Lusted,

I have something regarding the new 1.2 battle-analyser section of the config_ai_battle file that you might want to investigate for your mod.

Have you ever noticed that if you bring superior missiles to a fight against the AI, the AI will quite often sit out the duel using its inferior missiles, essentially allowing you to decimate the AI army? Well, in the battle-analyser section there's the following code:
Code:
        <battle-analyser>
			<!-- ratio of friendly to enemy strength to be considered more powerful -->
			<friendly-to-enemy-strength-ratio>0.8</friendly-to-enemy-strength-ratio>
			<!-- ratio of friendly to enemy melee strength to be considered overwhelmingly powerful -->
			<enemy-melee-strength-multiplier>3.0</enemy-melee-strength-multiplier>
			<!-- ratio of enemy to friendly ranged strength to be considered overwhelmingly powerful -->
			<friendly-ranged-strength-multiplier>3.0</friendly-ranged-strength-multiplier>
			<!-- ratio of friendly strength to enemy ranged strength to force attack -->
			<friendly-ranged-strength-divisor>5.0</friendly-ranged-strength-divisor>
			<!-- distance behind the defensive line the enemy must reach to be considered to have broken through -->
			<enemy-position-buffer-distance>25</enemy-position-buffer-distance>
        </battle-analyser>
This code was introduced in 1.2 and probably has a big impact on the passive AI. Now, as I see it and from the tests I've done there's seems to be an oddity here. I don't see how a friendly to enemy melee ratio and an enemy to friendly ranged ratio can both be greater than 0 and make any sense to the AI, when the end product is the same, i.e. for us (I think) to be perceived as being overwhelmingly powerful.

Anyway, in the tests I did where my missile heavy (4 missile units, 2 infantry units, 1 general) Byz army faced a Sicilian army of 2 Norman knights and 1 pavise crossbow (army ratio was 6:5 in my favour), the AI just sat and traded missiles until it was dead or routed. No attempt was made to engage the infantry and almost all Normans were dead. If the AI isn't going to retreat immediately this is clearly a daft tactic. So, I changed the
Code:
<friendly-ranged-strength-multiplier>3.0</friendly-ranged-strength-multiplier>
to
Code:
<friendly-ranged-strength-multiplier>0.3</friendly-ranged-strength-multiplier>
and this had a great impact. The AI appeared to trade a couple of rounds of missiles and then engaged its infantry. It still lost of course, but it played sensibly given the situation and took more casualties from me as a result.

Try it and see what you think. It's possible the last value could also be out of sorts but I haven't tested this one fully since changing the aforementioned one produced such good results.