The AI likes to kill its own armies to attrition

[The Dude]

Sometimes it's nice to catch a break, when you're guarding a recently captured frontier town with an under-strength army, its buildings still undergoing conversion. It's especially nice when that break is against the Eastern Roman Empire marching three full armies into your territory to take your town back, and defeating them turns out to be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

But let's be realistic here; if the AI kills itself to attrition, something needs to change.

The ERE in my campaign was reduced to only Libya and the Sahara. The Sassanids, Dacians, and Macedonians had conquered everything else. I'm coming in from Mauretania with my Visigoths, having settled Hispania and running a stable kingdom there. The Gaetulians in Dimmidi are giving me the evil eye, so I decide to be proactive and march in a single army, taking out their two and capturing the town in the process. In doing so I border my land against the remnant of the ERE, but I figure what the hell, they're a hollowed out skeleton state anyway, it's probably fine.

Turned out that they had three full stacks left to them. Three full stacks that you'd think would be pointed east, where the Sassanids are slowly creeping into Libya. Egypt is desolation, after all, so you'd expect the ERE to know what they were in for. Not so. All their armies are gathered on the border of Dimmidi's area of control, and I'm looking at my construction counter and see that my fortified town centre still requires three full turns to complete. My occupying army is a shadow of its former self, and will need about the same amount of turns to return to full strength. I'm ed, right? No way in hell I'm living to survive this.

End turn. The ERE marches its troops into the desert, and closes in on my town. My army has replenished somewhat. End turn. The ERE continues to march through the desert, travelling to Dimmidi's western side. End turn. They travel to Dimmidi's east side. End turn. By now my town is fortified. My defenders are strong. The ERE decides to march a few more laps through the desert. Their spear units operate at 15% of full strength. Meanwhile, Libya burns and the Sassanids have advanced to also deal the death blow to the WRE hiding out in their last town of Leptis Magna.

I march out from my town to attack the ERE. Severely outmatched, their armies scatter in all directions, exposing themselves to further attrition. No longer able to come to each other's support, I take them out one at a time, autoresolving with fewer than 100 battle casualties each. The Sassanids, well-pleased with my aggression against the Romans, offer me a non-aggression pact. I throw in a trade agreement, and we're golden.

If I were to learn history from this game, I'd be left with the impression that the Roman Empire wanted to fall.

[Kalatorni]

CAI is really wonky. In my campaign one of the Celtic factions (I dont remember the name, Ebd...Ed... something from Ireland) sent its fleet and army into sea attrition area near my regions, where it has been now for over two years. I attacked them to see if they are immune to the sea attrition (they werent) and they escaped further into the sea. And in general I see AI starving its armies in hostile regions/swamps etc without any purpose, despite having the necessary power to capture a nearby settlement.

[craziii]

more like cai got a super unhealthy dose of "get the player no matter what" code. this is just another form of getting in the way of the player, like the way civil war was designed in R2 EE.

that is pretty bad.

[AngryPolack]

Can modders improve the CAI or is it off limits? I have a feeling CA won't be doing much to improve it.

[GrimmCro]

In mid to later stage of one of my earliest Geat campaigns, I had about 13 factions at war with me. Few quality ones, the rest were those idiots who don't like great power and want to die fighting it. But there were simply too many of them allied against me to a point I was left with holding the Geat Kingdom (Scotland, England, Wales and Ireland). I've had a full stack fleet guarding the port province at the south of England along with an extra stack of infantry and two more stacks holding the passage a bit south with another stack in London acting as replacements where needed while the other armies got replenished. I held my ground there for nearly 30 turns of incessant attacks.

But here's the kicker. About eight armies tried to avoid that fatal funnel down south and sail to Scotland and hit me from behind. But that's where my 2nd Fleet came in, patrolling up and down the eastern coastline for any wannabe raiders. Few went bald and brave and tried to land only to get wiped out. After that happened, the rest packed their ships on a small stretch of the water in the middle of Oceanus Germanicus, right smack in the middle of attrition area, and they just sat there, turn after turn after turn. I was too occupied down south to care but when they finally stopped trying to walk into my borders, I went to see just how badly they've suffered. Eight full stacks were reduced to six stacks, most down to about a dozen troops per unit and quite a lot of them lost at least a quarter of their troops.

AI brain fart...

[Evan]

On one hand, you have the AI killing itself with attrition, while on the other hand, ignoring player rules and spamming stacks without any consideration to income or empire size. Its like things go from one extreme to the other, with no balance in between. It can make for some very​ frustrating games.

[Sithrain]

The worst part is that the AI takes something like 80% less attrition from most sources, and is completely immune to some forms. The fact that it can take noticeable losses at all from attrition is proof of how much time it spends marching its armies in circles hundreds of miles from friendly territory, presumably due to its desire to murder the player at any cost.

[The Dude]

Little status update on my campaign situation. After massacring the three ERE armies at Dimmidi, the CAI managed to spawn another five that are now camping around my side. They have only two towns left in the Sahara region, the Sassanids control everything else. I'm getting real tired of the AI not taking its enemies seriously, and fielding impossibly large armies from miniscule regions.