AI still very unbalanced

[heliostellar]

What game am I playing here?

Victoria 3 bills itself as having 5 primary game features, including the fourth:

"Rather than paint the map of the world, you write the book of your nation. But you are an actor on a global stage, racing other nations up the mountain of prestige. In Victoria 3, anything achievable by war, can also be done by diplomacy. Use pacts, alliances, threats and bluffs to claim your place in the sun."

I just ragequit yet again after trying to jump back into this game... this time it was as Russia.

AI-led UK (backed by its space marines armies that can arrive anywhere on Earth faster than present day militaries) made Circassia a protectorate and is simultaneously invading Qing and Persia asking for significant territorial concessions demands that it will most certainly win from both:

Spoiler

Spoiler

This kind of mindless aggression is not supposed to be possible in the game, even for the superpower that was the British empire. I know the masochist fanboys will say that they love the "challenge," even though it demands you use completely anachronistic strategies to win (i.e., map painting, or preventing the AI from map painting).

Countries should not be declaring wars constantly over every diplomatic slight, and we shouldn't be so confident of the results. You basically just wait for the game to crunch out the inevitable results, and automating this part of the game has not improved upon any of the franchise's chronic issues where the AI is doing completely irrational things. Generally speaking, all offensive wars should be inherently very difficult to achieve victory, because that's not how the era worked.

Also, it should be much more costly from the UK specifically to troll every nation on the planet. This was the Victorian era, even though the UK had a very powerful navy these D-Day level invasions that happen quite casually should not be happening.

 

[Manchura]

thing is, this is historically accurate for a ton of countries during the time, especially the great powers

Britain was simultaneously fighting both the anglo-persian war and the second opium war in the 1850s and handedly won both (ironically, this is what you posted)

france spent the ENTIRE era at war without a single break year often times involved in multiple conflicts across the globe

all in all it's less that it shouldn't happen because it makes no sense, but the fact AI can get away with it but if a player does it there is hell to pay is really the problem

 

[heliostellar]

thing is, this is historically accurate for a ton of countries during the time, especially the great powers

Britain was simultaneously fighting both the anglo-persian war and the second opium war in the 1850s and handedly won both (ironically, this is what you posted)

france spent the ENTIRE era at war without a single break year often times involved in multiple conflicts across the globe

all in all it's less that it shouldn't happen because it makes no sense, but the fact AI can get away with it but if a player does it there is hell to pay is really the problem

No. We are not even talking about the same thing. The wars you refer to were never intended to do what the AI is accomplishing, which is to paint the map. In neither war did the British Empire acquire vast new lands, nor did it even propose to.

The Second Opium War was not a total war with a fullscale land invasion of China in which the UK demanded the states of Western and Eastern Guangdong, while also directly occupying and annexing half of Persia.

Spoiler: Specifically, the UK did not annex the states of Arabistan, Fars, Kerman, Persian Hormuz, and Khorasan:

In the Anglo-Persian war, the only territorial changes even suggested but never happened were to give Oman more territory. Oman already has the Hormuz state and several trade ports in Persia. This is a logical demand.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

I dont take issue with Uk's agression. it has to go "somewhere", its not like it should be railroaded to the areas that it historically went, the Uk took huge swathes of land in Asia, could have been a different swath that i'm not concerned about.

I play a fair amount of games, and i do see the Uk go into ahistorical territory sometimes yes, but i feel i would really need to cherrypick among my games to take an example of an Uk that is just going rediculous. I dont think the argument is easily made by the example of 1 game, we all know games like EU4 sometimes have some rediculous outcomes in that regard too, points where even Albania can form a multi ethnic empire on its own, you roll the dice enough on random games you will get weird outcomes but then there was always a point why games were not to be railroaded anymore.

 

[delta180]

AI aggressiveness is a setting in the game, you can set it to low if you don't want this sort of thing to happen.
Personally I like to set it to high because carving up the world to secure population and goods for your empire is heavily incentivised for every big nation. This is not a problem with the AI, it is an issue with how land grabbing works.

