AI psychology: a thread attempting to analyze it´s behavior (contribs. welcome)

[Noir]

Originally posted by Cambyses II
I have seriously considered removing all valour bonus regions from the mod, but that would be very unpopular with many players, and understandably so.

Well, perhaps, however i have kept at a minimum campaign related factors that can influence the stats of units. I removed the armour and weapon upgrades, valour bonuses, morale uprades and nerfed significantly the default command stars (ranging from 0 to 4 now as a start) as mentioned earlier. These in my opinion only provide a distortion of the battles as rich factions can afford to make their units better, something which i dislike. Upgrades and jedai units being campaign winners are a huge spoiler for me. There's nothing worse than winning battles simply because your swords will beat the enemy swords and your spears will beat the enemy spears and so on. Tactics are not needed anymore passed that point.

In addition, i have regulated the maintencance costs/rebbeliousness of provinces in order to give no more than a stack+ a couple of units max per province for the AI factions and make it popssible to invade a neighbouring province at the cost though of having the newly conquered and the owned province rebelled if not careful/not having happy buildings etc etc.

This implies that apart from the horde and crusades/jihads, there are few battles to be fought with more than a full stack vs a full stack, which i find is perfect - more than that and battles become multihour chores that you know you'll win versus usually a fragmented and leaderless (after the initial melee) mob, but still you have to sit out in the pc.

As for the popularity of all this, well, i personally enjoy the game in this way. I understand very well that the rules change if you are making a released mod though.

Relative to the AI developing provinces until he reaches the requirements for the valor bonus, there is no doubt about it. I have played several Byzzantine campaigns in the MedoMod IV with the AI controlling building/training. He never did once built anything in Constantinople (Tharce in the mod) despite the fact that its the most ludicrous province commercially (together with Egypt, Sicily, Algeria, Provence, Venice, Aragon, and Khazar). That's because the katafracts that were getting the bonus there were already available. Once i've removed the bonus... surprise, surprise: the AI was making 1600 to 2300 in Constantinople in 20 turns in the majority of the cases, not so much different than what i was able to achieve.