XAI; News and anouncements
Hello my old friends!
XAI has made TREMENDOUS strides in the past couple of weeks. The campaign AI is now finally ready for the prime time and is what I would consider complete. I have fixed a huge number of issues with the game. One of the biggest accomplishments is syncing up the occupation and diplomacy rules. This was a monumental task and took hundreds of hours and I had to completely rewrite most of the diplomacy rules and occupation rules to get them to work together. No one else has accomplished this feat with Attila. I will leave it at that.
Another accomplishment is fixing the personalities attitudes because they sucked and were just plain flat wrong and many were set to be far too aggressive so the AI could never build correctly.
I have added 15 personalities to both Roman empires that are far more to Roman character than CA ever tried to do. In fact did you know that the GC only has like 52 personalities, but the little biddie AOC campaign has over 400..now what is wrong with that picture? So over time I plan on making more personalities for the GC that are true to character of the major factions and removing stupid traits that would not apply to them.
With XAI I have finally been able to play over 100 turns and not stop playing out of boredom, the XAI is engaging in diplomacy, battles, and overall feels like a game that is worthy of a release title. I feel I have accomplished my first stage of what I wanted to do and that was fix Attila. I did not have any idea at how broken this game really was, but now it is fixed so go enjoy it! I will be posting up the latest version this weekend for those of you who do not have Steam access. In about 2 weeks I estimate I will have completed the next goal Unit's 2.0!
I am hard at work on XBAI 2.0 which is quite a big task that is going to take a bit more time. Unfortunately there are still issues with the CA code that are preventing me from truly making it great. I am specifically talking about the AI's lack of using all formations properly. It will use most of the basic ones, but it will not use the more advanced ones like testudo or cantebrian circle when it should. I guess we will have to live with that until we can hound CA into fixing these issues. Other than that issue the XBAI 2.0 is doing a remarkable job of fighting with the XAI unit re balance 2.0 mod. I have taken it upon myself to redo the entire Attila roster, since others do not want to be my friend and allow me the use of their units. That is totally fine by me, because honestly, I have devised a really awesome system that is gonna be fun, make sense, and be realistic. So, I thank you!! You know who you are! In fact, I am almost done with the basic units, and I can tell you my friends I have found hundreds of ridiculous errors in the units file because I am redoing it the right way, even though it should have been that way from the start. There will not be any unit expansions at this time! Maybe next year as I am creeping up on 1300 hours for this mod, and honestly I am tired and need a break to enjoy it and some other stuff and life.
I should send CA a bill for my time that I have invested as I am currently studying for certifications to get better work but more than likely they will just use my work anyway without any kudos or payment anyway, so there really is no point. To all the naysayers and doubters go download XAI and play for 100 turns then we can have some discussion. For all the rest of you please enjoy the game you paid for! You can finally get your money's worth!
Well, I wanted to give a small update and let you know I am not lost just extremely busy.
Xeryx
