AI balancing

[ramsesii]

Hello Darth
I am playing around with the edu of RTR to force the AI to make more balanced armies instead of sending stacks with only inf or with rediculous amounts of elephants.
Seen Your Darth Mod aims at the same thing I wonder iff you could give me some tips and tricks that would help the ai to make better armies
I already tweaked the descr_strat Napoleon etc. and found that it was not a real big succes.
So now i want to tweak it with edu please help
My thanks infront.

[DARTH VADER]

sorry for late reply.

I will give you basic concepts. The rest need a lot lot test and interactive modding according to mod attributes.

-AI has a certain rule/formula which calculates benefit of attributes according to cost. So it is a huge mistake to begin just changing attributes without simultanuesly changing the cost. You have to "feel" the changes. For example if you produce a powerful unit and make it cheap you will see the AI preferring it almost exclusively.
So if you want balanced armies you will have to begin in your mind making classes of units and how do you want them distributed in AI armies.
It will not be realistic to see oversized cavalry units?Then fix cavalry to be either too costy or to be upkeep expensive.Do not overdo this bcs AI will not built them at all.
You can make them to be built in more than 1 turn and this is very effective for the AI despite the cost attributes.
-Generally powerful units like elephants have to be expensive in order that AI builts not too many.
-But....important thing is the unit attribute balancing.So alter them as you want them to work in the battlefield and maybe changing their costs simultanuesly.If you begin modding with a base that you are happy in battlefield and not happy in the campaign map then alter only costs and test. If you want to make adjustments then if you increase for example attack then immediately increase somewhat the cost or else you will spoil the balance and vice versa.
Then play some rounds and see how AI is building them. Are you happy? No? then try changing costs/upkeep in a manner that if you are disturbed by the oversize of a unit class to increase cost or upkeep or both and see changes and vice versa.
-The campaign Faction AI also has a huge impact in AI choice for example Mao chooses masses of cheap units (good for horde/barbarian armies) and smith produces armoured/heavy units in priority etc. etc.

Cannot write more. The a.m general things maybe will help you.(I hope)

PM. also note that the comparation of unit attributes/cost is that that matters. For example you may fix a mod that everything costs above than 1000. So if militia cost 1000 then Spartans should cost more than 4000...So in other words the system of each mod is different and have to study all units to begin your balance.

[ramsesii]

Does the AI also look at the upkeep I heart somewhere that it only looked at recruitment costs?
I have fount out that the AI values 2 hp units extremely high.
Can you confirm this??

[DARTH VADER]

yes certainly. The upkeep is very important. Also every attribute is important such as hp. But I do not know the formula so I have to "feel" the game by experience to balance. A newbie may find it difficult at start but if he does the basic steps mentioned above he will progressively understand the mechanisms.

[ramsesii]

I am sertainly no newbie dont look at my post rate I am an RTR forum man and have always modded EDU of RTR to my own likings. so I will keep you informated about my progress
Greetz RamsesII

[DARTH VADER]

do not be offended by the word "newbie". I was talking to the third person for everyone that reads the post.