This mod is outdated.

I realise that sometimes the luck of the draw is such that the AI can pull off a surprise. But it's very very rare.

I'm certainly not asking to do anything about diplomacy or anything, just pointing out what the most important AI problems are.

Mods with AI complication just don't exist. If anyone could do that, a lot of people would be incredibly happy

@GrokGrokov
As you yourself said some solutions:
1. I only let the domination (is that land size victory?) and lone survivor victory in settings
2. Small(er) map size, lots of players, Pangaea is king
3. if with diplomacy use the modifier that degrades relationships by 5 each turn
4. Set teams for instant wars. I found 3v3v3v3 or 6v6 (or 5v7 ;) entertaining.
5. max difficulty AI of course

@GrokGrokov
Ok, this is AI behavior I think I can't really touch. Diplomacy was never included by this mod.

Spells on strategic I had some AIs do it quite freqently, but more with lower tier spells doing a bit of dmg to my armies right before they attack.

The one time I actually played a (forgot the name) land size grab victory, the AI gave me quite hell for the next 15 turns.

Also, the AI rarely uses spells on the strategic map. Although it would seem that according to the research books, he is getting ahead, he should have a huge amount of mana, but no magical bombardment, no inciting revolutions from him will not be expected

Yes, the AI has problems with passives, I've played 500 hours of this game and this is what I can say:
1. AI very rarely attacks.
2. AI almost never declares war (passive). All these AI personalities do not work, up to 40-50 turn you can play calmly. AI will declare war only if the player will build around him and give him reasons to war. So the only way is to play in teams, against a large number of AI (then they are more aggressive from the start of the game).
3. The worst thing is when you declare a magical victory or unity victory. It would seem that all AI declare war on you, and should go exactly on the points of interest, and you expect that now there will be some game like Tower/Base Defence, but no. The AI will attack forts, castles, but not wonders of the world, and it will start attacking 5 moves before victory.

@Aktuarus hey! I found the AI behavior sufficiently well defined since last patch, that I found this mod redundant. The weird blobbing deffo is gone and the max diff AI was also going rather well at it.
If you think there are issues again with AI passivity I can have a look at it again, though ...

@Nerexa
The game had updates that also changed the AI. It would be nice if you updated your mod. I don't know how your mod works, but maybe it replaces other parameters with the old version.

@VirtualFuN
Hey, I finally found time to look into it. And the new packs for the DLC don't seem to contain overrides for the strategy personality traits. Meaning they should work same as all other lords in terms of aggressiveness.
I have updated the mod without changes, maybe there were some issues with the DLC drop or something. Maybe that fixes it?
But you said that some dragons were already fine, so I have limited hopes on that.

As I still don't have time to really playtest it, it would be nice, if someone could report on it.

Awesome! Looking forward to it!

@VirtualFuN
Didn't have time to play since DLC drop! But will look into the new lord personalities in the coming days and fix/add it!

Did you see "Diplomacy_Personality_Definitions_DragonLords.rpk"? Some dragons are passive even with this mod in new scenario.

This mod seems nice, i'll test it.

I remember in planetfall tested an IA more agressive.
The problem is that, as a human player, I've adapted to this AI, and even though at first it seemed to cause more problems, in the end I played a little more defensively to make it lose its units and then I'd laminate it because it no longer had enough defense to stop the counter.
In the end, this didn't necessarily make her a stronger opponent; in fact, it made her a weaker one.
But I suppose a human will always have the upper hand as long as he's able to adapt to predictable behavior... AIs still have a lot of progress to make.
Nevertheless, the games were a little more interesting.

Does this still work? I hope it does, it was very good to have!

Thanks for the kind words^^

Once you got the steps down, adjusting/creating simple value-change mods is really easy. I kinda do it like adjustiing game settings each time before I start a campaign. But I can understand that you don't want to start with it.

I think the name is very apt for the mod. It doesn't buff the AI, it doesn't affect vassals actually, it doesn't give the AI more troops it just makes it desire more bloodshed and conquest -> aggression ;)

Thank you for the great info, I don't think I would make a mod for this game though, especially after I realized the difficulty of building one.

It has to be some other mods that messed up with ai army power.

Maybe you would consider a different name for this mod? Like 'more active vassal ai' or 'fix passive ai'? I thought this is a difficulty increase mod until I searched every mod available and realized this is the one I've been looking for.

This mod is a must have that no one knows. Thanks again for being awesome

@Cheshirecrow
Hey! This mod should not change how many or how strong units the AI recruits, just how it uses the available ones. I think^^
If you want to tweak it and are willing to make a personal mod for yourself (it is fairly easy actually), the modified game files are in the description and if you open the mod in the modding tool and then the files, the changes are highlighted. I've been quite excessive with the numbers and liked the result, but you can try turning it down. Not sure it will fix your problem though.

Thanks for the amazing work. If I found enemy being too aggressive with 4 full stacks 3-4 tier units in under 40 turns at easy difficulty, is there anything I can do to tweak that?

@a very nice boy
Seemed to work in my one MP playthrough

Hello, does this work for multiplayer?

@SR
Level 3 is the caldera?
Funny, cuz even in vanilla they were quite active there in my games^^
I'm not completely sure, if the campaign lords are affected, I think they should, but there might be some underlying story scripting changing things.
And it only increases AI agressivenes, and doesn't change their overall behavior. So large distances still prevent them from attacking too often. I recommend smaller maps for a challenge.

Hey, tried this on campaign level 3, Hard diff, AI still slept. Could the issue be the campaign itself?

