VERY obvious AI problem (Britain AI), and some minor AI weirdness.

[ravenflight]

Hi All,

In my game as Russia, Britain was invaded by 2 French Corps across the Lille crossing arrow.

France and Britain don't start at war, so sure the British can get caught with their pants down. Britain declared war on France tho, and no naval battles were fought (to my knowledge), so there DEFINITELY should have been a small fleet in the channel.

This is 'playing Britain 101). There should ALWAYS be a small (friendly) fleet in the channel if the Lille crossing arrow is active.

It's being a really strange game. Austria declared watmr on ME as Russia!!! We have no reason to go to war in the early stages. Austria has no assets Russia wants, and Russia can't attack into Austria's sphere of influence without first taking care of business in the near east/Baltic. Even Italy is a bit of a mixed bag? So, I activated some cossacks, went on a pleasure cruise of Hungary and ate at the Holy Roman Emperor's bequest for a year... all the whike asking for an informal peace and fighting a war against Turkey.

Eventually they went informal peace & we're allies again. No harm done except me activating some corps I didn't want to activate.

[DCWhitworth]

Do not try and understand the AI behaviour in this game. That way lies madness

[ravenflight]

ORIGINAL: DCWhitworth

That way lies madness

This is as if to say 'moving phantom men around a phantom board sending driving the phantom enemy before you and hearing the lamentations of their phantom women' isn't madness?

[pzgndr]

ORIGINAL: DCWhitworth
Do not try and understand the AI behaviour in this game. That way lies madness

Indeed, it is even more maddening to try and understand the AI code, and then try to improve it!

FWIW, I have made some adjustments to the various AI probabilities to account for difficulty levels. Where the code checks for the major alliance modifiers, I've added +/-1 for medium AI and +/-2 for hard AI. For example, if the modifier is +1 then it become +3 for hard AI. The idea is to drive more traditional behavior at the higher difficulty.

For the "frivolous" DOWs like Austria and Russia being at odds with each other, I've included a modest -3 modifier to reduce these. There's still a chance, but hopefully a little less likely for several MPs. There's still alliances and calls for DOW that heat things up.

Anyways, I'm making a couple other minor adjustments for v1.21.04 which should be the official release version when I wrap it up. Any comments/feedback will help drive further improvements in the next update.