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[Lightning4]

Why? It doesn't know how to deal with the simple mechanic of stability hits.

Questionable.
When you have the choice to call in an ally in an offensive war, and they have some relationship with that enemy (truce, marriage, etc), the stability hit is in fact weighed in (you can see it in the tooltip), and affects how willing they are to do it. Unless they really, really like you, they're not going to want to take a stability hit. It's a pretty hefty malus, as I recall.

I don't really see why the AI-AI relationships would not work the same way as AI-Player relationships do, the mechanic does exist for it.
So if they are ignoring it, it's pretty pointless cheating.

[Leyic]

The other cheat that computers commonly use is superior inputs.  A human has to order its fingers to press keys, but a computer can be plugged straight into a video game and enter inputs impossibly fast with complete precision.  They also typically can read the state of the game directly rather than relying on a single sequence of images and some sound the way humans do.  This is why aimbots work so well.

You say that like it's a bad thing. A computer is designed to 'work' a set of data really quickly and precisely, than send the solution (this could be an answer to a question like "where to send the forces", or it could be a literal firing solution) down the pipes as fast as possible. It's like saying humans cheat at bowling because they can use fingers to guide the ball, instead of having to push the ball with their heads.

It's not exactly fair, either. While a human can only visualize the part of the playfield that's on screen and interact with it through a mouse cursor and keyboard shortcuts, a computer can visualize the entire playfield and interact with everything simultaneously. That's fine for a turn based or pauseable game, but for a real time game, it'd be like playing against Cthulhu who's using a giant hi-res multi-touch screen. Not exactly fair anymore, now is it?

[engy]

One of these is ignoring peace treaties, never getting stability hits

The player can also ignore a truce to answer a defensive call to arms.

They don't get stability hits from calling a war on you directly after signing peace, without CB. Good try, though.

I've never seen this happen.

..... You must not have played much. The AI breaks truces all the time, I'd call it near-constant but in reality its mostly directed towards the player due to the AI not knowing how to play the game and therefore suicide attacking the PC.

I've had multiple cases of bordering countries breaking truces a year after a peace agreement, even declaring wars outright without a CB and still getting full support from allies, because the AI literally gets no penalty from doing so. Why? It doesn't know how to deal with the simple mechanic of stability hits.

You are wrong.  This is how the AI Cheats: http://www.eu4wiki.com/AI#Cheats

I have played EU4 a lot; I have played several multi-player games to completion.   IF the AI starts a war that a player would take a stab hit for, they take the stability hit.  The same one you do.  They don't do it often, they aren't dumb, stab hits hurt. You'll usually see it when they are breaking a royal marriage.

I'm pretty sure you are just missing how they are going to war with you and not taking a stab hit for it; of which there are many ways....

Also, I've found the AI in EU4 to be vastly better then in EU3 DW, MEIOU or Magna Mundi.  I still remember being cocky after EU3 going into EU4 like oh man I got this and running into the new military AI; it was a rough surprise. 

I'm 100% sure the AI takes stab hits for wars; because I have used it for my benefit.  So before you act like a jerk and tell people they didn't play enough.   Maybe you should check your facts.

[Mictlantecuhtli]

They actually don't. A nation with 3 stability declaring war on you with a peace treaty, and if they have no CB, and if they have a marriage, it will result in them still having 3 stability. Go ahead. Invoke one of these scenarios and tell me I'm wrong.

[snelg]

They actually don't. A nation with 3 stability declaring war on you with a peace treaty, and if they have no CB, and if they have a marriage, it will result in them still having 3 stability. Go ahead. Invoke one of these scenarios and tell me I'm wrong.

I haven't played EU4 much but the ai in EU3 did take stability hits when declaring war. Hard to imagine them going backwards there. Still, I guess it's not impossible.

[PanH]

They actually don't. A nation with 3 stability declaring war on you with a peace treaty, and if they have no CB, and if they have a marriage, it will result in them still having 3 stability. Go ahead. Invoke one of these scenarios and tell me I'm wrong.

Tag switch and you'll see that their adm reserve points will take a hit. They will just be back up to max stab in no time because it's quite high priority and they always have a sizable reserve of monarch points. Or you can even cheat your way in getting the 'ai' bonus (got it once thanks to a bug), and declaring war with no cb will still give you stab hits, despite having every other advantage an AI has.
You're inventing some sort of conspiracy, while the devs have explicitly stated in which way the AI cheat, and it's not one of them.

[Micro102]

It's equally hard to believe that the AI has such a massive stockpile of admin points and still keeps up with technology. What if they don't take stability hits, but instead lose a percentage of their admin points?

[PanH]

It's equally hard to believe that the AI has such a massive stockpile of admin points and still keeps up with technology. What if they don't take stability hits, but instead lose a percentage of their admin points?