 

[Zhetone]

I also had the UK try to protectorate Circassia in my Russia game, it's completely idiotic that they can even do it. It cripples your game and there's essentially nothing you can do about it. They should at least cut Circassia off from the coast. Obviously this doesn't fix the fact that UK's power projection is way overtuned, though.

 

[heliostellar]

I also had the UK try to protectorate Circassia in my Russia game, it's completely idiotic that they can even do it. It cripples your game and there's essentially nothing you can do about it. They should at least cut Circassia off from the coast. Obviously this doesn't fix the fact that UK's power projection is way overtuned, though.

The weird thing is that the UK was actually involved in Circassia. LOL! The Russian capture of the HMS Vixen almost caused a war between Russia and the UK. The Russians even mobilized, but it was the UK that backed down:

The conflict threatened to develop into war between Russia and Britain, but by April 1837 relations had settled down. Urquhart was withdrawn to London. Britain was reluctant to antagonise Russia further, as it could not find a continental ally willing to lend support in a war. The official answer of the government and the Liberal Party to an inquiry by the Conservatives stated that Russia owned Circassia lawfully under the Adrianople peace treaty. Russia, therefore, continued its blockade of the east coast of Black Sea. The conflict became one of a number of episodes of Russian-British rivalry of the 1830s and 1840s, which were eventually to escalate into the Crimean War.

Mission of the Vixen - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Either way, the UK did not get its way. The Russians captured the Vixen and continued with its occupation of Circassia.

This should either be abstracted out or given an event to resolve without a war if we have to suffer through it.

 

[Hansatron]

I dont take issue with Uk's agression. it has to go "somewhere", its not like it should be railroaded to the areas that it historically went, the Uk took huge swathes of land in Asia, could have been a different swath that i'm not concerned about.

I think the great powers AI needs
to be empire building - if they just hang out in Europe it’s a pretty boring game - although I do think ever since they dropped sphere of influence, the UK (et al) hasn’t been pursuing the British empire instead of Britain. I’d be much happier if they tried to get countries into their bloc by diplo or gunpoint than just trying to conquer random states around the world. I struggle to grasp why British ai (substitute various other euro powers) would start a play to conquer a state from Vietnam and protectorate Vietnam at the same time, for example, but they do things like this all the time.

 

[Amallric]

Historical answer: in 1853 Russia tried to bully Turkey and the UK intervened. Need a reminder how that ended?

Gameplay answer: if you play as Russia, one of the strongest nations in the game, probably the strongest, and cannot beat UK over Circassia, you definitely need to git gud.

 

[Manchura]

I think the great powers AI needs
to be empire building - if they just hang out in Europe it’s a pretty boring game - although I do think ever since they dropped sphere of influence, the UK (et al) hasn’t been pursuing the British empire instead of Britain. I’d be much happier if they tried to get countries into their bloc by diplo or gunpoint than just trying to conquer random states around the world. I struggle to grasp why British ai (substitute various other euro powers) would start a play to conquer a state from Vietnam and protectorate Vietnam at the same time, for example, but they do things like this all the time.

this is more of an AI problem than anything, the AI tries to use all it's maneuvers without hitting 75 infamy (the point at which other AI nations are willing to become more hostile to them compared to a player's 25 infamy hostility point with AI) and well, since there aint a whole lot of things you can do other than take land, make a protectorate, and get reoperations it all goes somewhere

 

[Zhetone]

The weird thing is that the UK was actually involved in Circassia. LOL! The Russian capture of the HMS Vixen almost caused a war between Russia and the UK. The Russians even mobilized, but it was the UK that backed down:

Mission of the Vixen - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Either way, the UK did not get its way. The Russians captured the Vixen and continued with its occupation of Circassia.

This should either be abstracted out or given an event to resolve without a war if we have to suffer through it.

Maybe it could have an event, yeah, and if the UK backs down as they did historically it has some effect where they won't intervene. The thing is, though, the UK trying to protectorate Circassia in-game has nothing to do with what happened historically. They aren't doing it because Russia captured one of their ships, they do it because the AI is insane and wants to protectorate everything it can and it sees Circassia has no allies

Historical answer: in 1853 Russia tried to bully Turkey and the UK intervened. Need a reminder how that ended?

