Automation should be slightly worse than other countries AI

[Xerxes1]

What if you’re a low skilled player who isn’t as good as the AI, so you only play strong nations. Automation would optimise the fun out of your game

Another argument is that a strong country could naturally become a superpower with little input from the player. Diminishing the achievement

 

[JacceDON]

Making an AI for this game will be hard as it is, making it purposefully be decent but not good in certain circumstances is just a fantasy.

 

[Baphomet enjoyer]

Automation is optional and the player will always be better than AI/automation eventually. This isn't dark souls, using automation isn't a bad thing and it will be necessary for a game as complicated as this. Also, if you're playing strong nations anyways then you were never looking for a challenge.

 

[Xerxes1]

Automation is optional and the player will always be better than AI/automation eventually. This isn't dark souls, using automation isn't a bad thing and it will be necessary for a game as complicated as this. Also, if you're playing strong nations anyways then you were never looking for a challenge.

Im fully onboard with automation. I think it’s a fantastic feature. A challenge for you might not be the same for someone else. Like i said, they aren’t good enough to play smaller nations

 

[Baphomet enjoyer]

Im fully onboard with automation. I think it’s a fantastic feature. A challenge for you might not be the same for someone else. Like i said, they aren’t good enough to play smaller nations

Well I still think automation won't trivialize the game, even for strong nations. You still need to worry about antagonism, reforming you're estates/laws/societal values, and I doubt automated combat will be good enough due to how hard it is to make good warfare AI. The player is still required to think ahead as the AI can't do that for you, they can only do the menial actions.

 

[Jochirin]

So i have two reasons i don't want this.

1. I don't want the developers to divert resources from making the AI as good as possible. I believe that most of us have a worry that the AI will not be good enough to pose a meaningful challenge, and having the people that work on the AI put hours into making a version of the AI that is worse instead of putting those hours into making the general AI better sounds like a bad choice for everyone. Even if you talk about diminishing achievements as you argue, i would think that having the opponent AI improved is far more important. Maybe you don't realize this but if the developer were to go down this route it would mean maintaining two versions of AI for the rest of the games lifetime, it would have to get work put into it not only for every expansion but every time they tweak the numbers of the game. I guess they could also let it become basically useless over time as well but i really want this mechanic so lets not go that way.

2. One of the reasons i wont play Victoria 3 anymore is that it becomes an absolute slog to build buildings after about half the game, not having to make thousands of clicks and instead just have the AI take on something that has just become a chore would be wonderful for that game, but if the AI is not competent as it should be i would feel forced to continue to do it on my own and that just forces a negative gameplay experience on me for no reason. So what i imagine it will be like in EU5 is that i will start out my games doing everything on my own, but over time my nation will become to large, rich or hold to much trade influence that i will feel overworked with micromanaging it all and it will be a relief to hand it over to an AI so that i can actually get on with playing the game and not having it paused for 10 minutes on every month tick.

 

[ero_sk]

Following this logic, when player plays a country it should automatically get nerfing modifiers because a human player can outsmart AI countries most of the time. It's just a bad idea as a default. Perhaps should be an option for those who really want tough challenge.

 

[Kovax]

Making the AI play worse for the player just turns automation into an "auto-lose" button, and nobody will use it.

I've played a couple of games in the past with an "auto-resolve" button for combats, and it was absolutely pointless because it was heavily tilted against the player. You could go into the battle with a 3:2 numerical advantage and slightly better equipment and training, yet lose consistently. Nobody used it, just wasted development time.

 

[JoshuaFitzgerald]

I would argue this is already the case, though in a slightly different sense. While you can automate a lot of things, you can't automate e v e r y t h i n g the AI can. For example, any strategic decision like declaring wars, peace deals, royal marriages and alliances, and focusing on specific long-term objectives are still under your control alone, and the AI can do these things of course.