Thanks! I figured it out. Strange it doesn't keep separate file structures for the updated files, but it is what it is

@Salan
hey! As far as I understand, rpk files are only in the mod, if new ones were made. But this one only makes changes to existing base game rpks, in which cases it doesn't save a new rpk, but just the edits.
If you open the mod in the mod editor and then load the two files from the mod description out of the game pack file directory, you should have a marking on the data base entries, that got changed by this mod.

strange, when i look at your mod in the resource editor there is no rpk files edited.

Usually mods have the RPKs related to the mod, did you pack it somehow differently then most? Was trying to learn what settings you adjusted to make this work. Its a great idea!

Ahh ok thanks

@Rikashey

Hey, this mod doesn't give further bonus to the AI. What your experiencing is the normal power of an very hard/brutal AI. On max they get about 50% reduction to every cost you could imagine. If you wanna look it up, there is a mod "Difficulty Settings Explained", that adds ingame tooltips to the difficulty choice.
Without this mod you maybe don't notice the amount of enemy stacks as much, because they sit with 20 stacks on their capitol and do nothing and only come at you full force, once you invade their lands.

Does this give the ai any bonuses? Seems like no matter how many enemy stacks I wipe they just keep coming even in early game. There's no possible way they could be recruiting units so fast.

@UnderKingDuck I'm sorry, but I can't access and thus change the AI directly. Mods can oly do, what the editor allows. All this mod does is via ruler personalities, which have few things to work with, besides diplomacy.
This mod just changes like 5 values per personality group. I'm happy so little is already having an effect at all^^

Are you the AI modder we need but don't deserve? Cause if you know how to improve the AI there are quite a few areas that my group has noticed that the AI can really use some touching up on. Though it might be hard for just one person to fix it. :(

@Mansha
Short answer: No.
Long answer: If I understand it right from what I'm seeing in the data files, vassals follow the same logic as monster spawners for their roaming/attacking armies.
There are setting for spawners that at least can reduce their spawn intervalls, and I'm experimenting with them right now, but it seems, as if all spawners are currently linked to the default setting, even though different ones exist. Meaning, if you put free cities on steroids, you also put monster spawners on steroids :/

Great mod! Thats what was needed for AOW4!! Thank you! Is that possible to apply these methods for vassals as well ?

Yeah. Can't make them smart, just aggressive^^
But if they actually attack you, they at least have the potential to kill you^^

I tried it on the first Story scenario. It is indeed more aggressive, but Yaka uselessly sent 3 of his more powerful units, a phoenix and magma elements, to conduct a foolhardy raiding offensive in my inner territories, with the result that I more easily won against him when he sent the bulk of his army.

@TaeSung I don't know that. It is always safer to assume you ahve to start a new one though.

But if someone is willing to try it out with activating it only later, plaese report your findings :)

Does this mod apply to a session began without the mod? or should I start a new session to see the change due to the mod?

oh kk ty was unsure

@Matenkai only if you add new pack files. This one edits base game files as stated in the description. Those changes are stored directly in the .apc file, I guess.

shouldnt there be files in the Packs folder?

thank you for making this, it was very needed

@Zeikko Yes I have observed changed AI in my games, which I'm pretty sure I can attribute to the mod. As I wrote in another comment, I can't know what the exact details are on how the AI makes its decisions. So I'm not sure if it even affects the decision making if they go for a specific battle or not or if the whole thing only makes changes on a more makro/strategic level.
The main thing I wanted to tackle, was the AI sitting with gigantic armies on their cities and not even moving to the enemies they have war with. And that I have not observed again, yet.

Have you tested and noticed any changed AI behaviour after these changes? I just set up a 2 player map, declared war to Karissa the Red (Revolutionary Diplomat), razed their aggressive outpost. Then they moved close to my newly built city without walls and defender army value of about 400 with their army value of about 600. Then after reaching the adjacent hex of my city they just left and I was able to reinforce the city with my leader's stack. I was hoping they would attack my unwalled poorly defended city but no.

would be great, but its not, they make cities out of it, but they do this even wthout your, i just tried, so guess its cause i disabled underground and the map is too small

@RambelZambel I don't know what the detailed actions are that this affects, as I don't have access to how the AI actually "thinks". I just found the few weights I can actually access via the ruler personalities to twist the AIs general focus.
I could imagiine though, that an aggressive placement of outposts, that aren't really meant to be cities, is a part of their strategic offense behavior. As such it would probably occur more often with the mod.

@krishkrush vassal ai is bugged as hell, hope they fix it
@nerexa does this effect building outposts? They settle direct on my borders, even bettween 2 borders of 2 cities with almost no space left

I just don't like that they never do anything with teir troops, not even battle wandering marauders. Well if it isn't possible, that's too bad. Thanks for your answer and your great mod.

I don't really know how to do that. I looked through all game pack files, but couldn't find settings for it anywhere. I have an hypothesis, that vassal cities are actually treated the same as marauder spawners under the hood, which would open the option to change their interval for spawnng invading armies, but I can't make them behave like a player or make them actually use the troops that a player can give them.

Could you modify it to make this also apply to vassals? Maybe as a seperate mod?

If it doesn't cause an compability issue due to the same files being edited, it should work still.
Now this mod doesn't make the AI smarter or stronger in any way, it just makes it use the units it has more offensively. Its economy will actually probably be worse, due to the need to fuel its war maschine. But it can make better use of its numerical advantage.
So without resource cheats it will probably be a pretty underwhelming opponent.

How would this interact with the mod that also removes the AI cheats on higher difficulty?