Gameplay answer: if you play as Russia, one of the strongest nations in the game, probably the strongest, and cannot beat UK over Circassia, you definitely need to git gud.

Fighting the UK as Russia in this game is actually more annoying if you are fighting the UK alone because naval invasions make no sense. A dev agreed with me on the V3 Discord that the system is somewhat nonsensical; if they try to invade the arctic north you are forced to fight them with an absurdly small number of troops, meaning your numerical advantage is entirely defeated. Moreover they have every troop not just from the UK but also India and all their other colonies/protectorates, which is historically absurd

Beyond that, intervening requires basically being friends with Circassia, which is also against what you're supposed to be doing, which is getting to a point where you can annex Circassia by invading it; you start with a truce with them. I don't really enjoy defenses of awful game design that hand-wave them as not a big deal, it's a symptom of a much larger issue in the game. In the same game where they invade Circassia, they may annex half of Spain (I see this often), block France in Algeria by guaranteeing the minor states there, annex half of China, etc.

Circassia is a blip, it's just a very stupid and annoying one

 

[heliostellar]

Historical answer: in 1853 Russia tried to bully Turkey and the UK intervened. Need a reminder how that ended?

Gameplay answer: if you play as Russia, one of the strongest nations in the game, probably the strongest, and cannot beat UK over Circassia, you definitely need to git gud.

No, this was not an attempt at the game to trigger the Crimean War. Again, like I said to @Manchura, we are not even talking about the same thing. You are just cherrypicking a random historical event to justify the AI launching full-scale invasions that simply never happened.

There are two separate issues here that you conflated. One is the AI doing dumb things and the second is the Crimean War.

You seem to think the AI is doing something clever, but I say this is just an example of the infinity monkey theorem. Basically, if you get enough monkeys slamming enough keyboards for the rest of eternity, then statistically-speaking they will eventually type out "Merry Christmas" or trigger an international crisis in V3 at about the same time another crisis happened in real history. This is not genius. This is a coincidence.

 

[Secret Master]

You seem to think the AI is doing something clever, but I say this is just an example of the infinity monkey theorem.

"Clever" would be a strong term for me to use. I'm not sure a Circassin protectorate is worth the money and lives required to defeat Russia. Britain should have other fish to fry that would yield more revenue or military leverage.

However, as I was telling someone who was complaining that China was too hard due to British intervention, Britain only interferes in your corner of the world if it dislikes you. And if it's not otherwise busy. If you make friends with Britain, these interventions just go away. Or Britain might even help you if asked.

The AI isn't being clever, but it is trying to oppose those it considers to be threats or outright rivals. It's always looking for an excuse to intervene. And the trick of asking one side in a diplomatic play to become a protectorate in exchange for help is one human players can (and often do) use to extend their reach in foreign affairs. So, it's not like the AI is doing something a human can't or won't do.

The reasons it seems stupid are as follows:

1) If you accept protectorate to join a play, you can't really add more war goals. So, it's not like you can demand a bunch of other garbage on top of the protectorate. This makes some of these wars look stupid because Britain is going full Crimean War over piddly little war goals.

2) It's possible to turn every amphibious invasion in to Super-Gallipoli even when it really shouldn't be feasible. And there is no mechanism for limited attacks like during the Opium Wars.

3) From the player's perspective, it seems arbitrary. Unlike our historical counterparts, we aren't listening to diplomatic envoys or speeches related to how much they hate or love us, how threatened they are by our actions, and so on. You never get anything close to a "We will attack you over this issue" kind of ultimatum. So, it's just like BAM!, Britain is intervening in your conflict for no reason, when the reality is that Britain is feeling like it wants to oppose you for a whole list of reasons and it just picked this one issue to complain about.

4) Unlike other AI controlled countries, Britain often feels like it can actually oppose human players militarily. So, that's what it does. When other AI nations feel strong enough, they do the same things to their rivals and whatnot. But if a human is playing Russia, France, Austria, or Prussia, the AI often feels like it lacks the power to oppose you directly unless other GPs are already involved.

