Forcing the A.I to field more challenging armies

[Cos3]

We've all seen the A.I and thier army compositions. Most of the time it's no challenge at all when the A.I fields a full stack (or more) where half the army is made up of archers, crossbowmen and artillery. It wouldn't be so bad if the A.I knew how to use them, or positioned them so they would be protected, but it doesn't.

I've been doing a lot of testing by changing purchase values in my attempts to force the A.I to build, if not balanced, but more challenging army compositions.

Currently I have increased all artillery to over 2000 purchase value, rising up to over 3000 for the later gunpowder artillery. I now rarely see these in field battles, but the downside is the A.I also rarely uses them for castle assaults. Only a minor problem since the A.I can still build the regular siege units. I rarely use artillery myself, so it's an even playing field in this regard.

What annoyed me just as much was the A.I's over-use of missile units, so I have increased all foot missile units by 400 purchase value and javelinmen by 200. Now I mostly see a maximum of 2-3 of these in a full stack, the rest being what the A.I can use relatively well; cavalry and combat infantry.

With my changes to decrease kill rates I have been experiencing some truly epic battles where I have to think and react better. I'm using darth mod too, which slows movement rate to a more realistic pace, so with the larger number of enemy infantry/cav your troop maneuvers actually matter.

This doesn't work on VH campaign since the A.I has a huge cash injection (yes, it does) and was still pumping out armies with 4-5 artillery and too many missile units. So I've been playing on medium campaign and very hard battles. It's working well and presents far more of a challenge, especially with my changes to decrease kill rates and increase battle lengths.

Has anyone else tried something similar? What were your results?

[Kobal2fr]

There's also something you can change in... I think it was descr_strat.txt ? In which each faction is given a two-word building and troops preference scheme (with words like comfortable mao, trader napoleon etc...).

The first word is what the given faction will like to build first. Trader emphasizes markets and ports, comfortable builds everything that makes people happy first etc...

The second word represents army composition preferences. There were quite a few of these, I think you can search for those in the RTW modding forums. I seem to remember that mao was lots and lots of low quality infantry, napoleon was light cav and heavy inf. I think... Can't remember well, but I know there is a detailed post about this in the RTW forum.

All you have to do is test them and figure out which makes the AI build the army types you like to fight, and edit the descr_strat file accordingly

[General_Sun]

Kobal, if you could link me to exactly where that thread is (or give a more complete list of the words), that would be great. If you look down a few threads in this forum, I've asked just about this question.

I tried to use the search function. But no go...

Also, please check your PM on the TWC, :P

[Kobal2fr]

I'm not at home right now, and this connection is so slow I'd probably get faster rates by mail :} Merely displaying the main forum page takes a good 3 minutes, so let's forget the in depth search for now, shall we ? I roughly know what to look for though, and I promise I'll find the post a bit later in the week when I get back to a decent connexion and a decent comp to go with it.

[alpaca]

Here you go: https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...06&postcount=3

[nameless]

The AI seems obessed with siege and ranged weapons.

I tried out Lusted's mod but the AI still loves to build armies that have half siege weapons. So I went in and increased it to 100500 to recruit and upkeep. It's better but I had a spy run into an Egyptian army and they for some reason were able to recruit 2 catapults.... Other than that the AI started fielding more diverse armies.

I think that you have to give the AI more time. Later into the game, the stronger factions started fielding sword staffs and broken lances and axemen. Another problem is the AI not repairing any of their buildings which hampers their recruitment capability.

Edit: gotta try out the AI personalities.

[General_Sun]

Thank you very much! :D

[magnum]

Has anyone messed with unit regeneration (export_desc_buildings.txt) to see what effect that would have? In my attempts to get more balanced AI armies, I tried the cost method but the problems seemed to be that to get the AI to build a more balanced army you had to raise the cost of ranged units to the point that no one would build any of them. So I've dropped their cost/support to double the defaul. The last night I took the time of modding the building file to decrease the regen rate. I guess I'll find out the effect eventually, was just wondering if someone else had already done it and if so what effect they experienced.

[Cos3]

Modding the regen rate is a good idea. Let us know if that works well.

[Olmsted]

I have done this by starting most cities out with more buildings. Each castle on the map starts out with a basic barracks, stables and bowyer. I have also lowered the regeneration rate for most low level barracks and the size of the recruitment pool. This has worked very well so far.

[nameless]

What about reducing the regen rate for higher tier units? Would that get the AI to favour more of those units?

[Olmsted]

What about reducing the regen rate for higher tier units? Would that get the AI to favour more of those units?

No. Raising the regeneration rate would mean that the AI had more of them available to hire, which should make the AI hire more of them. The AI usually tries to build the best units it can within the bounds of whatever proportions it is supposed to follow.

[Lusted]

These armies challenging enough for you?