(Suicidal) AI behaviour

[caravel]

In the meantime, Spain got overrun by the Almohads in a way that Leon-Castille were trapped in Navarre and Aragon never got out of Aragon in the first place. Both had depleted Almohad armies to the south and full stack frenchies to the north. Both attacked me .

It's called "dodgy AI". In MTW this is quite common. In reality the cornered factions change to a different AI type once they're down to one province and out of money. They probably attacked you because your provinces would have been raking in more income than the Almohad provinces. I've found often that Spain and Aragon prefer to strike north at the French.

In the levant, Armenia was at war with the Seljuks and - well, not losing but definitely not winning either. Yet they found it wise to attack my just arrived crusading army in Antioch, equivalent of maybe 2-3 fullstacks

More dodgy AI. If you mean that they chose not to let your crusade through? This is more common with Orthodox factions than you would think.

As a sidenote, I have to say the french are insanely rich in the xl-mod. even with only basic farming I could build and recruit in every province and still make profit.

That's because, despite some of the ludicrous claims that are made about the mod, it's incomes are still very skewed in the player's favour as is the case with vanilla MTW.

All in all, a very odd experience. I'm still pondering if it classifies as fun.

Btw, I noticed everyone is building ships like mad and attacking ships as well like mad. Is there any file where this AI behaviour is encoded?

It's in the startpos file. The shipbuilding is a problem because the mod reduces ship construction and maintenance costs IIRC. This alone without restrictions to sea regions does not improve the shipping situation (in fact the only real solution to MTW's shipping is to get rid of ships altogether - but that's another story...).

Edit: to make the point of this thread clear: I never noticed a suicidal AI behaviour to such an extent with vanilla MTW-VI. Is it just my game or can anyone confirm this observation.

I cannot confirm it as I played that mod for all of about 2 hours before uninstalling it and returning to (custom modded) vanilla. It's simply a very overrated mod. Most players like it simply because of the extra factions and units. While these add "flavour" they don't add to the game technically.

I think you've simply "transcended" the level of gameplay/difficulty available to you in vanilla or that mod. Clean install MTW and try the Samurai Warlords or medmod. You will find these more fitting to what you want.