SAI-Campaign Not-an-AAR. What's wrong with AI?

[demol]

I play Nord Sea Grand Campaign as a Germany with hard difficulty and become to wonder about AI behavior (or absence of it) at all levels from strategic to tactical.

a) Strategic
- AI does not train crews above "level 0" when have more than enough OP-point for that. It results in engagements of -1/0  AI crews vs +1/+2 player crews. In such circumstances AI loose even 2:1 engagements.

b) Operational
- I regulary raid British coast and coastal shipping with BC, CA, and even CL raiding forces. In most cases British battlecruiser fleet ignorantly zigzagging between Dogger and Fisher banks, in perfect intercept position, but never tries to go down to "broad fourteens" to simply stomp on retreating raiders.
I feel much frustrated when I realized that with such raids I should waste all my cruisers instead of gain 1mil points without any single loss.

c) Tactical
And at last. Summer '15. Early morning. High Seas Fleet meet Britich Fleet combined. I save and try various battle approaches.
Tactical AI proves completly helpless. When attaked without handicap British fleet did not manage even to reform from coluns to battleline and was massacred with enveloping fire and torpedoes while bunched. Load.
I employed homerule: do not attack before british battleline is formed. I played three times and could not make AI-Britons to do any result other than grant me campaign autowin.
AI loose 6 to 10 BB/BC when i only once accidently lose 1 BB. AI-British outrun and outgun me but does not try to do a crossing-T other than by accident. Does not trying to save stragglers. Does not use BCs in a way they shoud be used.

It was very frustrating too because I more than sure that in H2H play i should be instakilled (or barely managed to run away) in such engagements.


I think that point a) can be easily fixed/modded (but I do not know how) and that should fix some of point c) results.
But point b) is no less important, it is simply absurd when german 23kn CLs or 21kn CAs burn everything from Whitby to Dover every week or three and British 25-27kn BCs simply watching it from 150 miles but never interfering.

(sorry for my english if you feel it slightly weird. It's not my native language)

[randomizer]

Sorry that you're unhappy. However, without providing screenshots and or saved game files it is almost impossible to determine what is going on in your games.

A - Just checked my current North Sea campaign and the AI (in this case German) certainly does train above crew-quality zero.

B - Some of what you're experiencing is likely a reflection of the time and space problems inherent in the historical situation and the Grand Fleet doctrine not to pursue German raiders into the southern North Sea. Again without a saved game, determining what is really happening is virtually impossible. Trying a campaign as the RN might create a better appreciation for the potential difficulties involved.

C - Without any information regarding the conditions (daylight remaining, visibility, wind and sea-state) there is no way to assess these observations. The AI generally does not attempt to save stragglers (almost always a bad idea in the real world) but will try to disengage them and send them to the nearest suitable port with big ships under escort by one or two destroyers.

The AI in Steam and Iron is by no means perfect or the equivalent of a human player in head-to-head play but remember that it gets no intelligence bonus, can suffer from Operations Point issues and is open to responding to bad data like the Player is. That said there is unlikely to be any further development for SAI anytime soon.