AI National Building Strategy Differentiation

[Emma de Normandie]

Would it be possible to implement some sort of national building strategy for AI nations?

Specifically, how different nations preferred and chose to focus on building programs of specific types of ships.

For example, Japan traditionally had an emphasis on heavy cruisers rather than light cruisers, and the Royal Navy was the opposite.

Germany had a focus on submarine warfare and trade war; they liked to build ships with extended range so that they may be best fitted for the raider roles; they also liked the idea of pocket battleships.

Italy had a preference for ships with fast speed and short range as their main theater of operations - the Mediterranean, is a relatively small body of water, thus the Italian ships should be able to get to where they need to be with short range.

The U.S. with their perks in carrier operations built a lot of carriers, fleet carriers and escort/light carriers in the non-armored hanger scheme.

There are many more smaller things such as the Italian's torpedo protection, UK's many corvette and frigates, Soviet Union's missile submarines and missile cruisers after the war, etc.

Just like historical resources, it would be interesting to have a "historical building strategy" option which makes the AI national characteristics even more obvious. What are your thoughts?

[cormallen]

A lot of the choices made by Nations in the inter-war period were driven by treaties. Without these it's unlikely the "Heavy Cruiser", as seen, would appear. More Battlecruisers from the major players until engine technology advances enough to make "Fast Battleships" maybe? Smaller cruisers for fleet support and trade protection for the people with big empires to cover? Without the WT Japan would likely be trying to build some of her 8-8 programme backed up by Furutaka style fleet cruisers? More Destroyer Leader types (Yubari-esque?) perhaps?

[director]

For example, Japan traditionally had an emphasis on heavy cruisers rather than light cruisers, and the Royal Navy was the opposite.

Germany had a focus on submarine warfare and trade war; they liked to build ships with extended range so that they may be best fitted for the raider roles; they also liked the idea of pocket battleships.

Um... that's only true if you look at one narrow time period.

Japan did tend to build its light cruisers as destroyer flotilla leaders - which comes from the British WW1 example, and they built a lot of heavy cruisers post-Treaty because they couldn't build anything larger. The Royal Navy built a large number of armored cruisers, transitioned to battlecruisers and then built a lot of 'County' class heavy cruisers before using newly allowable treaty tonnage to build a lot of light cruisers, so I'm not sure that characterization holds up either.

Germany in WW1 owned the second-largest battle fleet and did not turn to commerce raiding with submarines until half-way through the war, only after the battle fleet had failed to achieve a favorable result.

And it should be noted that the US spent 1900 to about 1930 focused on its battle-fleet, focused on a balanced fleet through WW2 and turned to a carrier-only fleet after 1945.


I agree with you that having different national building priorities would be very nice, I just don't think locking a nation into one program for all 50 years is historical or desirable.

[gurudennis]

I would like to see nation-specific or even random "fascinations" similar to the French Jeune Ecole or some of the other examples cited here. It doesn't mean that they must dominate that nation's naval construction throughout the game, but they would affect its priorities for a time.

[charliezulu]

While exact parallels are unlikely, a lot of the "characteristics" _are_ a product of more broad circumstances.

The RN's preference for smaller cruisers was largely because of the need to have so many cruiser hulls on a very limited budget; realistically, a similar trend of building lots of small cruisers would show up for any nation with a high colonial service requirement that doesn't have America's budget.

Likewise, Japan's overbuilt CAs was based on the philosophy of "using a few to conquer many". All ships had to be qualitatively superior to the enemy, as they couldn't afford to match foreign nations on quantity.

Germany's choice of an emphasis on raiding was a combination of their traditional enemy being an empire reliant on oceanic trade and being unable to compete in a traditional battleship race. I'm pretty sure that an enemy nation switching to subs after you sink most of their surface fleet is already in game, but unlike IRL, Germany's navy isn't only focused on defeating Britain.

Italy's preferences are obvious and, yeah, it should be reflected with their builds in-game. For that matter, most nations without overseas possessions should do the same.

America's perceived carrier fixation was mostly them being the only people who could afford to make ships in the postwar era. They were also the only people to continue operating battleships*, so...

* The exceptions being the British going sunk cost on theirs and Soviet plans, but that's due to a mix of Stalin being Stalin and the North Atlantic being a worse location for carriers than the Pacific.

[kagami777]

I would like to see each nation have a small selection of potential preferences for their admiralty in what they prefer to build. So that in one game Britain may focus on lots of CL or they may focus on DD's or something

[euchrejack]

Since the AI tends to draw its ships from the list of ships historically built, and each AI has a build list based upon their own country's historical ships plus what they wanted to build, this feature is kind of in the game already. It is actually due to the attempts to expand the AI's build lists that they appear more "generic".
The AI traits also tend to push the AI in their more historical directions.

An interesting idea though is letting the player decide to what degree the AI should maintain historical accuracy in its building, in either direction.

[williammiller]

Dec 30, 2021 9:32:00 GMT -6 euchrejack said:

Since the AI tends to draw its ships from the list of ships historically built, and each AI has a build list based upon their own country's historical ships plus what they wanted to build, this feature is kind of in the game already. It is actually due to the attempts to expand the AI's build lists that they appear more "generic".
The AI traits also tend to push the AI in their more historical directions.

An interesting idea though is letting the player decide to what degree the AI should maintain historical accuracy in its building, in either direction.

On a related note, the Expansion changes will make AI ship designs more effective and make the AI a more challenging opponent.

[indy]

Dec 30, 2021 9:44:29 GMT -6 williammiller said:

On a related note, the Expansion changes will make AI ship designs more effective and make the AI a more challenging opponent.

I’ve noticed that the AI ship designs you have for this game reflect that of what happened as a result of the Washington Naval Treaty. Your 1930’s and ‘40’s Battleship designs are lacking with respect to a game in which this treaty is absent. I hope you’ve adjusted your AI designs to adapt to the possibility this game presents the player for not having a treaty as well as the AI designs for an after WW2 scenario in which the scrapping of Battleships may not be a wise move as the AI now does in the mid 40’s just inexplicably scrapping perfectly good battleships.

I hope you’ve fixed these issues because I consider them a ‘broken’ part of this game. I’ll be happy to debate you on the details.

[williammiller]

Dec 30, 2021 16:34:38 GMT -6 indy said:

Dec 30, 2021 9:44:29 GMT -6 williammiller said:

On a related note, the Expansion changes will make AI ship designs more effective and make the AI a more challenging opponent.

I’ve noticed that the AI ship designs you have for this game reflect that of what happened as a result of the Washington Naval Treaty. Your 1930’s and ‘40’s Battleship designs are lacking with respect to a game in which this treaty is absent. I hope you’ve adjusted your AI designs to adapt to the possibility this game presents the player for not having a treaty as well as the AI designs for an after WW2 scenario in which the scrapping of Battleships may not be a wise move as the AI now does in the mid 40’s just inexplicably scrapping perfectly good battleships.

I hope you’ve fixed these issues because I consider them a ‘broken’ part of this game. I’ll be happy to debate you on the details.

'Yes' is the answer...the revised ship templates assume no treaty.

[maxnacemit]

That means no paper CAs any more...great!