Descr_strat and the AI

[Soul Firez]

Can anyone here tell me exactly how much AI control the descr_strat settings have over the campaign AI .

What i mean is this (which i only found playing with geomod) at the start of each faction in the descr_strat you have the usual AI label faction___ and balanced smith but i found it doesnt have to be balanced smith there where alot of different settings the one i tested was sailor. also the smith part there was a list of names to use i choose ceasar instead of smith . I only watched the campaign AI for a while but i did note alot more naval traffic from the faction and well they where very aggresive in taking land

Perhaps my imagination but it really did seem to have remarked effect , can anyone tell me exactly how much effect or if i was only imagining the effect these settings had LOL.

[diadok]

balanced smith is the more balanced.
all other combinations seems to create more problems than resolve.

here is the tutorial :
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=197219

Characteristics

These control a set of AI production personalities, which contribute a bias towards building and training (but not retraining or repairing)
. This bias is fairly small compared to game-generated factors such as "the enemy is attacking me with lots of cavalry, build me some spearmen". Explaining the weighting system which drives the production AI in full is beyond the scope of this document as it would take several days to write. So in short, the building construction personalities are these: (ranked highest to lowest - therother)


* balanced - biases towards growth, taxable income, trade level bonuses (roads), walls and xp bonus buildings

* religious - biases towards growth, loyalty, taxable income, farming, walls and law

* trader - biases towards growth, trade level, trade base, weapon upgrades, games, races and xp bonus buildings

* comfort - biases towards growth, farming, games, races, xp bonus and happiness

* bureaucrat - biases towards taxable income, growth, pop health, trade, walls, improved bodyguards and law

* craftsman - biases towards walls, races, taxable income, weapon upgrades, xp bonuses, mines, health and growth

* sailor - biases towards sea trade, taxable income, walls, growth, trade

* fortified - biases towards walls, taxable income, growth, loyalty, defenses, bodyguards and law


These biases are towards building properties, rather than buildings themselves. The game does not know what a
"Blacksmith" is, for example, it only knows that it is a building which provides a weapon upgrade, and hence a Craftsman
AI would be more likely to build it than another AI personality type.

These are then combined with a troop production personality, as follows:


* smith - exactly level

* mao - biased towards mass troops, light infantry

* genghis - biased towards missile cavalry and light cavalry

* stalin - biased towards heavy infantry, mass troops and artillery

* napoleon - biased towards a mix of light and heavy infantry, light cavalry

* henry - biased towards heavy and light cavalry, missile infantry

* Caesar - biased towards heavy infantry, light cavalry, siege artillery


The same system as for the buildings applies. Troop category and class are combined at the time the unit database is loaded to give a unit production type, and the likelihood of the AI choosing to produce a given unit type which can be produced is then modified by the unit type weighting. There is also a random element in the choosing of which building or troop type to produce next, so the effect of the bias is a statistical thing. Another factor that is applied over the top which may obscure the bias is a tendency towards producing troop mixtures (according to what is already in the garrison) and a weighting according to unit strength.

[Soul Firez]

Thanks very interesting strange i had never noticed this before perhaps not good for wide spread use in a campaign but with specific factions it may work (or atleast ill test it ) .The level of the Bias is of main concern i mean to limit a faction to just troops of that style wouldnt be good but if it still recruits the others but with slight bias to thatstyle it may indeed work with the apacheans i just added in

Ah Mikll just showed me a link with the full list and from it i would agree with him that CAs original intent was to give each faction a seperate personality (i cant believe in all this time i never saw any of this. ) But can anyone tell me before i trial it how broken is the feature (it must be because they never ended up using it and no descr_strat i have ever seen using anything other than balanced smith all the recruitmet tweaking has been done using the EDU .

[Achilla]

What you need is 'balanced' for unit recruitment and then to address ALL your issues via recruitment priorities in EDU. The building trait part (e.g. 'fortified' or 'smith') is matter of testing, really, and extensive one. I prefer to not mess with something I don't truly understand, but certainly there IS some room to cover there.

[diadok]

there must be a coefficient between the recruit_priority_offset of the EDU, the AI production personality, and the troop production personality.
but how the engiine cooks all of that... it would need thousands of tests to discover the perfect recipe

[xeryx]

You guys are correct, and it would be a bias..based off of the priorities. However without having access to the actual values of the "bias" it would be next to impossible to determine.