Modding Question About Balanced AI Armies

[R'as al Ghul]

Thats great info, thanks very much!

Do you know in which file the building priority is declared, so that I could associate a higher priority for trade related buildings?

Many thanks
GS

GS,
the build_prod file contains the building priority switches.

Concerning the balancing of armies, it's a difficult task.
I found out that the personality triggers mentioned by Ludens don't have
as much influence on the unit production as one might think. Instead it seems to be more influential on the general politic of that faction.
Imo, the decision to build a certain unit results from several points:
AI personality, infrastructure, threats, unit size, suitability to certain battlefield tasks. The last point is very interesting here.
When the first versions of Nap mod came out the AI would only build Cavalry. The Ai was confused by all the missile units and it somehow thought cav was stronger. When I changed the unit labels in unit_prod like "Attacker, Skirmish, Strong" or "Defender, Anti-Missile, Weak" etc. I was able to change that behaviour towards a balanced armies that consisted of over 50% missile units (line infantry), a small cavalry contingent and 1-3 artillery pieces.
I'm trying to do the same thing in our Samurai Warlords mod. The labels tell the AI the suitability of a unit for certain tasks. So if the enemy has a lot of cav, a unit labeled "Anti-cav" or "spear" (don't remember the exact labels) will be considered a good buy.
You may want to download the formation_data_files which contains a list of all possible labels for VI that can be used in unit_prod. /see download section)
I encourage you to try this approach.
Of course, a faction requires the necessary buildings to build units at all, but the selection of the units is a different thing.
You can also search the modding section of Medieval, the topic has been discussed before. It's been a while, though.