It's really easy to have too much monarch points as a western nation. The AI wastes a lot of them, but if you don't, you'll be at 999/999 most of the time. Seriously, as a western (or even eastern, hell, I was leading tech by 1-2 with PLC), it's harder to find where to spend your points than getting some. Western have rich lands (advisor), low cost tech, lots of universities from the start, neighbor bonus.
It shows a lot how the AI wastes his monarch points with other tech groups : you can be 3-4 tech level in front of the AI, because he'll waste it on getting stab to 2-3, stuff like that. The AI is just programmed to have a reserve, because it can't plan ahead.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

I think you've got confused about the stab hit due to the presence of the "lucky country bonus". When set to historical lucky countries a bunch of select countries will get a bunch of (rather ridiculous) buffs. Some of these buffs include a higher chance to get good heirs, to always have +1 on all leader skills and stab cost reduction. This is why some nations like England and Russia can glance off tons of stab hits and often still have a stockpile of MP points.
AI will take stab hits when declaring wars, I have observed it many times. Since stab hits are now pretty dire you will almost never see an AI DOW without a CB as was so common in EUIII.

The standard ai is never swiming in MP. They tend to prioritise tech over ideas which is unoptimised over focusing on ideas and investing in tech when the neighbour bonus cheapens. I can have most of my ideas unlocked and still be competing in tech while the standard ai has completely fallen behind in idea development. This is another reason why lucky countries just tear through Europe since they have buffs, more development in both idea/tech and finally have some of the strongest ideas in the game. 

Personally if I was new to EUIV I would completely disable lucky countries since it only leads to "end game blobs" for the player to fight and nothing else (plus Russian is OP and will always join a coalition when I'm expanding in India ).

[Korbac]

Under "Human Handicaps"     

AI is willing to use up its last diplorelation for a human (it reserves one for humans so you're not always getting 'can't afford another relation').
    Humans cannot get inherited by other countries, in a PU or elsewise.
    Humans cannot be replaced as warleader in a war unless they are a vassal.
    Humans can save and reload when things go badly (unless you're playing ironman).
    Humans have a human brain.

XD

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Since stab hits are now pretty dire you will almost never see an AI DOW without a CB as was so common in EUIII.

Never happened to me in EU3 and yet in EU4 AI will declare wars without CBs with impunity, especially on the PC. Check the logs in game and you'll see them regularly declaring wars without CBs and with royal marriages without a care in the world, because they do not get stability hits, so this talk of them 'using reserves to boost back to 3' isn't true.

Get a scenario where a country will declare war on you with a royal marriage or without a CB, in a situation where they should get a stability hit. Tick 1: No war. Tick 2: X declares war on you! [With or without CB] Tick 2a [without unpausing after the declaration of war]: Check stability of computer nation. Will be the same as Tick 1.

Stability hits are taken into account the second you declare a war, and the AI works in 'ticks', so it wouldn't spend any points to boost stability until Tick 3 of this situation. If the stability is the same as the moment they declare the war, they are not getting a stability hit. I know it's hard to believe but the AI in EU4 does not understand the simple mechanics of the game and therefore ignores them.

Readily admitted by the paradox crew that they don't know how to make an AI to be able to play their games with competence, as well. The quote is something along the lines of "The AI doesn't understand how to prepare ahead of time so we just let it ignore x!' where X is any penalty/malus incurred on the player for simple actions of progress.

It doesn't matter how neat the mechanics are in this kind of game if none of the other colors on the map know how to utilize them and outright ignores mechanics the player is forced to utilize.

[Dutchling]

Your game seems bugged Mictl. That or a recent patch changed AI behaviour and rules, as I haven't played this game since CKII's SoA DLC was released.

[a1s]

Stability hits are taken into account the second you declare a war, and the AI works in 'ticks', so it wouldn't spend any points to boost stability until Tick 3 of this situation. If the stability is the same as the moment they declare the war, they are not getting a stability hit.

...Unless the stability increasing code kicks in after the war evaluation/declaration code. Since the AI is going to increase stability anyway, it makes no gains from delaying the action and it would make sense for it to do so during the same tick.

[chaoticag]

It doesn't matter how neat the mechanics are in this kind of game if none of the other colors on the map know how to utilize them and outright ignores mechanics the player is forced to utilize.

The player does ignore some mechanics the AI uses though. Unless you're a vassal, you'll stay being a war leader if you are one, and you can't be integrated from a personal union. When the people that coded the AI tell me that they take a stab hit, then they likely take a stab hit. It likely has code for declaring wars without a CB and boosting it's stab as soon as it does that.

[fivex]

Since stab hits are now pretty dire you will almost never see an AI DOW without a CB as was so common in EUIII.

Never happened to me in EU3 and yet in EU4 AI will declare wars without CBs with impunity, especially on the PC.

I see it happen in EU3 very often. I almost never see it happen in EU4.
I've also never seen anyone make the same claims as you.