I actually think British intervention in world affairs does make the player actually engage in diplomacy and monitoring the world situation. I always try to have strong allies in the early game, and I pick my wars carefully to prevent British intervention (or co-op them into joining me). And you can bet that I'm always looking for ways to isolate Britain diplomatically in the early and mid game.

 

[TheFlemishDuck]

However, as I was telling someone who was complaining that China was too hard due to British intervention, Britain only interferes in your corner of the world if it dislikes you. And if it's not otherwise busy. If you make friends with Britain, these interventions just go away. Or Britain might even help you if asked.

This has been a notable matter whenever i played in the Pakistan region, the first games i played earlier typically lead to a declaration of war from the British east India company, but in all of my more recent games i fairly easily managed to placate the Brits so to not attack me and even do things like giving me a guarantee of independence or offering a defensive pact. However these play troughs featured heavily on making money trough tariffs and trade and i noticed that the AI is very eager to be your friend or atleast leaves you alone if you have enough trade with it. So the AI is fairly significantly deterred to aggression by trade, if it would loose a lot of trade trough a Declaration of war its simply very unlikely to do so, its more likely to give you gifts and favors when your trade to them matters.

 

[heliostellar]

"Clever" would be a strong term for me to use. I'm not sure a Circassin protectorate is worth the money and lives required to defeat Russia. Britain should have other fish to fry that would yield more revenue or military leverage.

Not only is Circassia not worth the money, but it was never a protectorate. The real history is that the UK backed down specifically because it thought it needed a continental partner to take on Russia (yet Vicky 3 UK is basically the Galactic Empire out of Star Wars--completely out of place and time). In reality, the UK was secretly upset because the Ottomans and Russians were conspiring to shutdown the Dardanelles to the UK and French in response to their shenanigans in Egypt. It had nothing to do with Circassia, but instead had more to do with anti-Russian public sentiment that dissipated when the leaders realized what it would take to make Russia leave Circassia alone.

However, as I was telling someone who was complaining that China was too hard due to British intervention, Britain only interferes in your corner of the world if it dislikes you. And if it's not otherwise busy. If you make friends with Britain, these interventions just go away. Or Britain might even help you if asked.

Flatly no, that is not true. The UK interferes everywhere regardless of relations, because it has so much capacity to interfere and too few targets to interefere with. It's basically a Don Quixote nation that needs to just chill out. It's a balance problem, not a "me" problem.

The AI isn't being clever, but it is trying to oppose those it considers to be threats or outright rivals. It's always looking for an excuse to intervene. And the trick of asking one side in a diplomatic play to become a protectorate in exchange for help is one human players can (and often do) use to extend their reach in foreign affairs. So, it's not like the AI is doing something a human can't or won't do.

No, the AI is mindlessly reaching for anyway to troll the other nations because it is poor designed and doesn't know why it should be doing whatever it's doing. UK attacking Liberia? Sure. Attacking the US to get them to ban slavery, yup that too.

These things are completely ridiculous and not even close to plausible. They happen anyway because the real world disincentives for this behavior are not present in the game.

The reasons it seems stupid are as follows:

1) If you accept protectorate to join a play, you can't really add more war goals. So, it's not like you can demand a bunch of other garbage on top of the protectorate. This makes some of these wars look stupid because Britain is going full Crimean War over piddly little war goals.

No one said that Circassia accepting UK's request to make it a protectorate is stupid. It's actually a genius move... What it does show is how sophmoric the outcomes in Vicky actually are. "Why would the British people die for Circassia?" That's the real question the British government would ask itself. In real life, it realized how dumb and obvious the answer is. To a poorly designed AI, it's just as good and equally as justified as any other war.

2) It's possible to turn every amphibious invasion in to Super-Gallipoli even when it really shouldn't be feasible. And there is no mechanism for limited attacks like during the Opium Wars.

Correct. Amphibious invasions as they are currently implemented should be flatly impossible.

