on to other wars), just leaving behind the impervious 1i garrisons. I finally put Turkey out of its misery by moving Persian troops in to occupy the remaining capitals. That was years later, during which Turkey had been pinned in the fiasco zone.

In re: cossacks, does the AI remember to rebuild them (and to build extras if Russia is invaded)? My impression is that in 1.02, if you killed the cossacks, they never came back. As you point out, they can be very effective for disrupting supply.

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ORIGINAL: testcase4321


4. Others have mentioned this earlier, but I think this is worthy of bringing up again. There needs to be a better way of cycling through free states during the economic phase. As Russia I tend to only have a few free states until later in the game, but even still I occasionally forget to build troops with Free states and its quite annoying. I dont know what it would take to implement this, but it should be considered.

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ORIGINAL: testcase4321

1. I find that after conquering bits of Turkey my corps remaining in conquered Turkish provinces sometimes randomly teleport back to Russia. In fact, this has happened 3 out of 4 times so far, and I have no idea why. In fact, it just happened in the game I am currently playing (troops transported to Odessa). It tends to happen in Winter (February) as this is usually right before my spring campaign

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2. I can no longer invade England across the channel in France. This occurs even when there are no blocking British fleets.

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4. Placing fleets from Free States. This happened in previous versions as well, and Im not sure if it's a bug or just something goofy. When I conquer Sweden or Denmark and turn them into free states I seem to be able to place their fleets whereever I wish. This includes in the Black Sea, which I have done often. It would seem that a restriction to placing fleets in the home country makes much more sense.

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2. I have noticed that the AI chooses the 'right' options for alliances. i.e. Austria/Britain/Prussia always seem to ally. However, even though they ally they are not able to work together. In fact, while declaring war on every major power in the game I find that only Turkey has invaded my Russia, and even then the Turks seem to be content to attack only provincial corps and not push the attack.

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4. My declarations of war against Austria/Prussia/Britain have led to exactly zero corps invading Russia, coming towards Russia, or threatening me in any way. The game tends to pile up troops in the capital cities (particularly Austria) leaving the rest of the country open.

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5. Fleet actions are still a bit suspect. I find the Brits dont concentrate their forces against the Russia Navy, leading to significant British losses.

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6. I don't see the French conquering any of the big power territories. They do a better job with the minor states at least, but are not aggressive enough. They also tend in my games to leave large forces in the Swiss area, and do not pull back until Paris is threatened.

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7. I have no idea what the Spanish are doing all game, but with close to no combat and at the Hard AI level, they seem to be my closest competition for game winners.

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1. Instituting the "Alternative great power" rules is really a must (mostly for PBEM play, sa the AI isnt up to challenging humans yet). It shakes up the game quite a bit and throws a wrench into the standard Turkey/Spain/France alliance vs British/Austria/Prussia/Russia alliance.

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2. This game really needs something like a 'badboy' rating. Another term for this is a 'Hate' rating (depending on what other games you have played). These terms refer to the computer opponents reacting to human players on the basis of the human player actions. Essentially, the more aggressive and powerful a human player is, the greater the likelihood of the computer players all ganging up and attacking the human player. I cant tell if EIA has this built into it, and from what I can tell it does not. But my expectation is that at some point, if I as the Russian player have conquered 1/2 the globe, then I should be a target for the AI.

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3. The small map in the right bottom corner of the screen just bothers me. Its almost, but not quite useful. In addition to marking colors for conquered nations, it really should have a similar scheme for Free States. It is sometimes difficult to tell how powerful nations are, or how much they have spread, when a significant portion of their holdings dont show up on that map. I dont see why we cant have all the conquered and free state nations the same color.

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This is actually part of issue # 35 in Mantis so if the save game could be posted there that'd be great.

There is a general issue with France being too timid from the beginning of the game onwards.

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ORIGINAL: testcase4321

Thank you Del for your very helpful responses. I especially appreciate the small map help, it makes the game much clearer.

Also, where is this 'Mantis' list or whatever? Id love to take a look at it.

Finally, just wanted to share that I was thinking the most recent update was to be a AI enhancement update. I was thinking of this as I pulled my Russian troops off the Turkish border in 1805 after Turkey declared war. For the remainder of the game I watched as the Turkish troops made the daring move one province in to my territory and occupy Podolia/kamenetz. For the next 7 game years, we saw no activity on the Turkish border. I guess this is an improvement over previous versions of the game, where the turks would declare war and then sit on their side of the border, but overall I would say the game dynamics havent changed much. And this is a problem.

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ORIGINAL: Thresh

Marshall,

I started a game where I was Spain, with a bid of 13.
Every other MP was on Hard AI.

The bids I used were
France 38
GB 36
SP 13
Pr 15
Tu 10
Ru 23
Au 21

In January of 05, after setup and diplomacy,I checked the VP status.

France was at 13%
GB at14%
Sp at 0%
Pr at 14%
Ru at 15%
Au at 21%

France needs 400 VP to win the game.  At 4 PP phases per year, 44 PP phases Total, France needs 9.09 PP per phase (at aq bid of 0) to win.  The Hard AI  bonus is giving France 52 points before the game even begins.

That means France needs 7.9 points, call it 8 PP per economic phase to win the game.  Starting at the D2 position, France can sit and manipulate to stay in the dominant zone, and never have to do another thing PP wise to win the game.

Which is what I think is happening.  I think the French AI is looking around, sees it doesn't have to doa thing, and does nothing but build.  Any DoW's against France are the result of either a Call, or a random die roll that I haven't figured out.

The only way around such bonus's I see at the moment are to bid ridiculously high numbers for the AI...

I may very well be wrong on all of this though, as programming is not my forte.  :-)

Todd

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ORIGINAL: RayKinStL

I am not sure how you got France to surrender as GB. If I make a run at Paris, the one thing they will do is move that monster stack to protect their capital. Plus the reason you aren't winning is the way Matrix did difficulty levels. Knowing the AI was garbage, they made up for it by giving the computer more VP (by percentage) each turn depending on the difficulty. Difficuly has nothing to do with the way the computer moves, just the way VP is calculated.

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ORIGINAL: Reiryc

Darth tater?

Is that you?

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ORIGINAL: Tater

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ORIGINAL: RayKinStL

I am not sure how you got France to surrender as GB. If I make a run at Paris, the one thing they will do is move that monster stack to protect their capital. Plus the reason you aren't winning is the way Matrix did difficulty levels. Knowing the AI was garbage, they made up for it by giving the computer more VP (by percentage) each turn depending on the difficulty. Difficuly has nothing to do with the way the computer moves, just the way VP is calculated.

That is another thing...if the GB & French start at war option is used the Conditional surrender option should not be available. All I did was win a battle in the Paris area and breach Paris. Next turn France surrendered conditionaly.

OK, now the VP makes sense...it's just a cheat. Hmmm...but then wouldn't this encourage the AI to not be aggressive? If the AI is sitting fat, dumb and happy VP wise what drives the AI to take aggressive/offensive actions?

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ORIGINAL: ndrose

Update on the game played as Austria:
[snip]
What should the AI have done? I can see the difficulty of writing a general rule that would cover this case. And of course I don't know how much money it had. (Though one would think, having done nothing, it should be rich.)

Ideally, it would already have been set up on a depot to the east of Milan when the war started. But barring that, it could either make the calculation to spend the money for one turn to move its whole army forward (and it could have placed a depot in Milan to cut the cost, rather than supplying from Turin). Or (even better in this case, since Spain was about to win the game on points), declare against Spain and eat Parma and Genoa as a snack before advancing on Modena. The Spanish army was in Portugal and posed no threat.