Do changes to units affect AI faction recruitment choices?
Experimenting with a minimod, I increased the accuracy of light cannon. My starting-point was that some units seem worthless - for instance, why would we recruit 3-lb horse artillery when we can recruit 6-lb horse artillery and why use sakers when we can recruit demi-cannon? (Incidentally, I thought that Humble Warrior's post on a thread which discussed sakers and demi-cannon http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...vs-Demi-Cannon was hilarious).
My response was to try to make these 'worthless' units useful - for instance, light cannon could be more accurate or reload more quickly, while still having lower firepower (so that, for example, sakers don't make demi-cannon worthless - each unit would have some advantage over the other). When I played a game using this test minimod, suddenly it seemed that the AI factions wanted to recruit sakers instead of demi-cannon in the first few turns. (I then looked at the in-game description for sakers, realised that historically sakers were probably less accurate - some sakers had big barrels for old ammunition, so modern cannon balls 'rattled' down their barrels, which would mess with their accuracy. So I looked for other ways of balancing 'worthless' units - but I still remember my surprise that suddenly the AI factions seemed keen on sakers.
In a more recent minimod (a version of vadik_1st's mod which allows recruitment of the Warpath units by Native American factions in the Grand Campaign) I reduced the cost of the Warpath elite units. I thought that this would encourage the Native American factions to recruit them. This seems to work, especially in conjunction with a modded startpos which doubles the starting treasuries of Native American factions. I recently fought a battle against a Cherokee army which contained 5 Warpath elite units, which made it more of a challenge.
These experiences seem to indicate that improving unit statistics and reducing the cost makes AI factions more likely to recruit units - which is what I thought would happen. But I could be falling into some of the fallacies described in a brilliant infographic on the debating forum http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...ng-Forum-Rules (in the third post, by Ferrets54) - I'm relying on anecdotal evidence and may be affected by confirmation bias.
Has anyone found anything in a database table which directly governs how AI factions decide which units to recruit? (I'm wondering if we can edit this, e.g. by changing an entry in the unit_tables or unit_stats_land_tables). Alternatively, have you noticed changes in the recruitment choices of AI factions after editing units or installing mods which edit units?
Last edited by Alwyn; June 15, 2014 at 11:24 AM.
Reply With Quote
