Hello fellow Citadel readers.
I've recently read a lot of topics about how the AI is useless and never expands properly or even gets steamrolled too easily, and of course have had the same experiences. As such, I've been looking into fixing files so the AI can stand more of a chance even against players who like to constantly expand, such as I do.
Now, there are quite a few things you can do, but the very simplest method is to allow the AI to have more money. You can achieve this by editing your descr_strat file and searching for a term called 'kings purse'.
This basically is the amount a faction gets at the start of each turn.
Note that the descr_strat is only read when you start a new game, so it will not impact current games.
What you should be doing there is to change the purse for playable factions (there is no point to change it for mongols, timurids, aztecs, rebels and the pope as they firstly have a higher than usual purse and will not need any florins anyway) from their current value, which ranges from 1500 to 3000 to 5000.
While this may seem a tiny increase, you can trust me that this is actually a lot and you will hardly ever find yourself on top of the finance ratings this way unless you keep sabotaging the AI with assassins.
The downside of this is, that almost all AI characters will pick up bad traits such as Gambling, ExpensiveTastes, Embezzler, Corrupt and the like. Those don't affect combat and their behavior much however so can be safely ignored.
If you want to make your game even more challenging, you can adjust the maximum amount of turns for the game downward in the same file. That is, change the end date to less than 1530. With a lower max turn count, the AI plays a lot more aggressively and actually takes the rebel settlements quicker instead of ignoring them. If you change the end date, you probably want to change when events occur as well as you might otherwise miss out on things like the new world or gunpowder. Instructions on how to do that you can find in my signature.
Further methods you can use are to go into files you need to unpack such as faction_standings and campaign_db_ai, but that is only advisable for those experienced with modifying them. Those also only have minor effects, but you can influence how quickly relations deteriorate and how long the AI will stay passive at the start before it starts waging wars against other factions. If you really want to know how to do that, read the spoiler:
That is the default code in the campaign_db_ai. It is also there about 4 or 5 times so you need to change each entry to have a notable and unambiguous effect. 10 basically means for the first 10 turns at the start of the game the AI will only attack rebels unless they are at war. If you change this number down to say 1, once you end your very first turn, the AI will start massing its armies to attack other AI factions or you. It also means that it will pursue rebels less allowing you to take extra settlements. I would actually advise increasing that number to say 12 or 14 so the AI will consider getting some far away rebel settlements too early on, such as those in eastern europe or the middle east. However, you can also decrease that number and increase the following instead:
Change the above to 40 or 50 and this means the AI will also attack rebel settlements after turn 30 and thus be able to pump out more troops.
For the faction_standing file, you can also change how the pope views your actions against fellow catholics. The code in the spoiler tags will make him hate you quite a bit more for aggressions. Just replace the sections in your own faction_standing file with the one here:
Note that except for changing files found directly in the data directory by default, most others are only loaded when you start a new game. So you can actually change stuff like character traits and the ai for a running game!
There certainly are a lot more things you can do to improve the AI, but that would take extensive modding of how traits are allocated and what buildings do etc.
What I posted is a good start to boost the fun level you get out of campaigns and should even make things challenging if you steamroll.
In my semi-steamroll campaign as the French, the Hungarians for example are much further ahead in technology due to the money they have available and are fielding chivalric knights fairly early.
Making your game more challenging without turtling
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