The AI cheats financially in Kingdoms

[NagatsukaShumi]

Correct. In the campaign_script you can read that the AI gets extra money because the AI doesn't get any missions with which it can earn some money. The script also adds some extra money for higher difficulty levels to make the game more ah.... yes indeed difficult.

You are indeed correct, the AI is programmed to gain money should they hit the red, which is clearly making them more of a challenge to just stomp on, I also belive its available to get them to declare war should you grow to a certain extent.

[nameless]

You can still cripple the AI though. THe Lithuanians have been smashed down to two villages and they can no longer retaliate.

[DVX BELLORVM]

You are indeed correct, the AI is programmed to gain money should they hit the red, which is clearly making them more of a challenge to just stomp on,

That makes economic warfare pretty much useless. But then again provides more challenge.

Is it known how much money the AI gets, and under what circumstances ?

[alpaca]

That makes economic warfare pretty much useless. But then again provides more challenge.

Is it known how much money the AI gets, and under what circumstances ?

Yeah, you can check the campaign_scripts for the different campaigns.
It differs from campaign to campaign and faction to faction.
If the AI has less than 0, they get 2000 and if they have less than -5000 they get another 6000, in addition to that they get an increase for their king's purse depending on your difficulty setting.

In crusades for example, the KOJ gets +500 on easy (while the player would get 1000 extra playing it), +2000 on medium (no play bonus), +3500 on hard and +5500 on vh.
In addition the Turks get a 15k extra per turn in that campaign when not played by a human.

[DVX BELLORVM]

Yeah, you can check the campaign_scripts for the different campaigns.

I don't have the Kingdoms yet
But I've checked campaign_script for the vanilla, and didn't find anything. Does that mean that in vanilla AI doesn't receive financial bonuses, or have I missed something?

[Rumpole]

In the American campaign script, each faction is given a "King's Purse" that varies from 500 to 6500 per turn. In addition, the Tarascans, Chichimecans, and Aztecs get an extra 10000 florins per turn.

The effect is that AI factions can build and support all the forces that they can recruit. That explains why they have multiple stacks per city sitting around.

It will be interesting to see whether any human can win with a faction other then the Apaches, given this misguided code in campaign_script.

[Rumpole]

I checked campaign_script for the original MTW2 and found no special code to give money to AI factions. This is a new feature(bug) in Kingdoms, and it wrecks the economic foundation of the game, since you are watching your finances and the AI effectively has infinite cash. I cannot imagine how this made it through beta testing.

[MStumm]

I checked campaign_script for the original MTW2 and found no special code to give money to AI factions. This is a new feature(bug) in Kingdoms, and it wrecks the economic foundation of the game, since you are watching your finances and the AI effectively has infinite cash. I cannot imagine how this made it through beta testing.

This is actually a feature. I believe in the original campaign the AI (with a few exceptions) was almost always broke, so you were fighting mostly militias. Now at least they can afford the brawn to fight back. Too bad they still lack the brains. In the Teutonic campaign all factions have lots of pretty large armies, much larger than in the vanilla. Since they have armies they can actually attack me now, and with expensive units too. Like Teutonic armored spearmen which are about 700 each.