3) From the player's perspective, it seems arbitrary. Unlike our historical counterparts, we aren't listening to diplomatic envoys or speeches related to how much they hate or love us, how threatened they are by our actions, and so on. You never get anything close to a "We will attack you over this issue" kind of ultimatum. So, it's just like BAM!, Britain is intervening in your conflict for no reason, when the reality is that Britain is feeling like it wants to oppose you for a whole list of reasons and it just picked this one issue to complain about.

No. You are basically advocating the fallacy of gray to hide how dumb the simulation results are. The UK should never care this much about Circassia. The real history is a convenient sanity check.

4) Unlike other AI controlled countries, Britain often feels like it can actually oppose human players militarily. So, that's what it does. When other AI nations feel strong enough, they do the same things to their rivals and whatnot. But if a human is playing Russia, France, Austria, or Prussia, the AI often feels like it lacks the power to oppose you directly unless other GPs are already involved.

I actually think British intervention in world affairs does make the player actually engage in diplomacy and monitoring the world situation. I always try to have strong allies in the early game, and I pick my wars carefully to prevent British intervention (or co-op them into joining me). And you can bet that I'm always looking for ways to isolate Britain diplomatically in the early and mid game.

You're basically just saying there's nothing to see here and that the AI is working great. Disagree.

 

[Secret Master]

Flatly no, that is not true. The UK interferes everywhere regardless of relations, because it has so much capacity to interfere and too few targets to interefere with. It's basically a Don Quixote nation that needs to just chill out. It's a balance problem, not a "me" problem.

No, it doesn't. If it did, I'd never be able to build a colonial empire via conquest anywhere without UK interference. And if what you were saying was true, I'd never be able to befriend or ally with the UK.

A simple examination of the diplomatic UI lets me know just what I can do without the possibility of UK intervention. Let's look at some examples:

The date is July 1936. I am Prussia. I am going to attack Aceh. I have absolutely no business doing so as I basically have no navy and no allies.

And will the supposedly arbitrary UK interfere?

Nope. They are simply not interested in backing Aceh.

Now, the British East India Company or China or Spain might get involved, but Britain won't. And I can predict that fairly accurately.

And does the actual play bear this out?

Yep.

The play isn't even at the point where you can't join anymore. Britain dropped out early.

And why not? They have business with Siam.

What about another example:

Hmm, Britain really doesn't seem interested in helping here, either.

What if up the stakes?

Still not interested. Two conquest war goals, and Britain nopes out of the play before it is required to do so. It's not like I have a bigger army or navy than them. They just aren't interested as I could have predicted from the diplomatic play interface.

It's not 100% accurate in its predictions, but this is often due to something else changing in the world state early in the play. It's also worth pointing out that when you drag other GPs into plays, remaining GPs are strongly incentivized to rethink their outlook on that play. But there's no reason in the world you can't plan your plays to avoid British intervention.

Not only is Circassia not worth the money, but it was never a protectorate. The real history is that the UK backed down specifically because it thought it needed a continental partner to take on Russia (yet Vicky 3 UK is basically the Galactic Empire out of Star Wars--completely out of place and time). In reality, the UK was secretly upset because the Ottomans and Russians were conspiring to shutdown the Dardanelles to the UK and French in response to their shenanigans in Egypt. It had nothing to do with Circassia, but instead had more to do with anti-Russian public sentiment that dissipated when the leaders realized what it would take to make Russia leave Circassia alone.

No. You are basically advocating the fallacy of gray to hide how dumb the simulation results are. The UK should never care this much about Circassia. The real history is a convenient sanity check.

Why would this matter in the game? Are we going back to Vic1 and having a scripted and mandatory Crimean War with mandated outcomes?

If Britain is deliberately looking to pick a fight with the Russian Empire, why not intervene? Again, I think it's a waste of time and money, but Britain opposing Russia in diplomatic plays is not completely stupid.

