Personally, I wouldn't waste a lot of time trying to improve the AI's economic situation. That may be a road to frustration.
I have found a very simple way to make the AI a formidable opponent both militarily and economically:
Have the player choose a faction, and then instruct the player on how to give ALL other factions more florins (from 10,000 to 2,000,000) for the difficulty setting they have selected.
So whether the player is playing a default campaign, your mod, or any other mod, doing the above will give the player a great game.
With lots of florins the AI can squander money on units AND have lots of money left over to build improvements. This also means that the AI doesn't have to worry about building a trading system; only the player has to worry about it.
I would concentrate on:
* getting rid of crappy units (like peasants) and have better units available for the AI
* make ALL factions playable
* include some unique units
I have also found by switching Faction Behaviours around, I can get some factions to be more aggressive.
They are found here:
C:\Program Files\Total War\Medieval - Total War\campmap\startpos:
For VI Campaign:
For example, in the default VI Campaign, the Northumbrians are set as CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE. I often change this to CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST. With this behaviour, the Northumbrians will attack me and build ships. As the Scots, I am having quite a war against them and the Saxons in my current VI Campaign (I also gave all other factions 200,000 florins).
//Faction Behaviour
//This is the default behaviour of each
//faction, various in game factor will
//alter it. Rebel are always set to REBEL
//these are the available options
//also note that these are related to the
//product spreadsheet
//CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST_CRUSADER
//CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST
//CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST
//CATHOLIC_ISOLATIONIST
//CATHOLIC_TRADER
//CATHOLIC_CRUSADER_TRADER
//CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE_CRUSADER
//CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE
//ORTHODOX_EXPANSIONIST
//ORTHODOX_STAGNANT
//ORTHODOX_DEFENSIVE
//MUSLIM_EXPANSIONIST
//MUSLIM_PEACEFUL
//MUSLIM_DEVOUT
//POVERTY_STRICKEN
//DESPERATE_DEFENCE
//CLOSE_TO_SUPPORT_LIMIT
//POPE
//BARBARIAN_RAIDER
//REBELS
//========================================
SetBehaviour:: FN_01 CATHOLIC_NAVAL_EXPANSIONIST // Irish
SetBehaviour:: FN_02 CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST // Mercians
SetBehaviour:: FN_03 CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE // Northumbrians
SetBehaviour:: FN_04 CATHOLIC_DEFENSIVE_CRUSADER // Picts
SetBehaviour:: FN_05 CATHOLIC_EXPANSIONIST // Saxons
SetBehaviour:: FN_06 CATHOLIC_CRUSADER_TRADER // Scots
SetBehaviour:: FN_07 BARBARIAN_RAIDER // Vikings
SetBehaviour:: FN_08 CATHOLIC_TRADER // Welsh
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