Army Cohesion on Strat Map

[Quark]

What factor/variables control whether Ai army units will combine on the strat map into one big army or stay as small seperate armies.

[Snipafist]

try changing the campaign_ai_db file for some noticeable changes. "invade_raids" and "invade_opportunistic" in my experience promote tiny little stacks running all over the place. Get rid of them and you'll see the AI combining its units together into larger, although not always maximum-sized, armies.

[formulapower]

i also noticed all these "Military Actions" in the AI files....everything from defend normal....defend deep....defend frontline....invade raids......ect...ect

Does anyone know exactly what each one of thoes actions mean???

[GrandViZ]

The decision of the AI to split or not to split up its forces not only depends on the invasion strategy, but also on the invasion priorities against the considered targets.

If two targets have the same or nearly the same invasion priority, then the AI will split its forces more or less evenly between these targets. Therefore, even with invasion strategies like invade_immediate or invade_buildup, that focus on attacking with superior forces, the tendency to split up can be observed.

A human player facing two separated enemy armies will obviously assign each of them a priority and attack the one, which poses the biggest threat to him first (he might still send two armies if he can afford to be superior at two different places at the same time), with ALL its forces!

The AI however, often tries to fight both targets at the same time, without having the means to do it. The more targets the AI has, the worse the situation gets.

The key to resolve this issue, is to assign the right priorities for all possible situations. E.g. fighting rebels should almost allways be of lower priority than fighting another faction, or fighting an enemy should allways be of higher priority than starting a new war etc.

[Quark]

Just thought I would say thanks for the wise words . Just trying to get a solid grip on these Ai files and 'what does what to whom' so to speak.