SavageAI Beta - New Campaign AI
Updated 3/1/09 with Version 0.82 beta
SavageAI is a new campaign AI designed to be much more aggressive, unpredictable, and challenging than Lusted's, without being reckless or stupid. I originally planned just to tweak Lusted's AI, but eventually just rebuilt the entire AI from scratch.
Features of SavageAI
Difficulty Scaling - More than any other AI, there are significant differences in difficulty level. On Very Hard the AI will be much more aggressive toward the player than on Normal, and it will also be somewhat more difficult to make alliances.
Stack Merging - Much attention has been paid to minimizing small AI stacks and ensuring that the AI concentrates its forces into larger stacks. (To some extent this is unavoidable but it has been minimized as much as possible.)
Invasion Planning - The AI no longer launches last minute, ill-planned invasions. It will "plan" the invasion and gather its armies into a superior force before invading. Even when you're at war, the AI will generally NOT respond with an endless stream of small, ineffective counterattacks. Instead, it will usually wait a turn or two and then launch a larger, more effective counterattack.
Naval Invasions - If the AI has reason to invade a non-neighboring faction, it can and will launch a naval invasion.
Better AI Garrisons - The AI will more frequently defend its settlements properly with significant garrisons.
Semi-Stable Alliance Blocks - In SavageAI, alliances have a big impact on deciding who to invade. Your allies will back you up (usually), and you can expect attacks from the allies of your enemies (usually). (Of course, other factors play a role. For example, it's less likely that your ally will back you up if your ally is already distracted by multiple wars at home.) That said, alliance blocks are not 100% stable, as allies can backstab each other depending on strategic considerations.
Greater Emphasis on Strategic Considerations - In addition to faction relationship and troop strength along the border, SavageAI also considers larger strategic factors when deciding who to attack, such as whether a faction is thinly stretched with many enemies or not (regardless of the border garrisons). For example, let's say Venice is considering an invasion of Hungary. If Hungary is at war with the Byzantines and the Kievan Rus, Venice is more likely to invade than if Hungary isn't fighting another war. One result of this is that the AI's aggressiveness toward you, the player, will to some extent be determined by your playstyle. If you "turtle" by maintaining good, peaceful relations with your neighbors, defending your settlements well, and building strong alliances, then you're probably not the best target for the AI and they'll be more likely to turn elsewhere. But if you overstretch your resources and start invading your neighbors, you better leave some armies on your "peaceful" borders or they won't be peaceful for very long.
Alliances are Important, but Your Allies Can Still Backstab - AI allies will often attack your enemies and generally won't backstab you for no reason, so alliances are critical... But alliances are not set in stone, and your allies can turn against you depending on the strategic situation. The likelihood of allied backstabs is also dependent on faction relations and difficulty level.
Faction Relations - While good relations are no guarantee that another faction will not attack you, in SavageAI (just as in the real world) they make a big difference. Maintaining good relations with your allies will help ensure that they stay loyal, but let relations with them deteriorate too much and they're far more likely to abandon you when you need them most. SavageAI now includes conditional relationship factors that affect whether relations improve or degrade over time based on the strategic situation (e.g. relations between Spain, Aragon and Portugal will be better while the Moors are on the Iberian peninsula, but may begin to degrade once the Moors have been driven out... thanks to Turbo for developing this idea). Even relations between historically friendly factions may begin to degrade if one faction grows too powerful.
"Smart" AI Aggression Against Rebels - The AI will move quickly to invade rebel territories, but if they go to war with neighbouring factions, the AI will prioritize these wars over invasion of rebel territories.
Reasonable Papal Behavior - Generally, the Papal States faction is passive and will not attack Catholics. If you're on the Italian peninsula, though, it's best to stay on the Pope's good side...
My goal is to make SavageAI:
1) the most challenging M2TW AI around
2) enjoyable by the largest range of people, from "turtles" to "TOTAL WAR!" types
Installation Instructions
You can download the SavageAI .zip at the bottom of the page. As of now, SavageAI is only three files: descr_campaign_ai_db.xml, descr_diplomacy.xml and descr_faction_standing.txt. To install, simply copy these files over your current files in the /data directory. So for Stainless Steel, you would copy it in "..Program Files/SEGA/Medieval II Total War/mods/Stainless_Steel_6/data/". (Make sure to make a backup copy of the original copies of the three files.)
SavageAI should work with just about every version of SS 6.x. That said, it was designed and tested on Gracul's RC releases with Real Recruitment/RC.
If You Try SavageAI, Please Give Me Feedback
This version is a beta version, so although it's fully functional and pretty challenging at times, it could still use some fine-tuning. So if you play with it and give me feedback, your input will definitely be used to help improve future versions.
Please include the following information:
1) What faction are you playing as?
2) What difficulty setting?
3) What campaign? (Early, Late, etc.)
4) What mod or mods (e.g. SS 6.1, SS 6.2 RC4, RC4 w/Real Combat, etc.)
Specific issues you might also want to comment on:
-Did the AI request peace too quickly/often, or likewise was the AI intransigent and wouldn't accept peace even when it definitely should have?
-Were AI invasions reasonable? Or were you frequently thinking "WTF is the AI doing?!"
-Alliances: Too many or too few? Too strong or too weak?
-AI vs. AI aggressiveness: Did the AI seem to be too aggressive toward other AI factions? Not aggressive enough?
-Did you find the AI challenging? What do you think would make the AI more challenging?
Note on Early Era Campaign:
At the start of the Early Era Campaign, nearly half the map is held by rebels, and many factions are completely surrounded by rebels. Generally, SavageAI will prefer to take over a nearby rebel regions rather than start a war with another faction. For this reason, at the start of the Early Era Campaign you may not see many wars starting during the first 20 or so turns because the AI is focusing on snapping up rebel regions. Once the AI runs out of easy rebel targets, however, then it will quickly turn its attention to other factions.
Random Note on Forts with SavageAI:
SavageAI works best if forts have been disabled. They are already disabled on many of the most popular mods for SS. If you have fort building enabled then no worries, it generally won't be a problem. But if you find that AI armies seem to get "stuck" in the forts (or else the AI doesn't seem to be garrisoning its settlements well and AI armies in forts are not coming to the rescue when those settlements are attacked), you may wish to consider disabling forts yourself. If you want to disable forts, you can do so by:
1) Open up /data/descr_campaign_db.xml in your Stainless Steel folder. (Make a backup of this file first.)
2) Find this line:
<can_build_forts bool="true"/>
3) Change it to:
<can_build_forts bool="false"/>
4) Save and close.
Acknowledgments:
Thanks to Lusted and CavalryCmdr for laying the groundwork for all AI modding with their research and discussions.
Thanks to Turbo for many of the ideas used in the faction_standings file.
Thanks to Niamad for use of much of his faction_standings file.
Thanks to Quark and Gracul for creating the faction_standings file on which mine was based.
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Originally Posted by loet66
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