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AI Unshackled - AI Cities and Tactics Extended

Goal:

This mod attempts to upgrade the performance of the AI (within the limitations of the modding tools available), as well as make some minor changes to the Disjunct feature and Quest frequency.

This mod is inspired by "AI Difficulty Mod - Limit Break" which is well rated and likely better than this mod. This mod goes about some things in a different way, especially regarding disjunction.

Note: This mod still requires full play testing. While AI performance is drastically improved, it’s hard to determine the full impact of the changes made to Disjunctions and the Death of Leaders.


AI City building:

AI have less restrictions when it comes to where and how many cities they can build. They can build cities closer together, and build many more than the player provided they have the space to expand.

To offset their ability to grow empires much larger than the base game, they must also maintain larger armies in order to expand. The larger armies also benefit the AI’s survivability against cosmic events, roaming armies, and the player.


Disjunction settings:

It is now much harder to Disjunct spells without using Improved Disjunct. The penalty for a Critical Failure Disjunction has also been significantly increased, and each failure will only minimally reduce the integrity of the spell to be Disjuncted.

Basically if you want to Disjunct a spell with any strength to it, you’ll need to pour adequate resources into doing so safely and efficiently.

One of the best methods to cripple your opponent’s magical prowess is to go for the source. The death of a Leader will result in an 80% chance to cancel their active sustained spells. Any spells that aren’t cancelled will cost 4x as much upkeep to maintain until the Leader is resurrected (3 turns).


Quest settings:

Quests can be given to the player slightly earlier after meeting independents, but can also take longer than vanilla (5 to 15 turns).
In addition, the time between being given new quests has been extended to 5-10 turns.
This will slightly slow down the rate of favour a player can gain with independents through questing alone.


Tactical AI Settings:

This was the hardest to tweak. There are many settings that don’t exist within the modding tools making it hard to control some of the more suicidal AI behaviour. For the most part AI has been significantly improved and should perform noticeably better.

The Biggest changes have been in AI targeting priorities, with less distinction between what the AI should target in terms of unit type, and much greater weighting on self-preservation, and scoring kills.

The AI will pay attention to the strongest units on the field, without ignoring the weaker units just because they are weaker.
They should be less likely to B-line straight for a single target ignoring all others, and should be more likely to prioritise finishing off a unit rather than spreading damage - though this isn’t guaranteed, the AI can still be quite unpredictable.


Independent AI Settings:

I’ve attempted to give independent AI the Shipbuilding skill so they can traverse water. I haven’t been able to verify whether or not this is working in game.


Compatibility:

Requires the base game only

This mod loads in Priority 1 Slot, and will overwrite changes from any mod also loading in a lower Priority.

It will be compatible with anything that doesn’t change AI priorities, Disjunct Settings (but changes to the Disjunct ability are okay), Quest or Cosmic event frequency.

This mods changes will be overwritten by any mod loading with a higher Priority than it.


Under the hood:

Changes made to: TITLE.RPK and AOW_CLASSSKILLDATA.RPK (Diplomacy only)

Original vs. New values for settings are listed below, these are also located in an excel file in the Mod folder with much neater presentation.

City Search Domain Radius Original: 3 New: 4
City Search Min Distance Original: 7 New: 5

Dead Leader Sustain Cancel Chance Original: 0 New: 0.3
Dead Leader Sustain Cost Multiplier Original: 2 New: 4

Disjunction Settings
Base Failure Chance Multiplier Original: 0.5 New: 0.8
Min Dispel Chance Original: 0.05 New: 0
Max Dispel Chance Original: 0.95 New: 1
Improved Disjunct Cost Multiplier Original: 2 New: 2
Improved Disjunct Bonus Original: 0.25 New: 0.5
Failure Integrity Multiplier Original: 0.5 New: 0.8
Critical Hitpoint Loss Original: 0.5 New: 0.8

Domain Structure Min Distance Original: 5 New: 9
Domain Structure Min Distance AI Original: 14 New: 9

Independent Player Skills Original: None New: Shipbuilding Skill

Quest Player Min Cooldown Original: 3 New: 5
Quest Player Max Cooldown Original: 5 New: 10
Quest Giver Min Cooldown Original: 8 New: 5
Quest Giver Max Cooldown Original: 12 New: 15
Player Max Quests Original: 5 New: 5

Max Cities More Than Human Original: 1 New: 10
Max Cities More Than Human (King) Original: 3 New: 15
Max Cities More Than Human (Emperor) Original: 4 New: 25
Min Units Per City Before Founding Original: 4 New: 9
Max Proportion Of Units Of One Type Original: 0.2 New: 0.5

Tactical AI Settings
Kill Target Score Bonus Original: 25 New: 60
Die To Unit Score Penalty Original: -30 New: -300
Out Of Range Score Penalty Original: -40 New: -40
Wall Climb Safe Distance Original: 5 New: 5
Wall Too Far Base Penalty Original: 15 New: 15
Wall Too Far Penalty Original: 2 New: 2
Marked Wall Bonus Original: 15 New: 15
Wall Damage Score Mult Original: 50 New: 50
Breached Wall Guard Bonus Original: 10 New: 10
Position Guarded Penalty Original: -15 New: -50
Minimum Spell Effectiveness Original: 1 New: 1

Prioritization Settings
Is Leader Bonus Original: 1.5 New: 0.5
Is Hero Bonus Original: 0.75 New: 0.5
Independent Hero Penalty Original: -0.4 New: -0.4
Has Ranged Attack Bonus Original: 0.2 New: 0.3
Has Area Attack Bonus Original: 0.3 New: 0.2
Has Mind Control Bonus Original: 0.3 New: 0.2
High Threat Bonus Original: 0.6 New: 0.6
Low Threat Bonus Original: -0.6 New: 0
Flat Adjacency Bonus Original: 0.2 New: 0
Per Unit Adjacency Bonus Original: 0.1 New: 0
Leader Adjacency Bonus Original: 1 New: 0
Hero Adjacency Bonus Original: 0.5 New: 0
Mind Controlled Override Original: 0.2 New: 0.2
Mind Controlling Bonus Original: 1 New: 0.6
Caution Level Default Original: 1.1 New: 20
Caution Level Leader Original: 2.5 New: 20
Caution Level Hero Original: 1.75 New: 20
Caution Level Mind Controlled Original: 0.2 New: 0.2
Ranged Attacker Melee Preference Original: 0.4 New: 0.1
Exploding Ranged Preference Original: 0.7 New: 0.8

Num Enemies Cast Spell Override: Hero Original: 4 New: 7
Num Enemies Cast Spell Override: Leader Original: 6 New: 7
Spell Choosing Random Spread Original: 0.2 New: 0.2
Guard After Using Score Bonus Original: 6 New: 10
War Cry Damage Original: 3 New: 3
Free Ability Ranged Attack Bonus Original: 15 New: 20

Throne Settings - Turns to Respawn Original: 3 New: 3
Default Throne Distance Original: 30 New: 30
Make Throne Turns Per Distance Original: 0.2 New: 0.2
Make Throne Turns Min Original: 4 New: 4
Make Throne Turns Max Original: 3 New: 3