You can complain that the AI is wasting its time and money, or you can complain that it's silly the AI is able to support amphibious operations in the Black Sea. But GPs in the period picking fights over minor things to oppose each other is perfectly in line with historical behavior in aggregate. We're talking about a game covering the period where Germany thought it was a good idea to try and intervene in Morocco in 1905 up to the point where both France and Germany were mobilizing just like you do in Vic3 during a play. The fact that the Kaiser was bluffing in the First Moroccan Crisis does not diminish the seeming frivolity of their involvement in something like this.

(Bonus points to those who know why I'm using the term frivolity in reference to a crisis over Morocco.)

You're basically just saying there's nothing to see here and that the AI is working great. Disagree.

There are plenty of flaws with the AI. But if AI behavior is actually making players pay attention to diplomacy, interact with its mechanics, and it forces humans to care about the possibility of GP intervention, then it's doing something useful.

I think the mechanics are the problem here. British intervention isn't bad, but a British intervention without having the option to add war goals when backing a new protectorate is a problem. The inability to negotiate back and forth in a diplomatic play and instead just being able to give in or fight a war means historical outcomes are impossible to achieve sometimes. And the constant Super-Gallilopi invasions are just weird.

 

[guiskj]

I think this all starts with consequences. The pre release Dev Diaries talked about the cost of war, yet this turned out to mostly be about a budget issue.

The people and societal cost of war is just not something I worry about. A competent player can replace the lost lives through immigration and my political make-up is never seriously shook up by placing my people through the meat grinder of war.

First and foremost the Devs need to better implement the repercussions of warfare. Only then can we rebalance how an AI should take these consequences into account.

 

[Aloraand]

I think this all starts with consequences. The pre release Dev Diaries talked about the cost of war, yet this turned out to mostly be about a budget issue.

I find that money is only a worry if you are punching up(e.g. Romania fighting Russia with equal army size but a fraction of the population) and risk bankruptcy. Because the state gets so much money and army is fairly cheap, you often see late game AI with underdeveloped economy taking no debt while fully mobilised, so not even this cost is really present. And because there's just so much money flowing around, expensive wars are often an overal economic boost in the end, because you get the scarce resource (pops) with any new land.

So AI running doing what the player does and running around bullying the world is just ai playing within the logical constraints of the game which impose little costs on war. But if they make war costly, ai will be a pushover because it doesn't even budget construction based on income, so you'd almost always just outeconomy everyone.

 

[ThePastfinder]

Seems like the big issue is that there's just no internal "war legitimacy" thing. Infamy is solely a diplomatic cooldown penalty, based mainly on how many people you're conquering and not much else. War exhaustion is only about how well the war is going rather than how justified it is, and unlike in some other Paradox titles, has no consequences beyond capitulation in the current war. There's not much room for some deep lore about someone being mad about access to the Dardanelles or whatever.
And it'd be hard to pull off. Such a mechanic would be intensely difficult to balance right, either involving some intricate system to simulate something about as chaotic as history itself, or depending on events so much that the game would turn into a visual novel (Suzerain's a fine game but that's not the aim here). I guess the lobby groups update was a step in the right direction.

 

[Zhetone]

2) It's possible to turn every amphibious invasion in to Super-Gallipoli even when it really shouldn't be feasible. And there is no mechanism for limited attacks like during the Opium Wars.

This is honestly the worst part, as Russia you can easily defend against Britain's invasions numerically (they can't funnel that many men onto boats) but the way that the game organizes defenses to invasions makes no sense. You can outnumber the invasion 10-1 but the game still pits an even number of your troops against theirs randomly. I was informed that terrain actually always works against the defender; I mentioned the arctic north in European Russia and the terrain means you can commit very few defenders, yet the number of attackers possible for the invader to commit doesn't seem nearly as affected, and it doesn't hamper their attacking abilities. So you end up with easy invasions in an area that the Entente couldn't feasibly invade after World War 1 just because naval invasions make zero sense.

This wouldn't be such a big issue if losing a few random naval invasion battles didn't mean the entire British Empire funneling into any front that opens, but it does because the design is that bad. It makes zero sense to me that they designed the system the way they did, especially because we could see how broken it was in pre-release streams! Why has it not been changed at all?