KGCM+ HHB issues with the AI

[Messremb]

Hello, folks. Sorry for starting a new thread, but since it secondarily matters to standard KGCM too...

First, the garrisons of all AI factions are manned just barely, the player waltzing and the enemy stacks retreating to regroup around another settlement and be useless.
Related (or not): when assaulting the balance of forces is shown heavily favoring the defender even though autocombat yields normal results. Does the AI see that erroneous computation when manning garrisons and leaves them unprotected?
Would raising the number of free upkeep slots help the AI better defend (after the previous issue has been corrected)?

Secondly, how to cripple the Papacy? I've cut the starting money to 3k, the king's purse to 0, eliminated most of that starting army and still in every campaign at about turn 5- war on Milan; around turn 30 Milan is gone.
Is this intended by the mod, to make the Papacy rabid or not?

Thanks.

[Dave Scarface]

Thats XCAI 4.2 I think your talking about. I used it in the KGCM hotseat patch and played hotseats with it for many months. I too saw the same problems, AI armies were wondering around much more than normal. In 1 hotseat I was playing Antioch and another guy was playing Byzantium and the turks armies just disappeared completely. We nearly captured all of their settlements. Then when the turks were down to only 2 settlements about 6 turk stacks suddenly showed up. All the turkish armies had left its settlements behind for us to capture and should have rushed to recapture them much sooner. Then me and Byzantium allied and fought together so we could defeat the turkish hordes. That said, the AI never defends its settlements in Lusteds CAI (KGCM 4.2) either. It will go to deep defense when it has lost some settlements and only has a few left, but thats about it. Basically you can never have an AI that is both agressive and defends well in M2TW, its simply not possible for this AI. It is better to go with an aggressive AI as opposed to a turtle AI though. Because that obviously makes the mod a lot more interesting with plenty of wars. The AI in HHB is a good AI on the whole and is an improvement in many areas. But the wandering of armies does need to be cut down a bit.

About the Papal States, again as observered from playing hotseats the Papal AI will always go for Florence and also loves naval invading Cagliari. The only way you can stop this is to try and make the Papal States completely passive. But then whats the point in the Papal States remaining in KGCM? just for Crusades? In my view that is big a waste of a faction slot. The Papal States should be a live faction or not be in the mod at all. A good solution has already been found for KGCM 4.3. Milan no longer neighbours Rome and Florence starts rebel. Milan gets a new region Turin in its place. Also Milan no longer starts at war, job done.

Dave